Tag: Tom King

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Holiday Sales March on – More $1.99 DC Titles

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has a new set of $1.99/$2.99 titles, include more recent selections and a heads up on the latest Marvel sale incidents.

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):

First a little housekeeping. We’re not sure what’s going on with the Marvel sales this week, so we’re going to look at DC right now, since they have another holiday-priced ($1.99/$2.99) sale, and then circle back around to Marvel at the end of the week at the usual time.

Marvel’s sales from two weeks ago are still up – we’re not sure if they’re supposed to be – and we have some Nega-Band action! (This is when two sales occupy the same URL. Reload ~5 times and watch the sales switch places, just like Mar-Vell and Rick Jones did with their Nega-Bands.)

The Heroes Reborn Sale and Marvel 20th Century Sale occupy the same URL. And that’s supposed to be 20th Century Fox – Planet of the Apes / Aliens / Predator. We also don’t think this Planet of the Apes Omnibus is supposed to be $6.99, so if it’s appealing, you might want to grab it before it gets corrected.

The Marvel Omnibus sale page is still up, but except for the Aliens collections, the prices are no longer $19.99, so heads up on that. The Secret Wars prices seem to be intact.

And, 6 hours later, there have been some adjustments. But we’re still not sure that PoA price will stand.

It’s always something, isn’t it?

Freshly Discounted

The DC Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

This is a fairly odd sale. It appears to be collected editions released from the first week of September and then back as far as April ’21.  That said, there a lot of the $1.99/$2.99 price points of the last few weeks (it must be the holiday season) and this will be the first time a decent chunk of these have been on sale, so let’s hit the highlights (roughly speaking, from newest to oldest):

Nightwing  DCeased: War of the Undead Gods  Gotham City: Year One

  • Gotham City: Year One by Tom King and Phil Hester. This one needs some contextual framing. First off, we’re under the impression this isn’t a Black Label title, so it could be in continuity. It sure reads like a Black Label. From a Batman perspective, it’s an attempt to explain how Gotham City got to its current state. From a reader perspective, this isn’t a Batman comic. It’s hardboiled/noir detective story somewhere in between the Hammett and Spillane schools, featuring Slam Bradley (who is, broadly speaking, more in the Mike Hammer role than Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe). There’s been a kidnapping. The Wayne family is involved. Bradley doesn’t realize he’s up to his chin in sewage until he’s trapped. It’s a good detective (graphic) novel that might actually be better if it wasn’t tied into the Bat-mythos. Don’t get it for a child thinking it’s just a Batman comic, though. This one goes to dark places.
  • DCeased: War of the Undead Gods by Tom Taylor and Trevor Hairsine – the final chapter in the DCeased series of mini-series. We know a lot of you have been waiting on this to get a discount.
  • Batman V.2: The Bat-Man of Gotham – Chip Zdarksky / Mike Hawthorne. 2nd Zdarksky collection. If you go to the end of the series page, you’ll also see V.1 of Zdarky run, the Josh Williamson collection and the final Tynion Fear State on sale for $1.99/$2.99.
  • Batman: The Knight – Speaking of Zdarksy, this is his take on Bruce Wayne’s training years with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico.
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood. Still on sale. Still great, especially at $1.99 a volume.
  • Nightwing Vol. 3: The Battle for Bloodhaven’s Heart – Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo. This was not on sale last week and will put you back $2.99. First two volumes are $1.99@ and still on sale. And this volume is very nearly a Titan’s tale.
  • Batman: One Bad Day – The whole line is $1.99/volume.
  • Wonder Woman Historia – The Amazons – Kelly Sue DeConnick / Phil Jimenz / Gene Ha / Nicola Scott. Want to see some absolutely jaw dropping art? This one.
  • Black Adam: Theology – Priest / Rafa Sandoval / Eddy Barrows.  Black Adam catches a plague and thinks about his line of succession. Priest exploring a really odd angle? Go figure. Interesting read with a caveat: we’re not sure if V.2 is going to be collected or not in digital, so you might need single issues to finish the series. (Print orders apparently didn’t meet DC’s expectations?)
  • Batman/Superman: World’s Finest – Mark Waid / Dan Mora. If you’re looking for the classic/traditional DC feel, this is your book. Bats and Supes encounter a demon and the Doom Patrol is along for the ride. Lots of fun and Mora has made the transition to superheroes VERY well.
  • Batman: Killing Time – Tom King/David Marquez. We’ve mentioned it before but a solid noir/caper tale.
  • Suicide Squad V.1: Trial by Fire – John Ostrander / Luke McDonnell. You remember on Friday, we said that V. 1 of the original series would be on sale soon enough. Well, it’s on sale. As we’re typing this, it looks like the entire series is now on sale, but we’re not sure how much longer V.2-8 will be $1.99, so heads up.
  • The Flash: The Death of Iris West – Cary Bates / Alex Savuik / Don Heck. A collection that digitally suffers from HC pricing is now $4.99 in digital, so if you’re curious now is the time. This is a real oddity. First off, she’s going by Iris Allen at this point in the continuity, not Iris West. This is the famed storyline where Professor Zoom murders her and Barry loses it. It’s a particular oddity because this is a fairly early attempt to write a DC comic in more of a Marvel style with more subplots lurking in the background before coming to the surface. And not all of it works. Some folks swear by this arc, though.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Darth Vader; Far Sector; X-23; Rorschach; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops some discounts on Darth Vader and X-23; DC has a top 100 sale and DH cuts prices on Usagi Yojimbo.

