Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Prices Improve; Spider-Man; Loki; Assassin’s Apprentice

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC’s deals improve with a little more $1.99 action and bigger books at $2.99. Marvel discounts Spider-Man and Loki. Dark Horse cuts prices on Assassin’s Apprentice, Assassin’s Creed and Critical Role.

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):

So That’s Where the Black Friday Sale Went?

World's Finest  The Flash  Wonder Woman: Dead Earth

The DC World’s Greatest Super-Heroes Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

If you were thinking that DC’s Black Friday sale didn’t contain the pricing you were expecting, this week might work a little better for you and there are definitely some things we’re going to be pointing out for price points here.

As usual, there’s more to the sale and it’s worth your time to browse, but here are a few things that caught out attention:

Recent Release / First Discount

This is a popular series at the site, so let’s point out up top that V.4 of Batman/Superman: World’s Finest has gotten it’s first discounted listing. Mark Waid and Dan Mora continue the Kingdom Come prequel from V.2 as this continues to be one of DC’s best reads. (The whole series is on sale and we recommend it.)

“Regular” Highlights

  • 52 – Geoff Johns/ Grant Morrison / Greg Rucka / Mark Waid / Keith Giffen / Eddy Barrows / Phil Jimenez / Dale Eaglesham; A 52 issue weekly series to tell the story of a “missing” year in the DCU. Also where Dan DiDio picked up his proclivity for the number 52. 2 volume set for $2.99 + $3.99
  • Alan Scott: The Green Lantern – Tim Sheridan / Cian Tormey; First time discounted
  • All-Star Superman – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; Essentially, this is a love letter to and distillation of everything good about the Silver Age Superman stories. Highly recommended. $2.99
  • Aquaman: Deadly Waters – Back half of the influential Steve Skeates / Jim Aparo run. This one is usually a little overpriced in digital because it’s a HC in print; $2.99 (as low as we’ve seen it)
  • Batman: The Black Mirror – Scott Snyder / Jock / Francesco Francavilla; Snyder’s earlier run on Detective; $1.99
  • Batman: The Court of Owls Saga – Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo; The first arc of the Snyder/Capullo Batman run. 11 issues / 350 pages – $2.99 (And yet, not the biggest page count for $2.99 you’ll see today…)
  • Batman: Year One – Frank Miller / David Mazzucchelli; Bruce Wayne figures out how to be Batman and Catwoman gets a new background story. You may have heard that David Mazzucchelli draws real purdy. It’s true. $1.99
  • Birds of Prey (’23) – Kelly Thompson / Leonardo Romero; Black Canary leads a raid on Paradise Island
  • Black Lightning – The original series through the Detective and World’s Finest solo appearances; $1.99@
  • The Flash: Savage Velocity – Mike Baron / William Messner-Loebs / Jackson Guice / Greg Larocque;  Wally West debuts as The Flash with the full Mike Baron run and beginning of Messner-Loebs. Kilg%re! Kapitalist Kourier! Chunk! Also, 475 pages for $2.99!
  • Green Arrow: War of the Clans – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; 450 pages for $2.99 (!)
  • Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice – Len Strazewski / Grant Miehm / Mike Parobeck / Tom Artis / Rich Burchett + a couple Paul Levitz/Joe Staton tales; Warm up miniseries prior to the Strazewski/Parobeck run that STILL NEEDS TO BE COLLECTED; $2.99
  • Legion of Super-Heroes (’80-’85) – As low as the prices get for most of these. The Curse is a real value buy with 450 pages of Paul Levitz / Keith Giffen goodness for $2.99
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / John Totleben; The legendary run w/ the first four volumes at $1.99@
  • Superman Smashes the Klan – Gene Yang / Gurihiru; An Eisner winner based on a Superman radio serial. YA;  $1.99
  • Superman: Up In the Sky – Tom King / Andy Kubert; Superman pursues kidnappers into space; $1.99
  • Swamp Thing: The Dead Don’t Sleep – Len Wein (Swampy’s creator) returns to the swamp in ’16 w/ Kelley Jones; $1.99
  • Wonder Woman (’23) Vol. 1: Outlaw – Tom King / Daniel Sampere; An Amazon is implicated in a death and a coverup / propaganda campaign begins as Wonder Woman becomes an enemy of the state. Darker than you’re expecting and V.2 is even *darker* as King explores the politics of domination and manipulation.
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson; Wonder Woman wakes up to an apocalyptic hellscape and tries to determine what happened. If you’re looking for the “metal” experience, look no further. $2.99
  • Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons Kelly Sue DeConnick / Phil Jimenez / Gene Ha / Nicola Scott; Multi-Eisner winner

