Silk Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts the Vertigo line and Hellblazer. Marvel drops prices on War of the Realms and Silk. Plus, Doctor Who and is that another unannounced Dark Horse sale?

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

So Much For Balance

The DC Vertigo Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

For an imprint DC shuttered years ago, it sure does have a prominent place on their online promotional list, doesn’t it? DC would probably tell you Black Label serves a similar purpose, but we keep expecting Vertigo to rise from the ashes one of these days. They had an awful lot of interesting material and some of it is starting to migrate to other publishers (like Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint, to the surprise of exactly no one).

The nickel tour of Vertigo titles:

100 Bullets – Classic revenge/crime/spies mashup by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
- 100 Bullets: Brother Lono – The follow-up by Azzerello/Risso
American Vampire – The comic that first put Scott Snyder on the map as a new breed of Vampire emerges in the West and clashes with what came before. Rafael Albuquerque is the artist and Stephen King lends a hand at launch.
The American Way: Those Above and Those Below – John Ridley / George Jeanty; Just your average superhero alternate history tale written by an Oscar winner. Sequel to the Wildstorm series that isn’t collected/on sale.
Animal Man – While the Grant Morrison/Chas Troug run is what gets talked about, This is followed by Peter Milligan, Tom Veitch and Jamie Delano with Steve Dillon and Steve Pugh on art. Not exactly chopped liver.
Daytripper – Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba
Dead Boy Detectives – Toby Litt & Mark Buckingham. Young ghosts solve crimes. Coming soon to Netflix…
Doom Patrol ’89 – The Grant Morrison / Richard Case run. Legendary and adapted for television. Perhaps one day they’ll adapt the rest of the run.
DMZ – Brian Wood / Riccardo Burcchielli; As the US is in the middle of a civil war, a reporter becomes trapped in the no man’s land that is NYC and navigates of landscape of warlords and political intrigue from both sides. Doesn’t get hype anymore, but a solid series that hasn’t exactly gotten stale.
Ex Machina – Brian K. Vaughan (Saga) / Tony Harris (Starman); Originally Wildstorm, now Vertigo, this political thriller/powers genre bender finds a world’s only superhero being elected mayor of NYC. (Long before Lucas Cage or even Wilson Fisk.)
Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham
Flex Mentallo – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; A delightfully odd/surreal tale that starts out as parody of the old Charles Atlas ads. And an early Morrison/Quitely pairing. They work well together.
iZombie – Chris Roberson / Mike Allred; A zombie detective dramedy adapted for television
Jew Gangster – Joe Kubert; Kubert lets loose with a ’30s crime tale.
Lucifer – Before he was M.R. Carey and handing out “all the gifts,” Mike Carey had a long run on this Sandman spin-off. Peter Gross is the artist.
Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillion; Another Vertigo TV adaption (you might be noticing a pattern), God has gone missing and Jesse Custer would like to have a word with him. Also, power abhors a vacuum.
Punk Rock Jesus – Sean Murphy’s tale of reality TV, religion and Punk (before his solo Batman work)
Saga of the Swamp Thing – The classic Alan Moore years (he’s good, that one); plus the Mark Millar years.
Sandman Mystery Theater – Matt Wagner / Steven T. Seagle / Guy Davis; The Golden Age Sandman in a pulpy mystery series (but with a bit more character work than your average pulp). Highly recommended.
Sandman – By some chap named Gaiman. You may have heard of it.
Scalped – Jason Aaron / R.M. Guera – An FBI agent goes undercover (as himself) on the reservation he thought he’d escaped to investigate the reservation casino. Aaron starting out in the crime genre we wish he could do more of.
Sweet Tooth – Jeff Lemire; As seen on Netflix.
Top 10 – Alan Moore / Gene Ha / Zander Cannon – Another Wildstorm (OK, technically America’s Best Comics) series now dubbed “Vertigo,” this is Alan Moore’s delightful excursion into the Hill Street Blues style of police procedural… but with superheroes as the law. Good stuff.
The Unwritten – Mike (M.R.) Carey and Peter Gross reunite for the tale of a boy one whom a Harry Potter-esque series of books was based discovers he might actually be the literary character made flesh and the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.
- The final two volumes are list separately. (And you wonder why the retailer want better metadata?)
- The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice – The prequel
Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan (him again) and Pia Guerra in the tale of the last man alive after a mysterious incident kills everyone else on Earth with a Y chromosome. Well, except his monkey. You may have even seen the TV series.

