Month: September 2021

Comixology Sales: Wolverine, Venom/Carnage, (Solo) X-Men, Justice League, Spawn and Cursed Pirate Girl

This week in Comixology Sales, Marvel discounts Wolverine’s demise and the solo X-Men adventures, DC cuts the Justice League pricing, we have a look at some under-the-radar Image titles in their large Fall sale and… Cursed Pirate Girl!

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

Dead Again

The Marvel  Death of Wolverine Sale runs through Sunday, 10/3.

Spoilers: he gets better.

This sale is pretty straight forward. If you want the full Event experience, Death of Wolverine: The Complete Collection gets you a little more bang for your buck.

Death of Wolverine

Mutants Without Partners

The Marvel X-Men Solo Series Sale runs through Thursday, 10/7.

This would be a collection of some of the mini-series and otherwise short lived titles featuring the various members of the X-family off on their own.

Of the set, Legion (or Legion: Legacy as it’s sometimes referred to) by Si Spurrier and Tan Eng Huat is probably the one with the most lasting influence.  You might also be interested in a bit of Chris Claremont.  Everyone once in a while, Marvel will give him the greenlight and this 2014 Nightcrawler series drawn by Todd Nauck is one of those.

Legion   Nightcrawler

Symbiotes

The Marvel Venom-Carnage Sale runs through Sunday, 12/17.

Gosh, it’s like there was a movie out or something…

The Venom saga starts with this Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection. That puts you in the David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane era of the book.

Maximum Carnage isn’t the first appearance of Carnage, but it’s the BIG story arc where Carnage really gets the spotlight, a few years after Venom debuted.

Amazing Spider-Man - Venom   Maximum Carnage

Justice over the Years

The DC Spotlight: Justice League Sale runs through Monday, 10/4.

This is one of those mezzanine level, 50% off sales that are becoming the norm for DC.  What’s on sale?  A whole bunch of Justice League, naturally.  And the older single issues are $0.99, so make sure it’s not cheaper to get single issues than the collected edition. (It’s usually cheaper to get the collected edition if it’s on sale, but not always.)

The original Justice League of America run is here.  You can get the first 41 issues or so in collected editions and another batch in the #80s-#90s, but this is mostly a single issue affair.  We always thought the Steve Englehart/Dick Dillin era was Peak JLA: #139-146; 149-150. The Gerry Conway/Dick Dillin/George Perez era that followed has it’s fans, too.  Conway was on the title a looooooong time.

For an oddity, long before he was doing Deathstroke and Vampirella, Priest did a run on Justice League Task Force. A title you really don’t hear the name of very often. The cleanest place to start (darn those pesky cross-overs) is probably #17, which Mark Waid writes and Priest pops back in with the next issue.

For pure Bang For The Buck, it’s hard to beat Justice League Quarterly. The ’90-’94 series is eclectic as all get out for creators (see for yourself) and it’s 70+ pages for $0.99/pop.  Definitely cheaper getting the single issues on this one. If you see a creator lineup you like on an issue, it’s cheap!

The more recent material is also available, but we figure you’re already familiar with that.

Justice League of America   Justice League Task Force   Justice League Quarterly

Hidden Treasure From Image

The Image Fall Reading Sale runs through Friday, 10/15.

Normally, we don’t recommend $20+ digital collections… but we’ll make an exception for Spawn Compendium V.1 because it’s a 50 issue collection and that comes out to roughly $0.48/issue, which is as cheap as it comes.  Spawn’s pretty hot right now and this is a good way to see how it started. Todd McFarlane is even penciling Spawn before Greg Capullo and Tony Daniel enter the picture. Plus all those early guest writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

Speaking of things that are hot right now, Kyle Higgins seems to have a hit on his hands with Radiant Black, but not that many people remember his previous indie superhero vehicle, C.O.W.L. Co-written by Alec Seigel and drawn by Rod Reis concerns a labor union for superheroes in ’60s Chicago.

