Tag: Scarlet Witch

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Labor Day Sale; Doctor Doom; Ant-Man; Scarlet Witch; EC Archives

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has some new items in their Labor Day Sale, Marvel discounts Doctor Doom, Deathlok, Ant-Man and some witch-centric titles. Dark Horse slashes prices on the EC Archives and Crime Does Not Pay.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

DC Labors To Find You a Deal

Green Lantern  Shazam  Titans

The DC Labor Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/02.

And this sale features a few new collections for $2.99 that are either new to discounts or haven’t been discounted very long. Let’s run down the highlights.

Recent Discounts

  • Danger Street Vol. 2 – Tom King / Jorge Fornés; Did you get V.1? Here’s the conclusion. Recent Discount
  • Green Lantern ’23 – Jeremy Adams / Xermanico; More of a Silver Age feel to the current series as Hal Jordan is back on Earth and the classic supporting cast turns up. Recent discount
  • Hawkgirl Vol. 1: Once Upon a Galaxy ’23 – Jadzia Axelrod / Amancay Nahuelpan; Recent discount
  • Shazam! Vol. 1: Meet the Captain! ’23 – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; Very fun launch as Waid & Mora steer the franchise a little closer to the whimsical original tone. Recent discount
  • Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows ’23 – Tom Taylor / Nicola Scott; The Titans step up to take over the Justice Leagues duties and Brother Blood is back. Sets up Beast Wars. Good book. Recent discount
  • World’s Finest: Teen Titans – Mark Waid / Emanuela Lupacchino; An adventure of the original squad, similar in tone to Waid’s World’s Finest. Recent discount

Older Titles Worth a Look

  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; The *right* people doing an excellent continuation of The Animated Series
  • Batman / Spawn – Frank Miller / Todd McFarlane & Doug Moench / Alan Grant / Chuck Dixon / Klaus Janson; Both crossovers and $2.99 is a good price for it
  • Bizarro Comics – Alternative cartoonists, like Matt Groening, have their way with DC in this entertaining anthology
  • OMAC: One Man Army Corps – Jack Kirby’s ’70s satire of a corporate dystopia
  • One-Star Squadron – Mark Russell / Steve Lieber; Brilliant satire of on-demand apps and the gig economy… with Red Tornado
  • Prez – Mark Russell / Ben Caldwell; Social media accidentally elects a president; An election farce that we wish was not so relevant right now, but it’s a great comic that deserved a longer run
  • Rorschach – Tom King / Jorge Fornés; A meditation on identity in the world of Watchmen
  • Suicide Squad: Blaze; Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell; A very dark take on super powers and the government… even by Black Label standards
  • Superman: Birthright – Mark Waid / Leinil Francis Yu; Influential exploration of Superman’s coming of age
  • Swamp Thing ’21 – Ram V / Mike Perkins; The origin of the current Swamp Thing… all three volumes are not on sale simultaneously as one might think, too…

Victor Von Doom Bows Before No Man!

Doctor Doom  Avengers - The Private War of Doctor Doom  Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment

The Marvel Doctor Doom Sale runs through Monday, 9/9

The top dog here is the Doctor Doom series by Christopher Cantwell and Salvador Larroca. Its an instant classic well worth your time. Doom has been framed. For now he’s on the run, but his vengeance will be terrible. Featuring Kang in a highly amusing frenemy role.

Avengers: The Private War of Doctor Doom has a lot of creators with Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart and Jim Shooter as the primary writers and George Perez as the primary artist. This is a cross-over between Super Villain Team-Up (a better than you might think series that was basically Namor and Doom plotting against each other) and Avengers.

Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment by Roger Stern and Mike Mignola has Strange and Doom invading Hell to free Doom’s mother from the clutches of Mephisto.

Also of possible interest – Iron Man: Doomquest collects a famous pair of David Michelinie / Bob Layton tales (w/John Romita, Jr. on the first) that have a time travelling Doom clashing with Iron Man.  Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is the lesser-known Michelinie/Layton/Ron Lim follow-up.

Witches

Vision and the Scarlet Witch  Strange Academy Strange

The Marvel Agatha, Marvel Witches, and The Darkhold Sale runs through Monday, 9/30.

There’s a new TV show coming out… but there aren’t a lot of Agatha comics (especially in this sale), so we get a little bit of everything else, instead.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

Also of interest:

  • Strange Academy – Skottie Young / Humberto Ramos (Omnibus editions)
  • Strange – Jed MacKay / Marcelo Ferreira; Clea’s turn as Sorceress Supreme

What Did the Pink Panther Say To The Ant?

Ant-Man    Ant-Man: World Hive

The Marvel Ant-Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/2.

Since there are multiple formats for much of this, we’re going to walk through the highlights in the cheapest formats (which means omnibus, if available).

Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection: The Man in the Ant-Hill is a collection of the early Hank Pym stories from Tales to Astonish

Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection: Ant-Man No More follows Pym from the final Tales to Astonish issues through Scott Lang’s debut in the suit in Marvel Premiere.

Ant-Man: Scott Lang is a compilation book of the early appearances of Scott Lang in the Ant-Man suit. i.e., Lang before Lang became more of a comedy character. This is a relatively David Michelinie-driven volume with the solo 2-parter in Marvel Premiere, an Avengers arc and an Iron Man arc.

Irredeemable Ant-Man is the Robert Kirkman / Phil Hester run with Eric O’Grady finding the Ant-Man suit. At this point, O’Grady’s an unethical SHIELD agent playing both sides against the middle and it’s a bit of a farce. And this is where Ant-Man starts being played as an action comedy. Something that’s still largely the case.

The Astonishing Ant-Man: The Complete Collection is the omnibus for the Nick Spencer era, with art by Ramon Rosanas, Anapaolo Martello and Brent Schoonover. This is where Ant-Man is reset closer to the films as more of an action-farce. Scott Lang has worse luck than Peter Parker and he tries to get his life together, get a job and start co-parenting his daughter… but things are seldom that easy.

Ant-Man: World Hive by new Spidey scribe Zeb Wells and Dylan Burnett finds Scott Lang forced to team up with Swarm. Yes, a Nazi scientist with a body made up of bees. There’s an honest-to-goodness invasion/conspiracy to create an insect uprising and he’s having the hardest time getting the Avengers… or Spidey… or even Black Cat to take him seriously. We particularly enjoyed this one.

The Al Ewing trilogy. Ewing did this sneaky trilogy that wasn’t billed as such. Three miniseries that build on each other with Ant-Man and the Wasp. Naturally, the third one (which was GREAT) isn’t included in the sale.

Lok… Because Spelling Is Kewl

Deathlok Masterworks Deathlok Deathlok

The Marvel Deathlok 50th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 9/2.

Originally a cyborg (against his will) in a dystopian future, the original Deathlok was a Rich Buckler creation and the whole run of that incarnation can be had in the Deathlok Masterworks, nice and easy.

The next time Deathlok popped up in a major way was the 90s and it was a hot comic for a short period of time. Dwayne McDuffie/Gregory Wright/Butch Guice/Denys Cowan reinvented a modern day Deathlock in Deathlok: The Living Nightmare of Michael Collins, which was followed by an ongoing series.

Since then, there have been a few revivals:

  • Deathlok ’99-’00- Joe Casey / Leonardo Manco
  • Deathlok ’09-’10 – Charlie Huston / Lan Medina
  • Deathlok ’14-’15 – Nathan Edmondson / Mike Perkins

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Men  Avengers: Twilight  Wolverine

The trend returns after a short break. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

EC Crime SuspenStories  Tales From the Crypt Crime Does Not Pay

Dark Horse has their EC Archives on sale. Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales and that whole family of famous titles.

They also have Crime Does Not Pay on sale. This isn’t an EC book. It actually predates EC, but it eventually had a narrator called “Mr. Crime” who was a few years ahead of the Crypt Keeper and company… although the mysterious host was a radio tradition going back to the 1930s. (The Shadow was the narrator of Detective Story Hour in 1930 before the pulp magazine turned him into a fleshed out character, for instance.)

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Guardians of the Galaxy; DC’s Greatest Hits; Scarlet Witch; Rogue & Gambit; Mass Effect

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Scarlet Witch and Rogue & Gambit. DC drops a “Greatest Hits” sale and Mass Effect gets a discount at Dark Horse.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

DC’s Besties

All-Star Superman  Far Sector  Sandman

The DC Greatest Hits Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Something of a “best of” or “classics” sale… and some of the prices are good, particularly on older volumes. This is more of a “what haven’t I gotten around to reading” sale and it’s worth a browse.

A few things that caught our eye and/or are at a particularly good price:

  • All-Star Superman – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely – a love letter to the Silver Age tales and recommended by James Gunn
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton – return to the world of “Batman: The Animated Series” and it doesn’t miss a step
  • Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola – a Victorian/Steampunk Elseworlds with a new sequel coming out
  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale – since a final installment has been announced, here’s the original
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke – Cooke’s stone cold classic about the dawn of the Silver Age heroes. A+
  • Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles – Mark Russell / Mike Feehan – Snaggletooth recast as Tennessee Williams facing down the House Unamerican Activities Committee
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham – $2.99/volume for the long-running Epic of fairy tale heroes and villains in exile
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemison / Jamal Campbell – A new Green Lantern at the edge of the galaxy investigates the first murder in 500 years. Good luck finding better world building.
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood – It’s a serious noir that also has all the goofiness of the bwa ha ha era Justice League International. Great book.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us – Tom Taylor / Mike S. Miller / Bruno Redondo – You wouldn’t think this was a video game adaption + enter the team of Taylor & Redondo
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid / Alex Ross – the original dystopian DC epic
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / Stan Woch / John Totleben – Moore’s hugely influential run for $2.99/volume
  • Sandman – Neil Gaiman / a rotating cast of artists – Gaiman’s fantasy classic at $2.99/volume
  • Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons – you already know what this is.
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson – Diana wakes up in a dystopian hellscape and tries to piece together what destroyed civilization. “Metal” is a good way to describe it.
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid/ Dan Mora; contender for DC’s best current title and V. 3 is now discounted.
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra – All the men have died, save Yorrick and his monkey. $2.99 per DOUBLE volume. As cheap as it gets!

Groot? Groot Groot.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing   Guardians of the Galaxy Omnibus

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Let’s break this into incarnations.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

New GoG (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

What’s good here?  Well, we’ve always liked the original. Particularly the Steve Gerber bits. We also loved the recent Al Ewing / Juan Cabal run. And if you like the current incarnation, you should probably go back to the source with the DnA run. We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point out that Kev Walker did an amazing job on the art with the most recent run.

Which Witch?

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

We might reserve our largest praise for Wanda’s once and future husband, though. Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta is an excellent tale. The Vision has a synthezoid family in the suburbs and things slowly go horribly wrong.

‘Til Death Do Us Discount

Mr. and Mrs. X   Gambit Classic   Gambit: The Complete Collection

The Marvel Rogue and Gambit Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The series the best lives up to the sale’s theme is Mr. & Mrs. X by Kelly Thompson, Oscar Bazaldua and David Lopez. That would be Rogue and Gambit, if you missed the wedding.

While Gambit is the newer character, he’s had more exposure in solo titles. Gambit Classic collects the original Uncanny X-Men arc and the early mini’s, including the 1995 Rogue mini-series in V.2.

Gambit: The Complete Collection is the slightly better known 1999 series primarily by Fabian Nicieza / Steve Skroce / Yanick Paquette

Plenty of assorted X-Men volumes to go with all this, too.

Unlisted Sales

Mass Effect  Killer Queens

Over at Dark Horse, we find a Mass Effect sale, as in the video game from Bioware. It’s available in:

Also with a discount: Killer Queens by David M. Booher & Claudia Balboni, which sports the tagline, “putting the SASS in assassin.”

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Superman Family, Scarlet Witch, What If? and America Chavez

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Superman Family gets the discount spotlight from DC; Marvel asks “What If” and the cuts prices on the Scarlet Witch and America Chavez

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Family Planning

The DC – Spotlight: Superman Family Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

No, there aren’t any $0.99 issues of the old Superman Family comic. Yes, that’s the first thing we thought of, too. What we have here are a selection of Superman-adjacent comics. Plenty of Supergirl titles here, if that’s your thing.

Of possible interest:

Superboy and the Legion of Super-heroes. These are on the expensive side for a sale (at least they’re large). It’s two volumes towards the end of the 70s revival and the end of the Superboy era of the team.  Both volumes are dominated by the first Paul Levitz run, with a little Gerry Conway and Len Wein sprinkled in. Vol. 1 is mostly drawn by Jim Sherman and Mike Grell and anchored by the wedding of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, which originally ran in an annoying-to-track-down tabloid sized special. Vol. 2 is mostly drawn by Jim Sherman and Joe Staton, with a little Jim Starlin. It starts out with the first Levitz epic “Earthwar,” a much longer arc than you typically see in ’78. Then it begins the Conway run with a Wein interlude.

Jump forward a bit and the Mark Waid / Barry Kitson volumes of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes are on sale. Waid and Kitson have been a frequent pairing over the years.

And also of interest, the New 52’s version of Worlds’ Finest. Note the placement of that apostrophe. This is Paul Levitz, initially with George Perez & Kevin Maguire, then later with R.B. Silva telling the tale of Power Girl and The Huntress landing on the wrong Earth (as opposed to Earth-2).

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes   Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes   Worlds' Finest

Which Witch?

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

And for something a little tangential, but fun, Avengers: Four by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson (where have we heard those names before?) is a retro adventure looking at the first Avengers line-up change when former villains Hawkeye, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch joined up with Cap.

Avengers: Four

What a Country

The Marvel America Chavez Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

The first thing we’d be inclined to look at here is Ultimates by Al Ewing: The Complete Collection, which features both Ultimates series by Ewing with an artist lineup including Kenneth Rocafort, Christian Ward and Travel Foreman. This is some of Ewing’s earlier cosmic work at Marvel.