What the Hel…

The DC John Constantine, Hellblazer Sale runs through Monday, 1/22.

While perhaps not the original Vertigo flagship book, Hellblazer ended up being the longest running title and something DC has tried to revive (with mixed results) post-Vertigo. Let’s run it down:

Hellblazer ’88 – DC would like to call it “John Constantine, Hellblazer” in the post-Keanu world, but that’s not what anyone calls it. The first run is just Hellblazer. And it’s as solid a 300 issues as you’ll find. Jamie Delano. Neil Gaiman. Garth Ennis. Brian Azzarello. Mike Carey. Paul Jenkins. John Ridgeway. David Lloyd. Steve Dillon. The list goes on quite a while. A parade of top talent, if we’re honest. Good horror comics!
John Constantine: Hellblazer – City of Demons ’11- One-off graphic novel by Si Spencer and Sean Murphy. We seem to recall liking it.
Constantine ’13 – The new 52 relaunch. Mostly Ray Fawkes / Renato Guedes
Constantine: The Hellblazer ’15 – Ming Doyle / James Tynion IV / Riley Rossmo
The Hellblazer ’16 – Rotating creators; we haven’t read this one, but it’s notable that V. 4 is co-written by Sandman Slim novelist Richard Kadrey
John Constantine, Hellblazer ’19 – This is the Si Spurrier/Aaron Campbell version we’ve been stumping for around here. Right up there with the best runs and DC just started a new series of it. Both volumes make for 1 story and it’s great.
Hellblazer: Rise and Fall ’20 – Tom Taylor/Darick Robertson Black Lablel tale. (And with that team, you should know if you want it.)
The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher: A Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel ’21 – Ryan North / Derek Charm YA tale
Constantine: Distorted Illusions – Kami Garcia / Isaac Goodhart do teen Constantine and his band

This Means War

The Marvel War of the Realms Sale runs through Monday, 1/22.

This would be the Jason Aaron Thor Event.

You know how all these Events have “The Road to” type lead-ins? That’s the case here, except it’s part of the Thor series: Thor V.2: The Road to War of the Realms (Jason Aaron / Mike del Mundo / Tony Moore).

There’s also War of the Realms Prelude, which is a collection of issues from various Thor titles that have some bearing/build-up to the Event.

The meat of the Event is the collection of the miniseries (War of the Realms – Aaron/Russell Dauterman). If it were us, we’d probably have included Thor V.3 – War’s End (Aaron/Del Mundo), but that’s not actually part of the sale for whatever reason.

As usually there are a lot of tie-in books. Choose those at your liberty, though Aaron writes the Avengers tie-in (with Ed McGuinness).

Not Just For Handkerchiefs

The Marvel Silk Sale runs through Monday, 1/22

We know what you’re thinking: “I thought Silk belonged to Quality Comics.” And you’d be right, but that’s “Her Highness and Silk,” the Kid Eternity foes who got spun off into their own feature. This is the Marvel Spidey spin-off.

Silk starts out in the ’14 edition of Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos.

Then Silk gets handed off to Robbie Thompson, whom we can safely call Cindy Moon’s primary writer.

There was a ’15 mini-series that Marvel identifies as a Vol. 0 by Thompson and Stacy Lee.
Followed by the ’15 ongoing Silk series by Thompson with Lee as the primary artist.
Both of the ’15 series, plus the Amazing Spider-Man material are also collected in Silk: Out of the Spider-Verse, because… well, you know how it goes with Marvel collections. They like to rebrand.
During the above run, there was also an Amazing Spider-Man & Silk: Spider(Fly) Effect infinity comic (i.e. webcomic) by Thompson and Todd Nauck
There was a ’21 Silk series by Maurene Goo and Takeshi Mitazawa (Amazon appears to have incorrect creator credits on this.)

Who Dat?

The Titan The Eleventh Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 2/26.

That’s Eleventh Doctor, as is Matt Smith’s Doctor.

These comics come in two formats:

The single issues are cheaper. (Collected editions tend to be 5 issues.)

