Tag: Wonder Woman

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s First Holiday Sale w/ Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman; Iron Man; X-Men

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has the first holiday sale of the season with their “Trinity” sale of Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman… as low as $1.99/book. Plus, Marvel puts almost the entire Iron Man catalog on sale, as well as some X-Men and Storm titles. Dark Horse chips in with an Erik Powell sale.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

DC’s First Holiday Sale Is Here

Batman: The Detective  Superman: The Man of Steel  Wonder Woman

The DC Trinity Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

This sale is often the first holiday sale. Why are we saying it this year? $1.99 collected editions. The rule of them is if a collected edition is $2.99, go ahead a pull the trigger. $1.99? Yeah, that’s rock bottom for DC in recent years.

As such we’re going to be taking a look here at the vast swatch of $1.99 and $2.99 books. (This is comics.CHEAP, after all.) There are definitely newer books on the sale, but they might be — gasp — $3.99 or $4.99.

Batman

  • All-Star Batman (’16 – ’17) – Scott Snyder / John Romita, Jr. / Jock / Rafael Albuquerque
  • Batman (’40 – ’11) – mixed pricing
  • Batman (’11 – ’16) – Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo; That’s right, you can stick the full Snyder/Capullo run in somebody’s stocking for $1.99@
  • Batman (’16 – present) – Most of the Tom King and James Tynion IV runs are $1.99@
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor / Andy Kubert; (yes, the first Taylor run for $1.99. Happy holidays.)
  • Batman: The Killing Joke – Alan Moore / Brian Bolland
  • Batman: Three Jokers – Geoff Johns / Jason Fabok
  • Batman: Year One – Frank Miller / David Mazzucchelli
  • Batman/Superman (’13 – ’16) – Greg Pak / Jae Lee
  • Detective Comics (’37 – ’11) – Mixed pricing
  • Detective Comics (’11-’16) – Tony Daniel, then John Layman / Jason Fabok
  • Detective Comics (’16 – present) – James Tynion IV / Eddy Barrows through Mariko Tamaki / Dan Mora (before the price starts inching up)

Superman

Wonder Woman

  • Wonder Woman ’87 – ’06 – Mixed pricing. Perez is one of the definitive runs, though not as cheap. The first Greg Rucka run is cheap, though, and it’s great.
  • Wonder Woman (’11-’16) – You want the first 6 volumes of the Brian Azzarello / Cliff Chiang / Goran Sudzuka run. It’s a divisive take on the character (see: Azzarello, Brian), but it’s a solid yarn. Treat it like an Elseworlds, if you like.
  • Wonder Woman (’16 – ’20) – You want the *excellent* first four volumes by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp

This is one you want to take some time and browse. Some interesting things in these lower price points? Sure.

Trinity by Matt Wagner teams up Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman as Ra’s al Ghul has a plot involving Bizarro, a rogue Amazon and some nukes. Also… it’s Matt Wagner. $2.99

Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia by Greg Rucka and J.G. Jones finds Wonder Woman and Batman having a little trouble agreeing to disagree. $2.99

Batman: Venom – Denny O’Neil / Trevor Von Eeden / Russ Braun / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez; About a year before Bane appeared, this was the Legends of the Dark Knight arc that introduced “venom,” the super-steroid that bulked up Bane. (With as good a creative lineup as you could reasonably ask for.) $1.99 – cheap.

Does Whatever An Iron Can…

Iron Man: The Man Who Killed Tony Stark  Iron Man: Heroes Reborn  Iron Man: Big Iron

The Marvel Iron Man Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

This would be one of those sales where most of the hero’s run is on sale, so we’re going to follow our usual protocol and start out by breaking out the primary titles and volumes. ‘Ole Shellhead hasn’t had as many relaunches as some titles, but there is a volume where the collection options are a little… odd. Note: the Masterworks aren’t included in this sale, so you’re looking at Epic Collections and “regular” collections for the classic material.

  • Tales of Suspense – Iron Man debuted here in what was a split book with Captain America for most of the run.
  • Iron Man ’68-’96 – The original solo run in the era before constant relaunch gimmicks

OK, sit tight. The ’98 -’04 run is collected in VERY odd ways and poorly cataloged for browsing.  The truly excellent Kurt Busiek/Sean Chen/Patrick Zircher run lasts from 1-25. We can’t find 15-25 collected? (That entire run should be!)  You can catch 1-14 and the Mike Grell run (50-59)  in cheap omnibus form here.  You can catch Joe Quesada’s scripting run (26-32) and the Avengers: Disassembled tie-in late in this run in single volumes here. (But get the omnibus version for Busiek.)

  • Iron Man ’04-07 – Best known for launching with the “Extremis” storyline
  • Invincible Iron Man ’08-’12 – The excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larroca run. Save some money with the omnibus collecting the first 3 volumes.
  • Iron Man ’12-’14 – The Kieron Gillen run with Greg Land as initial artist
  • Superior Iron Man ’14-’15 – Tom Taylor / Yildiray Cinar
  • Invincible Iron Man ’15-’16 – Brian Bendis and David Marquez/Mike Deodato, Jr. start out with Tony Stark in the armor
  • International Iron Man ’16 – Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev (And yes, we’re in the thick of the relaunches now)
  • Invincible Iron Man ’16-’18 – Brian Bendis and Stefano Caselli with Riri Williams/Ironheart filling Tony Stark’s shoes (yes, parallel substitute Iron Man runs)
  • Tony Stark: Iron Man ’18-’19 – The Dan Slott era with Valerio Schiti as the principle artist in the rotation.
  • Iron Man ’20-’22 – The Christopher Cantwell / Cafu run.
  • Invincible Iron Man ’22-current – Gerry Duggan / Juan Frigeri

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll have notice Infamous Iron Man are not on sale. Why? We cannot say. Too close to Doom assuming the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme?

So what’s good?  We haven’t read ALL the Iron Man out there, but we’ve read a lot of them.

In our opinion Iron Man starts hitting it’s stride when Archie Goodwin arrives toward the end of the Tales of Suspense run and then is pure gold through issue 28 of the ’68 Iron Man series. Artists for this run include Gene Colan and George Tuska. (That’s collected in both Masterworks and Epic formats, but only the Epic is discounted right now..)

The next “all-star” run is #116-157 of the original Iron Man, that’s the David Michelinie / John Romita, Jr. / Bob Layton run that’s most famous for the “Demon in a Bottle” alcoholism arc, but there’s more to the run than just that arc.  The Denny O’Neil / Luke McDonnell run that follows is solid (make sure you get a collection that includes #200!!!), but Michelinie & Layton return for #215-250 with a few artists, including Mark Bright and Jackson Guice… with Layton even switching to penciller, instead of his usual inking post, for parts of it.  This second run is most famous for “Armor Wars” (originally known as Stark Wars).

When Heroes Return hits, Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen are pop in for the excellent 1998 run, of which only 1-14 are currently collected.

The ’08 – ’12 run by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca is particularly good. You know how modern Marvel titles can get sidetracked by Events. Fraction and Larroca lean into it and produce a lengthy and self-contained arc with Tony Stark on the run and attempting to overwrite his brain to keep everyone’s secrets out of the hands of Norman Osborn. Yes, an honest to goodness great Event tie-in arc. It’s a rare thing.

We were quite happy with the  Christopher Cantwell/Cafu run. Tony Stark chases Korvac into outer space and meditates on the nature of godhood, good intentions and addictions. Lots of character work and action.

