In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts most of their Iron Man catalog, plus Absolute Carnage. DC revisits the 90s. Dark Horse cuts prices on the many works of Bendis & Oeming.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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In case you’re having troubles with the new UIX (a LOT of people have been):

Does Whatever An Iron Can…

Iron Man: The Man Who Killed Tony Stark  Iron Man: Heroes Reborn  Iron Man: Big Iron

The Marvel Iron Man Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/27

This would be one of those sales where most of the hero’s run is on sale, so we’re going to follow our usual protocol and start out by breaking out the primary titles and volumes. Iron Man isn’t as goofy to follow as, say, Spider-Gwen… but there are “quirks.”

  • Tales of Suspense – Iron Man debuted here in what was a split book with Captain America for most of the run.
  • Iron Man ’68-’96 – The original solo run in the era before constant relaunch gimmicks

OK, sit tight. The ’98 -’04 run is collected in VERY odd ways and poorly cataloged for browsing.  The truly excellent Kurt Busiek/Sean Chen/Patrick Zircher run lasts from 1-25. We can’t find 15-25 collected? (That entire run should be!)  You can catch 1-14 and the Mike Grell run (50-59)  in cheap omnibus form here.  You can catch Joe Quesada’s scripting run (26-32) and the Avengers: Disassembled tie-in late in this run in single volumes here. (But get the omnibus version for Busiek.)

  • Iron Man ’04-07 – Best known for launching with the “Extremis” storyline
  • Invincible Iron Man ’08-’12 – The excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larroca run. Save some money with the omnibus collecting the first 3 volumes.
  • Iron Man ’12-’14 – The Kieron Gillen run with Greg Land as initial artist
  • Invincible Iron Man ’15-’16 – Brian Bendis and David Marquez/Mike Deodato, Jr. start out with Tony Stark in the armor
  • International Iron Man ’16 – Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev (And yes, we’re in the thick of the relaunches now)
  • Invincible Iron Man ’16-’18 – Brian Bendis and Stefano Caselli with Riri Williams/Ironheart filling Tony Stark’s shoes (yes, parallel substitute Iron Man runs)
  • Tony Stark: Iron Man ’18-’19 – The Dan Slott era with Valerio Schiti as the principle artist in the rotation.
  • Iron Man ’20-’22 – The Christopher Cantwell / Cafu run.
  • Invincible Iron Man ’22-current – Gerry Duggan / Juan Frigeri

If you’re keeping score at home, you’ll have notice Superior Iron Man and Infamous Iron Man are not on sale. Why? We cannot say.

So what’s good?  We haven’t read ALL the Iron Man out there, but we’ve read a lot of them.

In our opinion Iron Man starts hitting it’s stride when Archie Goodwin arrives toward the end of the Tales of Suspense run and then is pure gold through issue 28 of the ’68 Iron Man series. Artists for this run include Gene Colan and George Tuska. (That’s collected in both Masterworks and Epic formats, but only the Epic is discounted right now..)

The next “all-star” run is #116-157 of the original Iron Man, that’s the David Michelinie / John Romita, Jr. / Bob Layton run that’s most famous for the “Demon in a Bottle” alcoholism arc, but there’s more to the run than just that arc.  The Denny O’Neil / Luke McDonnell run that follows is solid (make sure you get a collection that includes #200!!!), but Michelinie & Layton return for #215-250 with a few artists, including Mark Bright and Jackson Guice… with Layton even switching to penciller, instead of his usual inking post, for parts of it.  This second run is most famous for “Armor Wars” (originally known as Stark Wars).

When Heroes Return hits, Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen are pop in for the excellent 1998 run, of which only 1-14 are currently collected.

The ’08 – ’12 run by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca is particularly good. You know how modern Marvel titles can get sidetracked by Events. Fraction and Larroca lean into it and produce a lengthy and self-contained arc with Tony Stark on the run and attempting to overwrite his brain to keep everyone’s secrets out of the hands of Norman Osborn. Yes, an honest to goodness great Event tie-in arc. It’s a rare thing.

We were quite happy with the  Christopher Cantwell/Cafu run. Tony Stark chases Korvac into outer space and meditates on the nature of godhood, good intentions and addictions. Lots of character work and action.

Be Kind, Please Rewind

Hellblazer  League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  The Nail

The  DC 90s Rewind Sale runs through Monday, 5/20.

Yes, it’s a 90s sale… with a little late 80s/early 00s around the edges. It’s worth a browse, particularly if you want to go wide on the Batman of that period, but let’s hit some highlights, shall we?