We would like to point out some creator names you might recognize. Early in the run, you’ve got writing by Al Ewing and Simon (Si) Spurrier. Both of whom get mentioned around here a fair amount.

Unannounced Dark Horse Sale

We’re not sure how long this is running, but the omnibus editions of Adam Warren’s Empowered on sale. It’s superhero satire about a heroine with terrible luck and unreliable powers.

Still on Sale

The Marvel Best of 2023 Sale runs through Monday, 2/5
The Kodansha In Case You Missed It Sale runs through Monday, 01/29

This week’s Comixology sales include the Silver Surfer and Silk from Marvel, Peacemaker from DC and Image celebrates the return of Saga with a “Sci-Fi” sale.

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Surf’s Up

The Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Sunday, 1/23. (Amazon link)

You really can’t go wrong with the original Stan Lee/John Buscema (with Jack Kirby at the end) run of Silver Surfer, which is collected across two Masterworks editions.

We’re also fond of the 80s Silver Surfer run. In classic Marvel fashion, it’s collected in a strange way. That link will take you to the Epic Collections. The first one, “Freedom” is from the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run, which is excellent. Naturally the rest of that period isn’t collected. To get the beginning of the Jim Starlin/Ron Lim period that followed it, you need to jump over to Silver Surfer: The Rebirth of Thanos. Then you can jump back to the “Thanos Quest” Epic Collection, which takes you up to issue 50 and the end of the Starlin era that really laying the groundwork for Infinity Gauntlet. Ron Marz jumps in for the next Epic Collection, “Infinity Gauntlet” and that’s more of a companion series to the mini-series/Event of the same name, so venture forward it you want, but know the next volume is largely a tie-in. Also – the actual Thanos Quest mini-series is reprinted in both Rebirth of Thanos and the “Thanos Quest” volume. Great planning, Marvel collections dept.!

It Bites

The Marvel Silk Sale runs through Sunday, 1/23.

Yes, this would be the adventures of Silk, the other person bitten by the radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker his powers. For this one, we might go for the Spider-Verse collection

Not Dempsey and Makepeace

The DC Peacemaker & Friend Sale runs through Monday, 1/24. (Amazon link)

A small number of random collections and issues here. (Only V.’s 1 and 4 of the Ostrander/McDonnell Suicide Squad? Weird.)

What can we put a good word in for? Suicide Squad: Bad Blood by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo is quality book with more double crosses than you can shake a mallet at. Taylor and Redondo are starting to look like a long term pairing, too.

Vigilante by Marv Wolfman is the beginnings of the Adrian Chase version of the character and gives you an artistic lineup of George Perez/Keith Pollard/Chuck Patton/Ross Andru. (The volume ends before you get some Gil Kane and Trevor Von Eden.)

Saga Returns

The Image Sci-Fi Sale runs through Monday, 2/7. (Amazon link)

But let’s call this what it really, and what they’re leading with: the return of Saga. Yes, everyone’s favorite SF/F title by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staple is FINALLY returning after a ~3.5 year absence. This one falls under the usual Image collection runs – Saga Compendium V. 1 is a fabulous deal. The entire first run (i.e. – all caught up in 1 volume) is $23.99 for 54 issues of material. That’s less than 45 cents/issue and that’s stoopid cheap for what you’re getting. The other omnibuses collecting ~3 “regular” volumes are more expensive than getting what Comixology calls the “Collected Editions,” so go Compendium or go individual volumes.

What else is back? Shockrockets. With Kurt Busiek’s return to Image, comes this collaboration with Stuart Immonen. A good entry in the sub-genre of military coming of age SF with salvaged alien tech being used to fight the invaders. This was part of the short-lived gorilla comics imprint and we didn’t harbor many hopes of it returning. Wrong.

The Manhattan Projects is also a fun ride. This Jonathan Hickman / Nick Pitarra has the Manhattan Project brain trust being brought together not just for the atomic bomb, but for a secret program of Mad Science. Space exploration, parallel dimensions and all manner of strangeness. Sometimes it’s silly and sometimes it borders on horror. All in all, quite a ride. As with Saga, the individual collected editions are slightly less expensive than the “deluxe edition” omnibuses.