Tag: Usagi Yojimbo

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Teams; Thanos; The Spider-Verse; Captain Marvel; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts teams and team-ups. Marvel slashes prices on Thanos, Captain Marvel and the Spider-Verse. Plus, 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):

Let’s Fight and Then Team Up

Batman and the Outsiders  Legion of Superheroes: The Curse  Suicide Squad

The DC United Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

This is a deep, 600+ item sale that’s _mostly_ centered around team books and team-ups. Mostly. The sale page is almost completely unorganized, but it’s worth an extended browse. There’s a lot there.

Some things we found interesting and in a semblance of order? Sure, we can do that.

The OG Marvel Cosmic Sale
Avengers Vs. Thanos Silver Surfer: The Return of Thanos Infinity Gauntlet

The Marvel Thanos Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock.  You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating). Thanos got VERY involved in things, starting with The Return of Thanos and continuing with Thanos Quest and Silver Surfer: The Infinity Gauntlet. And yes, the first two volumes absolutely set up the famous The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim).  And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material.  “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a couple graphic novel trilogies:

and

And, for good measure, while not really part of the above – Avengers: The Legacy of Thanos by Roger Stern, John Buscema and John Byrne is a highly entertaining tale of Nebula (yes, the Granddaughter of Thanos who’d later be in Guardians of the Galaxy) attempting to conquer the Skrulls.

The most recent big blip on the radar was the Donny Cates / Geoff Shaw Thanos Wins and its spin-off, Cosmic Ghost Rider.

Not A Big Red Cheese?

Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin Captain Marvel Captain Marvel

The Captain Marvel Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Right. This one is a little goofy to define (and the beginning overlaps a bit with Thanos).

First off, the original Kree Captain Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel:

Is Starlin’s Mar-Vell, the best Mar-Vell? We’d say so. We’d also say the Englehart/Milgrom follow-up is well worth your time, but it’s not included here.

Carol Danvers as Ms./Captain Marvel:

OK… brace yourselves… this one has a ton of relaunches:

We think that’s the overly complicated chronology, anyway. For recommendations, we’re not really experts on this set of books, but we’re inclined to say go with the current Thompson run. Kelly Sue DeConnick has a very dedicated fanbase, so maybe browse the sample pages there and see if that catches your fancy, too?

Then there’s Mar-Vell’s son Genis:

This one is a Peter David joint, through and through. We did read the ’22 version last year and enjoyed it. It has a little more going on than you might think at first.

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

Spider-Verse  Superior Spider-Man  Spider-Gwen

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 9/23.

So, the Spider-Verse is basically a celebration of the Spider-Man cast expanding with a lot of Spidey-related characters and then throwing in some Spidey-equivalents from different dimensions. Miles Morales being the most important one, important enough to be ported into the main “616” universe when the Ultimate line was shuttered.

Spider-Verse was the original Spider-Man family event in the comics that formalized much of this. You’re best off getting the omnibus edition that has the entire thing and all the crossovers, else it gets complicated figuring out reading order between the various series-specific collections.  There are a ton of creators working on this, as you might expect, but this is effectively a Dan Slott as show-runner affair. (Which means, yes, Christos Gage is not far behind.) You can also grab the lead-in series,

If you’re a film fan, the first thing you’re probably thinking of when you hear Spider-Verse is Miles. We broke it down last week, but the  Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale is still running through Monday.

There’s also a bunch of Spider-Gwen / Ghost-Spider material.

The original Spider-Gwen run was Jason Latour writing with Robbie Rodriguez on art.

The first series is collected as Volume 0. Then the second series is collected as Vol. 1-6, but you can get Unmasked instead of V. 4&5 and save a little money. (We warned you this was messy!)

A bit later, famed fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire (sometimes known as Mira Grant) wrote some Spider-Gwen, as the feature was re-named Ghost-Spider. The first series is here.  The second series, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa and Ig Guara, is here.

And the most recent installment in the sale is Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse by Tim Seeley and Jodi Nishijima.