Spawn Compendium x C.O.W.L.

The Monolith, written by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray and illustrated by Phil Winslade is a comic that was originally published by DC, with the rights having returned to the creators. (Do not say that last part around the Marvel legal offices this week. Someone might get alarmed.) A troubled young woman discovers golem in her basement in this one. A very angry golem who thirsts for revenge. It’s something you may not have heard of and we’re saps for Phil Winslade’s art.

Another lesser-known series by a now more prominent creator is twenty-seven by Charles Soule and Renzo Podestá.  Yes, Soule is on the prolific side. This one explores why all those famous musicians die at the age of 27. An occult conspiracy?  That would be telling.

The Monolith   27

Curses!

The BOOM! YA All Day Sale runs through Friday 10/1.

We would draw your eye to a wonderfully idiosyncratic comic: Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl. We’re not sure we’d necessarily call it YA, so much as living in it’s own space in sort of an surreal Alice in Wonderland kind of way… but with pirates and ghosts.  Such a unique work!

Cursed Pirate Girl

Still on Sale

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Comixology Sales: Marvel Buy One, Get One Free adds a Deadpool Sale

The Marvel Buy One, Get One Free sale at Comixology adds Deadpool to the extra discount lineup.

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

BOGO!

We’re in the home stretch of the Marvel Buy One, Get One Free is back. Click that link, get that code and stack the BOGO on top of the current sales.  The sale ends on Monday, 9/27 at 11PM ET.  Fine print says the offer is no good on comics that came out after 8/25/21, pre-orders or Max titles, among other things.

The absolute best deals on with a Marvel BOGO sale are when you put a couple a books that are already on sale into your shopping cart and then add that BOGO code.  You effectively get another 1/2 off the sale price and you enter the real of EXTRA CHEAP

The Discounts with The Mouth

And Marvel has added a new sale to  the lineup. The Marvel Deadpool Vs. Sale runs through Thursday, 9/30.

What’s “Vs.” mean? It’s a Deadpool Team-up sale, with titles like Deadpool Team-Up, Deadpool vs. X-Force (featuring early Pepe Larraz art) and the Cullen Bunn / Dalibor Talajic  classic of milieu, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe.

Deadpool Team-Up   Deadpool vs. X-Force   Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe

And if you head back to our last installment, we’ll give you the scoop on stacking the BOGO discounts on top of the Doctor Strange and X-Men: Inferno sales.

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Comixology Sales: MARVEL BOGO! Plus, Doctor Strange, Neil Gaiman, X-Men’s Inferno and World War Hulk

This week in Comixology sales, Marvel has a Buy One, Get One Free Sale, plus there’s deep dive into the worlds of Doctor Strange and Neil Gaiman, plus World War Hulk and the X-Men’s plunge into Inferno.

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

BOGO!

Yes, Marvel Buy One, Get One Free is back. Click that link, get that code and stack the BOGO on top of the current sales.  The sale ends on Monday, 9/27 at 11PM ET.  Fine print says the offer is no good on comics that came out after 8/25/21, pre-orders or Max titles, among other things.  So have at it… and those Doctor Strange discounts are looking twice as good.

The Doctor is In

The Marvel Doctor Strange Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 9/30.

Doctor Strange is a character where we very much recommend the original run through the 80s.  He’s also one of the characters to find his legs the quickest.

As always, we find the Epic Collections to be slightly better values, but the Masterworks go all the way through the series, where the Epic’s tend to jump around.  So either look at the listing in the sale link or follow through the sequence of titles and look in the collected editions section there.

Doctor Strange debuts in Strange Tales. This is the Stan Lee / Steve Ditko run and the original clashes with Baron Mordo and the Dormammu. (And that Lee/Ditko Epic Collection is a good one.)

Doctor Strange in Strange Tales

Then there was the late ’60s Doctor Strange solo series that (along with the first half of the Marvel Premiere run) is collected across two Masterworks editions.