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):

Is That Like a 100 Countdown?

The  DC Top 100 Sale runs through Monday, 10/2.

Lots of things with decent pricing this week. Let’s start with a highlights list and then underline a few:

The Legion and SSOSV volumes are there for fans of those franchises because the prices are significantly lower than we’ve seen them lately.

Best of the best here?  Hmmm…

Far Sector was a bit of a revelation. N.K. Jemisin has won just about every SF/F prose award out there, but you do NOT always see a prose author jump to comics so smoothly. Great worldbuilding and character work in this one. Great art, too. Just a really nice series and we wish they’d have a sequel.

Manhunter probably falls in the “legendary runs” category. Archie Goodwin and a very young Walt Simonson collaborate on one of, if not the, best adventure strips of the ’70s. An espionage-ish tale that ends in Batman team-up. If you like adventure strips, this is a must.

We’ll give Rorschach a slight edge over One-Star Squadron because we aren’t predisposed to Watchmen sequels. Quite the opposite. That said, Tom King and Jorge Fornés manage to pull off a very engaging mystery/conspiracy in the Watchmen universe without trampling on any toes. Which is quite an accomplishment. And it has a few things to say about conspiracies and identity.

Far Sector   Manhunter   Rorschach

Sith-Tober?

The Marvel Darth Vader Sale runs through Monday, 10/2.

Yes, this means Marvel is back on the old sale schedule, if you were keeping score on that.

First, let’s count down what all’s here, since it includes some of the old Dark Horse material.

We still haven’t read a Darth Vader comic that tops the Kieron Gillen / Salvador Larroca run.  It’s slow clap territory, especially the scene at the end of the opening arc when Vader figures out he’s been lied to.  This series picks up right after A New Hope and follows Vader as he goes rogue, looking for that rebel pilot who blew up the Death Star.  Note: The larger volumes we link to include a couple issues of Star Wars and Vader Down that make for a complete read.

The second best Vader series we’ve read is the Charles Soule / Giuseppe Camuncoli run. It might be the favorite series at the Lucasfilm offices, seeing as how they gave Soule a promotion. This run really hits second gear in arc #2 when the librarian of the Jedi Temple turns up.

Darth Vader    Darth Vader

X’d Out

The Marvel X-23 Sale runs through Monday, 10/2.

Laura Kinney is X-23. She’s also the clone daughter of Wolverine. Eventually, she’ll take up the mantle of Wolverine, but these are the adventures prior to that. This can all be grouped into three titles to simplify your browsing.

  • X-23: The Complete Collection – These two volumes contain everything through the 2010 series.
  • New X-Men – The “Childhood’s End” Complete collection gets you issues #16-32; then skip ahead to V.4 & 5 to actually complete the run.
  • X-23 (2018-19) – Mariko Tamaki / Juann Cabal / Diego Olortegui

X-23: The Complete Collection   New X-Men   X-23

Have Rabbit, Will Travel

The Dark Horse 2023 Usagi Yojimbo Digital Sale runs through Monday, 10/16.

This is Stan Sakai’s long-running (it started in 1984) saga of a samurai/ronin rabbit. It’s got a pretty nice collection of awards, too.

And this is one where there’s a CLEAR winner in format: $6.99 Omnibus Editions that are usually over 600 pages.

