Month: March 2022

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Immortal Hulk, X-Men, Captain Marvel and Outcast

This week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales include, the wonder that is Immortal Hulk, X-Men Legacy, Captain Marvel (so many relaunches to keep track of) and a possible late addition to the Image Omnibus sale.

But first, we should probably talk about Amazon’s inability to get their sale prices right on the first iteration of a sale. This seems like it’s mostly a DC thing, but sale prices are dropping TWICE on some comics. The first time when the sale first appears and the second time a day or two after the sales are posted. It’s strange and the best advice we can give is that if the price doesn’t end in .99 or .49, it’s likely there’s an update that hasn’t happened yet.

We can’t tell if this is deliberate or a technical error, and if it’s a technical error, whether the problem is on the Amazon side or the DC side.  Regardless of why, this is really inconvenient. While Amazon (and even Comixology) have always had the odd title that lagged behind the rest of the sale, this has gotten ridiculous.

On a related note, we can’t really tell if all of the Dark Horse titles on the Deals page are really on sale.  You don’t sill the digital list price vs. sale price listed on those, just

Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Price set by seller.

That’s not the most helpful thing in the world.

Now, if you go into the sale listings, *some* of the comics will have the “best price in 30 days” banner. Those are probably one sale. The rest? We’re just not sure.  We like things like Hellboy and Joe Kubert’s Tarzan, but we’re not sure those are great sale prices for everything listed.

Speaking of digital list price vs. sale price, if an individual book is enrolled in Comixology Unlimited, you need to be logged out of Unlimited to be able to see the original list price.  Yes, this is yet another inconvenience after Amazon’s attempted absorption of the Comixology site.

We’re so old, we remember when Amazon actually cared about the customer experience. It’s just not clear how much the care about their comics customers, since we keep having all sorts of new hiccups.

Anyway, back to the Cheap.

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

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

The End of the Immortal

Marvel’s Immortal Hulk Sale runs through Thursday, 3/31.

Easily the sale of the week.

This is Al Ewing’s horror-tinged opus. The Hulk and other gamma-afflicted characters gather. It seems those dosed with gamma might not be able to die and it all seems tied to a mysterious green door that might lead to Hell. And there’s someone behind the door.

Now, there are two parallels sets of reprints here: the “regular” volumes (1-11) and the deluxe volumes (Book 1-4). The deluxe ones reprint 2 of the regular volumes, so you’d be waiting on V. 5. Otherwise, there’s not an appreciable price difference between formats.

Note: V. 11 collects various one-shots and is optional.  V.1-10 gets you the full story.

Other than that, just enjoy one of the best comics of the last decade.

Immortal Hulk

LoX?

Marvel’s X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Sunday, 3/27.

This would be the (largely) Mike Carey era of the X-Men: Legacy comic. You might know him from Lucifer and My Faith in Frankie or in his secret identity as M.R. Carey with The Girl With All the Gifts. Yes, he gets around a little.

It’s the X-Men, so there’s quite a few artists passing through – Scot Eaton, Khoi Pham and Clay Mann all figure prominently.

This picks up after Messiah Complex and runs into Avengers Vs. X-Men with Christos Gage penning the last couple volumes.

(The actual series page might be easier to navigate.)

X-Men Legacy

Not A Big Red Cheese?

The Captain Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Hero Sale runs through Sunday, 3/27.

Hmmm… was somebody bending over backwards to riff on the original Captain Marvel being “The World’s Mightiest Mortal?” It does seem that way, doesn’t it?

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

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

Speaking of Complex Relaunches

The Wonder Woman sale was broken down in the last installment.

A Late Addition

That  Image Omnibus sale running through 3/31?

We’re not sure if this was a late addition to the sale or our eye skipped over it, but there’s an omnibus of the Robert Kirkman / Paul Azaceta series Outcast available. 48 issues for $27 is fractionally a lesser deal than the Spawn Omnibuses, but that’s about $3.38 per “normal” collection/ ~56 cents/issue.

We need to read the last volume, but this story that’s twist and subversion of demonic possession has been holding our interest.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: A Big Wonder Woman Sale, plus… The Invaders

A mid-week look at Comixology (at Amazon) Sales. Why? Because there’s a very large Wonder Woman sale that takes quite a bit of effort to break down into digestible sections.  Plus, The Invaders are on sale, including a recent run that was largely ignored and is worth reading.

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

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

Golden Age Avengers

Marvel’s Invaders Sale runs through Thursday, 3/24.