Doctor Strange '68 series

And then there’s “main” Doctor Strange series of the 70’s and 80’s.  The second half of Marvel Premiere run is lumped in here, as that where Steve Englehart enters the picture.  The Englehart/John Brunner run is considered a classic, right up there with Lee/Ditko’s psychedelic masterpiece.  Gene Colan hops on for a long tenure after Brunner leaves (with the odd artist switch) and then Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern and Chris Claremont tag in and out as writers, until Peter Gillis jumps in at the very end of the run.  It’s a strong series and the later Stern issues with Marshal Rogers and Paul Smith on the art are a particular joy.

Doctor Strange by Englehart

You say you want the more recent Jason Aaron / Donny Cates era?  Mark Waid era? It’s all on sale too, just remember to grab the BOGO code and apply it to your shopping cart for Maximum Cheap.

Burning Love

The Marvel X-Men Inferno Sale runs through Thursday, 9/30.

This one takes us back to the beginning of the age of X-Men crossovers as Mister Sinister and the demons of Limbo converge to cause all sorts of problems for the X-Men (and Spidey… and Daredevil… and the Avengers).

X-Men: Inferno

The War of Smash

The Marvel World War Hulk Sale runs through Sunday 9/26.

It’s a small sale with the Event spin-offs available… but the “main event,” World War Hulk by Greg Pak and John Romita, Jr., is one of the classic Hulk stories.

World War Hulk

Neil’s Limelight

The DC Spotlight on Neil Gaiman and Sandman Sale runs through Monday, 9/27.

We’re going to assume you haven’t been living under the Rock of Eternity and are familiar with Sandman already. That said, there are a couple less famous items here. (We say less famous, because Neil’s too popular for much of his catalog to truly be obscure.)

Black Orchid is a very early piece by the now celebrated team of Neil and Dave McKean. Originally pitched in ’87 and coming out at the end of ’88, it actually pre-dates Sandman. The series is an origin of sorts for the ’70s character (Why of sorts?  Therein lay spoilers.) Batman, Swamp Thing and Lex Luthor are involved in this tangled web.

DC Universe by Neil Gaiman is a collection of several non-Vertigo projects. The best known ones are probably the “Whatever Happened to the Cape Crusader?” Batman project, the Superman/Green Lantern “Legend of the Green Flame” sequence from Action Comics Weekly and the Metamorpho strip from Wednesday Comics.

Black Orchid   DC Universe by Neil Gaiman

Still on Sale

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Comixology Sales: Batman Day, Iron Man, Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks and Don Rosa

This week in Comixology Sales, it’s Batman Day and there’s a whole lot of Batman floating around, Marvel has a big run of Iron Man on sale and if you like Disney, especially Carl Barks and Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge, that’s at a discount, too.

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

Batman Day

The DC Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/20 and it comes in three parts: Graphic Novels, Single Issues I and Single Issues II.  Yes, that means a couple thousand single issues, including some oddities like Batman Family and the usually excellent – and mostly uncollected: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight  (the original run, not the later digital-first edition).  Oddly enough, no Detective Comics single issues.

Batman Family   Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight

For collected editions, well… it’s mostly all there, from the current Tynion run (through Joker War) all the way back.  You can easily pick your own flavor of Batman, but we’d point out a couple things…

Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle V. 1 is a nice thick volume containing the beginning of Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run. Early enough the John Wagner was involved. You get the debuts of The Ventriloquist and The Ratcatcher, a Clayface reunion and a tale of The Demon, among other things.  Strong collection.

If you’d like something a little lighter on the wallet, while it’s included in the larger Archie Goodwin collection, Batman: Night Cries by Goodwin and Scott Hampton is a mere $1.99 for the standalone graphic novel.

Legends of the Dark Knight Norm Breyfogle   Batman: Night Cries

Not the Ozzy Version

The Marvel Iron Man: Massive Golden Avenger Sale runs through Sunday, 9/19.