Golden Age Omnibuses

Silver Age Omnibuses

300+ pages for $2.99

Spider-Teen

Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man  Untold Tales of Spider-Man  Ultimate Spider-Man

The Marvel Teen Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

We’re not sure that’s the best name for this sale, despite it being literal, so let’s explain the thought behind it. When Spidey started under Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, Peter Parker was a high school student. When the original Ultimate Comics launch happened (and does that ever feel strange to type), Peter was once more in high school.

This isn’t so much “teen” Spidey as “Spidey the early years.” And really, you can break this into original / 616-Spidey and Ultimate Spidey.

616-Spidey

Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man collects the original Stan Lee / Steve Ditko run. Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 will take you through #19 and Annual #1.

Spider Man: Blue by the famed team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale is a story about Peter and Gwen Stacy falling in love.

Spidey is the ’15-’16 take on Peter’s high school years by Robbie Thompson and Nick Bradshaw.

Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1.1: Learning To Crawl is essentially the Dan Slott / Ramon Perez take on “Spider-Man: Year One”

But we’d like to draw special attention to Untold Tales Of Spider-Man: The Complete Collection Vol. 1  by Kurt Busiek and Pat Olliffe. This ’95-’97 series often flies under the radar because it was part of an experimental line of $0.99 comics at Marvel. This was the only thing from this line that got any traction. For our money, this was the best Spidey comic from that period. It’s set in the same time as those early Lee/Ditko stories and it just feels right. And let’s face it… this is .cheap. OF COURSE we liked the quality $0.99 book when everything else was $1.50 cover price. Plus, no clones and stories that ended promptly.

Ultimate Spidey

Ultimate Spider-Man  – Brian Bendis / Mark Bagley (and Bill Jemas in the outline/treatment stages). This was the first “Ultimate” title. A back to day one “modern” restart on Spidey that introduced his friends and enemies in slightly tweaked incarnations and in different orders. And it was a very good comic. Worth your time if you’ve never tried it. The link is to the double volumes (listed by Amazon as Omnibuses), which are a little cheaper for the number of issues.

God of Mischief

Loki: Agent of Asgard   Journey Into Mystery   Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Vol. 1: The Vengeance Of Loki

The Marvel Loki Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

The interesting thing about a Loki sale? These days you have “post-TV” Loki and traditional Loki.

If you’re looking for Loki as the lead, the closest you’re likely to get to the TV show (thus far) is probably looking for either Loki, Agent of Asgard by Al Ewing, Lee Garbett and Jorge Coelho or the Loki run in the revived Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen, Doug Braithwaite, Richard Elson (and a few more artists).

If your jam is the traditional Loki as a villain, this isn’t the best sale for that, although it does have Loki’s original appearances in Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Vol. 1: The Vengeance Of Loki.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Weapon X-Men

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

Unannounced Sales

Assassin's Apprentice The Hunger and the Dusk The Metamorphosis

Dark Horse seems to have multiple sales going on in the background:

Also,

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Superman Family, Scarlet Witch, What If? and America Chavez

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Superman Family gets the discount spotlight from DC; Marvel asks “What If” and the cuts prices on the Scarlet Witch and America Chavez

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):

Family Planning

The DC – Spotlight: Superman Family Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

No, there aren’t any $0.99 issues of the old Superman Family comic. Yes, that’s the first thing we thought of, too. What we have here are a selection of Superman-adjacent comics. Plenty of Supergirl titles here, if that’s your thing.

Of possible interest:

Superboy and the Legion of Super-heroesThese are on the expensive side for a sale (at least they’re large). It’s two volumes towards the end of the 70s revival and the end of the Superboy era of the team.  Both volumes are dominated by the first Paul Levitz run, with a little Gerry Conway and Len Wein sprinkled in. Vol. 1 is mostly drawn by Jim Sherman and Mike Grell and anchored by the wedding of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, which originally ran in an annoying-to-track-down tabloid sized special. Vol. 2 is mostly drawn by Jim Sherman and Joe Staton, with a little Jim Starlin. It starts out with the first Levitz epic “Earthwar,” a much longer arc than you typically see in ’78. Then it begins the Conway run with a Wein interlude.