And the next thing we’d look at is Young Avengers by Gillen & McKelvie: The Complete Collection. Yes, that would be Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie, shortly before they did The Wicked + The Divine.

Ultimates by Al Ewing   Young Avengers

If Not, Why Not?

The Marvel What If? Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

We have a preference for the original What If, here, but we’d like to point something out to you first. When you go to the series link for the original, toward the top of the page, you’ll see a new navigation feature that’s a little more relevant here. Under the series graphic on the left hand side is a pulldown menu where you can select “Volumes” or “Omnibus.” Volumes being the “normal” sized collections.  We’ll have to have a longer look at how that’s implemented. It might be useful… IF it works.  In this case it only shows the omnibus on sale. Yes, that’s right, there are actually four omnibuses containing ~12 issues each of What If. Only one of them is on sale and that’s the only one that shows up on the Omnibuses page, ergo the Omnibuses page appears to be broken. (Why are you acting surprised?)

So, here’s the link for the “regular” volumes. Here’s the link for the lone omnibus on sale (which is issues #1-12).  And we’ll look at some of the more interesting stuff in the individual volumes, since What If is all over the map. Some of these are going to sound awfully darn familiar, too.  What If seems like a gold mine for pitching your editor!

  • #1 – What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #2 – What If The Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #10 – What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #12 – What If Rick Jones Had Become The Hulk? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #13 – What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today?  (NOPE, no longer collected)
  • #23 – What If The Hulk Had Become a Barbarian? (V. 4)
  • #30 – What If Spider-Man’s Clone Had Lived? (V. 5)
  • #35 – What If Elektra Had Lived? (V.6)
  • #37 – What If The Beast and The Thing Continued to Mutate? (V.6)
  • #43 – What If Conan Were Stranded in the 20th Century? (No longer collected).

Gosh, we’re sure NOBODY ever picked up those topics a decade or four later…

What If?

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The “Best of 2022” Sales drop with Spidey & Moon Knight; Plus, Dark Horse Superheroes

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we look at the best of the Marvel Masterworks sale plus holiday sales from Image and Dynamite.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commission.)

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

The holiday sales have ended and the “regular” sales has resumed… except, DC seems to still have the holiday deep discount spirit.

Best of 2020 2022 – Marvel Edition

The Marvel Spotlight on 2022 Sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

Yes, we can speak to Marvel’s ’22, though we’ll keep it to series that have a V.1 on sale. (No sense sending you into the middle of something, the way these runs tend to work).

The Jed MacKay section, since he had a bit of a breakout year at Marvel:

Moon Knight is MacKay and Alessandro Cappuccio setting up a new status quo for Moon Knight, a character with so many drastically different takes on him, he’s sort of Marvel’s Hawkman in that respect. MacKay and Cappuccio are methodically incorporating and rationalizing the different versions. Moon Knight has opened a “Midnight Mission” to continue his work for Konshu… after a fashion. He’s seeing a therapist. There are vampires on the loose and a rival emissary of Konshu. A somewhat unpredictable ride, but that’s a definite plus.

The Death of Doctor Strange can function as a standalone, but it’s really the first act in a longer arc. MacKay and Lee Garbett kill off Stephen Strange, but not exactly the way you were expecting. A clever book.

Strange is the next act. Clea Strange has assumed the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme. She’s trying to find a way to resurrect Stephen, but keeps butting heads with a group of paranormal gangsters calling themselves “The Blasphemy Cartel.” MacKay is joined by Marcelo Ferreira on art.

Moon Knight x The Death of Doctor Strange x Strange

Also good:

The Marvels is Kurt Busiek and Yildiray Cinar (with Alex Ross covers) doing a story from more of a Marvels (the 90s painted series). The point of view here is an outsider who’s collected some superhero/villain technology and finds himself dragged along on an adventure. Lady Lotus, the Invaders villain is taking over the country of Siancong, in plot that has its origins back in World War II. The scope takes you from there to the present day for a big tour of the Marvel universe with an excursion to some… unusual corners. Basically, a showcase for classic Marvel. (Both volumes are on sale, so treat this like a 2-parter.)

The Defenders: There Are No Rules by Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez find Doctor Strange and… The Masked Rider organizing an inter-dimensional posse of sorts. Very cosmic, very mind-bending and Rodriquez is really outdoing himself here.

Amazing Spider-Man by Zeb Wells and John Romita, Jr. is another recent title we’ve been enjoying. The first arc, with Tombstone, is a bit more serious than we were expecting, but the tone shifts a bit more Wells-like with arc two. Romita is as icon a Spidey artist as his father, so it’s good to see him back on the book.

Marvels   Defenders   Amazing Spider-Man

The Literary Roots of WandaVision

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 1/9.