This one is a real jumbled mess to browse, so we’re going to break this down by series.  The rule of thumb is that Epic Collections tend to be slightly better values than the Masterworks, but pick your format.  Masterworks are released in order, Epics are… a little eclectic in their releases.

Iron Man’s story starts in Tales of Suspense. Call us heretics, but we don’t think Shellhead really soars until Archie Goodwin shows up at the end of this run and takes Tony into the solo title.  That would be By Force of Arms if you go Epic or Masterworks V. 4.

So then the long running Iron Man series is one of eras. The opening run with Archie Goodwin is pure gold. While it’s not bad after Goodwin, it next takes a bit leap with David Michelinie and Bob Layton turn up.  Both runs, really.  The first run with John Romita, Jr. brings the classic “Demon in a Bottle” and the later run with Mark Bright brings “Armor Wars.” You can’t lose when those two are on Iron Man.  And, honestly, the Denny O’Neil/(mostly) Luke Mc Donnell run in between the Michelinie/Layton runs is under-rated.  The “Iron Monger” final arc ending in #200 is a good one that Hollywood embraced.

Iron Man: The Man Who Killed Tony Stark

The next superlative run was dubbed Iron Man: Heroes Reborn. This is Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen. For inexplicable reasons, only about 1/2 of the series has been collected, but you can get all that has been in one volume. (Sorry Kurt, you can protest all you want, but your run is a highlight.)

Iron Man: Heroes Reborn

And the final entry on the highlights list is the Matt Fraction/Salvador Larroca run. This run gets special recognition for the “World’s Most Wanted” arc. When Dark Reign’s “non-event” event dropped, Fraction put the story arc on pause and delivered a KILLER self-contained epic about Tony Stark on the run.  And then popped back to what he was planning on doing a year later. Great run.  You can save a little money by getting the omnibus edition that collects the first 3 volumes.

Iron Man

*The first volume of the current Christopher Cantwell/Cafu Iron Man is $2.99. We’re enjoying it, but we’re not ready to put it on the wall before the first arc is over.  😉

Iron Man: Big Iron

If It Walks Like a Duck…

The Fantagraphics Disney Sale runs through Thursday, 9/23.

And with Disney, we’d point you to the Duck masters.  Carl Barks and Don Rosa. They rule the roost.

Uncle Scrooge   The Don Rosa Library

Still on Sale

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Comixology Sales: Star Wars, Y: The Last Man, Garth Ennis, Killadelphia, Red Sonja, Hercules and a LOT of Image

Highlights of this week’s Comixology Sales include a Star Wars sale, discounts on a wide range of Image’s crime-related comics, Hercules, Red Sonja… and you might have heard a Y: The Last Man TV show is approaching, so of course that’s on say.

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

Nothing But Star Wars

The Marvel Star Wars by Aaron & Gillen Sale runs through 9/16.

In one of the most straight forward sales we’ve ever seen at Comixology, this is simply the Marvel Star Wars run that begins with Jason Aaron/John Cassady and ends with Kieron Gillen/Andrea Broccardo, with Salvador Larroca handling much of the art in the middle of the run.  Let’s face it, you already know if you want this or not.

Star Wars

Prince of Power

The Marvel Hercules Sale runs through Sunday, 9/12.

Hercules: Price of Power by Bob Layton is pretty much where Herc starts as a solo character.  It’s something of a space opera centuries in the future and has gained something of a cult following over the years.

For something a hair more recent, we thought the Dan Abnett/Luke Ross Hercules never really got a fair shake.  It was fun and creative with the character.

Now speaking of cult runs, The Thing: Project Pegasus shows up in this sale.  Arguably the best arc from Marvel Two-in-One, Ben Grimm finds himself embroiled in suspicious dealing at Project Pegasus, an alternate energy research facility. (Or is it something more sinister?)  A classic from Gruenwald & Macchio on the writing side, with art by Sal Buscema, John Byrne and George Perez.