Usagi Yojimbo

Watch for the Image sale to flip to Part 4 Friday night/Saturday morning.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s Summer Sale and Dark Horse Goes Line Wide

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC says school’s out for summer and Dark Horse discounts the whole line.

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):

Note: Since most of the sales are ending Monday, we _think_ things will be a little more normal, come Tuesday. We’ve been raising our eyebrow at how they’ve been timing the last few weeks of sales, too.

<Insert Alice Cooper Lyrics Here>

The DC Summer Vacation Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

This is a standard DC misc. sale, so let’s look for the sweet spot of a lower price and better material on a few things.

American Vampire is where Scott Snyder first came to prominence over at DC (back when they still had Vertigo). Along with Rafael Albuquerque (and an opening with Stephen King), this is the story of a new breed of… that’s right American vampire, as something goes horribly wrong out West and sticks around. $4.99/volume for

Batman: Prey collects a pair of Hugo Strange arcs from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight by longtime Batman writer Doug Moench and his old Master of Kung Fu partner, Paul Gulacy.

The Challengers of The Unknown by Jack Kirby is something of an oddity. This was a hit for DC in that brief period before Kirby left for Atlas/Marvel. The really interesting thing about this book is how much it feels like early Fantastic Four… except this was 1957 (instead of ’61) and isn’t quite superheroes. This was out of print long enough that most people don’t realize how similar the titles were.

American Vampire   Batman - Prey   Challengers of the Unknown

The Omega Men by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda was King’s DC debut. It’s a particularly dark tale where Kyle Rainer (operating as the White Lantern at this point in continuity) is kidnapped by the Omega Men, a group that might be terrorists, might be freedom fighters or perhaps both? In some ways, it’s closer to his Sheriff of Baghdad than his Batman.

New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez was one of DC’s shining lights of the early to mid-80s and is generally regarded as a classic. $4.99/volume through V.7, which happens to be “The Judas Contract.”

Omega Men   New Teen Titans

Anything Goes

The  Dark Horse Everything Digital Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.

We should probably talk about this before diving in. This appears to be a line-wide sale. HOWEVER, only titles beginning with A-F are displayed on the sale page.

We know what you’re about to ask – is this another programmer error or are they going to change the page and display G-L next week?  We don’t have an answer to that.

A few browsing options for the rest of the alphabet (Amazon doesn’t have an alphabetical sort available for normal listings, so we’re going to have to improvise):

For the moment, we’re going to operate under the assumption that this was mislabeled and G-L (or a similar range) will appear next week for easier browsing.

So what’s good that’s on display in this chunk of titles?

Air – G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker collaborated on this criminally under-rated adventure into the unknown featuring an air hostess, terrorists, dimension hopping and celebrities who were supposed to be deceased.

Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment – The very unusual masterpiece by Bryan Talbot that explores the origins of Alice in Wonderland and the English town of Sunderland. It’s a bit hard to describe, but it works very well.

Baltimore – Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Ben Stenbeck and Peter Bergting collaborate on an epic tale of how a plague is released at the end of WWI and the solider who’s hellbent on vengeance against the vampires behind it.

Air   Alice in Sunderland   Baltimore Omnibus 1

Blacksad – Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido bring you this jaw-dropping anthropomorphic hardboiled detective series about detective John Blacksad. These are tales from the Hammett/Chandler school with some of best art you’ll see. Click on the sample pages, don’t just take our word for it.

Concrete – Paul Chadwick’s old school, multi-award winning series about a man who becomes encased in a shell of alien rock (which he can’t escape) and the accidental celebrity that follows it.

Finder – Carla Speed O’Neil’s aboriginal science fiction series is all about world building. Much of it following Jaeger, a “Finder” who can most anything and navigate his way almost anywhere… as well as being a sin-eater. Another criminally underappreciated series. Note: Finder: Chase the Lady is mislabeled as a single issue and not listed with the graphic novels.

Blacksad   Concrete   Finder

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Avengers (almost all of it), Civil War, One-Star Squadron and DC’s Spring Break

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, The Avengers (almost the entire catalog) gets discounts, plus Civil War and DC’s “Spring Break,” featuring the under-appreciated One-Star Squadron.

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):

Savings, Assemble!

The Marvel Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Sale runs through Tuesday, 4/1o.

