Month: September 2022

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Avengers, Deadpool, ~3K DC Titles and Image Crime

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC goes wide and deep with some better prices, Marvel offers up Avengers and Deadpool and Image slashes crime comics.

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):

Before we get to the sales, a message for the folks at Comixology: you really need to get some pagination in this new format. Yes, sorting and alphabetizing books is important and a step in the right direction, but there really needs to be some pagination or bookmarks. A sale like the current DC sale requires a person to click the “See more” button around 90 times to get to the end. If that person wants to read the details on any item before getting to the end, they get thrown back to the beginning of the sale when they click the back button to return.  That’s a pretty awful UIX experience and puts a significant burden on the user who wants to browse something at the end of the alphabet, like Wonder Woman. Fix this.

(We recommend right-clicking and opening a new tab or window if you want to examine an item in one of these monster-sized sales. It will save you some headaches.)

DC Forget To Put the Kitchen Sink On Sale

The DC Ultimate eBook Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

As we were saying, this is a REALLY large sale, around 2700 items – all collected editions. And here’s the thing, items that are a few years old (and a couple more recent releases) are frequently $3.99/volume with some of the “Deluxe” editions – i.e., print HCs that contain two TPBs worth of material – for $5.99.  Good deals and as cheap as we’ve seen some of this in some time.  It’s well worth a browse.

Here’s a list of some things that caught our eye as cheaper than usual and/or not always on sale:

  • Challengers of the Unknown – This is the original Jack Kirby run and if you haven’t read it before, you may be shocked how much it feels like early Fantastic Four. $5.99
  • (Original) Doom Patrol – $5.99 for the first omnibus? Yes, please.
  • Fables – The Bill Willingham/Mark Buckingham fantasy epic in $5.99 double-volumes
  • Far Sector – $5.99 for all 12 issues of the N.K. Jemisen/Jamal Campbell instant classic that introduces a new Green Lantern
  • First Issue Special – Are you confused about the new Tom King / Jorge Fornés Black Label series? It spins out of this ’70s anthology series. A serious weird mix, but with some real gems like Doctor Fate by Martin Pasko & Walt Simonson, a few Jack Kirby one-shots and the debut of Mike Grell’s Warlord feature. $7.99 and it hasn’t been discounted until recently.
  • Gotham Central – $3.99 for double volumes of the Ed Brubaker/Greg Rucka/Michael Lark/Stefano Gaudiano/Kano classic?  That’s crazy cheap for the material.
  • Green Lantern (’60-’86) – There’s a lot here for $3.99 a pop, but here’s a good sequence that’s not always properly discounted V.1 = Len Wein/Dave Gibbons, V.2 = Wein/Gibbons and transitions to Steve Englehart/Joe Staton; V.3 = Englehart/Staton; V.4 of the sequence is inexplicably packaged as Tales of the Green Lantern Corps V.3, but is the next Englehart/Staton volume. The series then changes to Green Lantern Corps, but that volume is $7.99.
  • Green Lantern (’18-’20) – i.e., the Grant Morrison/Liam Sharp run. It’s all one extended story and it’s _all_ on sale now. Season 1 – $3.99. Season 2 – $3.99/$4.99
  • Hardware: The Man in the Machine – $3.99 for the great intro arc by Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan
  • Lois Lane: Enemy of the People – The 12-part Greg Rucka/Mike Perkins serial. – $5.99
  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – The original Marv Wolfman/George Perez classic at $3.99/volume
  • Orion – Walt Simonson’s criminally under-rated New Gods series. $5.99/$6.99
  • Rorschach – Tom King and Jorge Fornés do an excellent, if tangential, follow-up to Watchmen with a surprisingly meta meditation on identity and modern mythology.
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – The Alan Moore era for $3.99/volume.
  • Suicide Squad (87-’92) – The John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell run that defined the concept for $3.99/volume? Ayup!
  • Superman: Phantom Zone – The wonderfully bizarre and creepy Steve Gerber/Gene Colan mini-series that takes more of a horror angle on Superman, plus the DC Comics Presents follow-up. $3.99
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen – Extremely funny take on Jimmy by Matt Fraction and Steve Leiber. HIGHLY recommended.