Hercules: Prince of Power   Hercules   Project Pegasus

Crime Time

The Image Crime Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16 and comes in two flavors: Graphic Novels and Single Issues.  The single issues are mostly $0.99 and there are a few older titles in there that don’t have their collected editions in digital, so worth a browse. We’ll be looking a bit more at the graphic novels.

To start out with a bit of an oddity, we hadn’t realized Bloody Mary had resurfaced at Image. If that sounds familiar, but you can’t place it, that’s because it’s a Garth Ennis/Carlos Ezquerra dystopian assassin comic that originally saw print at Helix.  Helix?  Yes, Helix – DC’s short lived attempt to create a science fiction-centric version of Vertigo.

Joshua Williamson is having a turn as the focus of attention at DC and will be taking over Batman soon. We always liked Nailbiter, a series he did with Mike Henderson about a small town that produces a highly suspicious number of serial killers and the secret behind it. [Note: it’s slightly less expensive to get the regular collections than the omnibus/deluxe editions.]

Bloody Mary   Nailbiter

About a month back, we finally got around to cracking open Killadelphia and it would be hard to be happier about the first two volumes.  This Rodney Barnes/Jason Shawn Alexander vehicle is a neo-noir detective thriller about a vampire conspiracy over-running Philly. There’s a historical twist we won’t spoil and some VERY good one-liners pop up.  Very highly recommended.

It’s  been just long enough since Criminal wrapped up, not everyone remembers that’s where Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips used to put their crime stories. All sorts of thoroughly enjoyable mayhem in these, but if you have to choose just one, that’s an easy choice. V. 6, “The Last of the Innocent” is a film noir pastiche of the Archie comics and it is straight up brilliant.

Killadelphia  Criminal

We’ve liked Chew for a long time and consider the first issue an absolute textbook on how to launch a series. This John Layman / Rob Guillory series concerns Tony Chu. In a world where an avian flu has outlawed the consumption of chicken, Chu is an agent of the FDA. He also has the strange ability to know the past of anything he eats. Want to know who killed that corpse? Chomp. Oh, yes… this is beyond absurd and has it all — chicken speakeasies, rogue chefs, aliens, vampires, criminal conspiracies and a death-dealing secret agent rooster named Poyo.

Recently, Chew spawned a spin-off.  Chu is the story of Tony’s sister Saffron, who operates on the opposite side of the law. And their mysterious grandfather. If you like Chew, Chu basically an old friend coming back to visit. John Layman returns and Dan Boultwood handles the art.

Chew   Chu

Y: The Last Sale

The DC Spotlight: Y The Last Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/13.

You may recall that a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan teamed with Pia Guerra for Y: The Last Man about the sole male survivor of a mysterious plague. It’s got a TV adaptation that drops on 9/13.  The first 5 items in the sale, “Book One” through “Book Five” are the omnibus editions and better deal for this classic series.

Y the Last Man

Paint the Sale Red

The  Dynamite Red Sonja Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16.

When it comes to Red Sonja, come people want Gail Simone. Some people want Frank Thorne.  And both are on sale, but the Mark Russell / Mirko Colak / Bob Q run is the one that really floored us.  Equal parts military adventure and a satire of pretentious sword & sorcery narratives, the two sides blend together incredibly well for a unique experience.

Red Sonja

Still on Sale

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Comixology Sales: DC’s Huge Discounts Continue, Plus Ka-Zar vs. Thanos and X-Men

This week in Comixology Sales, we look at the back half of DC’s 70+% off Labor Day sale, plus Ka-Zar and X-Men get the discount treatment at Marvel.

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

DC Has STRONG Discounts

No, you’re not hallucinating. DC broke out of their slump with some of the best discounts they’ve had in months. 73-77% off. It’s better than a BOGO sale.