Vison & The Scarlet Witch, as the pair were colloquially known for much of their time at Marvel are kind of a strange one to go looking for collections of, largely because most of their adventures were as supporting cast members in The Avengers.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision collects their Wedding from Giant-Sized Avengers #4, the ’82 mini-series by Bill Mantlo and Rick Leonardi and the ’85 maxi-series by Steve Englehart and Richard Howell. Usually, it’s that maxi-series that gets referenced the most, but this is as complete a set of early (ish) solo adventures as exists.

Now, it you want something a little closer to the TV show, there’s the John Byrne run of Avengers West Coast. “Vision Quest” is where Vision is disassembled and rebuilt with the white body and revelations are made about her children. “Darker than Scarlet” is the first time Wanda snaps.

If you want Wanda wholesale rewriting reality, that’s more House of M and the Avengers: Disassembled that leads into it and those aren’t in the sale.  WandaVision is a goofy fit with the comics in some ways.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast

Best of 2020 2022 – DC Edition

The DC Best of 2022 sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

Oof! We hope you were taking advantage of DC’s unusually good discounts at their holiday sale, ’cause the collected editions we’re seeing this week are largely things that were on sale last week, too… except now they’re at least twice as expensive. We’re not going to highlight those.

All the way at the bottom of the sale page is a selection of (mostly) $1.99 single issues. Yes, we know… they’re not $0.99 anymore, but they did somewhat rotate the selection. Here are some highlights. You should know the drill by now… with longer running titles like Batman, you may need to scroll down a little to get to where things are on sale.

Dark Capes

The Dark Horse Superhero Sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

Yes, Dark Horse has a few superheroes. They even have their own line.

We did a re-read of Nexus over the last couple years and Omnibus line holds up. (We’d also forgotten how many issues Paul Smith drew.) Nexus is sort of a science fiction/superhero mash about a man who reluctantly becomes a superpowered assassin for a mysterious alien. Nexus has nightmares about the mass murderers he’s to kill and they won’t go away until the deed is done. Lots of world building in this one. Mike Baron writes the whole thing and Steve Rude is the primary artist. Omnibuses 1-6 are the original Capital City/First Comics run, V. 7 picks up when the license moved to Dark Horse. Yes, Nexus is still around.

For something way off the beaten path, there’s The Best of Milligan & McCarthy. That would be Peter Milligan (Shade, the Changing Man; Hellblazer; X-Statix) and Brendan  McCarthy (Judge Dredd, Strange Days, and believe it or not, the co-writer of Mad Max: Fury Road). These two collaborated a lot in their early days in the UK market with the best known bits in the US probably being the Strange Days mini-series from Eclipse. It fits in here because of their Paradax strip. Trippy would be the key term for these two.

With Brian Bendis moving his base of operations to Dark Horse, that means Powers is getting a new edition. Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming are the creators of this long running (on again, off again… with 4 relaunches as they’ve switched publishers) police procedural about the cops who investigate those with superhuman abilities. The police aren’t supposed to have powers, but… that would be getting ahead of ourselves. This was one of the early hits that eventually led Bendis to Marvel and it’s a quality series. Perhaps better read in collected edition, since you aren’t trying to figure out the publishing schedule (which has probably diluted the reputation of the series).

Nexus   The Best of Milligan and McCarthy   Powers

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Doctor Strange, Justice League, Scarlet Witch, Constantine and Jeff Lemire

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales – Doctor Strange has pretty much his entire run on sale and the Scarlet Witch joins him with a sister sale of sorts. DC celebrates the death of the Justice League with (correct) discounts and Image celebrates the work of Jeff Lemire.

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commissions)

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo

The  Marvel Doctor Strange Sale runs through Sunday, 5/16.

And it’s most of the Doctor Strange material that’s been collected in book form. You’d almost think there was a movie out or something.

So first, as is our custom, we’ll walk you through the various series over the years… this is a little more complicated because the early Epic/Masterwork volumes aren’t on the same page. (We’ll let you you pick out the mini’s yourself, since those aren’t as convoluted.)