And this as pretty much everything except the Masterworks editions. (Hey, don’t look at us… we think that’s a strange omission, too.)

Let’s start about by breaking down the major series/titles on sale

The Jonathan Hickman era

The Hickman era is a little complicated, because his Avengers and New Avengers titles run together, but getting the “regular” volumes of those are cheaper, but the Avengers by Jonathan Hickman collections are what we’d recommend for a more natural reading experience. Those collect both titles, plus tie-ins… and this is something were reading order counts.

But, this being Marvel collections, it get more complicated. The Avengers/New Avengers material (whichever format you read it in) is just one segment of Hickman’s tale. The story is continued in Avengers: Time Runs Out, which is the real last arc of Avengers and New Avengers.

And all this funnels into Secret Wars, the true endgame of Hickman’s Avengers run… which, of course, is not included in the sale. (Silly Marvel.)

The Hickman era really is it’s own beast. A lot of comics talk about having an “epic scale.” This one’s scope is staggering and it sheer size of the scope means it gets better and better as things progress in a way few comics really do. So just know that the entire era is effectively one extended story and it’s a real “in for a penny, in for a pound” thing.

The Jason Aaron era

While not necessarily as complex as the Hickman era, there are a few different ways to read it:

What’s at the top of the list?

As a self-contained unit, it’s hard to beat Avengers Forever. It’s one of the best Kang stories and it’s not spilling into anything else. Busiek + Stern + Pacheco = Excellence.

For the classic series, there are a lot of good runs. The first Roy Thomas/John Buscema run, particularly around the introduction of The Vision. The Kree-Skrull War. Steve Englehart’s Run. Jim Shooter’s run. Roger Stern’s run, particularly when the team of John Buscema and Tom Palmer return. There is a ton of good stuff to look at. When we factor in price point and page count (some of the newer Epic Collections are a little more expensive), we keep coming back to The Final Threat. Steve Englehart/ Gerry Conway / Jim Shooter / George Perez / John Byrne / John Buscema / Sal Buscema. You get the return of Wonder Man, “The Private War of Doctor Doom,” and “Bride of Ultron” for the major arcs. It’s a nice cross-section of creators and stories for $5.99.

We’re also major fans of the Kurt Busiek / George Perez run that begins here. A second golden age that stands up with the best runs. Also, $5.99 (mostly) for some page counts that sometimes approach Epic Collection length, so a little extra value from that end.

Let’s face it, there have been a lot of good Avengers run.

Avengers Forever   Avengers   Avengers Assemble

Spring Breaking and Entering

The DC Spring Break Sale runs through Monday, 4/10.

Another random-ish drop of title from DC. What’s good?

We read One-Star Squadron by Mark Russell and Steve Leiber a couple weeks back and loved it, which is not surprising with that pairing. We also think this is the first time the book’s been discounted. Definitely in the “bittersweet humor” category, this is a satire of the gig economy and venture capital as Red Tornado runs company whose app sends out third string heroes for appearances and gig work. His gig workers are not necessarily happy in life, nor his office workers. Recommended, especially if you’ve interacted with the gig world.

The Human Target (V.1) by Tom King and Greg Smallwood is an excellent ride. Christopher Chance has been poisoned and has twelve days to figure out who did the deed. And the Bwa Ha Ha era Justice League International are at the top of the suspect list. One part noir, one part deconstruction of the JLI. A very strong first collection. (The full series wrapped in Feb, but the second collected edition isn’t out yet.)

Two classic Flash runs are on sale at the same link. First, there’s The Flash by Mark Waid with Greg Larocque, Mike Wieringo and Oscar Jimenez among the primary artists. This was Waid’s breakout series with “The Return of Barry Allen” probably being the most famous arc. The you’ve got The Flash by Geoff Johns with Scott Kolins and Howard Porter as the primary artists. Early (and very entertaining) work from Johns.

One-Star Squadron   The Human Target   Flash by Mark Waid

And then we have a few things we think are getting discounted for the first time. (And heads up, some of those discounts are based on the HC price, so be aware of that.)

Of interest, due to the movie trailer:  Blue Beetle: Jaime Reyes, Book 1. The first 12 issues of the Keith Giffen / John Rogers / Cully Hamner series that’s being adapted.

And a few more things we think are on sale for the first time:

The War Between the… Sales Managers

The Marvel Civil War: Complete Events Sale runs through Tuesday, 4/10.

