Comixology (At Amazon) Sales: The Annual Marvel Masterworks Sale, Plus Star Wars and What If

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, its the Annual Marvel Masterworks sale, plus Star Wars and What If.

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):

Marvel’s Annual Masterworks Sale

The Marvel Masterworks Sale runs through Monday, 1/8.

Yes, we’ve been getting a lot questions about whether this sale was happening this year. It’s happening now, though the $4.99 price point is not as cheap as it’s been the last couple years. Since a lot of folks make this an annual “stock-up sale,” and wandering what’s come out since last year’s sale, we’ve compiled a list of those titles. We’re looking out for you on that.

Amazing Spider-Man Masterworks V. 24
Avengers Masterworks V. 23
Captain America Masterworks V. 15
Daredevil Masterworks V. 17
Dazzler V. 4
Fantastic Four Masterworks V. 24
Fantastic Four Masterworks V. 25 * NOTE – This one isn’t linked into the series page, so use this link to find it *
Ghost Rider Masterworks V. 4
Ghost Rider Masterworks V. 5
Incredible Hulk Masterworks V. 16
Incredible Hulk Masterworks V. 17
Iron Man Masterworks V. 15
Iron Man Masterworks V. 16
Ka-Zar Masterworks V. 3
Spectacular Spider-Man Masterworks V. 6
Spider-Woman Masterworks V. 3
Tomb of Dracula Masterworks V. 2
Uncanny X-Men Masterworks V. 15

For the most part, we’re into the 1980s with this batch. Daredevil is the end of the first Frank Miller run. Fantastic Four is nearing the end of the John Byrne era and V. 25 includes The Last Galactus Story. Iron Man sees the transition from the first David Michelinie / Bob Layton run to Denny O’Neil / Luke McDonnell run and Rhodey taking over armor duties.

We also feel we should point out the oddity of that last Dazzler collection. Did you realize that the original series ended with a short run by Archie Goodwin and Paul (Concrete) Chadwick? It also contains the more X-centric Beauty and the Beast mini-series by Ann Nocenti and Don Perlin.

Past that, hit the main sales page and dig it. Plenty of classic Marvel on sale for what usually works out to under $0.50/issue. Cheap.

Whither the Epic Edition Sale?

Yes, we’ve been hearing that question, too. In past years, the Epic Editions were on sale the week of Black Friday. This year, there was an Omnibus sale the week of Black Friday. Since the Masterworks sale is in it’s normal time slot, we’re guessing the Epic Editions sale is pushed back to January… although whether the second week or later is beyond us. We can’t imagine they’d skip it altogether, though.

Nothing But Star Wars

The Marvel Star Wars Omnibus Sale runs through Monday, 1/8.

$4.99 collections of the original Marvel run and the Dark Horse Material. This is broken up in the series entries a little oddly:

Star Wars: The Rebellion – original trilogy stories (mostly) including the original Marvel run
Star Wars: The Empire – When the Empire is in charge
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – You can guess when these are set
Star Wars Universe – A sort of misc. category… notably including some Star Wars tales for the UK market.
Star Wars: The Old Republic – As in “Knights of the Old Republic”
Star Wars: The New Republic – Rogue Squadron

What’s good? Over in “The Rebellion” link, some of those volumes of the original Marvel series get over 500 pages. Lets call those V. 1, V.2, V.3, V.4 and V.5. V. 3 catches most of the under-rated David Michelinie / Walt Simonson run.

This is really organized to let you pick your era and go.

If Not, Why Not?

The Marvel What If? Sale runs through Monday, 1/8.

NOTE: as we type this, What If is in a negaband sale, assigned to the same URL as last week’s Alpha Flight sale. If you click the link and get Alpha Flight, reload a few times until What If shows up.

We have a preference for the original What If, here, but we’d like to point something out to you first. When you go to the series link for the original, toward the top of the page, you’ll see a new navigation feature that’s a little more relevant here. Under the series graphic on the left hand side is a pulldown menu where you can select “Volumes” or “Omnibus.” Volumes being the “normal” sized collections. We’ll have to have a longer look at how that’s implemented. It might be useful… IF it works. In this case it only shows the omnibus on sale. Yes, that’s right, there are actually four omnibuses containing ~12 issues each of What If. Only one of them is on sale and that’s the only one that shows up on the Omnibuses page, ergo the Omnibuses page appears to be broken. (Why are you acting surprised?)

So, here’s the link for the “regular” volumes. Here’s the link for the lone omnibus on sale (which is issues #1-12). And we’ll look at some of the more interesting stuff in the individual volumes, since What If is all over the map. Some of these are going to sound awfully darn familiar, too. What If seems like a gold mine for pitching your editor!

#1 – What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
#2 – What If The Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner? (V. 1 / Omnibus)
#10 – What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
#12 – What If Rick Jones Had Become The Hulk? (V. 2 / Omnibus)
#13 – What If Conan the Barbarian Walked the Earth Today? (NOPE, no longer collected)
#23 – What If The Hulk Had Become a Barbarian? (V. 4)
#30 – What If Spider-Man’s Clone Had Lived? (V. 5)
#35 – What If Elektra Had Lived? (V.6)
#37 – What If The Beast and The Thing Continued to Mutate? (V.6)
#43 – What If Conan Were Stranded in the 20th Century? (No longer collected).

Gosh, we’re sure NOBODY ever picked up those topics a decade or four later…

We’ll be back at the normal time at the end of the week to look at the rest of the new sales. The DC sale looks familiar and cheap, but we need some time to dig through it.