  • Strange Tales – This is a cluttered series page, but its the original Lee/Ditko run, so let’s break it down to Masterworks 1 and Masterworks 2 or Epic Edition 1
  • Doctor Strange ’68-’69 – the Masterworks listings are here and include the early Marvel Premiere run. The ’68 run is perhaps most notable for some amazing Gene Colan art, but the scripts don’t always live up to the art.
  • Doctor Strange ’74-’87 – The Masterworks here catch the end of the Marvel Premiere run and the Epics pick up with the back half of ’68 run. (Yes, it’s a confusing way to look at things.)
  • Strange Tales ’87-’88 – The Peter B. Gillis / Chris Warner era was back in Strange Tales in between the two “regular” Doctor Strange titles.
  • Doctor Strange ’88-’96 – Probably best known for the Roy & Dann Thomas run with Butch Guice and Geoff Isherwood as notable artists.
  • Doctor Strange ’15-’18 – Initially Jason Aaron/Chris Bachalo with Donny Cates tagging in towards the end. (The omnibuses here are the better buy)
  • Doctor Strange ’18-’19 – The Mark Waid / Jesus Saiz / Barry Kitson era with Strange in space.
  • Doctor Strange, Surgeon Supreme (’19) – the very much under-rated and too short Mark Waid / Kev Walker run. Walker knocks it out of the park here.
  • Death of Doctor Strange – Jed MacKay and Lee Garbett kill off Stephen Strange. For real. (OK, so far for real.) A clever series that delivers its titular promise in unexpected ways.
  • Strange (’22-?) – get the first couple issues of the new Sorcerer Supreme for $0.99

What’s good?  This is where we get into Masterworks vs. Epics… because the Masterworks are a LOT more complete right now, particularly through the 70s.  The original Lee/Ditko run is great and you can get that in the first Epic Collection. Things pick up again when Englehart and Brunner show up towards the end of the Marvel Premiere run and the whole ’74-’87 run is solid, though we have a particular soft spot for the Roger Stern / Marshall Rogers / Paul Smith material towards the end.  Yes, Doctor Strange had A list creators most of the time.  That’s your core.

Something under the radar?  The (as you’d expect with these creators) excellent Doctor Strange: The Oath by Brian K, Vaughan and Marcos Martin. The final Waid/Walker run is also a lot more under the radar than it should be.

Doctor Strange - The Oath    Doctor Strange in Strange Tales   Doctor Strange

Mutant Sorcery

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Sunday, 5/9.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

Dead Again

The DC Justice League R.I.P. Sale runs through Monday, 5/16.

We’re actually not seeing the goofy $9.32 type prices on this sale that we’ve been seeing on other DC sales for the last couple months. Could the bug be fixed? That’s probably too much to ask for, but we’ll see what happens next week. In the meantime, some of these prices are a little higher than we’d like to see on a sale (part of that being the absurd practice of putting a hard cover list price on eBooks), but they seem like the intended sale prices for a change.

Anyway, this is DC’s celebrating killing off the Justice League as a lead-in to their next crossover event.  Let’s break down some of the major series here:

  • Justice League of America ’60-’87 – The original
  • Justice League of America ’87-’96 – This is, at least initially, the Justice League International / Justice League Europe run with Keith Giffen/J.M. DeMatteis / Kevin Maguire.  BWA HA HA HA HA HA
  • JLA ’97-’06 – Best known for launching with the the Grant Morrison / Howard Porter run
  • Justice League of America ’06-11 – Initially launched as Brad Meltzer / Ed Benes and eventually got Dwayne McDuffie (who was undercut by editorial)
  • Justice League ’11-’16 – The New 52 Geoff Johns era, initially with Jim Lee art.
  • Justice League ’16 – ’18 – The Bryan Hitch (as writer) era with rotating artists
  • Justice League ’18-22 – It’s probably easiest to call the most recent incarnation the Scott Snyder era, as he launched the volume. So many rotating artists here.

That the timeline of the main series.  There are plenty of mini’s and spin-off series in there for your browsing.  If you’d like some $0.99 single issues (you are heard), if you sort by lowest price, you’ll see them quickly. Yes, even JLA: Classified.

Best bets?  For pure bang for your buck, head to the original Justice League of America run and pick up the first two “Silver Age” collections. ~300 pages for $4.99.

The Morrison/Porter JLA  run isn’t nearly the price per page value, but there’s a reason everyone comes back to it. The Waid/Hitch bits aren’t bad, either.

Under the radar?  The Christopher Priest / Pete Woods arc from ~3 years back. It’s just good comics without silly crossovers.

Justice League of America   JLA   Justice League by Priest

Unadvertised Sale

We have an overlooked gem for you this week.  John Constantine, Hellblazer by Si Spurrier, Aaron Campbell and Matias Bergara. It’s not clear to us if these are random discounts or it’s just the wacky “Epic” sale discounts getting fixed on this one.  Either way, this is one of the best comics we’ve read in the last year.

This is a really an extended 12-issues arc, so you’re going to want both volumes. It starts at the end of the world and follows Constantine through a series of gangland skirmishes as he tries to perceive who or what is the strangely familiar entity pulling the strings. Sometimes straight horror, sometimes comedy (Constantine vs. the sensitive new age magician is priceless), this is quite possibly the best work of all the creators involved.

John Constantine, Hellblazer

Jeff Who?