Yes, Civil War is one of those Events we really believe Marvel needs to rethink its collection strategy for.  All these various and sprawling collections need to be integrated. Or at least SOME of them need to be integrated.

So here’s our take on it:

Civil War the main mini-series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven – is the action movie version of the story.

Civil War: Front Line – written by Paul Jenkins with art by Ramon Bachs, Steve Lieber and Lee Weeks – is about WHY the Civil War is happening as Ben Urich tries to get to the bottom of things. This title is much more of the Event’s actual plot and motivations than the more famous flagship series and Marvel really need to have a collection that integrates the two.

There are obviously a lot of tie-in books here. You can dip in where you feel like, but Civil War: Wolverine by Marc Guggenheim and Humberto Ramos is a little more relevant than most and has Logan (hellbent on vengeance) tracking down the people responsible for the Stamford incident.

Yes, there is a lot more to the story than the main Millar/McNiven book, it’s just not really emphasized.

Civil War   Civil War: Front Line V. 1   Civil War: Wolverine

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s Black Friday Sale = Lots of Batman and Recent $0.99 Single Issues

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’sDC’s Black Friday Sale! Better than normal discounts on collected editions – yes, lots of Batman – plus a lot of recent $0.99 single issues.

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):

Surprise! DC’s Black Friday Sale dropped while we were writing up Marvel’s (annual Black Friday) Epic Collection Sale – which you should absolutely have a look at – and we’ve been getting prodded to annotate DC’s, too.  So… DC today and then we’ll get back with the rest of the Black Friday sales on Black Friday… since sales are definitely starting to drop.

I See a Sale and I Want It Painted Black…

The DC Black Friday Sale runs through Monday, 11/28.

This sale is a mix of some more recent material and some classic material… and some of the prices are good. But let’s hit some highlights and then try to run down the single issue options, since those are buried at the bottom of the sale and most people don’t have kind of patience it takes to click that far down.

’80s Batman

Gosh, you think a DC Sale will have a lot of Batman?  Duh.

For 80s Batman, a primo deal is V. 1-6 of Batman: The Dark Detective (click and scroll down a little, you’ll see them). That’s the 80s Detective Comics run starting with Mike W. Barr / Alan Davis and continuing through the Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle run. V. 3 includes the sequence by Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm and Denys Cowan. A really nice run for $3.99/$4.99 a pop.

Speaking of Sam Hamm, his Batman ’89 is the Two-Face story he would have done for the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton era Batman films, had the franchise not moved over to Joel Schumacher. Joe Quinones does the art. It’s on our “to read list,” but we haven’t gotten there yet, HOWEVER we would like to point out this was an August release and that awfully fast for DC to put the discounts on it. ($3.99)

For whatever reason, we don’t usually see the first volume of Batman and the Outsiders on sale. More often, it’s just V. 2 & 3 – which aren’t on sale this time, so go figure. This is #1-13 of the Mike W. Barr / Jim Aparo series, so if you’ve been curious, this is not a bad time to stick a toe in.

Batman: The Dark Knight Detective   Batman '89   Batman and the Outsiders

Current Batman

We think this is the first time the Josh Williamson run of Batman has been on sale (again, an August release for $3.99). You’ll also find the James Tynion 4.0 run at this link for $2.99/$3.99 if you scroll down a bit.

We’ve always loved the continuation of the animated series, but we love Batman: The Adventures Continue V.2 (Alan Burnett/Paul Dini/Rich Burchett/Ty Templeton) even more for $2.99! The Court of Owls enters the animated universe!

Is that a new volume of the Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo Nightwing? Why yes, we think this is the first time V. 2 has been on sale and we know it’s a popular series with .cheap readers.

Batman: Abyss   Batman: The Adventures Continue   Nightwing

Recently On Sale

Not new, but not really that old, either. At least we’ve seen them on sale before.

Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell was a jaw-dropping debut for Jemisin (who’s won just about every major Science Fiction/Fantasy prose award that comes to mind). A new Green Lantern with an experimental ring is off in a far corner of the galaxy and finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation on a world where murder hasn’t happened in centuries. Superior world building! 12 issues worth for $3.99

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? by Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber is an utter delight. One of the funniest comics DC has ever produced. Again, $3.99 for a 12-issue series is as good as it gets with DC.