And then we have a Superior Spider-Man section.

Yes, that would be the run when Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body. One of the greatest moments of “wait… this is actually good” in recent history. (Everyone we knew winced at the high concept, but the execution was on the money!)

The primary Superior Spider-Man series by Dan Slott and Ryan Stegman is best packaged in the 2-volume Complete collection, that also includes the “Dying Wish” arc that sets up the run.

Superior Spider-Man Companion gets you the first 12 issues of Superior Spider-Man Team-Up and some tie-in issues.

Superior Spider-Man (’18-’19) is the Christos Gage / Mike Hawthorne revival that returns Otto Octavious to his Spidey persona.

Of course, we all know who the real star of the Spider-Verse is: Spider-Ham!

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ultimate Spider-Man She-Hulk  Venom

The trend continues. 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

Unannounced Sales

Usagi Yojimbo  Seconds The Hunger and the Dusk

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it. The strange thing is, only the later volumes are showing the good discounts? Usagi Yojimbo Saga is the omnibus version and the better buy. Single volumes are here.

Also with discounts:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men and Daredevil (nearly) Full Runs; Batman; Infinity Gauntlet; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts nearly all the Daredevil and Uncanny X-Men collections on sale. And an Infinity (Gauntlet / War / Crusade) sale on top of that. DC does another installment of their “Epic” sale and Dark Horse slips in 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):

X Marks the Price Tag

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live  X-Men Epic Collection  X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix

The Marvel Uncanny X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

It’s a legacy sale, so it’s the Uncanny X-Men core… although this may shorter list than some of the legacy sales. For instance,  X-Men wasn’t part of Heroes Reborn, so no relaunch there.

As is our custom, let’s run through the key series included, first:

  • Uncanny X-Men ’63-’11 – The original X-Men, the “new” X-Men, Morrison… it’s a long run.
  • Uncanny X-Men  ’11-’12 – The original Kieron Gillen era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’13-’15 – The Brian Bendis / Chris Bachalo era (Battle of the Atom fits in with this run as a crossover)
  • Uncanny X-Men ’16-’17 – The Cullen Bunn / Greg Land / Ken  Lashley era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’18-’19 – The Mathew Rosenberg era

And you might be asking yourself, “aren’t there usually more than one X-Men title and don’t they cross over a lot?” Yes, that would be a potential issue… pun intended. Not so much with the Epic Collections and the Masterworks as with the later series, and there are some Event collections in the sale, too.

You should know our general advice right now. There’s a slight preference for the value of Epic Collections over Masterworks collections, but it depends on the exact price point and the Epic Collections sometimes have gaps.  That still applies here.  The wild card with X-Men is that it can get impenetrable with continuity and all the characters floating around. You can’t always just jump in.

So, recommendations with that in mind.

If you’ve never tried the original X-Men, we’d say go with The Sentinels Live Epic Collection. It’s at the very tail end of the original run that the original X-Men run is at its best: a bit of Jim Steranko and then a Roy Thomas / Neal Adams sequence that ended all too quickly.

For the “new” X-Men, we’re cool with the theory that Giant-Sized X-Men #1 / Uncanny X-Men #94 through #200 is one big arc. That’s where we’d start if we were new. The Epic Collections that are discounted only take you to #153, at which point you need to start cutting in the Masterworks editions with V. 7 through 12. (The next Epic with a discount only takes you to #198, which is short of the finish line!)

For an alternate jumping on point, perhaps the Ed Brubaker era, which is collected in three volumes starting with Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.

We thought the Bendis era was better than it’s reputation, but aware that it runs parallel with All-New X-Men, which isn’t in this sale.

If you were wondering, Grant Morrison is filed under New X-Men and not part of this sale.

Also be aware that X-Men: Reload is effectively the omnibus version of Uncanny X-Men: The New Age, where Chris Claremont returned to the book with Alan Davis.

Hornhead

Daredevil  Daredevil Epic Collection  Daredevil by Zdarsky

The Marvel Daredevil Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

Let’s break this down by series. Like X-Men, Daredevil has had fewer relaunches than some titles.

