In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts their best of 2023, Silver Surfer and Echo. DC has a Crisis sale… and it looks like there’s an unannounced sale at Dark Horse.

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):

First, a word about the Epic Collections. In previous years, there was an Epic Collection sale the week of Black Friday. That didn’t happen in ’23.  The Omnibus sale that did run on Black Friday, ran at the beginning of February in ’23. Will the Epic Collection sale move to February this year? We don’t know, nor are we sure what the pricing would be, given that the Masterworks sale was more expensive this year. But, given that Epic Collections feature prominently this week and we’ve gotten questions about them, that’s all we know.

An Interesting Definition of 2023

Doctor Strange  Guardians of the Galaxy  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel Best of 2023 Sale runs through Monday, 2/5.

Yeah… some of these option do not exactly scream “2023” at us.  Or even “2022.” But lets do some quick annotations on thing we _did_ like here. And yes, you’re going to see a recurring theme of “Al Ewing” and “Christopher Cantwell.” In no particular order:

  • Ant-Man: Ant-Iversary – Al Ewing / Tom Reilly; A sort of retrospective of the various Ant-Man helmet-wearers in a time-spanning tale involving Ultron.
  • Wasp: Small Worlds – Al Ewing / Kasia Nie; Effectively a companion piece to Ant-Man: Ant-Iversary. Both Wasps, Janet and Nadia, are drawn into a mystery from Janet’s early days as the Wasp. Silver age continuity-driven.
  • Daredevil & Elektra by Chip Zdarsky Vol. 1: The Red Fist Saga – Chip Zdarksy / Marco Checchetto; The first volume in the final act of Zdarsky’s highly entertaining Daredevil run.
  • Doctor Strange by Jed Mackay Vol. 1: The Life Of Doctor Strange – Jed MacKay / Pasqual Ferry; Strange and Clea investigate mysterious deaths in which they both might be involved. Opening act of MacKay’s latest Strange storyline, all of which have been good.
  • Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise – Tradd Moore; An artistic tour de force of outlandish landscapes
  • Guardians Of The Galaxy by Al Ewing – Al Ewing / Juann Cabal / Marcio Takara; Certainly not ’23, but we’re big fans of Ewing’s GoG run that blended space opera, fantasy and some interesting continuity bits so very well. Cancelled too soon!
  • Hellcat – Christopher Cantwell / Alex Lins; Spinning out of Cantwell’s Iron Man, Patsy Walker confronts a particularly weird mystery spinning out of her past. Her ex-husband, the Son of Satan, is involved. As is… Sleepwalker? One of the more offbeat offerings of the year.
  • Joe Fixit – Peter David / Yildiray Cinar; PAD revisits Vegas era Hulk with Spidey in tow, as the Kingpin makes a play for the Strip. A very fun comic that flew under the radar largely because it wasn’t in the current continuity.
  • Namor The Sub-Mariner: Conquered Shores – Christopher Cantwell / Pasqual Ferry; This is the Namor version of Old Man Logan. In a dystopian future where the surface world is in ruin, an aging Namor (whose temper has only gotten worse) tries to solve a mystery surrounding the remaining humans and decide if humanity is worth saving.
  • Sins of Sinister – Kieron Gillen / Al Ewing / Simon Spurrier / Leinil Francis Yu / Lucas Werneck / Paco Medina / Patch Zircher /Alessandro Vitti; This collects one of the best X-Men events in recent memory. Mister Sinister has been running experiments in how to take over the world and resetting reality whenever something goes wrong. Yes, the scientific method is being applied. Except things get out of control and he’s unable to reset things. Thus we see hundreds of years of his altered mutant taking over the universe and fighting amongst themselves as Sinister tries to reset things and escape. It’s the very odd instance of when an Elseworlds story is firmly in continuity and has consequences moving forward.
  • X-Terminators – Leah Williams / Carlos Gomez; Jubilee, Boom Boom, Dazzler and Wolverine (Laura Kinney) find themselves kidnapped by vampires and run through Arcade-esque death traps as entertainment. It’s surprisingly funny and a little off-color. Not what you’d necessarily be expecting, but a good time.

The Bird is the Word

Silver Surfer Masterworks  Silver Surfer - Englehart  Silver Surfer

The  Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall into three periods:

First, the classic original series by Stan Lee and (mostly) John Buscema. This ran from ’68-’70 and is a minor legend for a reason.