The Calm Before?

X of Swords  X-Men: Red  Resurrection of Magneto

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

It might be better to break up the highlights as pre-Krakoa and Krakoa era.

Pre-Krakoa

  • X-Men: Magik – Storm & Illyana – Chris Claremont / Brent Anderson / John Buscema; extra dark tale of Illyana’s abduction by demons
  • Storm (’06) – Eric Jerome Dickey / David Yardin; prequel to her marriage to T’Challa
  • Storm (’14-15) – Greg Pak / Victor Ibenez

Krakoa Era

  • Marauders (’19-’22) – Gerry Duggan / Matteo Lolli / Stefano Caselli; Kitty becomes a pirate captain w/ Storm in tow
  • Giant-Size X-Men by Jonathan Hickman (’20) – Jonathan Hickman / Russell Dauterman / Alan Davis
  • X of Swords (’20) – Hickman showrunning the full creative staff
  • X-Men: Red (’22-’23) – Al Ewing / Stefano Caselli; Storm rules Arrako (Mars)
  • Resurrection of Magneto (’24); Al Ewing / Luciano Vecchio; An X-Men: Red end cap of sorts, as it’s time for Magneto to return from the dead

What’s good? We’re partial to the Krakoa era. X of Swords is a satisfying Event – yes, that’s possible, it just doesn’t happen often enough. X-Men: Red was a highlight of the late-stages of Krakoa and Resurrection of Magneto was interesting… although if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know we’re usually in the bag for Al Ewing. (Mmm… ZOMBO!)

Villains of the Atom

X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga Complete Collection  Mystique  X-Men: Age of Apocalypse

The  Marvel X-Men Villains Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

It’s true. The X-Men have villains and sometimes the villains eventually become friends. And sometimes friends become villains and then become friends.

The best thing here is the utter classic X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga Complete Collection by Chris Claremont & John Byrne. Yes, the comic is definitely better than the film in this case and that edition has some extra issues that are worthwhile.  (For Jean Grey’s initial resurrection, there’s also X-Men: Phoenix Rising)

Best thing under most radars? Mystique, where she’s repurposed as Xavier’s spy. The first Brian K. Vaughan / Jorge Lucas / Michael Ryan omnibus is particularly good.

You have a couple options for the Age of Apocalypse arc. X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse does appear to be slightly more complete.

The sequel is filed under the two volume X-Men Vs. Apocalypse.

Also under the radar: Magneto (’14-’15 ) by Cullen Bunn & Gabriel Hernandez Walta goes to some dark places.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ms. Marvel  Ghost Rider

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

Big Man Plans  1984  Godzilla: The Half-Century War

Dark Horse has a sale on Eric Powell’s comics:

Also on sale:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Doctor Strange, Marvel Monsters, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Cyberpunk 2077

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, more Marvel Halloween mayhem with Doctor Strange and the Marvel Monsters. DC has a few more recent collected edition releases, plus Cyberpunk 2077.

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):

The Doctor Will See You Now

Doctor Strange in Strange Tales  Doctor Strange by Englehart  Doctor Strange - The Oath

The  Marvel Doctor Strange Sale runs through Monday, 11/4.

And it’s most of the Doctor Strange material that’s been collected in book form. Alas, the Masterworks are not in this sale and they’re a little further along the 70s/80s series than the Epics are.

It seems the Jed MacKay run is still being kept separate from the “regular” Doctor Strange sale. No, it makes no sense to us, either. Parts of it have been discounted elsewhere.

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

Another personal favorite is Doctor Strange: The Oath by a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin. They’ve both moved on to bigger things, but a long run by those two would have been a real highlight.

Something under the radar?  The final Waid/Walker run is also a lot more under the radar than it should be.

Or We Could Just Call It a Halloween Sale

Man-Thing by Steve Gerber  Tomb of Dracula  Marvel Zombies

The  Marvel Monster Sale runs through Monday, 11/4.

One thing you’ll note when browsing the links is how the 70s “Complete Collections” are in the process of turning into “Masterworks” editions. We suspect that when the Masterworks are complete, the Complete Collections will be rebranded as Epic Collections.

So first, an overview of the highlights:

What’s good here? There are two titles you’ll usually hear mentioned as the top Marvel monster/horror book:

Man-Thing – three volumes get you the full run of one of Gerber’s longest running associations. He didn’t create the Man-Thing, but Gerber defined him. The final volume even catches you up on the Marvel Comics Presents serial and The Infernal Man-Thing miniseries that was published post-posthumously. There are a lot of artists tagging in and out, but prominent ones include Mike Ploog, Val Mayerick, John Buscema, Tom Sutton and Kevin Nowlan. Yes, both DC and Marvel had great swamp monster runs that kicked off at roughly the same time.

Tomb of Dracula – This one had some creative false starts, but once Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan have a couple issues to settle in and start building their supporting cast, this quickly becomes one of the most interesting books Marvel was publishing for it’s 70 issue issue run. Like Man-Thing, it’s one of the gems of the ’70s.

And for something a little more modern, there’s Marvel Zombies. The “Complete Collection” editions are extra interesting because the first one collects the Zombie dimension’s initial appearances away from the miniseries that followed. While the mini’s have occasion to float into the absurd, the initial appearances where a little more firmly in the horror world. And yes, the first two mini’s were Robert Kirkman writing zombies at Marvel.

Pride Cometh Before the Sale

The Flash  Shazam  Wonder Woman

The DC Fall Sale runs through Monday, 10/21.

A lot of the more relatively recent collections this week. Here are some things that jumped out at us, most of them at a cheap $2.99, a common price for this sale:

What’s good here?

Wonder Woman is actually something of a political thriller and King’s political inclinations flow a little better here than they have in other places as it makes a slow, deliberate march into “enemy of the state” territory.

Shazam! should be a top choice if you’re looking for something that leads with fun, as it course corrects the character back towards the classic format.

The Flash starts out with the Speed Force and then veers off in more of a cosmic horror direction. Maybe skip the very out of place Beast World tie-in in the middle of it, but stay for the strangeness and sense of wonder as the mystery slowly unspools.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Blood Hunt  Edge of the Spider-Verse: Spider Society  Predator: The Last Hunt

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

  • Blood Hunt – Jed MacKay / Pepe Larraz – $9.99

Unannounced Sales

Cyberpunk 2077   Cyberpunk 2077 Big City Dreams  The Nasty

Looks like there’s an unannounced sale on Dark Horse’s Cyberpunk 2077. A video game adaptation with an interesting award to its credit.

The first four collections can be found here.

After which, the property went to the album format Dark Horse sometimes uses for titles with a higher bookstore profile, which are listed with the single issues:

Big City Dreams was the 2023 Hugo Award winner for Best Graphic Story or Comic. And there you have it.

Also with discounts: remember  The Nasty by John Lees & Adam Cahoon? Come to find out, it’s on the New York Public Library’s list of the 50 Best New Comics for Adults in 2024.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool, Wolverine, Teen Titans, Ultimate X-Men, Resident Alien, Neil Gaiman and some Unannounced Sales

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops sales with Deadpool, Wolverine and Ultimate X-Men / The Ultimates, plus some more of these oddly discounted new releases. DC discounts Teen Titans, plus mysterious price reductions on Superman and Wonder Woman.  And then, Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales from Dark Horse.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

Oh, look… the Marvel sales came back.