  • Animal Man – Initially Grant Morrison / Chas Truog, the full run is on sale this time.
  • The Authority – Ellis & Hitch, then Millar & Quitely; Hugely influential at the end of the ’90s, this is what effectively started the “widescreen comics” trend. (Pity the Stormwatch lead-in isn’t in the sale.)
  • Batman: No Man’s Land: The epic line-wide crossover Event, where Gotham is cut off from the rest of the country and the villains set themselves up as Warlords. (Yes, this predates DMZ by several years.) We thought this was the peak of the 90s Bat-Events.
  • Green Arrow (’88-’98) – Mike Grell / Ed Hannigan / Dan Jurgens – the Grell version that did away with most of the trick arrows.
  • Hellblazer – The first 13 volumes are on sale from the original Vertigo run. Delano / Ennis / Jenkins / Ellis.  Strong, strong run and for what it’s worth, we enjoyed the less-talked about Paul Jenkins/Sean Phillips issues. Don’t sleep on them.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentleman – Alan Moore / Kevin O’Neil; Yes, DC (via Wildstorm) still has the first two volumes. And they’re good! It’s a literary team-up with satirical elements around the edges (pay attention to the ads…). Note: there is a demise in V. 2 that is very much NOT for kids.
  • The Nail – Alan Davis presents the tale of a world where the Kents didn’t find Kal-El’s rocket and the Justice League forms without Superman to bail them out.
  • Preacher – Garth Ennis & Steve Dillion; Since adapted for TV. God’s gone missing and Jesse Custer would like a word with him. A series as wrong as it is praised.
  • The Spectre – John Ostrander / Tom Mandrake; This would be on our best of the 90s list. Jim Corrigan is dead and tethered to the Wrath of God. He’s trying to work through that. It’s a lot.
  • Superman: The Death of Superman – The most famous line-wide Superman Event. The “Funeral for a Friend” and “Reign of the Supermen” sequences worked far better than one would have expected when solicited. This is also where John Henry Irons / Steel is introduced.
  • Transmetropolitan – Warren Ellis / Darick Robertson; The science fiction satire about a Hunter S. Thompson-esque future journalist and his war against a corrupt establishment. One of the more influential titles of the late 9os.

Absolute Hyperbole

Absolute Carnage  Venom: Absolute Carnage

The Marvel Absolute Carnage Sale runs through Monday, 5/20.

Absolute Carnage was, by Marvel standards, a small scope crossover between Donny Cates’s Venom run and the Nick Spencer era Amazing Spider-Man. Yes, in the context of an Event, only generating eight collected edition counts as restraint.

The Event miniseries holding it together is Absolute Carnage by Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman.

Venom: Absolute Carnage by Cates & Iban Coello collects the Venom tie-in issues.

Amazing Spider-Man: Absolute Carnage by Nick Spencer & Ryan Ottley collects, you guessed it, the Amazing Spider-Man tie-in issues.

From there, fill-in as your tastes dictate. We will say that the lead story in Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk And Other Tales is worthwhile, if not central to anything. Immortal Hulk being a high water mark in general.

Unannounced Sales

Powers  Goldfish  Fortune and Glory

Dark Horse has a big block of Brian Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming titles on sale. Let’s hit the numbers first:

We’d like to talk a little about the early Bendis, which doesn’t seem to be widely remembered after all his time at Marvel and DC. Bendis started out doing the full cartoonist and working on crime comics like Goldfish and Jinx.

He started getting a little more notice when he jumped over to Image for Powers w/ Oeming. Powers starts out as a police procedural in a world where super powers have to be registered (this is LONG before Marvel’s Civil War) and follows a police unit that handles “powers”-related crimes. There’s a lot of worldbuilding involved and things get quite a bit more complicated as the backstories of the main characters unfold.

Powers left Image for Marvel’s Icon imprint when Bendis blew up there and as he got deeper into Marvel, the shipping schedule got erratic. It’s relaunched a few times and seemingly lost a lot of audience momentum. Shipping schedules, have very little to do with the quality of the comic, however. It’s a good one and an influential one that’s worth dipping into the collected editions of. (And trust us, its so much easier with omnibuses where you don’t have to remember which relaunch a given issue is from!)

Also very worthwhile:  Fortune & Glory is Bendis recounting tales of interacting with Hollywood when Goldfish got optioned. It’s hilarious and multiple folks who work in TV/Film have assured us it’s frighteningly accurate.

We’d also point you to Scarlet as a more recent example of Bendis returning to that early crime vibe. It’s a strong comic.

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