  • Daredevil ’64-’98 – The original run. Oddly, as we type this up, the Epics are on sale and the Masterworks mostly aren’t?
  • Daredevil ’98-11 – The Marvel Knights relaunch. Kevin Smith / Brian Bendis / Ed Brubaker
    • For the Bendis and Brubaker runs, you want the Omnibus section and scroll down for their respective “Ultimate Collections”
  • Daredevil ’11-15 – This was really two volumes with an arbitrary relaunch in the middle, but the excellent run by Mark Waid / Chris Samnee / Paolo Rivera / Javier Javier Rodriguez is a better buy in this 5 volume set that collects both volumes and treats it like the single run it was.
  • Daredevil ’15-’18 – The Charles Soule era with Ron Garney as the main artist.
  • Daredevil ’19-’21 – Chip Zdarsky’s breakout title as a writer. Marco Checcetto is the primary artist.
  • Daredevil: Woman Without Fear ’22 – Zdarsky / Rafael de Latorre; Sort of a bridge title during the Devil’s Reign event, but part of the ongoing plot. Note: this is included in the final DD omnibus for the ’19-’21 run.
  • Daredevil ’22-’23 – Also known as Daredevil & Elektra. The final act to the Zdarsky/Checcetto era

What’s good here? Honestly, with the exception of the “Shadowlands” Event at the end of the Marvel Knights run, DD has been consistently good to great since Frank Miller showed up. You don’t hear us saying that about every title! We will say that Gene Colan’s return to DD (with Joe Kelly writing) seems to be under the radar these days.  But starting with Miller, just pick a run (Miller / O’Neil / Nocenti / Chichester / Kessel / Kelly / Smith / Bendis / Brubaker / Waid / Soule / Zdarsky) and dig in.

Infinite Jest

The  Marvel Infinity Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

On the one hand, this sale would seem to be a continuation of last week’s Cosmic sale, which naturally segues into The Infinity Guantlet. On the other hand, they’re throwing in anything else with “Infinity” in the title, so we’re going to have to separate this out a little more than we normally would.

Starlin’s Infinity Saga

As you may recall from last week, Jim Starlin returned to Marvel and re-introduced Thanos in Silver Surfer, which lead up to Thanos getting his hands on the Infinity Gems and kicking off a series of Event mini-series.

Alongside those titles, Warlock & the Infinity Watch (Starlin / Angel Medina / Tom Grindberg and others) ran parallel and filled some gaps between Events.

And then some more Thanos/Infinity mini’s and graphic novels:

Avengers

Not part of the Starlin Infinity world, but thrown in for… reasons (?)

Avengers Infinity by Roger Stern / Sean Chen is a cosmic/Avengers in space tale.

Infinity is roughly the middle act of Jonathan Hickman’s massive Avengers run. That volume pulls in all the various parts and is how you want it, although we’ve said in before and we’ll say it again – Hickman’s Avengers is one long epic and if you’re going to sample, read the whole thing. The sheer scope of it adds to the experience when you start at the beginning.

Sounds Like a Marvel Brand – Week Two

Batman: Venom   Manhunter  Jimmy Olsen

The  DC Epic eBooks Part 2 Sale runs through Monday, 03/11.

This time out it’s a seriously eclectic set of volumes. Occasionally just one or two from the middle of a run.  Some things that jumped out at us?