This would be the WWII super team built around Captain America & Bucky, the original Human Torch & Toro and Namor, the Sub-Mariner. They invaded Europe and fought the likes of the Red Skull, Master Man, Warrior Woman, Baron Blood and U-Man.

Invaders Classics: The Complete Collection is the best pricing for the run and we’d put the first volume as slightly stronger than the second. V.1 is Roy Thomas and mostly Frank Robbins on art. Yes, Robbins on superhero comics is a divisive thing, but Invaders is where he fits best.  Don Glut joins in the writing fray in V. 2 and the art rotates a bit more, notably with Alan Kupperberg. The early sequence introducing Baron Blood is particularly good.

Invaders

The most recent Invaders flew under most radars, but it was a personal favorite here at the Tower of Cheap. Chip Zdarksy, Butch Guice and Carlos Magno. That book launches today, it gets a little more attention, but Zdarsky was not yet at his current profile level in ’19. This is a modern day tale of Cap, Winter Soldier and the original Torch trying to figure out what’s going on with aggressive military stances in Atlantis. Of course, there’s palace intrigue under the sea, but this also serves as a Sub-Mariner series, providing some explanations for different characterizations of Namor over the years and wrapping up some of his subplots across various titles. It’s a really solid comic and we were sad it ended.  This is one extended story, so you need to get both volumes.

Invaders

We also liked the Stern/Epting collection and Avengers/Invaders, but those are the top picks here.

It Makes You Wonder…

DC’s Wonder Woman and the Amazons Sale runs through Monday, 4/4.

This is another one of those extra hard to navigate, jumbled up sales. We’re going to do what we did with the Batman sale and break this down into the individual titles, so you can browse little easier.

  • Sensation Comics – these are the “Golden Age” archive editions and have the early issues of Wonder Woman in them, too.
    Sensation Comics (Single Issues) – If you prefer the Mr. Terrific and Wildcat backups be included, the single issues are $0.99. That might be the everyday price, too.
  • Wonder Woman (’42-’86) – The early issues are filed under Sensation Comics, so this listing is “Best of” collections and the collected “12 Labors” from the 70s.
    Wonder Woman (Single Issues) – The original run is not complete, but a lot of the single issues are available and most of them are $0.99. Again, looks like $0.99 is the everyday price, too.
  • Wonder Woman (’87 – ’06).  OK, this is odd. Amazon has TWO DIFFERENT collected edition pages for this run.  That’s… not real efficient.  At any rate, this is the series that starts out with George Perez, then Messner-Loebs/Deodato, John Byrne,  Phil Jimenez and finally the first Greg Rucka run. (With a few creators in between those entries.)

Page #1 – this is the main page

Page #2 – click here for V. 5 and 6 of Perez and V.2 of Messner-Loebs

If I were working at DC, I’d probably ask Amazon what’s up with this link structure.

Wonder Woman (Single Issues ’87-’06) – again, mostly $0.99 and that seems like the everyday price.

OK, that was kind of exhausting.  Recommendations? Sure. Go back to Sensation Comics (either version) and get a look at how strange and subversive the original comics by Moulton and Peters were. Lotsa bondage in a kids’ comic setting.

Go to the ’87 series and get some Perez. For a lot of people Wonder Woman started with Perez. The Rucka + multiple artists run at the end of that series is also excellent.

The return of Rucka with Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp is also excellent, but you can save a little money if you get that in the first two volumes here.

And a couple one-offs we can also recommend:

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson is a helluva fun ride. Diana awakens in post-apocalyptical hellscape, fighting off the monsters trying to eat the human survivors and trying to remember why and how long she was unconscious. Listen to metal while you read it!

Wonder Woman: The True Amazon is Jill Thompson’s award winning OGN and it is absolutely gorgeous to behold.

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth   Wonder Woman - True Amazon

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Iron Man, Heroes Reborn and DMZ

This week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales include: The Dawn of X segment of X-Men comics, Heroes Reborn (OK, for our purposes, Heroes Return), Iron Man and the DMZ, now as seen on TV.

Side comments about the nature of reprinting cross-over Events included at no extra charge!

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

X-Hijinks

Marvel’s X-Men: Dawn of X Sale runs through Thursday, 3/20.

To put this in the context of the Hickman era of X, you start out with the House of X / Powers of X mini’s, then you go into the “regular” X-Men family of titles. This post HoX/PoX era is what’s being called “Dawn of X” and it basically stops just before the X of Swords crossover Event.

Dawn of X is a series of trade paperbacks (or digital TPBs for our purposes) that collect the issues of the _entire_ X-Men line of books, to more properly approximate reading the line in release order. Oh, they’ll fudge the exact release order here and there for 2-parters, but you get the idea.