Jump forward a bit and the Mark Waid / Barry Kitson volumes of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes are on sale. Waid and Kitson have been a frequent pairing over the years.

And also of interest, the New 52’s version of Worlds’ FinestNote the placement of that apostrophe. This is Paul Levitz, initially with George Perez & Kevin Maguire, then later with R.B. Silva telling the tale of Power Girl and The Huntress landing on the wrong Earth (as opposed to Earth-2).

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes   Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes   Worlds' Finest

Which Witch?

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

And for something a little tangential, but fun, Avengers: Four by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson (where have we heard those names before?) is a retro adventure looking at the first Avengers line-up change when former villains Hawkeye, Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch joined up with Cap.

Avengers: Four

What a Country

The Marvel America Chavez Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

The first thing we’d be inclined to look at here is Ultimates by Al Ewing: The Complete Collection, which features both Ultimates series by Ewing with an artist lineup including Kenneth Rocafort, Christian Ward and Travel Foreman. This is some of Ewing’s earlier cosmic work at Marvel.

And the next thing we’d look at is Young Avengers by Gillen & McKelvie: The Complete Collection. Yes, that would be Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie, shortly before they did The Wicked + The Divine.

Ultimates by Al Ewing   Young Avengers

If Not, Why Not?

The Marvel What If? Sale runs through Monday, 5/1.

We have a preference for the original What If, here, but we’d like to point something out to you first. When you go to the series link for the original, toward the top of the page, you’ll see a new navigation feature that’s a little more relevant here. Under the series graphic on the left hand side is a pulldown menu where you can select “Volumes” or “Omnibus.” Volumes being the “normal” sized collections.  We’ll have to have a longer look at how that’s implemented. It might be useful… IF it works.  In this case it only shows the omnibus on sale. Yes, that’s right, there are actually four omnibuses containing ~12 issues each of What If. Only one of them is on sale and that’s the only one that shows up on the Omnibuses page, ergo the Omnibuses page appears to be broken. (Why are you acting surprised?)

So, here’s the link for the “regular” volumes. Here’s the link for the lone omnibus on sale (which is issues #1-12).  And we’ll look at some of the more interesting stuff in the individual volumes, since What If is all over the map. Some of these are going to sound awfully darn familiar, too.  What If seems like a gold mine for pitching your editor!

  • #1 – What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #2 – What If The Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
  • #10 – What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #12 – What If Rick Jones Had Become The Hulk? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
  • #13 – What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today?  (NOPE, no longer collected)
  • #23 – What If The Hulk Had Become a Barbarian? (V. 4)
  • #30 – What If Spider-Man’s Clone Had Lived? (V. 5)
  • #35 – What If Elektra Had Lived? (V.6)
  • #37 – What If The Beast and The Thing Continued to Mutate? (V.6)
  • #43 – What If Conan Were Stranded in the 20th Century? (No longer collected).

Gosh, we’re sure NOBODY ever picked up those topics a decade or four later…

What If?

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Still On Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men; New Teen Titans; Aztec Ace; Geiger; Air

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel contemplates Mister Sinister, DC celebrates teamwork, Image does science fiction and Dark Horse discounts fantasy.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

New sales did post this week, so that’s good… but make sure you eyeball the displayed prices to see if it looks like it’s really on sale. A number of things did not pass the eye test, although at least the DC sale got fixed. As we type this, not everything did. Speaking of DC:

Fight and Then Team Up

The DC Super Teams Sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

There’s a 2-Omnibus set of 52 that’s a good deal. 52 issues for $20 works out to $0.38/issue, better than you usually see. 52 was a weekly comic co-written by Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns. Keith Giffen did the layouts and then a whole bunch of artists finished those. The story is a set of plot threads telling the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, with arcs for Booster Gold, Black Adam, Elongated Man, Adam Strange, Will Magnus (the Metal Men’s creator) and The Question, among others.

This World’s Finest is the 1990 Prestige/Dark Knight format version from Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude. Not something we’ve heard discussed in awhile, this is an attempt to recapture the Silver Age mojo as Lex Luthor and The Joker team-up to bedevil Superman and Batman. As pretty a comic as you’ll find.

The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez essentially pulled DC back from the brink at a low point in the company’s sales history. It’s a classic and it’s $4.99 per volume.

