In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops a fistful of sales (including Hulk, Fantastic Four and Venom). Plus, Avatar the Last Airbender.
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):
Hulk Is Cheapest There Is
The
Marvel Hulk Sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
And what we have here is basically a Hulk Legacy sale.
Let’s run down the various titles.
- Incredible Hulk (1962 – 1999) The original run and then the long running series that picked up a few years later. (For some reason, the Epic Collections have a separate listing.)
- Tales to Astonish (1964-68) In between the two Hulk solo runs above, Hulk was splitting Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man/Giant Man and then Namor. A lot of the foundational work was really in this run, with Stan Lee/Steve Ditko responsible for a lot of it. Included for the sake of completeness, for you shall find no discounts here
- Incredible Hulk (1999-2007) – Best known for the Bruce Jones / Lee Weeks/ Mike Deodato run towards the beginning and the Greg Pak / multi-artist “Planet Hulk” and “World War Hulk” epics at the end… though World War Hulk is at this different link.
- Hulk (2008-13) This is the Red Hulk run (and the title changes to that after awhile). It starts out with the better known Jeph Loeb/Ed Mc Guiness run and then Jeff Parker takes over with Gabriel Hardman, Dave Eaglesham and Patrick Zircher in the artist rotation.
- Incredible Hulk by Jason Aaron (2011-12) – Lots of artists rotating through here, Marc Silvestri, Steve Dillon and Carlos Pacheco among them
- Indestructible Hulk (2012 – 14) – Mark Waid’s the writer with an artist rotation including Leinil Francis Yu, Matteo Scalera and Walt Simonson draws the Thor team-up.
- Hulk by Waid and Duggan (2014-15) – That would be Mark Waid and Gerry Duggan with Duggan doing the bulk of the run. Mark Bagley is the main artist here.
- Immortal Hulk (2018-21) – Al Ewing’s masterpiece as the Hulk slides over towards horror and find a green door that leads to Hell.
- Hulk (2021-23) – The Donny Cates / Ryan Ottley run
- The Incredible Hulk (2023 -25) – Phillip Kennedy Johnson / Nic Klein
For the
main series, you can’t go wrong with the Peter David years (now complete in Epic format) and the Bill Mantlo era seems to have gained fans over the years.
The sequence from
Planet Hulk to
World War Hulk is highly enjoyable.
Let’s be real –
Immortal Hulk is a masterpiece. Highly recommended with an approach almost like Gerber’s Man-Thing or Moore’s Swamp Thing.
We’re really enjoying the
current run, too. (OK, there was a relaunch. As far as we’re concerned it’s the same book with different numbering and a title tweak.) It’s a return to horror, like the
Immortal Hulk run, but it feels a bit more like the Bruce Jones run. Banner is on the run, but this time the conspiracy pursuing him is supernatural in nature. Nic Klein is doing ridiculously good work on this title, too.
Also included in this sale: the original
Defenders series (which could use more Gerber discounts than are provided).
Four Play
Marvel’s Fantastic Four Sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
Marvel would like to remind you this was a film.
First let’s break down the various FF titles/volumes on sale:
- Fantastic Four ’61-’96 – The original run (In a truly bizarre turn, the Epic Collections are tied to the original series and all the Masterworks are floating in the system untethered to ANY series.)
- Fantastic Four ’98-’12 – Heroes Return era through Hickman
- Fantastic Four ’12-’14 – The Matt Fraction / Mark Bagley era
- Fantastic Four ’14-’15 – The James Robinson/Leonard Kirk run
- Fantastic Four: Fate of the Four (Marvel Two-in-One) ’17-’18 – Chip Zdarsky / Jim Cheung; Zdarsky’s MTIO run has been rebranded as FF… which is probably fair – not in this sale, but included for the sake of completeness
- Fantastic Four ’18-’22 – The Dan Slott run with a rotating cast of artists
- Fantastic Four ’22-’25 – Ryan North / Iban Coello / Carlos Gomez
Yes,
Fantastic Four has been relaunched less than other Marvel titles. As to what’s good, the gold standard has always been the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. (And yes, we do think you can draw a straight line from Kirby’s
Challengers of the Unknown at DC to
Fantastic Four.) We’d say they start to hit their stride a few issues before Galactus shows up – V.3 of the Epic Collections (“
The Coming of Galactus“) or V.4/5 of the Masterworks editions and you can ride a very fun train from there to the end of Lee/Kirby.
And at this point, we should talk about the “pick your poison” of Epic vs. Masterworks. The Masterworks are built out straight into the Byrne era. We think the $6.99 Epic Collections are the best value here, though some of the newer ones are priced higher. The discounted Epics are now into the Byrne run and then skip ahead to Englehart. Pick the format that works for you and has the issues you’re looking for.
Speaking of Byrne’s run, that’s the next highpoint that everyone agrees on. How to read Byrne? Well, there are 7 volumes of Masterworks on sale (V. 21-27) or you can hop on to
Fantastic Four Visionaires: John Byrne. These comics really ought to be in an Epic Collections, and that’s started, but Marvel doesn’t seem in any hurry to roll the Visionaires up into a more economical package. (Or should we say, economical when it’s on sale?)
Move ahead a bit and Walt Simonson had a stint that may be a little more notable for being an early appearance of the Time Variance Authority (which actually debuted in his
Thor run). This is most easily grabbed across Epic Collections
V.20 and
V.21.
Fast forward a bit to the Heroes Reborn era and there is a LOT to love about the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run. They brought back the “explorer” vibe from Lee/Kirby era that isn’t always there and upped the sense of wonder. You’d want the
four Ultimate Collection volumes that start here. The “regular” collections don’t go all the way to the end.
Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier jumped in for an arc
with Black Panther and Storm briefly joining the team.
And then, of course, there’s the
the Hickman era. A long storyline that laid the groundwork for his Avengers run and you can certainly argue that his
Secret Wars endcap to that is a Fantastic Four / Doctor Doom story. The omnibus editions we highlighted above include his
FF spin-off comic that frequently crossed over with
Fantastic Four, much like the Avengers titles flowed together. That packaging will be a better experience.
But that’s not all we have in a fairly expansive sale:
Ultimate Fantastic Four
The original
Ultimate Fantastic Four had Brian Bendis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar and Mike Carey (yes,
The Girl With All the Gifts M.R. Carey
) tagging off on writer duties. The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Stuart Immonen, Jae Lee, Greg Land, Pasqual Ferry, Mark Brooks and Tyler Kirkham. And a bit of trivia for you: Marvel Zombies? It’s an
Ultimate Fantastic Four spin-off. Check out V.3 of the omnibuses. That’s where it all begins.
Doctor Doom
A little bit from the arch foe:
Silver Surfer
Skull the Slayer
That’s right.
Skull the Slayer.
No, Not Bane’s Juice
The
Marvel Venom Sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
This is a fairly scattered sale, with multiple formats and a lot of random early miniseries floating around. Browse for a better accounting of the listings.
For the early stuff, the better values are the somewhat scattered Epic Collections.
The early (mostly) Spider-Man appearances can be found in
Venom Epic Collection: Symbiosis. That’s largely the David Michelinie / Todd McFarlane / Erik Larsen material. That’s followed by
Venom Epic Collection: Lethal Protector which has a few more villainous appearances and the original
Lethal Protector mini. And then
Venom Epic Collection: Carnage Unleashed continues the 90s appearances.
Eventually Venom gets his own series:
- Venom (2003-4) – The Daniel Way era
- Venom (2011-3) – Rick Remender/Tony Moore, then Cullen Bunn/Declan Shalvey
- Venom (2016-8) – Mike Costa / Tradd Moore / Mark Bagley
- Venom (2018-21) – Donny Cates / Ryan Stegman
- Venom (2021-24) – Al Ewing / Ram V / Bryan Hitch
- Venom War (2024) – Al Ewing / Iban Coello
- All-New Venom(’04-’05) – Al Ewing / Carlos Gomez
Let’s talk about the last 12 years or so. The
’11-’13 series is more interesting than you might think. That’s when Flash Thompson has the symbiote and uses it (among other things) to replace the legs his lost in the war. There are some interesting pathos floating around, particularly in the Remender/Moore run.
The
Cates/Stegman run is probably the most famous right now. That’s where Venom gets Cosmic and leads into the
King In Black Event.
The
Ewing / V / Hitch run, is an evolution and big leap forward from the groundwork laid by Cates. Al Ewing drives the Cosmic elements, which are the most interesting part. Eddie Brock is dead. But he isn’t. He’s separated from his body and he’s bouncing around in time as his son becomes Venom in the present. It’s a much, much stranger take on Venom than most others and really dives into the King in Black mythos and timeline, eventually culminating in
Venom War. Ewing’s basically picked up the ball and ran with it, creating his own saga.
Carnage
Yes, the other symbiote Bobbsey Twin is also included in the sale (at least part of the catalog)
This is an odd set compared with something like
Fantastic Four, since Carnage has been a guest villain or mini-series dweller for part of the time, so here’s the highlights and short tour.
For early Carnage, your best best is probably
Carnage Epic Collection: Born in Blood. That gets you the first Carnage tale from
Amazing Spider-Man _and_ the Maximum Carnage arc. For more of those early villain and mini-series appearances, there are
two more Epic Collections with their own series page.
Carnage then relaunched in ’22 by Ram V and Francesco Manna. This one weaves in and out of serial killer thriller / fantasy (with a trip to Asgard) / and capes.
The next series of
Carnage follows that up with the team of Torunn GrØnbekk & Pere Perez.
Also in the mix:
52 Pick Up
The
Marvel Gambit sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
Lots and lots of misc. X-titles in the one. In terms of Gambit (and his Mrs.), you’re looking at:
If you’d rather have some X-Men books, there’s plenty to browse, though these two spots might float near the top of the list:
Seeing Ghosts
The
Marvel Ghost Spider Sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
Ah, the always amusing struggle to balance a character’s movie name with their comics name. Yes, this is really a Spider-Gwen sale.
Not A Big Red Cheese?
The
Captain Marvel Sale runs through Monday, 5/25.
It’s back and now it has the Masterworks.
First off, the original Kree Captain Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel:
Is Starlin’s Mar-Vell, the best Mar-Vell? We’d say so.
You can also look at the
Captain Marvel Masterworks series, but the other one we’d put at the top of the list is
V.4 with the Steve Englehart / Al Milgrom run.
Carol Danvers as Ms./Captain Marvel:
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 experts on this set of books, but we’re inclined to say go with the recent 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?
Then there’s Mar-Vell’s son Genis:
This one is a Peter David joint, through and through. We did read the ’22 version last year and enjoyed it. It has a little more going on than you might think at first.
Unannounced Sales
As always, it isn’t clear when the unannounced sales will end.
Dark Horse is having a sale on their
Avatar: The Last Airbender line of comics
- The Omnibus editions are the best bet
- Editions that aren’t attached to the series page (and are newer):
Also on sale,
The Legend of Korra
Dark Horse still has discounts on their Star Wars line of comics:
Also on sale:
And have a look at the
$5 and under page.
Still on Sale