There’s a ton of stuff here and it’s worth your time to have an extended browse.

Gotham Central   Superman: Phantom Zone   Rorschach

Avengers Disassemble

The Marvel Avengers/Mighty Avengers Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

This would be the Bendis “New Avengers” era. There are multiple formats in play with this sale, but omnibus seems to be the way to go here:

That said, there a couple things in this sale we prefer from this era: the lesser known Mighty Avengers run by Dan Slott with Koi Pham as the lead artist. It’s not the classic Avengers lineup, but it has more of a classic Avengers feel.

You’ve also got the Ed Brubaker and Rick Remender eras of Secret Avengers. This is the Avengers “covert” ops team, so more of a spy flavor.

The Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott   Secret Avengers

No, Not the Dirty Harry Film

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 10/3.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a collection of those secondary titles.

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.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it.

Deadpool & Cable   Deadpool Corps

Crime Time?

The Image Crime Sale runs through Monday, 10/17.

We’d probably call a LOT of these comics more SF/F than Crime, but we always did like a genre-bender.

If you want a straight up crime comic, The Good Asian by Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi should trip your trigger. It lives up to the considerable hype (especially the first half). This is a noir mystery about a Hawaiian detective of Chinese descent, summoned to San Francisco to investigate a disappearance related to his wealthy guardians family… and then things sideways. Conspiracies mingle with politics and racial identity. And it’s well researched, too.

While Criminal was originally published at Icon/Marvel, it’s kind of the old school flagship for crime work at Image, since that’s where Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips started doing crime tales (non-superpowered crime tales, at least, since they’d previously worked together on Sleeper).

Now, if you want something a lot further out there, but still with a criminal element, we’ve always been big fans of Chew. This John Layman / Rob Guillory classic is the right kind of weird. It’s also frequently hilarious. In world recovering from a nasty bird flu, after which poultry is outlawed, FDA agent Tony Chu chases a conspiracy, aided by ability to experience the memories of anything he eats.  Awesomely strange, one might say. (The sequel series, Chu is also top notch.) Oh, yes… there’s also a death-dealing rooster named Poyo.

The rest of the sale is definitely worth a browse. It’s a nice selection, especially if you like Brubaker/Phillips.

The Good Asian   Criminal   Chew

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Luke Cage and Iron Fist, Spider-Woman, Umbrella Academy, Black Hammer

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Luke Cage (Power Man) & Iron Fist get the discounts, plus Spider-Woman and Silk on the Marvel side. Dark Horse offers up the Black Hammer and Umbrella Academy. Meanwhile, the Batman Day Sale continues.

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):

So let’s talk about about the latest Comixology/Amazon navigation change, which Comixology was talking up on it’s Twitter. They’re trying to fix things, but it’s still a little odd.

The upshot is that they’re implementing a little better sorting.

  • Volumes in a title are now grouped together. (Not always in numerical order – that’s still handled poorly if there are more than 10 volumes.)
  • It’s sometimes in alphabetical order.  The tendency appears to be to have the highlighted title at the beginning and then slip in a… more alphabetical order later.  In the Batman Day Sale, they run all the collected editions and then run all the single issues after that.  In the Luke Cage sale, all Luke Cage/Power Man material comes before Iron Fist material, so it’s not really alphabetical.

It’s a little easier read, but the inconsistency with alphabetizing can be confusing.

The bad news is they removed to ability to change the display order. In other words, you can no longer search by publication date to see what the most recent book on sale is. (i.e., what just started to get discounted) You also can’t sort price (helpful for bargain hunting and to jump right to the $0.99 single issues when those are available). We have a philosophical problem with taking features away from users and we used those sorts.

On to the sales:

Bats

We broke down the big Batman Day Sale last time, but it’s still running. Click through for a closer look.

Batman: The Caped Crusader

Sweet Christmas!