Essentially, particularly early on in the line, the ideas of the X-family floated between titles. Ben Percy’s Wolverine and X-Force cross-pollinated a fair amount, too. We’ve felt that you do get a more out of the X-line by reading it as a whole. It enhances the scope and the worldbuilding aspects. Oh, there’s a dud of an issue here and there, but on the whole, it’s a strong line. (We didn’t think the line was quite as uniformly strong post-X of Swords, but that’s for a different time.)

Marvel has been getting better about going back and collecting stories that bounced between titles (like Hickman’s Avengers saga) in the actual reading order, as opposed tpbs of the individual titles that you need to bounce between. In general, this is a good thing.

We wish we could get you this listed in numerical order, but Amazon’s sorting routines aren’t very good here… but we can give you the list in reverse order! <rolls eyes>

Dawn of X

We’ll Stick with the Return

Marvel’s Heroes Reborn Sale runs through Thursday, 3/24.

This is the 90s experiment when Marvel outsourced some of their titles to Image. Now, for our money, the gems here are from the “Heroes Return” period, when those title came back to Marvel:

Iron Man: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection V. 1 has Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Sean Chen as the primary creative team, re-establishing shell head back in the Marvel Universe. You get some Mandarin, there’s a side trip with Captain America and MODOK. This collects the first portion of one of our favorite Iron Man periods.

And speaking of high points, this sale also has Captain America: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection,  which is the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run resuming. (It had just started, and was abruptly halted, for Heroes Reborn.) A little Hydra, a lost shield… that MODOK tale from Iron Man is also reprinted here (a shared Annual). It’s a solid run.

Iron Man: Heroes Reborn   Captain America Heroes Return

We Forget… Is It Still 2020?

The last couple years really are a blur and this sale is confusing us!

The Marvel Iron Man 2020 and Other Stories Sale runs through Sunday, 3/20.

First off, the Heroes Return sale for Busiek/Chen Iron Man is by far the better deal, so ignore the shorter collections here.

Now here’s a comic we haven’t seen mentioned in quite a while: Iron Man: The Inevitable by Joe Casey and Frazier Irving. We liked that one when it was coming out. Stark tries to rehabilitate the Living Lazer, while Spymaster and the Ghost plot his downfall. Introspection, espionage and then some things blow up. We think the audience may have been expecting more slam-bang when it came out, but we recall this as a slower build up… and it likely benefits from a collected edition.

Iron Man: Iron Monger is the end of the Denny O’Neil/Luke McDonnell era… although McDonnell bows out a little early, so you get some Rich Buckler and Mark Bright starts his run with #200.  And #200 is a helluva ride. O’Neil runs Tony Stark through the ringer and this sees him dragging himself up from the gutters after an alcoholic relapse to deal with Obadiah Stane and his Iron Monger armor. That finale has proven very influential over the years!

Iron Man: The Inevitable   Iron Man: Iron Monger

Feudal Warlords of Manhattan

The Stream DC: DMZ Sale runs through Monday, 3/28.

And yes, that would be the old Vertigo series, DMZ by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. And it’s a good one. The premise? There’s been a militia uprising. The rebels have captured the coast and New Jersey. The US Army holds Long Island. Manhattan is a no-man’s land between the armies. A demilitarized zone, i.e. DMZ. A rookie photojournalist pulls an assignment in the DMZ, but things go pear-shaped and he finds himself stranded… but also with a unique opportunity as an embedded reporter, so he attempts to navigate a strange landscape of neighborhood-based warlords and the strange society that’s popped up around the Manhattanites who could get out… while both armies jockey for position in the shadows.

You can read a few volumes on Comixology Unlimited to test drive it, but if you’re buying, you want the larger deluxe editions for your lowest tab.

DMZ

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Comixology Sales – Batman, Avengers, Spawn, Thanos and Blacksad

This week in Comixology (at Amazon) Sales, we break down that big Batman sale by titles and maybe that makes it easier to parse. Marvel has deals on (almost) all things Avengers and their Cosmic wing of the universe, while we keep an eye on the Image Omnibuses.

We’re just wondering if, by the time you read this, whether the Defenders sale is still listed on the Deals page. As we type this, the sale is over, the listing is still up and the link doesn’t really go anywhere.  Amazon is trying to keep you on your toes!

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

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

The Sale That Flaps in the Knight

So let’s revisit the big Batman Sale that’s still running through Monday (3/14). We’ve been hearing a LOT about how hard it is to navigate… and that’s no lie. We also heard one of our old habits is a little more helpful with the new Amazon consumer unfriendly layout, so we’re just going to give you a list of the various Batman series out there. Pretty much everything older is on sale, including $0.99 cent singles, so maybe this would be a little easier to parse?