Ghosts of Ultimates Past

Ultimate X-Men  Ultimates Ultimate Comics X-Men

The Marvel Ultimate X-Men and Ultimates Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

This is effectively two sales in one: the highly influential original Ultimate Universe rebootings of X-Men and Avengers.

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

The Ultimates is a little harder to explain because of how it was rolled out. They treated it as miniseries “seasons.” Suffice it to say, you saw a lot of it’s influence on the Avengers films.

The core material here is the Mike Millar-penned Ultimates material.  His run is:

Ultimates 3 is in the sale, but here at the Tower of Cheap, we like to pretend Jeph Loeb never got involved in the Ultimate universe.

But when the Ultimate Comics relaunch started, Jonathan Hickman turned up to work on The Ultimates and isn’t he a bigger name these days?

SNIKT

Wolverine and the X-Men  All-New Wolverine  

The Marvel Wolverine and the X-Men Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

This is a fairly unusual mix of various characters using the “Wolverine” code name and some X-Men titles, too. There’s a bit more to the sale, but here’s rundown of the highlights.

  • All-New Wolverine – Tom Taylor / David Lopez / Juan Cabal; A top notch series feature X-23/Lauren Kinney taking on the costume while Logan is “dead.” The best thing to come out of The Death of Wolverine by a wide margin.
  • Marvel Comics Presents – Ever notice they rarely show anything from MCP aside from the Wolverine serials? The first one from Chris Claremont / John Buscema is a lead-in to the original ongoing solo series.
  • Uncanny X-Men – scroll down a bit and you’ll find 16 volumes at $5.99@. From the birth of the new team roughly through Inferno.
  • Wolverine & The X-Men – Jason Aaron / Chris Bachalo / Nick Bradshaw; Logan takes his turn as headmaster
  • Wolverine Legends – Collections of some mini’s and story arcs. V.2 is the excellent “Meltdown” series from Walt Simonson/Louise Simonson/Jon J. Muth/Kent Williams

AARP Titans

New Teen Titans  Silver Age Teen Titans  Teen Titans

The DC Teen Titans 60th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

Hmmm… perhaps 60 is the new 16?  What’s here? Quite a variety of things, really. Let’s hit some highlights.

“Original” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans (’66-’78) – Bob Haney / Nick Cardy

“New” Teen Titans

  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – Marv Wolfman / George Perez / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Eduardo Baretto
  • New Titans (’84-’96) – Wolfman / Tom Grummett

“Post-Wolfman” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans  (’03-’11) – Geoff Johns / Mike McKone
  • Teen Titans (’11-’14) – Scott Lobell / Brett Booth / Eddy Barrows
  • Teen Titans (’14-’16) – Will Pfeifer / Kenneth Rocafort
  • Teen Titans (’16-’21) – Ben Percy / Adam Glass / Jonboy Meyers / Bernard Chang
  • Titans (’16-’19) – Dan Abnett / Brett Booth
  • Teen Titans: Earth One – Jeff Lemire / Terry & Rachel Dodson

“Kids” Teen Titans

What’s good? The Wolfman / Perez run is still the gold standard (and it’s hard to understate its importance to DC at the time). With the original series, the question is whether you like Bob Haney’s brand of quirk, although Nick Cardy is consistently great.  For something later in the feature, maybe give a look to the Geoff Johns / Mike McKone run. This is one of the things Johns was working on just before he really blew up with Green Lantern.

$20 on Hugh Jackman’s Dignity

Deadpool & Cable  Spider-Man / Deadpool  Deadpool Corps

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a large and wide collection of those secondary titles. You’ll want to browse yourself, but here are some of the more prominent titles being featured.

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.

Spider-Man / Deadpool also ran 50 issues. Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness was the early creative team with Robbie Thompson / Chris Bachalo tagging in later.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it and for… reasons rumored to be in the new film, we suppose…

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

New X-Men  Hawkeye  Captain Marvel

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. 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.

Released this week

  • New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection: E Is For Extinction – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely / Leinil Francis Yu; $6.99 is definitely a sale price for Epic Collections and we’re astonished the price is still active on it’s debut week.
  • Captain Marvel by Margaret Stohl – Stohl / Ramon Rosanas; Listed 484 pages, this is essentially an Epic Collection. $44.99 list price for print. $24.99 digital list price. As we type this, the “Kindle price” is $10.99.  Not quite as low one of the Deal Page sales, but plenty cheap for the page count on the debut week.

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced DC Sales?

Wonder Woman New 52   Wonder Woman by Gail Simone  Wonder Woman

We’re a little puzzled by this one. It might be next week’s sale loaded early. It might be remnants of an old sale. We’re not sure, but we’ll give you some links to browse through if you’re curious.

We also saw some Batman prices that looked like what you get when the sale prices are broken, so MAYBE they’re starting to load the sale prices in for a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman “Trinity” sale next week? Or it could be something else.

Unannounced Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales.

Resident Alien Norse Mythology  Neil Gaiman Library

Over at Dark Horse, we found two sales.

Resident Alien is a comic by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse about a stranded alien posing as a doctor and solving murders. It got a little more famous when a TV adaptation hit and a lot more famous when the TV show moved over to Netflix. (And will now be moving over to the USA cable network.) We read the first omnibus a few months back and if your point of reference is the TV show, the comic is a little more mystery-oriented. It’s available in

Note: the 7th series is only available as a collected edition at this time.

Over on the Gaiman side of things, there are a couple flavors – New comics material by Gaiman and adaptions of his prose work. P. Craig Russell is involved with much of the adapted work and check to see if a series is in the Neil Gaiman Library collections, because several are.

For original material,

  • Signal to Noise – Gaiman / Dave McKean
  • Mister X: The Archives – An explanation is order. This is a very good SF/noir series by Dean Motter / Los Bros. Hernandez / Ty Templeton (among others), but there’s also a Gaiman / Dave McKean story in it

Adaptions of prose work…

First not in the Gaiman Library editions

Then the Library and the individual titles collected within

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: World’s Finest; DC Elseworlds; Dark Horse Horror; Alison Bechdel

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC looks at more recent titles with their Summer Reading sale and towards the past with an Elseworlds sale. Dark Horse discounts a wide range of horror books and… is that Alison Bechdel?

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):

Summer Loving Reading

World's Finest Lobo  Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes

The DC Summer Reading Sale runs through Monday, 6/24.

Another eclectic title mix from DC, but plenty of $2.99/$3.99 titles and a few things are new (or at least recent) to having a discount. Let’s run down some notables by the bullets:

  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; The extremely well done return to the continuity of the 90s animated series by two of the show runners (and Ty Templeton’s been on this version a loooooooong time).
  • Batman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the original 30s/40s stories for $3.99/volume.
  • Batman/Superman: World’s Finest – Mark Waid/Dan Mora; Probably our favorite DC ongoing title at the moment. Popular with .cheap readers, too. Third volume recently entered discount territory.
  • The Dead Boy Detectives (’05) – Jill Thompson’s manga style adventure of what’s now a Netflix series.
  • Gotham Central – Ed Brubaker / Greg Rucka / Michael Lark / Stefano Gaudiano / Jason Shawn Alexander / Kano; The excellent series where the Gotham PD tries to cope with Gotham Crime without Batman. Double volumes for $2.99. Very worth taking a flier on if you’re unfamiliar.
  • Green Arrow (’23)-Josh Williamson / Sean Izaakse; First time discounted?
  • The Huntress: Origins – Paul Levitz / Joe Staton; All the Bronze Age solo appearances in once place.
  • JLA (’97) –    The 90s run that started with Grant Morrison / Howard Porter, mostly $3.99 for double volumes. A good era for the Justice League.
  • Justice Society of America (’23) – Geoff Johns / Mikel Janin; We can’t tell you when the next few issues will ship, but the collection of the first 7 issues is discounted.
  • Lobo (’90) – Keith Giffen / Alan Grant / Simon Bisley; The original off-color, ultra-violent humor series starring The Main Man. An effective tool for the offending of the easily offendable, but very funny if you aren’t.
  • Mister Miracle (’17) – Tom King / Mitch Gerads; In this much-lauded series, Mister Miracle attempts to escape death itself.
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; $2.99/volume ahead of the next series. High school friends are gathered at a remote house as the world ends… and the rest is spoilers. Very well done and a surprisingly big seller for a Vertigo book without the Vertigo imprint behind it.
  • The Omega Men: The End is Here – Tom King / Barnaby Bagenda; Under-appreciated early Tom King meditation on modern terrorism with the Omega Men reimagined as political terrorists who’ve kidnapped Kyle Rayner. Also one of the best Kyle Rayner stories you’ll find.
  • Peacemaker Tries Hard! – Kyle Starks / Steve Pugh; A recent addition to the ranks of the discounted at $3.99.
  • Rorschach (’20) – Tom King  / Jorge Fornés; The rare Watchmen sequel(ish) that we’ll endorse! It’s a political thriller in the Watchmen universe.
  • Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes – Paul Levitz / James Sherman / Mike Grell / Joe Staton / Jim Starlin – better than usual prices for big chunks of the first Paul Levitz run.
  • Superman (’23) – Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; Best “traditional” take on Superman in a few years. V.2 came out (at regular price) recently.
  • Superman: Birthright – Mark Waid / Leinil Francis Yu; 12 issue mini about Superman’s early years for $2.99
  • Superman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the 30s/40s Superman tales for $2.99/$3.99.
  • The Wild Storm – Warren Ellis / John Davis-Hunt; A reimagining/updating of WildCATS and the Jim Lee Wildstorm characters. Davis-Hunt is vastly under-appreciated.
  • Wonder Woman: The Golden Age – It’s hard to describe how deeply strange the early 1940s Wonder Woman comics are… and not just the submission and bondage elements. Blow your mind for $3.99
  • World’s Finest: The Silver Age – Big chunks of the original series (starting with the ’54 material) for $3.99 a pop.

Elsewhere
The Nail  Bizarro Comics  Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

The DC Elseworlds Sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

Elseworlds were originally DC’s answer to Marvel’s What If series, frequently re-imagining heroes in different settings and time periods. And you know what? Some of the were legitimately great comics. This sale has a few things that haven’t traditionally been referred to as “Elseworlds” (and we have no idea why some of the high end Batman collections are at the end, so we’ll leave it you to browse those) and there are several  things we are happy to recommend without reservation:

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller; the classic tale of Batman coming out of retirement
  • Batman: Gotham By Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola; a Victorian/Steampunk/Jules Verne reimaging of Batman who comes in conflict with Jack the Ripper and a version of Verne’s Robur the Conqueror
  • Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader – Neil Gaiman / Andy Kubert; A Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow – style send-off to Batman that starts at his funeral.
  • Batman: Year 100 & Other Tales – Paul Pope; Pope spins a future tale of a new Batman appearing, as Commissioner Gordon’s grandson pursues him. You don’t want to pay the hardcover price for this one.
  • Bizarro Comics: The Deluxe Edition – Genuinely odd anthology where alternative cartoonists like Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Tony Millionaire and Carol Lay do shorts with the various DC characters. Yes, that’s a Matt Groening cover.
  • Justice League of America: The Nail – Alan Davis; Ma and Pa Kent get a flat tire and never find Kal-El’s rocket, so the Justice League forms without Superman and things do not go smoothly.
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid and Alex Ross; You don’t get Injustice: Gods Among Us without this dystopian tale of a new generation of heroes running amok. It’s really a critique of the 90s grim ‘n’ gritty comics movement.
  • Superman: Red Son – Mark Millar / Dave Johnson / Killian Plunkett; What if baby Kal-el’s rocket crashed in the Soviet Union and he was raised to be Stalin’s secret weapon? Also, Dave Johnson doing interiors!
  • Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? – Alan Moore / Curt Swan; After Crisis on Infinite Earths wrapped, but before Superman relaunched under John Byrne, Moore and Swan did a two-part story to tie a ribbon on the saga of the original Superman. (Theoretically the Silver/Bronze Age Superman, but this is pretty all encompassing.)

Unannounced Sales – The Horror, The Horror…

Not listed on the Deals page, it seems Dark Horse is having a horror sale.  Indeed, Dark Horse has done a LOT of horror over the years. You might even say it’s a specialty for them. Here are some things we found:

What’s good here? The Mignola-verse is the standard bearer, and a many threaded thing it is. Before you get to the last B.P.R.D. Omnibus (in many ways, the real backbone of that universe), it helps to have read all of Hellboy, plus some Abe Sapien (which gets into his true origins) and Witchfinder. And that’s the _major_ highlights.

Horror’s a pretty strong genre for Dark Horse.

Even More Unannounced Sales
Heathen  Wrassle Castle  Fun Home

From Vault / Wonderbound

The Alison Bechdel Section

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Silver Surfer; DC Pride; Marvel Knights; X-Men; DH Manga; Dragon Age

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Silver Surfer, Marvel Knights and X-Men “Crossovers.” DC has their annual Pride sale. Dark Horse discounts most of their manga, plus Dragon Age.

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):

Surfin’ Bird

Silver Surfer by Lee/Kirby  Silver Surfer - Englehart  Silver Surfer

The  Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall into three periods:

First, the classic original series by Stan Lee and (mostly) John Buscema. This ran from ’68-’70 and is a minor legend for a reason. It does not appear to be on sale this time, but we’ll list it for the sake of completeness.

There wasn’t much solo Surfer for the better part of 17 years because the Surfer was considered to be Stan’s character in a similar way to how Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s. That changed in ’87 when Silver Surfer relaunched under the team of Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers. (Yes, the Batman pairing.) Predictably, it was excellent. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet.  We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

Then next major addition to the cannon was the Dan Slott / Michael Allred Silver Surfer in 2014. It is confusing listed in two places. The first three volumes here and the final two volumes here.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

And if you’re interested in cherry picking the Surfer’s original appearances in Fantastic Four, the very definition of classic, there’s an Epic Collection that does just that.

Who Exactly Did the Knighting Ceremony?

Daredevil Marvel Knights   Punisher  Spider-Man

The Marvel Knights Sale runs through Monday 6/10.

It’s probably best to put this in historical context. Prior to becoming Marvel EIC, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were co-running an imprint at Marvel called “Marvel Knights.” This started when Marvel was not exactly at a high point and Quesada & Palmiotti reinvigorated several titles. Eventually, Quesada got promoted.

The flagship title for Marvel Knights was probably Daredevil. It started out with Kevin Smith and Quesada as the creators, which was a hit. Then Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev had a storied run on it.

Garth Ennis wrote The Punisher for Marvel Knights, both the comedic series and the later series crime version that eventually moved over the MAX imprint.

Very little of it is in the sale, but the Christopher Priest version of Black Panther is still hugely influential.

Grant Morrison did a Fantastic Four mini-series with Jae Lee and Marvel Boy with J.G Jones.