  • Batman: Venom – Denny O’Neil / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Russ Braun;  Long before Knightfall, or even Vengeance of Bane, O’Neil and company did a Legends of the Dark Knight arc to introduce “Venom,” the drug that originally fueled Bane’s strength.
  • DCeased – which they really ought to file together, but don’t. It’s still entertaining stuff (and, of course, the opening volume isn’t included):
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; the first half of the series is on sale (in double-volume format) for the classic tales of fairy tale creatures hiding out in Manhattan after their worlds are overrun by invaders.
  • Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation – Robert Venditti / Eddy Barrows – in a world where the Nazis discovered the payload of a certain rocket from Krypton and over-ran the world, the Freedom Fighter form up as the resistance. A vastly overlooked take on the original concept.
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson tell a superb tale of spies, ninjas, clone and a certain caped crusader. One of the best adventure comics of all-time.
  • The Road to Perdition – Max Allen Collins / Richard Piers Rayner – A mob enforcer and his son go into hiding after a betrayal. You may have seen the film version.
  • Superman: The Phantom Zone – Steve Gerber / Gene Colan / Rick Veitch – Leave it to Gerber to come up with a creepy, horror-tinged take on Superman. There are much stranger things in the Phantom Zone that you realized. (Big thumbs up.)
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? – Matt Fraction / Steve Lieber – Jimmy wakes up hungover and married in Gorilla City… and that’s not even the silliest part. One of the funniest comics of the last few years. A+

Rabbit Rabbit

Usagi Yojimbo

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it.

The real bargain is the $6.99 “Saga” omnibus editions.

Filed separately, is the  Saga “Legends” volume, which includes things like Space Usagi.

If you’re in the market for single volumes, those are $4.99… but only for Vol. 8 and higher. (Hey, don’t look at us! We think that’s peculiar, too… but the Saga volumes are a better buy.)

Also Unannounced…

BAKEMONOGATARI

Vertical’s manga series BAKEMONOGATARI is on sale for $3.99/volume (although we can’t tell you where V. 1 went to…)

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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: Spider-Verse, Miles Morales, DC Pride, Fear Itself, Usagi Yojimbo, Plants vs. Zombies

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a Spider-Verse  and Fear Itself Discounts from Marvel. DC has a Pride sale. Dark Horse offers up Usagi Yojimbo and Plants Vs. Zombies.

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):

A Half-Month Sale

The DC Pride Sale runs through Thursday, 6/15.

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, a 17-day sale from DC. Been a while since we’ve seen one of those

What’s good?

For this sale, our favorite volume is Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III. That would be the full collection of the Detective Comics run. Strong collection and the introduction of Alice. To say more would be spoilers.

The Grant Morrison / (primarily) Richard Case run on Doom Patrol is a classic journey into the offbeat.  Mr. Nobody and The Brotherhood of Dada, Danny the Street, Crazy Jane… strange is the operative word here, in a good way.

You can’t really have a Pride Sale without Wonder Woman, can you? And there’s a LOT of Wonder Woman at the bottom of the sale. You can’t really go wrong with either of the Greg Rucka runs, the second of which (with Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp) can be found in the first two volumes here. And you can’t go wrong with George Perez, either.

Batwoman    Doom Patrol   Wonder Woman

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 6/12.

Gosh, you’d think there was a movie coming out or something…

So, the Spider-Verse is basically a celebration of the Spider-Man cast expanding with a lot of Spidey-related characters and then throwing in some Spidey-equivalents from different dimensions. Miles Morales being the most important one, important enough to be ported into the main “616” universe when the Ultimate line was shuttered.

Spider-Verse was the original Spider-Man family event in the comics that formalized much of this. You’re best off getting the omnibus edition that has the entire thing and all the crossovers, else it gets complicated figuring out reading order between the various series-specific collections.  There are a ton of creators working on this, as you might expect, but this is effectively a Dan Slott as show-runner affair. (Which means, yes, Christos Gage is not far behind.)

If you’re looking for Miles Morales, Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection is the best place to start (and also a bit of a tongue twister). That’s the original Brian Bendis / Chris Samnee / David Marquez / Sara Pichelli Ultimate Universe material that set the table and we’ve enjoyed this take.

Of course, we all know who the real star of the Spider-Verse is: Spider-Ham!

Spider-Verse   Miles Morales - Spider-Man   Spider-Ham

If You Needed Something To Fear…

The Marvel Fear Itself Sale runs through Monday, 6/5.

Fear Itself was a Marvel crossover Event we always thought should have just been a Thor/Iron Man crossover.