Browse around those links and they might be easier to sift through and digest than the formal sale listings.

Now to throw out a suggestion that’s deeper cut, we were always a fan of the Greg Rucka / Shawn Martinbrough / Rick Burkett run that’s been collected under the banner of “New Gotham.  Great run, and $4.99 for 300+ page volumes is good bang for your buck, too. Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Batman: New Gotham   Batman: New Gotham

Bargains Assemble

Marvel has an Avengers sale running through St. Paddy’s Day (3/17).

No single issues on this sale, but let’s take the same approach… although we apologize for how unorganized the series pages on Amazon are presented. It’s poor craftsmanship.

What we’d recommend overall is to head to the original Avengers run and pick off some of the Epic Editions for $6.99.

Another excellent option is to head over to the ’98-’04 Avengers run and look at the Avengers Assemble volumes by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, which is a wonderful thing.

You might be thinking about the Hickman era, but we’re going to throw up a caution light here. Because of how that run bounced between various titles, you’re much better off reading it in the Avengers by Jonathan Hickman: The Complete Collection format and that one’s not on sale right now.

However, if you’re looking to get your Jason Aaron/Ed McGuinness on, their Avengers is most definitely in the sale.

Oh, you’re going to make us pick and choose?  Fine.

Since the best chunk of Englehart’s Avengers isn’t in Epic format, we’ll go with The Final Threat for the original run Epic Collection. For $6.99, you get the very end of Englehart, a skirmish with Doctor Doom and Namor, the return of Wonder Man and the Bride of Ultron arc. Plus the finale of the original Thanos/Warlock saga. So your parade of creators also includes Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, George Perez, John Byrne and Jim Starlin. That ain’t shabby.

Then maybe Avengers Forever, a truly epic Kang story by Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Carlos Pacheco. That was it’s own maxi-series and sometimes get overlooked for not being in the main title.  But it’s GOOD.

(Honorable mention to Under Seige – the Epic Collection version, from the delightful Roger Stern / John Buscema / Tom Palmer era.)

Avengers   Avengers Forever

Image Lays It On THICK

Image’s Omnibus Sale runs through Thursday, 3/31. Now, you need to keep an eye on these Image omnibus sales because a lot of the pricing is for HC deluxe editions and such things don’t matter in digital.  That said,  things that caught our eye:

Paper Girls The Complete Story by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, i.e. 30 issues for $19.99? That’s a good deal on the time travel caper and you get the whole story in one piece.

Would you like to read the first 100 issues of Spawn for less than $0.50/issue? Because now there are TWO volumes of Spawn Compendium for $23.99 each. 50 issues per volume. Get your Todd McFarlane on, your Greg Capullo on and yes… your Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, too (in the first volume).  That’s about as good a per issue price as you see outside of the holidays.

If you were wondering, the Saga omnibus that was on sale a few weeks back is not currently on sale.

Paper Girls   Spawn Compendium

No… Cosmic Boy is a DC Character…

The Marvel Cosmic Heroes Sale runs through Sunday, 3/13.

So what’s Cosmic at Marvel?  Strangely, Jim Starlin-inspired material, but not Starlin, himself. No Captain Marvel or Infinity Gems.

Thanos Wins was the introduction of Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw to the Marvel universe. It was never clear to us just how cannon this arc was (then again, we never thought Old Man Logan would turn up in the current timeline), but it’s also an entertaining, disturbing and sometimes funny jaunt that finds Thanos confronting his victorious future at the end of time. And Cosmic Ghost Rider.

The real old school option here is Star-Lord: Guardian of the Galaxy, which collects the early Star-Lord tales. And when we say early, we mean starting with the old b&w Marvel magazines. We’ve got most of those and we like them. It’s a different Star-Lord than you see post-GoG movie, too… although Al Ewing has definitely been going back to basics. (Good on you, Al.) Who was working on these originals? Steve Englehart, Chris Claremont, Doug Moench, Timothy Zahn, Carmine Infantino, John Byrne… there was talent working on the character.

Thanos Wins   Star-Lord

And finally… you like hardboiled mysteries? If so, check out Blacksad. It’s anthropomorphic, but is is NOT funny animals. This PI comic is firmly in the Hammett/Chandler school and it is EXCELLENT.

Blacksad

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Comixology Sales: Batman, Conan, GI Joe and where the new sale pages are

This week in Comixology Sales… can we still all it Comixology? Well, the logo’s still on the Amazon page. Anyway, we have a look at some discounts on Batman, Conan and GI Joe… plus some advice on navigating the new Amazon page.