Mark Millar and Terry & Rachel Dodson did a Spider-Man run.

There was also the infamous “we’re just going to pretend that never happened” Punisher miniseries where Frank returns from the grave as an angel of vengeance. No, really.

There’s a bit more there, but those are the highlights (and the famous misfire). It was a pretty influential imprint.

X Marks the Event

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga  X of Swords  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel X-Men Crossovers sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

This is really a sale on the various Events in the X-family of books. Some of them mostly internal to the X-line, some of them crossing over outside.

The bulk of the sale is the X-Men Milestones line which collects Events from Dark Phoenix through  Age of X.

For something like Onslaught, you can simply get the Milestone edition or you can go whole hog:

Ditto for the slightly earlier Age of Apocalypse:

And then a couple more recent events are too new for the Milestones:

What’s good? We’d go back to that original “Milestone” – The Dark Phoenix Saga. There’s a reason it’s a classic and sent the X-Men into a legendary surge of popularity. Hard to go wrong with Claremont & Byrne. We also think extremely highly of the two most recent events: X of Swords & Sins of Sinister.

Pride

Batwoman  The Invisibles  Wonder Woman by George Perez

The  DC Pride Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

This is a 288 book set of books related to Pride Month. (Some of them more closely related than others.) A few things we saw that were interesting, including some off the more beaten path:

  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III – Rucka /Williams; The excellent solo series from Detective
  • Batwoman (’11) – W. Haden Blackman / J.H. Williams III / Amy Reeder; Blackman & Williams mount a good follow-up to the above Detective run, but an editorial decision to nix the wedding hampers the ending
  • Doom Patrol – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; The classic… although it’s a shame there’s no Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol in this sale. It would be appropriate.
  • The Invisibles – Grant Morrison / Steve Yeowell / Jill Thompson / Chris Weston; An underground society battles a conspiracy to keep humanity in it’s place.
  • Seven Soldiers of Victory – Grant Morrison’s series of interlocking mini-series isn’t always mentioned, when Morrison’s name is brought up, but we thought it was the execution was on the money.
  • Shade: The Changing Man – Peter Milligan / Chris Bachalo; Early Vertigo as Milligan & Bachalo retool the Ditko hero. The original marketing description of “mind-bending” is apt.
  • Wonder Woman (’87) – There’s a lot to like about this run – George Perez. Phil Jimenez. The first Greg Rucka run. Even a Walt Simonson / Jerry Ordway collaboration. Be aware you need to toggle between the Omnibus page and Volumes page to see all the material

Unlisted Manga + Dragons

Astro Boy  Blade of the Immortal Lone Wolf and Cub

Dark Horse is having an extensive manga sale. By the numbers:

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Dragon Age

Even More Unannounced Stephen King Comics
Stephen King's Dark Tower

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s Superman / Batman / Wonder Woman Pre-Holiday Sale; X-Men; Runaways; Young Avengers; Elfquest

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC starts the holiday sale season with a Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman “Trinity” sale, Marvel discounts all things “Hellfire” (as in X-Men) and “Young Heroes” (like Young Avengers), plus… Elfquest, but not on a shelf.

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. If you normally use the Comixology app, you’ve probably heard that Amazon is shuttering it on 12/4. If you haven’t heard that, open the app and it’ll notify you. Comics reading is moving over to the Kindle app.

We have a couple tips/warnings for you about that.

  1. You can force a sync by pressing the “MORE” button at the lower right hand corner of the screen of the Kindle App and selecting “Sync.” Be warned, this is a SLOW process and you might need to press the button several time before a sync really starts. We had had 4 or 5 attempts break before one finally took. A little bit of system overload? That should not surprise anyone. It took us maybe 3 hours before the “real” sync concluded.
  2. In the Kindle App’s library display screen, there is a “FILTER” button in the upper left corner. This is where you can change your view to comics-only, book-only, unread items-only, etc., etc. This is mentioned in Amazon’s update announcement, but we didn’t think they made it quite clear enough. Play with the filter and it will make things a little easier, particularly if you read both books and comics on Kindle. You really want to be able to view those separately.

We have not yet done a two-screen audit to compare what’s in the Kindle with what’s in the Comixology app, but we’re looking to carve out some time for that before the 4th. At first glance it looks OK, but we’ve heard people saying not everything came over (make sure Read/Unread are both off in the filters) and others saying it took multiple syncs, so we’re looking to err on the side of caution.

If you’re already using the Kindle App, this is a non-issue. And, let’s face it, we all knew this would eventually happen from the moment that Amazon acquired Comixology. Honestly, we’re a little surprised they’re still calling the comics section “Comixology” and not something like Amazon Comics.

The Holidays Start Early?

The DC Trinity Sale runs through Monday, 6/20.

Trinity means Superman / Batman / Wonder Woman, over at DC. But that’s not what we noticed.

What we noticed was all the $2.99/$3.99 collected editions, so we’re treating this like the first shot fired on Holiday Sales. (A pre-Black Friday sale? Maybe.) Will there be cheaper prices from DC in the next couple months? Maybe, but they don’t get lower than $2.99 very often, so it would a (pleasant) surprise.

If you’re looking for a “Trinity” title… basically since New 52 dropped, it’s going to be cheap. This sale is worth taking some time to browse.

Here are some mostly less recent things we saw and liked the prices:

Superman

Batman

  • Batman (1940-’11) -We especially like $3.99 “Caped Crusader” (the ’80s run) and $2.99 Ed Brubaker volumes if you scroll down.
  • Detective Comics (1937-’11) – We especially like $3.99 “Dark Knight Detective” (the ’80s run) and “New Gotham” volumes.
  • Batman: Damned – Brian Azzarello / Lee Bermejo; It will go down as infamous for the “bat pole” and the behind the scenes political upheaval it caused.
  • Batman: Death and the Maidens – A Ra’s Al Ghul tale by Greg Rucka / Klaus Janson
  • Batman: Gates of Gotham – Scott Snyder / Kyle Higgins / Trevor McCarthy – early Snyder Batman
  • Batman Universe – Brian Bendis channeling pure fun? Believe it! This is the Bendis/Nick Derington tale that was hidden away in the Walmart comics and we want another volume!

Wonder Woman

  • Wonder Woman: The Golden Age – Early Wonder Woman is strange. Lots of bondage and domination themes. Seriously. ~400 pages for $3.99. Worth getting one cheap to see how off the wall these are.
  • Wonder Woman (1987 series) – Don’t ask us why, but you need to click here and here to get everything. We don’t know why the listings are split like that. Anyway, you can’t go wrong with the George Perez run or the first Greg Rucka run at the end of this series. And be away that V.6 of the Perez run and the War of the Gods collection that isn’t numbered contain the same comics.
  • Wonder Woman (2011 series) – The first six issues by Brian Azzarello / Cliff Chiang / Goran Sudzuka are a top notch story. A little sacrilegious to the character? Probably. Consider it an Elseworlds take, but it’s good.
  • Wonder Woman (2016 series) – You want the first two “Rebirth Deluxe Editions” as Greg Rucka / Nicola Scott / Liam Sharp reset Wonder Woman, post-Azzarello
  • Wonder Woman: True Amazon – Jill Thompson’s Eisner Award winner

Adventures of Superman   Batman Universe   Wonder Woman - True Amazon

Arthur Brown’s Favorite Event

The Marvel Hellfire Sale runs through Monday, 11/20.

Is this a Hellfire Gala sale or a Hellfire Club sale?  Perhaps it’s both?