Fear Itself is the main series and on the Thor-centric side as the Asgardian god of fear escapes and marches Midgard towards an apocalypse. Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen are your creators.

The tie-in we liked for this was Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself from the excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larocca Iron Man run. Tony Stark doesn’t think he’s surviving this one, so he joins the dwarves in boozing while making weapons. One of the better “drinking with dwarves” sequences in literature.

Fear Itself   Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself

Gardening For The Dead

The Dark Horse Plants Vs. Zombies Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

Yes, this would be the comics adaptation of the Plants vs. Zombies video games by Paul Tobin and several artists (Ron Chan being the most frequent). And these sell better in the bookstore market than you might realize.

The omnibus editions are the best deal.

Plants vs. Zombies

Have Rabbit, Will Travel

The Dark Horse 2023 Usagi Yojimbo Digital Sale runs through Monday, 6/19.

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

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Hulk, Nightwing, Robin, Groot and Usagi Yojimbo

This week in Comixology (at Amazon) sales, the Hulk is on sale. As in, most of the Hulk comics. Groot gets a small sale, Nightwing and Robin get a larger sale and Usagi Yojimbo goes on sale ahead of next week’s Netflix debut.

(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):

Hulk Smash Prices

The Incredible Hulk Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 4/28.

Oh, yes. There is a LOT of Hulk on sale.  Most of it, really.  So we’re going to start out by doing what we do (and what Amazon can’t be bothered to do) and break it down by series.

  • Incredible Hulk (1962 – 1999) The original run and then the long running series that picked up a few years later.
  • Tales to Astonish (1964-68) In between the two Hulk solo runs above, Hulk was splitting Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man/Giant Man and then Namor. A lot of the foundational work was really in this run, with Stan Lee/Steve Ditko responsible for a lot of it.
  • Incredible Hulk (1999-2007) – Best known for the Bruce Jones / Lee Weeks/ Mike Deodato run towards the beginning and the Greg Pak / multi-artist “Planet Hulk” and “World War Hulk” epics at the end… though World War Hulk is at this different link.
  • Hulk (2008-13) This is the Red Hulk run (and the title changes to that after awhile). It starts out with the better known Jeph Loeb/Ed Mc Guiness run and then Jeff Parker takes over with Gabriel Hardman, Dave Eaglesham and Patrick Zircher in the artist rotation.
  • Incredible Hulk by Jason Aaron (2011-12) – Lots of artists rotating through here, Marc Silvestri, Steve Dillon and Carlos Pacheco among them
  • Indestructible Hulk (2012 – 14) – Mark Waid’s the writer with an artist rotation including Leinil Francis Yu, Matteo Scalera and Walt Simonson draws the Thor team-up.
  • Hulk by Waid and Duggan (2014-15) – That would be Mark Waid and Gerry Duggan with Duggan doing the bulk of the run. Mark Bagley is the main artist here.
  • The Totally Awesome Hulk (2015-17) – This would be Amadeus Cho’s turn as Hulk, which mean Greg Pak is you primary writer with an artist rotation including Frank Cho, Alan Davis and Luke Ross
  • Immortal Hulk (2018-21) – Al Ewing’s masterpiece as the Hulk slides over towards horror and find a green door that leads to Hell.

What’s good? We like the value of the Epic Collections in the original series (and Tales to Astonish) for $6.99.  The Masterworks editions for $5.99 aren’t bad either, so pick your period and format.

As for “the best of” Hulk…

We think this Epic Collection of the Tales to Astonish run is a good introduction to the Hulk. A rock solid creator rotation of Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Kane/Everett/Buscema/Severin. The introductions of The Leader and the Abomination (among others). Cold war paranoia and you get to the the original evolution of the Hulk as a character that changes formats and approaches every so often.

Immortal Hulk is a high water mark and well worth your time, though not really what you’d call a traditional Hulk tale.  Peter David’s lengthy run is a classic (and we’re not going to divide it up by artist periods – it’s all good). Greg Pak has gone big like few others.