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

We’re not sure how this whole “Comixology on Amazon” thing is going to go. We surely were not happy with the churlish and authoritarian forced updates to the app, so you’re not going to hear us complaining if you’re giving Amazon a “time out” over this — we sure did.

The format may get tweaked a little, but then again you’d expect that with the applecart getting upset. We’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

First things first, some navigational bits. We’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about the UIX, so here’s a cheat sheet for you.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

The new releases page is here. Bookmark it if you’ve been having trouble finding it.  You’re going to want to scroll down to the bottom of the page the see the real/full new releases. It’s similar, but perhaps a bit clunkier, than the old Comixology setup.  You can filter for major/mid-major publishers only.  Basically, the top list of filter options from the old version.

Since we know the Comixology folks read this – Comixology needs to consider AT MINIMUM adding an alphabetical sort to that new releases window. It isn’t clear what determines the order things are displayed in, but it comes off as haphazard and a lot more painful to use. You’re not doing your reputation any favors with the current state of things. We’d probably also add an option to display content in blocks by publisher… that might be overkill, but a lot of folks would use that.  (We’re so old, we remember when Amazon cared about customer opinions.)

The “Comics Deals” page is here. That’s the page for what’s on sale. Again, bookmark it if you’ve been having trouble finding it. We’re not sure about the rhythm of the updates yet – we were giving Amazon a time out. It isn’t clear the update pattern will exactly match the old Comixology site. Time will tell.  History suggests that ALL the sales may not turn up on the deals page and may start prior to showing up on the deals page, so… stay vigilant?

Something that made us laugh

Amazon/Comixology now has a “Graphic Novels” page. Maybe someone will come to their sense and fix this before you click, but right now we’re seeing X-Men #9, Saga #56, Batman #121 — which is to say, Comixology gets absorbed by Amazon and suddenly they can’t tell the difference between a single issue and a graphic novel.  Not inspiring much confidence there, sport!

So… anyway, what’s on sale right now that might be interesting?

Dark thoughts need a Dark Knight

There’s a Batman sale running through Monday, the 14th.

Yeah, it’s going to be a pain to click through 200+ pages, since Amazon doesn’t seem to have a grid display option for the complete sale, just their highlights.

What’s good?  $2.99 for Batman:Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli is a great value.

Call us crazy (you wouldn’t be the first), but we thought Batman: Universe by Brian Bendis and Nick Derington was a really fun ride. It’s a nice tour of the DCU, the snarkfest of Bruce’s and Alfred’s conversation is top notch and you don’t see the “fun” version of Batman that often. It’s just well done.

Batman: Shadow of the Bat V. 1 is the tail end of the Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle era of Batman… and also comes with some Tim Sale art, which is never a bad thing. At $4.99, it’s the most cost effective entry in that era (which is well worth your time).

Batman: Year One   Batman Universe   Batman: Shadow of the Bat

The Cheap Barbarian

Marvel’s Conan Sale runs through Sunday, 3/6.

Conan, possibly because it’s a licensed property, doesn’t seem like it’s on sale as much as other titles, so it might be worth some attention if you’re barbarian friendly.

We’d put this in three buckets:

  1. The original Marvel run of Conan The Barbarian by Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema and friends. This is conveniently available in Epic Collections. It is a classic and one of the most popular titles of its time.
  2. The Dark Horse “Conan Chronicles“— also conveniently available in Epic Collections (some of the most recent material in Epic format, too?). We’re particularly fond of the early Kurt Busiek / Card Nord run.
  3. Savage Avengers by Gerry Duggan and Patrick Zircher (as the primary artist). OK, we had to be coaxed into this one, too. Conan, Venom, The Punisher, Elektra and Doctor Voodoo questing after Kulan Gath. “Savage Defenders” might be a more apt name for it, because it really reminded me of what you’d get if Conan was running the old “non-team,” instead of Nighthawk or Doctor Strange. Except more over the top and macho. A comic that’s entertaining, while not taking itself completely seriously… and you’ll know by the description if it’s for you.

Conan the Barbarian   Conan Chronicles   Savage Avengers

The Discount Egress

The IDW GI Joe Sale runs through Thursday, 3/24.

We bring this one up because the GI Joe license is going to be leaving IDW at the end of the year. Depending on the roll-out at the new publisher, that means some of the material might not be in digital for awhile. So if you’re interested in it, now is a good time to get current with that interest.

We’d say go with the Larry Hama run. (Which continues here.)

GI Joe

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