The Image Jeff Lemire Sale runs through Monday, 5/16.

Yes, we’ll go ahead and say it: we think Jeff Lemire is at his best when he’s working on his own projects and Image has a few of them on sale. Of possible note and interest:

Gideon Falls with Andrea Sorrentino – A sort of horror/science fiction mashup that starts out rural and claustrophobic and then unfurls across a fairly epic canvas and multiple landscapes… while still managing to have that feeling of claustrophobic terror being ready to swallow up the heroes at any moment.  Rock solid dark adventure.

Descender with Dustin Nguyen is a science fiction epic about a little boy who happens to be a robot who’s looking for his family and falls into the middle of a robot rebellion. A beautiful book.

Ascender is the sequel as Lemire and Nguyen pivot for a space adventure with magic and vampires… and at least one killer robot. 😉

Gideon Falls   Descender   Ascender

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Still On Sale

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Comixology Sales: Spider-Man, Vision & The Scarlet Witch, DC’s Rebirth and Fantagraphics Goes Linewide

The Comixology sales this week include Marvel slashing prices on Dan Slott’s lengthy run on Spider-Man, The Vision & the Scarlet Witch as their show drops, DC revisits Rebirth, Dark Horse has Neil Gaiman at a discount and Fantagraphics has their digital catalog on sale.

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commission.)

Spidey Gets Slotted Ahead of WandaVision

Running through Sunday (1/17) is the  Spider-Man by Dan Slott Sale.  This is not the easiest sale to navigate because Marvel has relaunched Spidey several times and during the “Brand New Day” era, weren’t even sequentially numbering all the collected editions.  Seriously, it’s a mess.  The rule of thumb is it’s easier to read the omnibus editions, which tend to be slightly better deals anyway.

We’d tell you to start at the beginning with the Spider-Man: Brand New Day omnibuses. For context, this starts back when Marvel decided to publish Amazing Spider-Man three times each month and cancel the secondary titles, so you’ve got a rotating cast of creators including Slott, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly and Zeb Wells (among others) as writers and the likes of John Romita, Jr., Barry Kitson, Phil Jimenez,  and Marcos Martin (among a wide cast) as artists.  It’s a fun era and Slott eventually ends up helming Spidey.  It also ends with a certain Doctor Octopus storyline that sets up what might be Slott’s pinnacle: Superior Spider-Man. That’s the run where Doc Ock takes over Peter’s body.  It sure sounded strange when first announced, but Slott made it work very well.

If those two runs didn’t keep you busy, they’re followed by The Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Spider-Man: Worldwide.  Yes, Slott wrote a lot of Spidey AND Marvel can’t help themselves when it comes to relaunches.  Those last two series are really separate because the monthly relaunched.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day   Superior Spider-Man

Probably because there’s a TV show debuting, Marvel also has a Vision & The Scarlet Witch Sale running through Thursday (1/21).

If you want the actual couple, the Steve Englehart/Richard Howell Vision & The Scarlet Witch: A Year in the Life, which sets up a lot of mythology, include the birth of their children.

If you’d like to see where the suburban setting reared it’s head, there’s the superb Tom King/Gabriel Walta Vision series, which is paced a lot like a horror tale as The Vision experiments with having a wife and children. (What could go wrong?  Plenty.)

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   The Vision

DC Gets Born Again (and again)

DC has their Rebirth Sale  running through Monday (1/18), which is to say a big chunk of the titles from the previous relaunch.

We’re firm in the pick of the litter being Deathstroke. (You’ll also need The Lazarus Contract, which crossed over with Titans.) At first glance, that’s an unlikely pick, but Priest and a rotating cast of artists including Carlo Pagulayan, Denys Cowan, Joe Bennett and Larry Hama.  Yes, it’s a comic about an assassin, but Deathstroke has intricate plotting, emotional depth and one of the best treatments of Damian Wayne.

After that, we’d direct you to Greg Rucka’s return to Wonder Woman conveniently collected as Volume 1 and Volume 2. With Liam Sharp, Nicola Scott and Bilquis Evely sharing art duties, this is where Rucka resets Wonder Woman after the New 52 era and has Wonder Woman and The Cheetah searching for the truth behind what’s happened to Paradise Island and Diana’s past.

Deathstroke  Titans: The Lazarus Contract  Wonder Woman x Wonder Woman

Dark Horse Gets The Bends

The Dark Horse Mind Benders Sale runs through Monday (1/18) and is dominated by two titles.

American Gods is the Neil Gaiman/P. Craig Russell/Scott Hampton adaption of the the novel of the same name.  Yes, that IS an interesting creative cast and yes, we’ve been to the House on the Rock — it’s real.