You have a couple options for the first Hellfire Gala, depending on how many tie-ins you want. You’ve got the ’22 Hellfire Gala.

We definitely enjoyed the Krakoa-era Marauders by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli & Stefano Caselli. That had Captain Kate Pryde and her merry band of mutants patrolling the seas on behalf of the “Hellfire Trading Company” and breaking up the plotting of the original Club’s Black King.

For something something under the radar, Cable: The Hellfire Hunt by a pre-Starman James Robinson and Jose Ladronn putting Cable up against a scheme involving the Hellfire Club and Apocalypse.

Hellfire Gala   Hellfire Gala - Immortal   Maruaders

Somebody Card These Heroes

The Marvel Young Heroes Sale runs through Monday, 11/20.

Technically the “young heroes” title trend at Marvel goes back to Young Allies in the 1940s, but that’s not on sale here.

What is in the sale?

Runaways by  Bryan K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona might be the best title. When six friends discover their parents are super villains, they make a run for it. Vaughan was already writing Y- The Last Man when this came out, but his fame hadn’t reached a critical mass yet and this one isn’t always remembered.

Young Avengers by Allen Heinberg and Jim Cheung is a close second. Notable for introducing Hulking and Wiccan, also with Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang, this is a fun one. Doesn’t hurt that you can get the whole thing in one volume, either.

Another one that’s available in a single volume is the Kieron Gillen / Jamie McKelvie Young Avengers from  ’13. Gillen & McKelvie? You already know if you’ll like it. (They add Kid Loki to the team,  incidentally.)

Runaways   Young Avengers   Young Avengers

Elves Off the Shelves

The Dark Horse 2023 Elfquest Digital Sale runs through Monday, 12/4.

This is elf season, right? These are a different sort of elves. This would be Wendy and Richard Pini’s long running epic fantasy series about a tribe of elves driven from their land by a fire and humans.

The Complete Elfquest is the omnibus series that will take you all the way from the beginning through The Final Quest. It’s a very good value. Don’t look elsewhere unless you’re only missing a couple issues of The Final Quest.

Elfquest: Stargazer’s Hunt came out after The Final Quest and isn’t in the Complete series of omnibuses. Your purchase options here require a little explanation.

The first half of the story is available as  single issues (#1-4) and they’re a little cheaper to purchase this way.  The second half is only available as a graphic novel (V.2 of the series).

Elfquest   Elfquest: Stargazer's Hunt

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Comixology at Amazon Sales, Comicon Edition: DC’s SDCC Sale, Spider-Man 2099, Blade, the *Rest* of Dark Horse’s Line Wide Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s San Diego Comic-Con time. While only DC has a formal SDCC, Marvel’s got Blade and Spider-Man 2099 on sale and Amazon remembered to display the rest of the titles in Dark Horse’s massive sale.

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):

You Say There’s a Convention This Weekend?!?

The DC SDCC Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Somebody had to have a San Diego Comicon sale and it looks like DC got elected. Let’s have a look around for some of the better prices and content.

Batman: The Adventures Continue for $2.99?  Yes, please! For the uninitiated, this is Batman: The Animated Series writers/executives Alan Burnett & Paul Dini returning to continue where the cartoon left off. Ty Templeton is that artist and the whole this is pretty great. This one brings The Red Hood into the animated continuity. (Yes, think about that for a moment…)

A few more gems for $2.99 a pop

Batman: The Adventures Continue   Gotham Central   Superman: Red Son

Jonah Hex: Shadows West is now an oddity we don’t always see highlighted. It collects the three excellent Jonah Hex mini-series by Joe R. Lansdale and Tim Truman. These stories put the “weird” in weird western and could accurately be called western horror. 387 pages for $3.99 is a steal.

A few more books we think highly of at the $3.99 price point:

Jonah Hex: Shadows West   Jimmy Olsen   Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

If you’re looking for big chunks of comics, here are a couple things at the $5.99 price point:

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age V.1 – is an Arnold Drake / Bruno Premiani experience. We don’t see this one at the $5.99 level so often (check on Saturday to see if V.2 has dropped, as well… it currently has an odd price point). This is where the Doom Patrol started. Lots of similarities to early X-Men (which started independently at roughly the same time), but more pathos. 374 pages.

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga is one of the more iconic DC tales of the 80s and shows up highly on “best stories” lists to this day. Elevator pitch: The Legion vs. Darkseid. This collection starts with the runup to the tale with some Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick stories and then Keith Giffen tags in as artist and collaborator for the famous ride. It’s a good one. 414 pages of mayhem.

Doom Patrol   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga

Because “Stake” Would Be Too on the Nose

The  Marvel Blade Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

That would be the Daywalker and vampire slayer who’s better known through the films than the comic.

We feel pretty strongly that Blade is best experienced in his original context – a supporting character in Tomb of Dracula. It’s not clear you can call Tomb of Dracula an under-the-radar 70s classic anymore, since it’s gotten a fair amount of exposure since the Essentials line (finally) collected it ~20 years ago, but now it’s in color reprints. One note, though – you need to give the series six or seven issues to get moving. There were some false starts until Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan were paired up… but after they’ve got a couple issues under their belt, this one really takes off.

Blade: Black & White is a collection of… that’s right, the black & white adventures over the years and is built around some magazine appearances in Vampire Tales and Marvel Preview. Wolfman and Chris Claremont are the primary writers for that period. Colan and Tony DeZuniga are the primary artists.

If you’re looking for something has resembles the film franchise a bit more, there’s Blade: The Complete Collection by Marc Guggenheim (with Howard Chaykin as artist).

Tomb of Dracula   Blade: Black and White   Blade

76 Years Away

The Marvel Spider-Man 2099 Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Yes, 2099 was a line for Marvel in ’90s. Spider-Man  2099 was the flagship and longest lasting of the bunch. Peter David wrote it and Rick Leonardi is the artist most associated with it. Note: the omnibus is a better value.

What else was in the line (that’s been collected and is on sale?)

  • Doom 2099 – This collection is the Warren Ellis run with Pat Broderick and Steve Pugh as the main illustrators
  • X-Men 2099 – The beginning arc with John Francis Moore and Ron Lim
  • Deadpool 2099 – What? You don’t remember this? Ha ha! Marvel is slipping in a collection of a few Gerry Duggan / Scott Koblish issues from the ’15 run of Deadpool!
  • Amazing Spider-Man: 2099 – The 2099 arc from the Nick Spencer run with Patrick Gleason on art duties

No Ravage 2099 / Punisher 2099 / Ghost Rider 2099 collections to be seen, if you were wondering.

Spider-Man 2099   Doom 2099   X-Men 2099

They Fixed It

The  Dark Horse Everything Digital Sale runs through Monday, 7/31.  And now it’s showing the old catalog. Filed under “better late than never.” So let’s look at some less trendy, yet interesting items from the back catalog that we haven’t seen in a while.

Looking for something that’s filed under “classic?” Look no further than The Complete Elfquest by Richard and Wendy Pini.  Yes, Elfquest had a 40-year run with that original quest. Very few comic books hang on to their creators for that kind of a run. No two ways about that!

Another classic is Nexus by Mike Baron and Steve Rude (with notable guest artists like Paul Smith, Adam Hughes, Rick Veitch and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez). We revisited this one during lockdown and enjoyed it. This is an odd book. There are superhero trappings, but Nexus is a reluctant assassin and this is a science fiction adventure. There are cold war trappings and a bit of satire around the edges. Plenty of world building. 6 omnibuses of the original run and two more of the new material after Dark Horse liberated the rights from the defunct First Comics.