The Nice House On the Lake by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno is a creepy SF/Horror genre bender (and more than a bit of a hit). A group of people are summoned to an isolated vacation home, only to witness the end of the world beginning outside their safe hideout. The mutual friend who invited them there… well, they have some questions about him. $2.99?!? Yeah, you can get it on the cheap right now.

Rorschach by Tom King and Jorge Fornés is a really odd creature. Set in the Watchman world, after the end of the book, it’s more about the mythology that has sprung up around Rorschach. It’s a mystery about political killings and muses about ideology and identity. It’s something of a unique book. While we were nervous picking up ANY non-Moore/Gibbons Watchmen title, we really enjoyed this one.

Swamp Thing by Ram V and Mike Perkins. This is the current run and we haven’t seen V.2 on sale before. The set up here finds Levi Kamei as the new Swamp Thing/Avatar of the Green. He’s not entirely sure what’s happened to him, but it might involve a corporation and it might involve his family. Interesting setup that has some echoes to The Anatomy Lesson as V. 2 nears its conclusion. Worth at look when it’s a rock bottom $2.99/volume.

Far Sector   Jimmy Olsen   Nice House on the Lake   Rorschach   Swamp Thing

Older Material At Good Prices

A couple ~20 issue/$5.99 volumes that are at a better price than we recall seeing lately:

Kamandi –Jack Kirby’s take on Planet of the Apes, although that’s a reductionist description. Many, many years after The Great Disaster, the last boy on Earth navigates a strange wasteland of warring kingdoms of bipedal, talking evolved animals, where most humans are little more than livestock. An incredibly fun adventure book.

The Flash: Savage Velocity – this is the launch of the Wally West Flash era, post-Crisis. It contains the entire Mike Baron/Jackson Guice/Mike Collins run and the beginning of the William Messner-Loebs/Greg LaRocque run. (Yes, run is a pun.) Chunk! Red Trinity/Kapitalist Kouriers! Vandal Savage! Velocity 9!

Kamandi   The Flash

$0.99 Single Issues

This is going to be a little goofy for links, since you’re going to need to scroll down to the more recent issues on any of these pages, but you’ll get a good idea what’s out there. These are all fairly current issues… in the case of Batman,  January ’22 through August ’22.

 

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Avengers, Deadpool, ~3K DC Titles and Image Crime

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC goes wide and deep with some better prices, Marvel offers up Avengers and Deadpool and Image slashes crime comics.

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):

Before we get to the sales, a message for the folks at Comixology: you really need to get some pagination in this new format. Yes, sorting and alphabetizing books is important and a step in the right direction, but there really needs to be some pagination or bookmarks. A sale like the current DC sale requires a person to click the “See more” button around 90 times to get to the end. If that person wants to read the details on any item before getting to the end, they get thrown back to the beginning of the sale when they click the back button to return.  That’s a pretty awful UIX experience and puts a significant burden on the user who wants to browse something at the end of the alphabet, like Wonder Woman. Fix this.

(We recommend right-clicking and opening a new tab or window if you want to examine an item in one of these monster-sized sales. It will save you some headaches.)

DC Forget To Put the Kitchen Sink On Sale

The DC Ultimate eBook Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

As we were saying, this is a REALLY large sale, around 2700 items – all collected editions. And here’s the thing, items that are a few years old (and a couple more recent releases) are frequently $3.99/volume with some of the “Deluxe” editions – i.e., print HCs that contain two TPBs worth of material – for $5.99.  Good deals and as cheap as we’ve seen some of this in some time.  It’s well worth a browse.

Here’s a list of some things that caught our eye as cheaper than usual and/or not always on sale:

  • Challengers of the Unknown – This is the original Jack Kirby run and if you haven’t read it before, you may be shocked how much it feels like early Fantastic Four. $5.99
  • (Original) Doom Patrol – $5.99 for the first omnibus? Yes, please.
  • Fables – The Bill Willingham/Mark Buckingham fantasy epic in $5.99 double-volumes
  • Far Sector – $5.99 for all 12 issues of the N.K. Jemisen/Jamal Campbell instant classic that introduces a new Green Lantern
  • First Issue Special – Are you confused about the new Tom King / Jorge Fornés Black Label series? It spins out of this ’70s anthology series. A serious weird mix, but with some real gems like Doctor Fate by Martin Pasko & Walt Simonson, a few Jack Kirby one-shots and the debut of Mike Grell’s Warlord feature. $7.99 and it hasn’t been discounted until recently.
  • Gotham Central – $3.99 for double volumes of the Ed Brubaker/Greg Rucka/Michael Lark/Stefano Gaudiano/Kano classic?  That’s crazy cheap for the material.
  • Green Lantern (’60-’86) – There’s a lot here for $3.99 a pop, but here’s a good sequence that’s not always properly discounted V.1 = Len Wein/Dave Gibbons, V.2 = Wein/Gibbons and transitions to Steve Englehart/Joe Staton; V.3 = Englehart/Staton; V.4 of the sequence is inexplicably packaged as Tales of the Green Lantern Corps V.3, but is the next Englehart/Staton volume. The series then changes to Green Lantern Corps, but that volume is $7.99.
  • Green Lantern (’18-’20) – i.e., the Grant Morrison/Liam Sharp run. It’s all one extended story and it’s _all_ on sale now. Season 1 – $3.99. Season 2 – $3.99/$4.99
  • Hardware: The Man in the Machine – $3.99 for the great intro arc by Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan
  • Lois Lane: Enemy of the People – The 12-part Greg Rucka/Mike Perkins serial. – $5.99
  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – The original Marv Wolfman/George Perez classic at $3.99/volume
  • Orion – Walt Simonson’s criminally under-rated New Gods series. $5.99/$6.99
  • Rorschach – Tom King and Jorge Fornés do an excellent, if tangential, follow-up to Watchmen with a surprisingly meta meditation on identity and modern mythology.
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – The Alan Moore era for $3.99/volume.
  • Suicide Squad (87-’92) – The John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell run that defined the concept for $3.99/volume? Ayup!
  • Superman: Phantom Zone – The wonderfully bizarre and creepy Steve Gerber/Gene Colan mini-series that takes more of a horror angle on Superman, plus the DC Comics Presents follow-up. $3.99
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen – Extremely funny take on Jimmy by Matt Fraction and Steve Leiber. HIGHLY recommended.

There’s a ton of stuff here and it’s worth your time to have an extended browse.

Gotham Central   Superman: Phantom Zone   Rorschach

Avengers Disassemble

The Marvel Avengers/Mighty Avengers Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

This would be the Bendis “New Avengers” era. There are multiple formats in play with this sale, but omnibus seems to be the way to go here:

That said, there a couple things in this sale we prefer from this era: the lesser known Mighty Avengers run by Dan Slott with Koi Pham as the lead artist. It’s not the classic Avengers lineup, but it has more of a classic Avengers feel.

You’ve also got the Ed Brubaker and Rick Remender eras of Secret Avengers. This is the Avengers “covert” ops team, so more of a spy flavor.

The Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott   Secret Avengers

No, Not the Dirty Harry Film

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a collection of those secondary titles.

The longest running of the set is Deadpool & Cable, Fabian Nicieza and Patrick Zircher being the team most associated with it. Amusingly, the monthly comic was called Cable & Deadpool, but the character popularity has flipped since then.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it.

Deadpool & Cable   Deadpool Corps

Crime Time?

The Image Crime Sale runs through Monday, 10/17.

We’d probably call a LOT of these comics more SF/F than Crime, but we always did like a genre-bender.

If you want a straight up crime comic, The Good Asian by Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi should trip your trigger. It lives up to the considerable hype (especially the first half). This is a noir mystery about a Hawaiian detective of Chinese descent, summoned to San Francisco to investigate a disappearance related to his wealthy guardians family… and then things sideways. Conspiracies mingle with politics and racial identity. And it’s well researched, too.

While Criminal was originally published at Icon/Marvel, it’s kind of the old school flagship for crime work at Image, since that’s where Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips started doing crime tales (non-superpowered crime tales, at least, since they’d previously worked together on Sleeper).

Now, if you want something a lot further out there, but still with a criminal element, we’ve always been big fans of Chew. This John Layman / Rob Guillory classic is the right kind of weird. It’s also frequently hilarious. In world recovering from a nasty bird flu, after which poultry is outlawed, FDA agent Tony Chu chases a conspiracy, aided by ability to experience the memories of anything he eats.  Awesomely strange, one might say. (The sequel series, Chu is also top notch.) Oh, yes… there’s also a death-dealing rooster named Poyo.

The rest of the sale is definitely worth a browse. It’s a nice selection, especially if you like Brubaker/Phillips.

The Good Asian   Criminal   Chew

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Still On Sale

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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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