The “DC Labor Day Sale” comes in two parts.  Part One contains 100 Bullets though John Constantine, Hellblazer. (We looked at that last time out.) Part Two contains John Constantine, Hellblazer through Zero Hour.  There’s a ton of material here, including some semi-recent offerings so be sure to have a good browse.  That said, here’s some things that caught our eye in Part Two, but might not be at the top of your mind.

Let’s start out with Hellblazer. The adventures of anti-hero John Constantine were a pretty consistently good read from Vertigo for a very long time before internal politics killed the original series.  22 volumes are on sale, ranging from $2.99 – $4.99, depending on the volume.

Hellblazer

Not so long ago, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves revisiting the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen era of Legion of Superheroes (which starts out as Levitz/Pat Broderick).  The Great Darkness Saga and The Curse – read in that order – are two thick volumes of prime material for $3.99/$4.99.  Outstanding buys.

Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga    Legion of Superheroes: The Curse

And if we’re talking Levitz/Giffen Legion, we should probably also be talking Marv Wolfman and George Perez on New Teen Titans, DC’s other defining book of the pre-crisis era.  Fortunately, the sale is accommodating us and there are 11 volumes on sale for $2.99 a pop. (Cheap.) That takes you into the early Baxter series era. A very influential series to this day.

New Teen Titans

Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon certainly raised its already large profile when it got a TV adaption. Definitely not a comic for the easily offended, it concerns a disillusioned preacher, his girlfriend and his vampire buddy looking for God, who’s gone missing.  That’s safe for work version anyway.  Watch out for the New Orleans vampire sequence, it’s… but that would be spoiling. At $2.99 a pop for the 350+ page collections, this is another off the chart value.

Preacher

Speaking of large page counts for $2.99, remember when Gail Simone was writing the Secret Six? This is one of those title that Comixology splits up a little strangely, Volume 1 contains Villains United and the first Secret Six’s 6 issues. That was all in the run-up to Infinite Crisis. Volume 2 is where the second series starts and this is where we think it hits its stride as dark exploration of DC’s ne’er-do-wells.

Secret Six: Villains United   Secret Six

This might not be the consensus opinion, but we lean towards Omega Men being Tom King’s best DC writing. It’s also probably his least known. He was way under the radar when it started. You want this for $3.99, ignore the other link that’s the more expensive digital version of a print hard cover. (We always chuckle at HC prices for digital.)

And we end with another spectacular buy.  You may recall that a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan teamed with Pia Guerra for Y: The Last Man about the sole male survivor of a mysterious plague. It’s got a TV adaptation that drops on 9/13.  The omnibus editions are $2.99, same price as the regular (thinner) collections.  We’re not sure how much more you could ask for.  Click here, scroll down to “Omnibuses” and have at it.

Y the Last Man

There’s a ton more on sale and these discounts are unusual for DC, so carve out some time to browse this sale on your own.

Lord of the Jungle… er, Savage Land

The Marvel Ka-Zar Sale runs through Thursday, 9/9.

The best known Ka-Zar might be the 80’s Bruce Jones/Brent Anderson run, the first off of which is collected in Ka-Zar: Savage Dawn.

If you’d like something a bit more unexpected, Mark Waid and Andy Kubert had Ka-Zar squaring off against Thanos.  Yes, that Thanos.

And if you’re particularly old school, you’ll remember that Ka-Zar goes back all the way to the original 40s run of Marvel Mystery Comics.

There’s a bit more here, including some random Epic Editions where Ka-Zar appeared, for you to browse.

Ka-Zar Savage Dawn   Ka-Zar vs. Thanos   Marvel Mystery Comics

X-Men Event Editions

The X-Men Milestones Sale runs through Thursday, 9/9.

It’s a set of collections of X-family crossover events and it pretty self-explanatory. Looking to catch up on the original Inferno before Jonathan Hickman does his version?  This is where you can do that.

Inferno

Still on Sale

 

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