There wasn’t much solo Surfer for the better part of 17 years because the Surfer was considered to be Stan’s character in a similar way to how Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s. That changed in ’87 when Silver Surfer relaunched under the team of Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers. (Yes, the Batman pairing.) Predictably, it was excellent. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet.  We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

Then next major addition to the cannon was the Dan Slott / Michael Allred Silver Surfer in 2014. It is confusing listed in two places. The first three volumes here and the final two volumes here.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

And if you’re interested in cherry picking the Surfer’s original appearances in Fantastic Four, the very definition of classic, there’s an Epic Collection that does just that.

Don’t Cross the Streams

Echo  Daredevil: Born Again  Daredevil: Last Rites

The Marvel Echo & Kingpin Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

Gosh, you’d think a streaming show was dropping?

For Echo, what you’re looking for is Echo: The Saga of Maya Lopez, which collects both of her original Daredevil arcs by David Mack (who we don’t see enough of these days).

For Wilson Fisk, you have two excellent options.

The first one is what Marvel was supposed to be adapting for Disney+: Born Again by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. This is the one where The Kingpin finds out Matt Murdoch’s secret and goes about dismantling his life. A+ material.

Daredevil Epic Collection: Last Rites actually contains two Kingpin arcs. One by Ann Nocenti at the end of her run, with Bullseye in tow. The other, which gives the collection it’s name being a final throw down (for awhile) written by D.G. Chichester. Lee Weeks draws both and is the primary artist for this collection. A couple good runs, here.

One Title Per Event, Please

Crisis on Infinite Earths  Final Crisis  Blackest Night

The DC Crisis Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

We have been assured not every DC Event is a “Crisis,” but most of them have been. Especially post-DiDio taking office.  So lets walk through this chronologically.

The first “crises” were the annual Justice League/Justice Society team-ups, which are collected as Crisis on Multiple Earths (scroll down). The smaller “Volumes” are slightly less expensive than the larger “Books” (which are effectively 2 volumes). We’d say the best Volumes are V. 3 (for Earth-X / Freedom Fighters), V.5 (for the New Gods team-up that inserts Darkseid into the JLA’s sphere) and V. 6 (for the SSOSV arc and the All-Star Squadron crossover).

Next comes Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman & George Perez, which rebooted the line (and caused problems for anything Earth-2 or Legion of Superheroes). The “Companion” volumes are very much optional, although the Green Lantern stories in V.1 tie-in more than most.

Then comes ’94’s Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (note: everybody just called it “Zero Hour” when it was coming out) by Dan Jurgens & Jerry Ordway. This was the showdown with Hal Jordan’s villainous Parallax identity.

In ’05, there was a formal sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths called Infinite Crisis. Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez, George Perez and Jerry Ordway were the headliners here. Lots of story arcs built up to this one.

In ’08, Grant Morrison wrote the sprawling Final Crisis (that used to be a pain to read in collected edition until somebody wised up and put Superman Beyond and the relevant Batman issues in the collection). J.G. Jones, Doug Mahnke and Carlso Pacheco are the main artists for this highly regarded Event.

Now… the next thing on this list is Blackest Night. We’d have probably said Sinestro Corps War, but that was apparently too self-contained to the Green Lantern line. Here’s how you want to read it, because we don’t think it’s collected right. You absolutely need two books, here: Blackest Night and Blackest Night: Green Lantern. That’s the Event mini-series and the Green Lantern issues that are integral to it. We’d also recommend Blackest Night: Green Lantern Corps as being fairly integrated, just not as much as GL proper. This is the culmination of several plots Geoff Johns was weaving through the Green Lantern line after he revived it.

2011 brought Flashpoint, the ultraviolent sequence where The Flash tries to save his parents and ends up changing the timeline in very bad ways. This lead into New 52 and… the linkages were never really followed through on very well. Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert are the headliners, here.

2017 brought Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo into Event Mode with Dark Nights: Metal (and Starro!) and 2020’s sequel, Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Then in ’21, Joshua Williamson and Xermanico served up Infinite Crisis. 

That’s the nickel tour, skipping a few things we didn’t think really counted as a “crisis.”

Unannounced Dark Horse Sale?

We have no idea how long this will last, but we’re seeing what look like widespread discounts on Dark Horse titles.  A partial list (and the prices we’re seeing in case something changes):

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