The Witcher Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has wide discounts for Superman’s Anniversary. Marvel drops prices on Captain Britain and Excalibur, New Mutants and Thunderbolts. Dark Horse holds a sale on The Witcher.

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):

Super-Sale

The DC Superman Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 4/22.

An All-Superman, all-the-time sale. Now, DC’s digital depth doesn’t really go as deep as Marvel, so everything before the John Byrne/Man of Steel era is a little spotty… but you know what? Byrne’s run ushered in a pretty entertaining period.

The slightly better buy for the early portion of that Byrne-initiated period is the smaller Man of Steel collections (this flip-flops from sale to sale with the larger volumes). This is the post-Crisis relaunch spearheaded by John Byrne, but also with Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern and Dan Jurgen showing up early on. Solid runs and we’re particularly fond of Ordway’s work.

After Byrne left, but still firmly in what we’d consider this period of Superman, there’s a good run by George Perez with Roger Stern and Kerry Gammill collected in The Adventures of Superman by George Perez.

One of the somewhat rare ’80s reprints that we’ve enjoyed is Superman: The Phantom Zone by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan. This is a very odd, horror-flavored Superman tale as he confronts something unnatural that’s been living in the Phantom Zone… but you weren’t expecting Gerber & Colan to give you the ’50s TV version, were you?

Emperor Joker is a 2000 storyline from Jeph Loeb / Ed McGuinness / Joe Kelly / Doug Mahnke that finds the Joker acquiring godlike powers and remaking the world in his image. Not an Elseworlds, but entertainingly over the top.

For more recent items, the Mark Waid / Dan Mora World’s Finest (with a certain caped crusader in tow) is aces.

Superman Smashes the Klan has Gene Yang and Gurihiru revisiting and revising the original Superman radio show arc, “Clan of the Fiery Cross.” It’s on the YA side of Superman, but has picked up a LOT of good reviews.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow is an very witty collection of tales by Robert Venditti and Paul Pelletier that went under most radars because it was originally serialized digitally.

Superman, the current series by Josh Williamson and Jamal Campbell is also on sale and it’s a good one.

And for something under the radar, the Warworld saga from a couple years back is worth a look. Phillip Kennedy Johnson wrote Action Comics for a spell and there was very little discussion on it. We’ve since had it recommended a couple times and just finished reading it. Severely under-rated and we’d go so far as to call the first two volumes great. The set up is there’s a new Mongul running Warworld. Mongul has been subjugating a lost tribe from Krypton and uses them to lure Superman to Warworld (with The Authority in tow). A trap is sprung and Superman has to lead a rebellion.

Now, you might be saying “haven’t we seen this before on Apokolips? And the answer is, not exactly. Kennedy Johnson takes a full arc to set this up with signs of portent and excels at creating an atmosphere of foreboding leading into the final act. The characterization is strong and there’s an interesting thread about the problem of leading a revolution when the underclass has never known freedom. (And a bit of political skullduggery in the background.) Several artists tag in and out, but the more prominent ones are Daniel Sampere, Riccardo Federici and Will Conrad.

This storyline is collected across three volumes:

The optional fourth volume to the arc, which takes place in the background during Warlord Rising, is Superman and The Authority by Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin. This is where Superman recruits The Authority for his mission to Warworld… and trust us, this series works better in the greater context of the Warworld arc than it does as a standalone.

“I’m Not a Bad Sword, King Arthur Just Drew Me That Way”

Marvel’s Captain Britain and Excalibur Sale runs through Monday, 4/22.

The original run of Excalibur is here. We’re big fans of anything Alan Davis touched on this book and especially his second run as writer/artist. The Epic Collections are the better deal here, so you’re looking at The Sword is Drawn and The Cross-Time Caper as the two Epic Collections with Chris Claremont writing. We’d probably skip ahead to Curiouser and Curiouser, which begins the Davis solo run. HOWEVER, the last segment of the Davis run is only in Excalibur Visionaries: Alan Davis, Vol. 3 further down the page.

What else is here? Captain Britain: Legacy of a Legend is an odd, incomplete selection of tales across the various UK titles the character appeared in (plus, Marvel Team-Up). It’ll give a flavor for it, and has some of the Alan Moore/Alan Davis run, but there’s a reason we jump up and down when the omnibus goes on sale. That’s the complete version.

Claremont returned to Excalibur for a 2004 series with Aaron Lopresti. He also worked on New Excalibur with Christopher Yost and several rotating artists in 2006.

Captain Britain and MI:13 by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk has Captain Britain and the UK super-espionage community butting heads with Skrulls and vampries.

Fresh Mutations

The Marvel New Mutants Sale runs through Monday, 4/22

Let’s break this one down by the series highlights first:

New Mutants (’83 – ’91) – The original run
New Mutants (’09 – ’11) – Zeb Wells / Diogenes Neves; DnA / Leandro Fernandez & David Lopez
- Bigger volumes of the DnA run
New Mutants (’03 – ’04) – Nunzio DeFilippis / Christina Weir / Keron Grant / Khary Randolph
New Mutants Forever (’10) – Chris Claremont / Al Rio
New Mutants: Dead Souls (’18) – Matthew Rosenberg / Adam Gorham
New Mutants (’19-’22) – The HoX/PoX (Hickman) era with rotating creators

What’s the best run of New Mutants? That’s a question that runs to personal preference more than most series. We’d say, #18-31 is the core with Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz that stands above the rest. Demon Bear. The introduction of Warlock. A good Legion arc. And it’s conveniently packaged in an Epic Collection. It’s still an interesting run after Sienkiewicz moves on, but he’s so good at setting mood and tone.

Another thing we’d throw out as particularly interesting is specifically the Jonathan Hickman installments of the most recent series. These are also conveniently collected in a single volume… and his issues didn’t always run sequentially.

Past that, this is one where you browse and see if something strikes your fancy.

Thunder. Thunder. Thunderca… Whoops, Wrong Series!

The Marvel Thunderbolts Sale runs through Monday, 8/14.

The Thunderbolts have been through several iterations since they began in ’97, originally having been the Masters of Evil laying the groundwork for nefarious deeds. And yes, there’s a film in the works.

The original series was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Eventually Fabian Nicieza tagged in as writer and Patrick Zircher became the lead artist a bit after that. Alas, these volumes are only going to take you through issue #50. The omnibus editions are more complete, but aren’t on sale right now.

New Thunderbolts was the ’04-’06 relaunch, and yes, it’s included in the third omnibus of the original. Fabian Nicieza/Tom Grummett is the creative team, here.

This then turns back into (no adjective) Thunderbolts for ’06-’12, starting Nicieza/Grummett and then including runs by Warren Ellis / Mike Deodato and Jeff Parker/Kev Walker/Declan Shalvey

Thunderbolts relaunched for ’12-’14 with Daniel Way and then Charles Soule writing it. The artist rotation included Steve Dillon and Phil Noto.

Jim Zub and Jon Malin were behind the ’16-’17 Thunderbolts run.

’20 saw King in Black: Thunderbolts by Matthew Rosenberg/Gerry Duggan/Juan E. Ferreyra/Luke Ross.

The most recent volume in the sale is ’22’s Thunderbolts: Back on Target by Jim Zub and Sean Izaakse.

With Thunderbolts, we feel pretty strongly you need to read the first sequence or two and get a flavor for the concept before jumping into the later evolutions.