Something under the radar?  There’s a Paul Jenkins/Ron Garney/John Romita Junior run that preceded the better known Bruce Jones era. It’s collected with some other things, but the two volumes are The Dogs of War and Past Perfect. It goes darker than a lot of the Hulk tales, but we sure liked it.

Hulk Epic Collection   Hulk Dogs of War   Hulk - Past Perfect

I Am… Rocket?

The Marvel Groot sale runs through Thursday, 4/28.

This is a fairly small sale. The real question here is one of direction. You can head for the Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Brad Walker Guardians of the Galaxy run or in the Skottie Young direction with Rocket Raccoon and Groot.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Batman Family

The DC Spotlight: Nightwing & Robin Sale runs through Monday, 4/25.

The now standard warning on DC digital sales at Amazon – the pricing gets screwed up on these sales. A lot of prices initially get set at strange amounts like $9.32 and $13.98. Sometimes the prices get adjusted down to something more palatable like $5.99 or $7.99… but not always.  We don’t know if this is a problem on the Amazon side or the DC side, but it’s a problem. If the price ends in $*.99 (like $5.99), that’s probably the real sale price and you can proceed.  If not… the price might drop.  Yeah, it’s goofy in a bad way.  That said, what’s on sale?

The Grant Morrison era Batman & Robin for $5.99 per volume is not a bad deal. It’s a revolving door at artist, but when the revolving door is folks like Frank Quitely and Frazier Irving, one doesn’t mind as much…

Here’s another good deal, clocking in at around 300 pages for $5.99 – Robin: Reborn. This one starts out with the Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle tales leading up to Tim Drake taking up the cape. Then it collects the first Robin solo mini-series by Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle.  Tim Drake had a moment in the mid-90s (more volumes of his original solo run are here and here).

For Nightwing, we’re going to point you at Grayson, written by Tim Seeley & Tom King and drawn (mostly) by Mikel Janin. This ambitious series has Dick Grayson going undercover as a spy for a mysterious espionage agency called “Spyral,” which is spying on superheroes.

Batman & Robin   Robin: Reborn   Grayson

Rabbit Rabbit

And let’s not forget the Usagi Yojimbo Sale, running through Monday, 5/2.

Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit is getting a cartoon adaptation and this is the odd sale with two different publishers under the same umbrella.  Fantagraphics comes first and then the Dark Horse material.

Usagi Yojimbo

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Still On Sale

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Comixology Sales: Fantastic Four, Marvel Zombies, Star-Lord, Usagi Yojimbo, Derf and DC’s TV Sale

This week’s Comixology sales have a bit of variety. Marvel leads with Fantastic Four, Star-Lord and the Marvel Zombies. DC has a TV-themed selection. Dark Horse has “teen” titles on sale and the “Small Press” sales offers up some Kyle Baker, Ahoy and Kickstarter comics.

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

It’s Price Clobbering Time

The Marvel Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Sale runs through Sunday, 8/15.

That’s a lot of FF and it’s a really, really cluttered sale because of how many different FF reprint volumes there are, so here’s how we’re going to do it: Click here for the original series that started in 1961. Scroll down to the Collected Editions section so we can look at this in roughly chronological order.  The Masterworks are not on sale, but the Epic Collections are, so Epics are your best buy and they start on the second screen. We think Lee/Kirby hits it stride with the Epics “The Coming of Galactus” and “Thy Name Is Doom,” but you can’t go wrong with anything by that team. As you move forward the next really notable period is John Byrne’s, which hasn’t gotten Epic treatment yet, just the “Visionaries” line. Remember, he didn’t write V. 0 for that.  We’d end up with the Walt Simonson run, which is in a couple Epics or smaller Visionaries volumes.

Now click here for the ’98 relaunch.  In the Omnibus section is the Hickman material, and that’s probably the best way to read that run.  Scroll down to the “Collected Editions” section and after V.5, the Fantastic Four by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo volumes start. These are the omnibuses for that landmark run and the better pricing (good stuff). When you get past the Civil War volume, you come into 2 volumes of Dwayne McDuffie (Nuff said).