52   World's Finest   New Teen Titans

It’s a Sin

The  Marvel X-Men: Sinister Stories Sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

A tie-in to the “Sins of Sinister” Event? Sure enough. And given that’s a Kieron Gillen outing, it seems like Uncanny X-Men by Kieron Gillen: The Complete Collection is probably good background reading, since it establishes Gillen’s take on Mister Sinister.

Also particularly relevant to the current incarnation of Sinster is the recent Hellions series by Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia. We’re big fans of this one, which has Minster Sinister acting as Professor X for a unit of more… anti-social mutants. Is he using them as pawns in his greater schemes? Absolutely. One warning here, though. The middle volume of this doesn’t have much of a discount and we’re wondering if that’s an error? The omnibus edition is a tad more expensive and also a lot higher priced than you’d expect for a sale. Maybe it gets fixed and maybe it doesn’t. It’s still a highly entertaining run.

And while it’s not the first appearance of Sinister, we think one of the better values in the sale is X-Factor Epic Collection: All-New, All-Different X-Factor, which is the Peter David run. You’ve got a Mister Sinister arc, a Hulk crossover and art by Larry Stroman, Dale Keown… and some lad named Joe Quesada (whatever happened to him?)

Uncanny X-Men   Hellions by Zeb Wells   X-Factor Epic Collection

We Were Promised A Flying Purple People-Eater?!?

The Image Sci-Fi Sale runs through Tuesday, 1/31.

Fear Agent by Rick Remender, Tony Moore and Jerome Opeña is a pulp science fiction adventure of the hard-drinking final member of the Fear Agents, a force that handled alien threats. Spoiler: one of those alien threats is still active. It’s an old favorite around here.

Farmhand is a science fiction/horror/comedy series from Rob Guillory, who you might remember from Chew. This time out Rob’s doing full writer/artist duties and proving that Layman wasn’t the only pleasantly twisted person behind Chew. In Farmhand, Jedidiah Jenkins has an unusual cash crop – he grows replacement for human organs. Where did these crops come from? That would be telling, but strange things are happening around the farm at to some of the transplant recipients.

Geiger is a Geoff Johns / Gary Frank post-apocalyptical, traversing the wastelands adventure. We got some (darker) Kamandi/Ben Boxer vibes off it. Very much a post-modern take on the DC “Great Disaster” era science fiction tales of the 60s and 70s and in a good way.

Fear Agent   Farmhand   Geiger

No, Not That Kind of “Fantasy”

The Dark Horse Fantasy Sale runs through Monday, 1/30.

This is a VERY expansive sale and worth an extended browse it you have time. We’re going to point out three, somewhat under the radar books, two of which we don’t think have been on sale before.

Air by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker was originally a Vertigo book that Karen Berger appears to have pulled over to Dark Horse and Berger Books.  We would very much like to see a continuation, but… first things first. This is a very unusual genre bender. A little science fiction, a little fantasy, a little thriller. It also takes a little while to start unfolding. What starts as a flight attendant getting pulled into a terrorist conspiracy takes a turn for the weird and lands in a much wider conspiracy involving teleportation, time lost celebrities and an Aztec god. This is not a comic that’s easily reduced to a tagline, but it’s a good one.

Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot is your unabashedly intellectual comic of the week. An excellent work of art and truly unusual. The starting point is a history of Talbot’s hometown of Sunderland, which turns into a study of the influences on Lewis Carroll while writing Alice in Wonderland and then turns… where Talbot feels like going. A unique book!

Aztec Ace by Doug Moench, Dan Day, Michael Hernandez and Ron Harris is a time travel adventure. The most unusual thing about it might just be that Moench had never seen Doctor Who before writing it in the early 80s. This is a very Doctor Who-compatible series. Originally coming out from Eclipse and long out of print, Ace is a time traveler from the 23rd century who’s battling time paradoxes and the mysterious Nine-Crocodiles, who seems to be behind the paradoxes. He’s aided by Bridget Chronopolis, who wanders into his sphere very much like one of The Doctor’s companions would, and the floating head of Sigmund Freud. Not the lowest priced item, but it’s 15 issues + extras, so a better value than you might think at first glance. And a lot easier than trying to track down the single issues. (Just trust us on that, ’cause we did.)

Air   Alice in Sunderland   Aztec Ace

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