Mind MGMT is Matt Kindt’s psychic espionage tale that got quite a bit of critical acclaim back in ’12-’15.  The omnibuses are the best deal for Mind MGMT.

American Gods   Mind MGMT

 

The Fantagraphics Linewide Sale runs through Thursday (1/28).  Fantagraphics doesn’t do sales quite this wide vary often, so it’s well worth giving this an extended browse.  There’s everything from EC to imports to classic comic strips.  Here are a few highlights:

Remember Harold & The Purple Crayon? Before switching to children’s books, Crockett Johnson wrote Barnaby, a delightful strip about a boy, his talking dog and his fairy godfather.  Even Dorothy Parker was a big fan.

You could make a case for calling Love & Rockets by Gilbert and Jaime Hernendez the flagship title of Fantagraphics and few comics have been been as critically acclaimed over the years.

And if you really want to go classic, there’s the Carl Barks Library.  Barks set the gold standard for Disney ducks (and arguably for all Disney comics) with his Donald Duck work and especially Uncle Scrooge McDuck.

Barnaby   Love & Rockets  Uncle Scrooge

 

 

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Comixology Sales: Batman/Catwoman, Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Frank Miller, John Allison and more

With Cyber Monday over, it’s time to see what Comixology sales are percolating in between the start of buying season and the start of unwrapping season. A bit of Batman, the source material for a Marvel / Disney+ show, Dark Horse’s noir offerings and we dig through the small press sale for you.

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commission.)

Batman / Catwoman

DC leads off our post-Cyber Monday parade with the “Batman Catwoman Sale.”  (Hint: there’s a whole lot more Batman than Catwoman in this sale.)

If you’re looking for actual Batman/Catwoman comics, we can recommend Prey, which collects two Doug Moench/Paul Gulacy (yes, the Master of Kung Fu creative team) arcs from Legends of the Dark Knight. These are Hugo Strange arcs, but Catwoman figures prominently in them.

If you’re looking for solo Batman, here’s something off the beaten path: Batman: Haunted Knight collects the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Batman Halloween specials that led to The Long Halloween being commissioned. These came completely out of nowhere when they dropped, but are now less famous than the follow up series.

If you’re looking for solo Catwoman, you could a lot worse than the Ed Brubaker run, which starts out with Darwyn Cooke providing the art.

This sale runs until Monday (12/7).

Batman - Prey   Batman - Haunted Knight   Catwoman

Vision and the Scarlet Witch

Marvel follows up Black Friday with a Vison and the Scarlet Witch Sale, which runs through Sunday, 12/13.

This might have the single best comic on sale this week in it: the Tom King / Gabriel Hernandez Walta Vision series. If it’s not the best thing Tom King’s written, then it’s #2. It’s a masterclass in descent into madness as The Vision builds a family and moves to the suburbs, only to have his perfect Norman Rockwell life slowly fall to pieces.  Get both volumes and bunker down for a ride.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch by Steve Englehart and Richard Howell was launched in parallel with Englehart’s West Coast Avengers run and starts with a crossover. This is the series where Wanda conjures herself into a pregnancy, which has so many repercussions down the road.

The Vision   Vision and the Scarlet Witch

AKA Comixology Submit’s Hidden Gems

Running through Thursday (12/3) is the Small Press Mystery and Suspense Sale. This is a fairly large sale that’s not particularly organized, so we’ll give it the once over for you!

Watson & Holmes: A Study in Black by Karl Bollers, Rick Leonardi and Larry Stroman might be more popular in libraries than the Direct Market, where it never got its footing. Which is too bad, as this reimagining of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in present day Harlem is a solid comic and worth your discounted $4.49.

John Allison’s pre-Giant Days series Scary Go Round: The Continuing Adventures clocks in at 99 cents/volumes.  Also, both issues of Scary Go Round: Expecting to Fly are $0.99.

We have mentioned before that Kyle Baker is a genius.  Two of his works on in this sale and both of them even won an Eisner.  What more do you really want from the man? You Are Here also one a Harvey Award. I Die at Midnight was merely on the 2000 Eisner slate.

Watson and Holmes   Scary Go Round   You Are Here

Dark Horse Crime Comics

The Dark Horse Noir Sale runs through Monday (12/7).

Frank Miller is sort of the grandfather of Dark Horse Noir with Sin City. It’s a hugely influential series beyond the films, winning multiple Eisners and Harveys.

Grandville by Bryan Talbot is an anthropomorphic steampunk detective thriller.  Yes, it checks an awful lot of boxes and the third installment has a Hugo nomination to it’s credit.  And yes, that’s the same Talbot from Alice in Sunderland and Luther Arkwright. Highly recommended.

It’s also hard to go wrong with EC’s Crime SuspenStories.

Sin City   Grandville   EC Crime SuspenStories

Still on Sale

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