In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Comic-Con 2022 has arrived and the sales came along for the ride. Added to the pile: lots of X-Men, Eisner nods from DC, BOOM!’s wide swath of books and last week’s IDW link got fixed.
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):
Just a heads up – there is a LOT of indie action at the “San Diego Graphic Novel Sales” page. Or full annotations for the bulk of that are in last week’s column.
Brand X
The Marvel X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 7/28.
It’s a legacy sale, so it’s the Uncanny X-Men core… although this may shorter list than some of the legacy sales. For instance, X-Men wasn’t part of Heroes Reborn, so no relaunch there.
As is our custom, let’s run through the key series included, first:
- Uncanny X-Men ’63-’11 – The original X-Men, the “new” X-Men, Morrison… it’s a long run.
- Uncanny X-Men ’11-’12 – The Kieron Gillen era
- Uncanny X-Men ’13-’15 – The Brian Bendis / Chris Bachalo era (Battle of the Atom fits in with this run as a crossover)
- Uncanny X-Men ’16-’17 – The Cullen Bunn / Greg Land / Ken Lashley era
- Uncanny X-Men ’18-’19 – The Mathew Rosenberg era
And you might be asking yourself, “aren’t there usually more than one X-Men title and don’t they cross over a lot?” Yes, that would be a potential issue… pun intended. Not so much with the Epic Collections and the Masterworks as with the later series, and there are some Event collections in the set.
You should know our general advice right now. There’s a slight preference for the value of Epic Collections over Masterworks collections, but it depends on the exact price point and the Epic Collections sometimes have gaps. That still applies here. The wild card with X-Men is that it can get impenetrable with continuity and all the characters floating around. You can’t always just jump in.
So, recommendations with that in mind.
If you’ve never tried the original X-Men, we’d say go with The Sentinels Live Epic Collection. It’s at the very tail end of the original run that the original X-Men run is at its best: a bit of Jim Steranko and then a Roy Thomas / Neal Adams sequence that ended all too quickly.
For the “new” X-Men, we’re cool with the theory that Giant-Sized X-Men #1 / Uncanny X-Men #94 through #200 is one big arc. That’s where we’d start if we were new. The Epic Collections only take you to #153, at which point you need to start cutting in the Masterworks editions with V. 7 through 12.
For an alternate jumping on point, perhaps the Ed Brubaker era (# to # ) which is collected in three volumes starting with Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.
We assume you already know about the Morrison run.
And if you were looking for the Events that started after #200… well, that’s next.
Did Somebody Say Crossover?
The Marvel X-Men Milestones Sale runs through Monday, 7/25.
And this would be a set of single volume collections of the big “Event” storylines where the various X-titles converge. And maybe look at it in chronological view.
Dark Phoenix is the classic, but perhaps best enjoyed in the context of that #94-200 run we described above. Past that, everyone has their favorite. We might go out on a limb and suggest that Messiah Complex is the best post-Claremont arc, but… opinions vary.
Award Bait
The DC Eisners Sale runs through Monday, 7/25.
This is a tiny, 9 item sale that originally included some single issues that don’t appear to be on sale. No clue what was up with that.
Of the contenders, Batman is the usual suspect, but the Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo Nightwing is the critical belle of the ball, here.
A bit more under the radar is the Ram V / Mike Perkins Swamp Thing. We’re not so sure that shouldn’t have waited to package the entire story in one volume (V.2 drops in ~3 weeks), but this slight reimaging of the character as a new avatar for The Green emerges is definitely an interesting read.
Return to the Planet of the Comic-Con Sales
The Boom! SDCC Graphic Novel Sale runs through 8/4/22.
This one popped on the SDCC later than the rest, and you know what? There are a few BOOM! titles we’re happy to share the love for.
We Only Find Them When They’re Dead is an absolutely bonkers delight from Al Ewing (who’s on a hot streak) and Simone Di Meo. It starts out as tale of smuggling around a salvage operation, scavenging the body parts of dead gods found floating in space. Then it gets into suppressive governments and cults. We’re not sure precisely where it’s going to end up, but we’re happy to be along for the ride. It appears only V. 1 is on sale.
Once and Future by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora is probably a little higher up on the BOOM! visibility scale. It’s a breezy adventure with a bit of humor and darkness around the edges at times concerning a fellow who’s been drafted into the family monster-hunting business by his grandmother (who isn’t as retired as she should be) and a plot to raise a decidedly unfriendly King Arthur from the grave. A really fun series.
And for a deeper cut that’s coming to the surface because of a Netflix film deal, there’s Irredeemable by Mark Waid, Peter Krause and Diego Barreto. The high concept here is somewhere between “Superman has a psychotic break” and “Superman meets The Bad Seed.” The Plutonian, a sort of Superman-esque character finally snaps and decides he’s in charge. The surviving heroes and villains must try to stay alive long enough to figure out how to stop him. Interestingly, there seem to now be a lot of comparisons to The Boys, which you didn’t really hear when then two books were running. There is an “abuse of superpowers” theme in common, but the two series are nearly tonal opposites. The Boys, particularly the original comic, is slapstick and parody. Irredeemable plays it straight. We’ve always enjoyed it.
How IDW Got Its Link Back
The IDW SDCC Sale runs through Monday, 7/25… and guess what? Comixology/Amazon fixed the link from last week’s error, so now we can see the whole thing.
A buried bargain: $3.49 for Jeff Lemire’s Underwater Welder, a well regarded science fiction character study graphic novel.
$3.99 will get you Bermuda by John Layman and Nick Bradshaw. This fairly recent collection (came out in Feb.) concerns a region of the Atlantic Ocean that collects missing ships and planes. There’s an island in it, inhabited by pirates, dinosaurs and assorted monsters. And a 16 year old girl named Bermuda running roughshod over the lot of them. A little bit of Kamandi, a little bit of Land of the Lost. It’s a really fun book with great art, too. Seems like it flew under the radar.
And for the “classic” option, it’s sometimes hard to find enough praise to heap on Darwyn Cooke’s Richard Stark’s Parker series of graphic novels. An absolutely brilliant adaptation of the Donald Westlake crime novels about a thief who believes in payback. Highly recommended.
Still On Sale
- Marvel’s “Monthly July Sale” runs through Monday, 8/1
- The DC at SDCC Ebooks Sale runs through Monday, 7/25
- The Dark Horse Everything 2022 Sale runs through Monday, 7/25
- The Image Eisners Sale runs through Monday, 7/25
- The Dynamite SDCC Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 7/25
- Image SDDC Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 7/25