The Marvel Luke Cage and Iron Fist Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

The chronology moves something like this: Initially there was a Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. This eventually was retitled Power Man. Running in parallel was Iron Fist, first in Marvel Premiere, then in the Chris Claremont/John Byrne solo series. Then the two titles merged to form the off-beat Power Man and Iron Fist.  Power Man and Iron Fist might be best known for the Jo Duffy run, but it also has early work by Kurt Busiek, Priest and Denys Cowan, among others.

Power Man   Iron Fist   Power Man and Iron Fist

There have been a few revivals since, but the one that’s nearest to our heart is The Immortal Iron Fist. People are most familiar with the first half of the series, with the celebrated team of Ed Brubaker/Matt Fraction/David Aja. We’re here to tell you that the back half by Duane Swierczynski/Travel Foreman is also pretty darn good. Plus, more Fat Cobra! Don’t sleep on the back half.

Immortal Iron Fist

Along Came a Spider-Woman

The Marvel Spider-Woman Sale runs through Monday, 9/19.

Or maybe a Spider-Man/Silk sale if we want to be accurate.

So the sorting by series is broken here and the Spider-Woman titles are co-mingled, so let’s straighten that out:

Ditto for Silk. The “main” series are:

  • Silk ’15 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee
  • Silk ’15-’17 – Robbie Thompson / Stacy Lee / Irene Strychalski
  • Silk ’21 – Maurene Goo / Takeshi Miyazawa (Amazon has the wrong creator credits)

And then when they list Silk: Out of the Spider-Verse, that’s really the two series that start in ’15 collected along with some other relevant Spider-Man/Spider-Verse titles.

What do we like out of this? We’re not really current on Spider-Woman/Silk, but we can tell you that the original Spider-Woman comic is a deeply weird book. Lots of magic early on. Morgan Le Fey, Werewolf By Night, The Brothers Grim. If you like the more bizarre corners of 70s Marvel for its strangeness, it’s worth a look.

Spider-Woman

Getting Hammered

The  Dark Horse World of Black Hammer Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

This critical darling by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston is very much a world building experience.  Start with the core series and then branch to the spin-offs as the spotlighted characters catch your fancy.  There’s plenty of imagination to go around.

Black Hammer

Where’s My Umbrella?

The Umbrella Academy Sale runs through Monday, 10/17.

Why yes, there’s a new season on Netflix and we might even start on that tonight. Funny how sales line up with such things…

This one’s a lot easier to define: it’s a series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba about an extremely dysfunctional family of superhumans who are more than a little scarred by their adoptive upbringing.  One series link for the collected editions and no fuss.  Good comic, too. We enjoyed it.

Umbrella Academy

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Comixology Sales (at Amazon): Breaking Down the Batman Day Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we make a special mid-week appearance to break down the Batman Day Sale.

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):

Bat-Day

The  Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

We understand some people were having trouble getting into the full sale, and we sure haven’t been able to get at it on the desktop version of the site. No worries, we found the link  for the full sale. Since there have been some complaints about that, we’re popping in a little earlier to get Batman sorted out and then we’ll be back at the usual time for everything else.

We’re not wild about there being zero sorting options (we’ll update the link if we find another), but it gets roughly alphabetical after a little scrolling. First the collected editions, then the single issues follow.

As is our custom, we’ll start out with the highlights by series, so you can sort through a bit more efficiently, but be warned – there are plenty of minor/stray volumes that didn’t make the highlights

Collected Editions

Single Issues (the ones that aren’t all in collected editions and the older ones are all $0.99/issue)

So what’s good here? It’s Batman, so you can pick your flavor across the decades and zero in on that. Now, preferences aside, a lot of the less recent collections are $3.99, which is pretty low for DC these days.

We’d recommend having a browse through Legends of the Dark Knight, particularly the single issues, most of which haven’t been collected.  With a few notable exceptions where it crosses over with a line-wide event, these are all self-contained story arcs. Teams are assembled for the individual story and the quality is pretty high throughout.

We also like the Batman: The Caped Crusader and Batman: The Dark Knight Detective reprint series that collect the mid-80s Batman and Detective runs (and are getting into the 90s). We particularly like the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run that bounces between those books, before ending in Shadow of the Bat. We’ve been reading that in the background for the last couple years and it’s a good time.

