In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel has discounts on Thunderbolts and Aliens. Dark Horse drops the prices on their current Star Wars line, and we talk a little about Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees.

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):

Thunder. Thunder. Thunderca… Whoops, Wrong Series!

Thunderbolts  Winter Soldier  Taskmaster

The Marvel Thunderbolts Sale runs through Monday, 5/19.

Since the character mix in the film is a little different than the mix in the comics, we’re going to break this down by character…

The Thunderbolts have been through several iterations since they began in ’97, originally having been the Masters of Evil laying the groundwork for nefarious deeds. Judging by the previews, the film will be a little different from the comic.

Thunderbolts

The original series was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Eventually Fabian Nicieza tagged in as writer and Patrick Zircher became the lead artist a bit after that. Alas, these volumes jump around a bit after issue #50. The  omnibus editions are more complete, but aren’t on sale right now.

New Thunderbolts was the ’04-’06 relaunch, and yes, it’s included in the third omnibus of the original. Fabian Nicieza/Tom Grummett is the creative team, here.

This then turns back into (no adjective) Thunderbolts for ’06-’12, starting Nicieza/Grummett and then including runs by Warren Ellis / Mike Deodato and Jeff Parker/Kev Walker/Declan Shalvey

Thunderbolts relaunched for ’12-’14 with Daniel Way and then Charles Soule writing it. The artist rotation included Steve Dillon and Phil Noto.

Jim Zub and Jon Malin were behind the ’16-’17 Thunderbolts run.

’20 saw King in Black: Thunderbolts by Matthew Rosenberg/Gerry Duggan/Juan E. Ferreyra/Luke Ross.

’22 saw Thunderbolts: Back on Target by Jim Zub and Sean Izaakse.

The most recent volume in the sale is Thunderbolts: Worldstrike by Colin Kelly / Jackson Lanzing / Geraldo Borges.

With Thunderbolts, we feel pretty strongly you need to read the first sequence or two and get a flavor for the concept before jumping into the later evolutions.

Winter Soldier

The originating storyline runs in the 2004 series of Captain America by Ed Brubaker and a rotating squad of artists including Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Butch Guice and Mike Perkins. There are a couple omnibuses available, but this doesn’t really have a definitive larger collection like, say, the Hickman Avengers era. We’d probably point you to the Captain America Modern Era Epic Collection: The Winter Soldier volume. It’s a couple bucks more, but it gives you #1-19 straight through and that’s a very good run.

For solo series, the first choice is Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker, which is Brubaker and Butch Guice in a spin-off.

Also of possible interest:

Taskmaster

    • Taskmaster: Anything You Can Do… – <all sorts of creators>; Taskmaster’s early villain appearances fighting the Avengers, Spidey, Daredevil, etc.
    • Taskmaster: The Rubicon Trigger – Jed MacKay / Alessandro Vitti; A very funny adventure finds Taskmaster blackmailed into doing a job for Nick Fury. Should he refuse, the Black Widow will likely hunt him down and kill him.

 U.S. Agent

    • Captain America Epic Collection: The Captain – Mark Gruenwald / Kieron Dwyer; The famous arc where former Super Patriot and soon-to-be U.S. Agent John Walker assumes the mantle of Captain America
    • U.S. Agent: American Zealot – Christopher Priest / Georges Jeanty; In something of a deadpan political satire, John Walker develops some issues with his handlers when sent to a small town threatened by a corporate entity… if only the optics matched reality. Smart, but you figured that with Priest involved.

The Sentry

The Sentry is a character that is not always used well in the comics. We’d stick to the original Paul Jenkins / Jae Lee series and the Paul Jenkins / John Romita, Jr. sequel.

Not of this Earth

The Marvel Aliens & Predators Sale runs through Monday, 4/28.

Alien  Aliens: What If...?  Aliens

It’s probably best to divide this into the Marvel section and the Dark Horse section.

On the Marvel side of the fence, we are big fans of the Philip Kennedy Johnson Alien sequence (V.1 & 2 here; then V. 3 here — yeah, we know… comics publishers need to work on the meta data) with Salvador Larroca, followed by Julius Ohta; is essentially one winding tale of Weyland-Yutani Corporation conspiracies that starts out with hiding a few of those eggs that couldn’t possibly get out of control, moves on to interstellar pioneers and religion, then comes back to the living conditions of rogue androids. Effective slow burn storytelling.

Also on the Marvel side:

  • Declan Shalvey’s Alien run
    • V.1 w/ Andrea Broccardo
    • V.2 w/Danny Earls
  • Aliens: What If…? –Paul Reiser /Leon Reiser / Adam F. Goldberg / Hans Rodionoff / Brian Volk-Weiss / Guiu Vilanova – Yes, that Paul Reiser (and son, and friends) returns to explore what would happen if his Aliens villain, Carter Burke, had survived the film

From the original Dark Horse material:

A Note on This One

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

“Amazon Book Sale: Limited time savings of up to 75% on select titles” – unknown duration.

This extra-eclectic sale appears to be intact for the time being and we should probably talk about Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath. That was on this week’s reading list and it’s a very unusual book that lives up to the hype.

The elevator pitch is “Richard Scarry’s Dexter.” Which is to say, it’s drawn in an extra cute style reminiscent of children’s book legend Richard Scarry. A little more detail and fully rendered, but very Scarry. It (mostly) takes place in a happy little town, like the Scarry books. Except one of the residents is a serial killer who is alarmed when another serial killer turns up in town and goes on a very messy and public spree.

Hovarth even manages to get pacing and narrative style that’s similar to those children’s books… until it’s time to whip out the blood and swearing. This is from the Mouse Guard school of “it looks like a kid’s book until you get a little further in.” Is it a parody? Perhaps. It’s embracing the tradition more than mocking it, so we’d probably go with ironic pastiche.

This one isn’t going to be for everyone, but if that setup sounds appealing, you’ll probably love this. Excellence of execution and all. And we do mean execution. We hereby affirm the hype.

The discount could be better, but we just don’t see many discounts coming out of IDW these days.

Unannounced Sales

Star Wars: Tales from the Rancor Pit   Brandon Sanderson's Dark One  You Are Home

First, a Dark Horse Star Wars section. (May the Fourth is coming.)

And some more likely suspects:

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Deadpool Team-Up  Fantastic Four Vs. Galactus  Kid Venom

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

Dropping Next Week

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Still on Sale