Something that was probably under your radar? Nobody seems to remember The Light Brigade when it came out from DC. This would be a Peter J. Tomasi/Peter Snejbjerg historical/urban fantasy about a WWII platoon tasked by a higher power to retrieve the Sword of God before an unkillable Nazi unit can lay hands on it. A highly entertaining adventure that’s worth a little more attention.

And a few more things that might not be at the top of the mind that we’ve enjoyed over the years:

Elfquest   Nexus   Light Brigade

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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: New Mutants, Batman, B.P.R.D and Hellboy Spin-Offs, Arrowsmith

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel has discounts on New Mutants, DC has a potpourri of titles with lots of Batman mixed in, Dark Horse discounts Hellboy-adjacent comics and then there’s the new mystery category.

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):

DC Grab Bag

The  DC Essential Books Sale runs through Monday, 4/3

This is another one of those particularly eclectic DC sales. Let’s start with the obligatory Batman breakout, because most of Batman & Detective from New 52 on are on sale.

  • Batman (’11-’16) – The Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo era
  • Batman (’16 – current) – Tom King, James Tynion IV, Josh Williamson -Zdarksy’s run isn’t on sale yet.
  • Detective Comics (’11-’16) – Tony Daniels, John Layman, Francis Manapul
  • Detective Comics (’16 -current) – James Tynion IV, Peter Tomasi, Mariko Tamaki

A couple things we think are on sale for the first time:

DC Vs. Vampires   Detective Comics

And a couple things we’d recommend that aren’t new:

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson is a comic that can accurately be described as “metal.” Loud, fun and full of action. This Black Label tale has Wonder Woman waking from a coma in a dystopian, apocalyptical future. She’s having trouble remembering what happened and there are a lot of monsters to slay if things are to be put right. Good stuff!

Multiversity is one of our favorite Grant Morrison Events and this one stands out because, while there is a through-plot, much of it is just Grant Morrison building new Earths, that is do say alternate dimensions – a pulp character Earth, a variation on the old Earth-S (Shazam) and, of course, President Superman. Along for the ride are a ridiculous set of artists, including Frank Quitely, Doug Mahnke, Chris Sprouse and Ivan Reis.

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth   Multiversity

Mutations

The Marvel New Mutants Legacy Sale runs through Tuesday, 4/4

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
  • New Mutants (’03 – ’04) – Nunzio DeFilippis / Christina Weir / Keron Grant / Khary Randolph
  • 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.

New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga   New Mutants

Friends in Warm Places

The Dark Horse – World of Hellboy Sale runs through Monday, 4/10.

Not a Hellboy sale, but rather the related titles. But that’s fine, since B.P.R.D is actually even more of a saga than Hellboy proper. There are two big arcs in omnibus format, mostly written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi with art by the inimitable Guy Davis.

The first sequence is The Plague of Frogs, wherein the Bureau – i.e., the scientists and soldiers (and Abe Sapien & Liz Sherman)  Hellboy works with – go down a rabbit hole, trying to figure out what’s up with all these frog creatures that keep turning up. Hint: BAD things are up. Important note: with that link, skip the ones marked “omnibus” and scroll down to Plague of Frogs V. 1-4. Same material at a lower price.

The second sequence is Hell on Earth. And that title is no joke. Things take a turn for the worst.

We revisited these sequences during lockdown and it’s an extremely well done epic. There are some false starts early on as Mignola settles on a creative team, but once Arcudi and Davis arrive, buckle up… things start moving fast and you’ll be flipping pages.

For a very different side of the Hellboy verse, there’s Lobster Johnson. The Lobster is a pulp vigilante from the Shadow/Spider school, operating in the 1930s. The tone is all over the place from a straight pulp thriller to farce to over-the-top adventure with some Spy-Fi and occult touches. Very fun series. Mike Mignola and John Arcudi are your writers. There’s quite a rotation of artists here, but Tonci Zonjic is the most frequent contributor. You can get the first the volumes in an omnibus and then there are three more “single” collections.

BPRD - Plague of Frogs   BPRD - Hell on Earth   Lobster Johnson

The “Maybe” Sale

It has come to our attention that Amazon now has a sort of  $5 and under section for comics. We’re not quite sure what to make of it or how permanent it is.  Some of the listings are this week’s sales. Some of the listings are things that aren’t discounted… like single issues that are normally under $5. And a few things might be unannounced sales?

Some highlights:

Arrowsmith V.1 by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco for $1.99. The high concept here is World War I being fought with mages and dragons. This would be the original run. Six issues for $1.99? For Busiek & Pacheco? That just might be the bargain of the week.

Queen & Country is on the shortlist for the best espionage comic of all time. An homage, of sorts, to the old UK TV show “The Sandbaggers,” it’s a spy comic that also shows the politics that the spies’ handler must suffer through. Greg Rucka writes and the artists rotate by arc, but you’ll recognize a few of the names: Chris Samnee, Jason Shawn Alexander, Carla Speed McNeil and Mike Norton. Great series. Volumes run from $3.99 to $5.99. We think this is an unannounced sale, but we’re not positive about that.

And we have no idea what kind of time frame any unannounced sales in this section will stick around. It is, as they say, a mystery.

Arrowsmith   Queen & Country

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Black Adam, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Champions, The Ultimates and The Walking Dead

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC celebrates the Black Adam sale with Teth-Adam and Justice Society comics AND it’s also time for Wonder Woman Day sale. Marvel lets loose with discounts on Black Widow, The Ultimates and The Champions. Dark Horse highlights Berger books and what’s the holiday season without The Walking Dead?

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):

Can You Smell What The Rock Is Reading?

The DC Black Adam & the JSA runs through Monday, 11/14.

Well, at least we’d like to think The Rock was reading some of the source material… Lots of stuff we like here, too.

We’re big fans of the Paul Levitz / Sonny Liew Doctor Fate revival from a few years back. A medical student of Egyptian decent encounters the helmet of Fate as ancient forces start showing up in Brooklyn. One of the best, and best explained, passing on of the mantle/identity examples in recent memory. (Now… where is the long promised Immortal Doctor Fate collection?)

Tim Truman’s Hawkworld is still one of our favorite Hawkman series, although we doubt this one will look much like the movie.

Doctor Fate   Hawkworld

Do like the classic Justice Society lineup?  We do, here at the Tower of Cheap.

Justice Society of America: A Celebration of 75 Years is sort of a “best of”/sampler of the various ages. Golden Age All-Star Comics, JSA/JLA team-ups, an All-Star Squadron issue, an issue of the Strazewski/Parobeck Justice Society of America, etc.  (Which reminds us… Hey DC, where’s that Strazewski/Parobeck collection you’ve been promising us?!?)

Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice has Len Strazewski and a rotating artist group of Rich Burchett, Tom Artis, Mike Parobeck and  Grant Miehm send a ’50s era JSA squad out against Vandal Savage, in the original All-Star Comics format where the heroes split up. Not the later, unreprinted Strazewski/Parobeck series set in the ’90s, this came a little before that.

Infinity, Inc. is a spin-off of All-Star Squadron. It’s the adventures of the children and protégés of the JSA in modern times. Roy and Dann Thomas write it. Jerry Ordway is the initial artist, and if you follow the single issues, you’ll eventually find a young Todd McFarlane, which most people forget. (And he has some pretty wild layouts in those.) They’re not all on sale, but the sale takes you through issue 8 and the end of the Generations Saga

Justice Society of America   Justice Society   Infinity, Inc.