That’s a lot of FF and should keep you out of trouble.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The Name is Doom   FF by Waid and Ringo

A Solo Guardian

The Marvel Star-Lord Sale runs through Sunday, 8/15.

The bulk of the sale is the more recent incarnation, but we’d recommend going back to the original conception of Star-Lord in Star-Lord: Guardian of the Galaxy.  Al Ewing’s been revisiting some of this source material in the current GoG run. Peter Quill started out in the Marvel magazines of the ’70s before moving over to the normal comic line. You’ve got Steve Englehart, Chris Claremont and Doug Moench for writers and for artists, Carmine Infantino, John Byrne and Bill Sienkiewicz.  Not a bad set of talent.

Star-Lord

Marvel’s Walking Dead

The Marvel Zombies Sale runs through Thursday, 8/19.

Yes, when Robert Kirkman wrote for Marvel, he did a zombie comic. And it was a scream.  It’s technically a spin-off of Ultimate Fantastic Four, which was a more serious story than the very entertaining farce it involved into. We’d say to go with the Marvel Zombies Complete Collections. Vol. 1 gives the the Millar/Land Ultimate FF and Hudlin/Portela Black Panther lead-ins and the the original Marvel Zombies by Kirkman and Sean Phillips. (Yes, you might have vague feelings that Phillips is cheating on Ed Brubaker while reading this. It’s a natural reaction.)  Vol. 2 continues with the Marvel Zombie minis, Kirkman writes the first one before Fred Van Lente tags in and Seth Graeme-Green puts in an appearance. When Phillips leaves, Kev Walker tags in as the primary artist.  We’d say go for V.1 and V.2 initially. If you’re still wanting more, V. 3 is still there, but that might be a bit much for a single sitting.

Marvel Zombies

DC thinks about Television

The DC on TV sale runs through Monday, 8/16 and comes in 2 parts:  Part 1 is the collected editions and single issues through The Flash.  Part 2 finishes up The Flash through the end of the alphabet.

We’ll be straight with you: this isn’t a great sale for collected editions. Lots of lowball 45%-46% discounts. Lower than what you’re used to. $0.99 single issues are more what you’re used to and you’ll want to make sure it’s not cheaper to buy the single issues over collected editions.  Of possible note: we don’t always see the original Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane on sale.

Lois Lane

The Rabbit

The Dark Horse Teen Sale runs through Monday, 8/16.

There’s some manga, a tone of Avatar: The Last Airbender and some Stranger Things, but we think this is a great excuse to highlight Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai’s long running saga of a ronin rabbit.  When we say long running, we mean since the early 80s.

Usagi Yojimbo

Indie Comics on Parade

The Small Press Graphic Novel Mega Sale runs through Thursday, 9/9.

As usual, we wouldn’t call all of it “small press,” but there’s a lot here that really runs the gamut.  A few things we noticed in there:

The Cowboy Wally Show by Kyle Baker is a legendary graphic novel and a real riot. Always highly recommended. We’ll call a satire of the entertainment biz and save the spoilers.

Billionaire Island by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh is one of the best things we’ve read recently. A _dark_ satire where Billionaires create a mobile island to escape things like taxes, global warming and… laws. A dot com billionaire has done something especially heinous and the pigeons are coming home to roost.  This one takes the satire further than we’re accustomed to seeing.  Also highly recommended.

Punk Rock & Trailer Parks is Derf Backderf’s initial foray into graphic novels after years of The City strip in alt weekly papers and before going on to do My Friend Dahmer and Kent State. It’s about the punk scene in ’79 Akron, OH.

Leaving Megalopolis by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore is a tale of super heroes gone berserk and an popular Kickstarted comic.

Cthulhu is Hard to Spell is actually two anthologies about the slumbering one that don’t take themselves particularly seriously.

The Cowboy Wally Show   Billionaire Island  Punk Rock and Trailer Parks   Leaving Megalopolis   Cthulhu is Hard to Spell

Still on Sale

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