In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts the discounts on Jack Kirby, takes a trip to the beach, cuts prices on the Symbiotes and a variety of X-Men titles, too. Plus, Creepy, Eerie and Calvin and Hobbes.

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):

Kirby is King

Fantastic Four - The Coming of Galactus  Thor - The Wrath of Odin  Eternals by Jack Kirby

The Marvel Jack Kirby Sale runs through Monday, 8/31.

Yes, Jack Kirby did a LOT of comics for Marvel. Is he the greatest action artist comic books has ever produced? Quite possibly. And the man could handle 3 books/mo. That’s no small feat.

Let’s first hit the highlights by the numbers:

What’s better than the rest? If you want to split some hairs, I’d say Fantastic Four Epic Collection: The Coming Of Galactus is roughly where FF hits it’s stride leading to the first encounter with Galactus. Thor Epic Collection: The Wrath Of Odin is a good Thor volume. (We found Thor needed a bit of time to get rolling.) Eternals has finally gotten it’s reappraisal after too many years of comparisons to New Gods. Captain America Epic Collection: The Man Who Sold The United States is an odd one for this sale, but a great collection. You get the final act of Steve Englehart’s run and then you get Kirby’s Madbomb saga, which probably reads better today than it did in the original release.

Beach Blanket Punch Out?

Avengers West Coast  Untold Tales of Spider-Man  Jeff The Land Shark: Friends And Rivals

The  Marvel Beach Reads Sale runs through Monday, 8/31.

This is an odd sale with lots of volumes containing random appearances of somone like Sandman. There are, however a few characters and titles with runs, which will make more sense:

What’s good? We like Bill Everett on Namor. (Bill created him and it just works.) For the Silver Age, that means Namor The Sub-Mariner Epic Collection: The Invasion Of New York. For the Golden Age, early Marvel Mystery Comics is most consistently Everett. Untold Tales Of Spider-Man is great. Avengers West Coast is reliable through Byrne (though Byrne is divisive) and is there anything wrong with Roy Thomas or DnA? Not really. Plus, Jeff The Land Shark has his fans.

No, You Were Thinking of Sim-City

Venom by Remender   Venom by Cates   Venom

The Marvel Symbiote Sale runs through Monday, 8/31.

By it’s very nature, a Symbiote sale (read: Venom/Carnage)  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(’24-’25) – 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.

We liked the 70s-horror flavored ’17-’19 incarnation of Carnage by Gerry Conway and Mike Perkins quite a bit.

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.

After that, it’s Eddie Brock: Carnage by Charles Soule / Jesus Saiz. Is that Venom or Carnage and the answer is “spoilers.”

Also in the mix:

A Cluster of X

Mr. and Mrs. X  Nightcrawler  X-Men

Three X-Men family sales. We’re going to look at the more specialized parts of the sales and then some of the ususal suspects they’re pulling random volumes from.

Rogue and Gambit

Nightcrawler

Jubilee

And the usual suspects

Unannounced Sales

Creepy  It's a Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

As always, it isn’t clear when the unannounced sales will end.

Dark Horse now has a Creepy / Eerie sale.

Creepy was the first one and is available in both archive  format and “Creepy Presents” volumes spotlighting individual artists (Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, Steve Ditko).

Eerie was the companion series. By halfway through it’s run, it had evolved into something a little different with multi-part stories and characters who returned, the breakout character being The Rook (a time traveler with some western elements baked in). It’s also available in archive format and “Eerie Presents” for collecting individual features (El Cid and Hunter).

Dark Horse still has a Plants Vs. Zombies sale by Paul Tobin / Ron Chan.  Also available in omnibus form.

Also on sale

And have a look at the $5 and under page.

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Still on Sale