Now what’s more likely to resemble the Black Adam film probably starts with JSA by Geoff Johns. This was originally written by David Goyer (yes, the screenwriter – he did more comics in the early aughts) and James Robinson. Johns turns up in issue #6 and a few years later assumes solo duties.  The Black Adam volume from later in the run, where Black Adam takes over Khandaq and Hawkman doesn’t appreciate it might be where the movie is going.  Only about half the series is in collected editions, however the single issues are $0.99 a pop.  Also seems that the JSA: Classified companion series is also having $0.99 single issues. Go figure.

This series was relaunched (now entering the age of relaunches) as Justice Society of America with Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham.  This is also where Alex Ross returned to the Kingdom Come franchise, although it was poorly promoted at the time.

JSA   Black Adam   Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come

JSA Single Issue Bonanza

The DC Black Adam & the JSA Sale Single Issue Sale also runs through Monday, 11/14.

We noted a few of the single issue sales in the last item and while we were doing that, Amazon dropped a new sale.  Let’s break down the list by series (and know there are some specials, one-shots and minis not in the list):

  • Black Adam – Peter J. Tomasi / Doug Mahnke mini-series
  • Doctor Fate – ’87 – The Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis mini-series
  • Doctor Fate – ’88-’92 – J.M. DeMatties / Shawn McManus, later William Messner-Loebs/Scot Eaton
  • Infinity, Inc. – Roy & Dann Thomas/Jerry Ordway/Todd McFarlane
  • JSA – David Goyer/Geoff Johns/Stephen Sadowski is the primary combination
  • JSA All-Stars – Lilah Sturges/Freddie E. Williams
  • JSA Classified – Creators rotate by arc. Think the Justice Society version of Legends of the Dark Knight
  • JSA: Strange Adventures – Mini-series by Kevin J. Anderson/Barry Kitson/Gary Erskine
  • Hawkman – ’64-’68 – Get your Gardner Fox/Murphy Anderson on!
  • Hawkman – ’86-’87 – The Tony Isabella/Richard Howell run
  • Hawkworld – ’89-’93 – A continuation of the Tim Truman series (see above) by John Ostrander/Tim Truman/Graham Nolan
  • Hawkman – ’93-’96 – Continuation of Hawkworld, first by Ostrander/Jan Duursema, then Messner-Loebs/Steve Lieber
  • Hawkman – ’02-’06 – Initially by James Robinson / Geoff Johns / Rags Morales

What’s good here? We particularly liked the continuation of Hawkworld. This is really an eclectic dealer’s choice kind of selection. Get some Silver Age material. Pick up the Walt Simonson or Steve Englehart JSA Classified issues. You have options.

Hawkworld 

Call It a Day

The DC Wonder Woman Day Sale runs through Monday 10/24.  Wonder Woman Day being 10/21, if you were curious.

First let’s break this down by hitting the highlights of the series involved, since this is a really deep sale.

There’s a variety of good material here. Everyone should at least have a look at how entirely bizarre the early Wonder Woman comics are. Those bondage rumors are very real. While Amazon does a strange job of dividing into a different category pages, the George Perez re-imagining is a must-read for the character. We also swear by the Greg Rucka runs. The first, with JG Jones, Drew Johnson and Rags Morales on art, closes out the series that Perez’s run began. He then returned years later for another fantastic run with Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp on art.

Wonder Woman: The Golden Age   Wonder Woman by George Perez   Wonder Woman

Holy Eating Your Mate, Batman!

The Marvel Black Widow Sale runs through Monday, 10/24.

Yes, there’s a bit more Black Widow in print since she started showing up in the movies. We’re genuinely amused Marvel cobbled together an Epic Collection of her guest spots, too. But let’s talk about comics where she’s the lead.

The most recent Black Widow series by Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande pulled an Eisner Award and starts out with a very angry and violated Natasha Romanov looking for revenge. (Although ultimately, its a very family-themed run.)

You can pull the Waid/Samnee run on Black Widow in a single volume. This one has Natasha on the run as her past comes looking for her (a common theme in Widow stories). The nice thing about Waid/Samnee books – they’re a known quantity, so you already know if you’re interested.

If you want to go back a little further, we really enjoyed the darker, more espionage-centric pair of mini-series by Richard K. Morgan (yes, the Altered Carbon author) with Bill Sienkiewicz, Goran Parlov and Sean Phillips providing art. They are conveniently collected in the Black Widow: Welcome to the Game book.

Black Widow   Black Widow by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee   Black Widow - Welcome to the Game

Penunltimate

The Marvel Ultimates and the Ultimate Universe Sale runs through Thursday, 10/27.

The Ultimates were The Avengers of the Ultimate Universe. Mark Millar’s and Bryan Hitch’s series sparks a few arguments, but there’s no denying how influential it’s proven to be in everything from the “cinematic comics” movement to the Marvel films.

The other of the four flagship titles that launch the Ultimate Universe was Ultimate Fantastic Four. This title had a few more creators tagging in and out. Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, Mike Carey and Warren Ellis all wrote it at various times. Artists included Adam Kubert, Stuart Immonen and Greg Land.

Ultimates   Ultimate Fantastic Four

Breakfast of Champions

The Marvel Champions Sale runs through Monday, 10/24.

For the original ’70s Champions series by Tony Isabella, Bill Manto, George Tuska, Bob Hall and John Byrne, your best price for the full set is the Marvel Masterworks edition.

The ’16-’18 Mark Waid/Jim Zub/Humberto Ramos/Sean Izaakse/Kevin Libranda Champions run might require a little explanation for optimal cheapness. At the top of that page, get “Because the World Still Needs Heroes” and “Worlds Collide.“ (These are double volumes and better value.) Then jump to V.4 and V.5 of the regular series at the bottom of the page.

Champions   Champions

Image Zombies

The Image Walking Dead Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

You had to see this one coming for Halloween, right?

So there’s the headline: $17.99 Walking Dead Compendiums. That’s ~48-50 issues, depending on the volume, for $18 and comes out to $0.35-$37/issue.  Cheap.

Hard to beat that deal. There are some assorted ones shots in the sale, but we’d say the other heighted item of interest might be $0.99 issues of Walking Dead Deluxe, which is the color version of Walking Dead. If you’re curious about that, this is a decent time to sample it.

Walking Dead   Walking Dead Deluxe

Karen’s Books

The Dark Horse Berger Books Sale runs through Monday, 10/31.

Yes, that’s Karen Berger who ran Vertigo (and editing Legion of Super-Heroes before that). She set up shop at Dark Horse after DC shut down Vertigo.  Berger Books is a little more genre-diverse than Vertigo was, but there’s a similar vibe.

Invisible Kingdom by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward might be the de facto flagship book. This Eisner Award winner finds a religious acolyte and a starship freighter crew on the run after discovering corporate interests conspiring with religious leaders for control and profit.  We wouldn’t have minded a fourth volume.

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja got an awful lot of attention towards the beginning of the year and it’s certainly an interesting one that blends a lot of dispirate elements: climate collapse, aliens, exclusion zones, journalism and conspiracies.  Plus… Aja’s art!

And because Halloween beckons, there’s always Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts written by Bourdain and Joel Rose with art by Paul Pope, Alberto Ponticelli and Vanesa Del Rey.

Invisible Kingdom   The Seeds x Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts

 

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