We also like $5.99 for the two volumes of the Greg Rucka / Shawn Martinbrough / Rich Burchett Batman: New Gotham. A good run with a unique look.

And for something odd and obscure?  Batman Special #1, “The Player on the Other Side” wherein Mike W. Barr and Michael Golden (remember him?) introduce Batman’s opposite number, the original Wraith.

Batman - Prey   Batman: The Caped Crusader   Batman: The Dark Knight Detective

Batman: New Gotham   Batman Special

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Harley Quinn, Loki, TMNT: The Last Ronin, Sleeping Beauties, Land of Oz

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Harley Quinn enters a new decade, Marvel spotlights Loki and the Land of Oz, and IDW discounts Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin and Sleeping Beauties (as in Stephen & Owen King’s novel getting adapted).

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 Better Punchline

The DC Harley Quinn 30th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 9/12.

30 years?  Yup.  If you saw the debut on Batman: The Animated Series, we understand if you don’t admit it.

While it isn’t the cheapest deal by page count right now ($2.99 for 66 pages), any Harley Quinn conversation has to start with The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, wherein Paul Dini and Bruce Timm reveal Harley’s origin.  It’s a gem.

We’ve always had a soft spot for the New 52 Amanda Conner/Jimmy Palmiotti/Chad Hardin run of Harley Quinn. Their take is particularly absurdist and brings in an… eclectic supporting cast to say the least. We’ve heard compared to Deadpool a few times. It’s the version we’ve laughed at the most.

Your off the beaten path option (relative to the rest of the HQ catalog) is Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Pugh is a YA take with a teenaged Harley and it’s one of the most critically lauded versions.

Mad Love   Harley Quinn   Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass

God of Mischief

The Marvel Loki Sale runs through Thursday, 9/15.

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).

For your Loki as the villain, we’re going to slightly off the reservation into the world of Mutants with X-Men: Asgardian Wars. This is a collection of a story arc consisting of the X-Men / Alpha Flight mini-series (Chris Claremont/Paul Smith), the New Mutants Special Edition and an X-Men Annual (both by Claremont/Arthur Adams).  Loki starts some trouble and the X-Men eventually end up in Asgard looking for him.  Back in the mid-80s, the annuals in the X-verse were a bit more standalone from the ongoing plots and the New Mutants annuals were particularly wild for a few years. Claremont basically uses the mini-series and annuals (the “special edition” was essentially a New Mutants annual) to tell a self-contained, though somewhat sprawling tale.  Fun collection with superior artists.

Loki: Agent of Asgard   Journey Into Mystery   X-Men: Asgardian Wars

The Marvelous Land of On Sale

The Marvel Oz and Other Classics Sale runs through Monday, 9/12.

This would be a collection of the Marvel Illustrated (read: Classics Illustrated) adaptions from ’07-’13.  The most famous of which being the Wizard of Oz adaptions by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. Yes, that Skottie Young.

The key piece here is the set of Oz: The Complete Collection where it’s two books per volume.  Also, it should be noted Amazon lists the Road to Oz / Emerald City of Oz volume first… and that’s actually the last volume of the three.  The order is Wizard of Oz/Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz/Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and then Road to Oz / Emerald City of Oz.

Oz: The Complete Collection

No, Not “Hit” as in “Hit-Girl”

The IDW Recent Hits Sale runs through Thursday, 9/29.

This a particularly small sale and single issues are the key thing you’ll be looking at here.

The headline here is probably the $0.99 single issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz and Esau & Isaac Escorza. We’re not sure the “Dark Knight for TMNT” elevator pitch is quite right, but this is the story of a future where the last surviving Turtle heads for a final confrontation with the Foot Clan. This is much darker than the original series. We enjoyed the first issue and have this on our short list since it seemed to prudent to wait for it to wrap up.

Sleeping Beauties is the Rio Youers / Alison Sampson of the Stephen & Owen King novel. Since the second collected edition isn’t on sale, you’re better off with the single issues here.

TMNT - The Last Ronin   Sleeping Beauties

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Captain America, Nova, Swamp Thing, Legion of Super-Heroes

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Mutants get the “monthly” nod from Marvel, plus Captain America and Nova. Over at DC the Labor Day sale had deals on Swamp Thing and Deadman.

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):

X-Month

The Marvel Monthly Sale – X-Men: Grand Design & Other Stories Sale runs through Monday, 10/3. (And we see they took the listing on the Deals page down after this morning… but the link still works, so get a jump on it.)

This time around, it’s a mix of side projects and events around the X-Franchise, although you might have guess that from the name.  Some things we’ve enjoyed:

Mystique by Brian K. Vaughan: The Complete Collection –All the way back in 2003, Marvel tried launching a new imprint called “Tsunami.” It didn’t last. The most notable thing about it, historically, was the debut of Runaways. Runaways was one of the first comics to really start getting a pre-Saga/Paper Girls Brian K. Vaughan noticed.  Vaughan, with art by Jorge Lucas/Michael Ryan/Manuel Garcia rotating by arc, also did an espionage-centric Mystique comic. Mystique gets coerced into running black ops for Charles Xavier, sort of a precursor to the current X-Force.

For something a bit more recent, X-Men/Fantastic Four: 4X by Chip Zdarsky and Terry & Rachel Dodson has Professor X offering Franklin Richards a place on Krakoa. Reed and Sue Richards are a little… apprehensive about that and sparks fly. Surely Doctor Doom wouldn’t insinuate himself into the middle of all this? He never has ulterior motives.

And finally, one of the more off the wall X-Men projects: Longshot. This was the first big project from Ann Nocenti and Art Adams. While it isn’t clear that it was originally intended to be part of the X-franchise, it was definitely absorbed into it shortly after the miniseries completed. This is also the debut of Mojo, whom Longshot rebels against.

Mystique   X-Men / Fantastic Four: 4X   Longshot

Time is Relative

The Marvel Captain America: Man out of Time Sale runs through Thursday, 9/8.

Let’s go under the radar for the picks from this eclectic sale, shall we?

Captain America: Forever Allies – now here’s one we haven’t heard mentioned in awhile. Roger Stern and Nick Dragotta weave a legacy tale of Bucky (who was bearing the shield as Captain America at the time) picking up the pieces of last case of the (WWII-era) Young Allies. A continuation of sorts for the Invaders and, since Lady Lotus is involved, of possible interest to reader of the current Busiek/Cinar The Marvels.

The Adventures of Captain America – Another collection that hasn’t hit our radar in some time. This is a sort of “Captain America – Year One” style story with Cap and Bucky back at the onset of WW II by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire. A prestige format release, originally.

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty – Again, a lesser known title. This one was an anthology, vaguely similar to Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, in that it would do one storyline at a time and the storyline could be from any time period. It ran for 12 issues and was mostly written by Mark Waid with Ron Garney being the artist with the most issues under his belt.

All things we’ve spent money on, long ago.

Captain America - Forever Allies   The Adventures of Captain America   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

No, Not a Chevy

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Nova Classic   Nova by Abnett & Lanning

DC Does the Holiday

The DC Labor Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/5.

~2K graphic novels are floating around in this one, so you can spend a lot of time browsing. Some highlights?

Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing run with John Totleben, Steve Bissette, Stan Woch, Rich Veitch and co. for (mostly) $4.99 a volume? Yes, that’s a good deal for landmark run.

Speaking of ’80s classics, there are good prices on some extra long volumes of the Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen Legion of Superheroes.  The Great Darkness Saga is only $5.99. That’s the arc with the rep, but their whole run is good and DC needs to get on with reprinting the rest of the Levitz run. (And The Curse is an extra long volume.)

Going back a hair earlier, but keeping the $4.99 vibe going, there’s a 5-volume set of Deadman. The first two volumes are the Neal Adams material that’s the most famous, but you know what? Boston Brand has always been popular with creators and there are another 3 volumes of him hanging out in the ’70s, guest-starring or having a solo feature in the Adventure dollar comics, ending in an ’86 Andrew Helfer/José Luis García-López mini-series.

Swamp Thing   Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga   Deadman

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