Tag: Alien

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Thunderbolts; Alien; Star Wars; Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel has discounts on Thunderbolts and Aliens. Dark Horse drops the prices on their current Star Wars line, and we talk a little about Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees.

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):

Thunder. Thunder. Thunderca… Whoops, Wrong Series!

Thunderbolts  Winter Soldier  Taskmaster

The Marvel Thunderbolts Sale runs through Monday, 5/19.

Since the character mix in the film is a little different than the mix in the comics, we’re going to break this down by character…

The Thunderbolts have been through several iterations since they began in ’97, originally having been the Masters of Evil laying the groundwork for nefarious deeds. Judging by the previews, the film will be a little different from the comic.

Thunderbolts

The original series was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Eventually Fabian Nicieza tagged in as writer and Patrick Zircher became the lead artist a bit after that. Alas, these volumes jump around a bit after issue #50. The  omnibus editions are more complete, but aren’t on sale right now.

New Thunderbolts was the ’04-’06 relaunch, and yes, it’s included in the third omnibus of the original. Fabian Nicieza/Tom Grummett is the creative team, here.

This then turns back into (no adjective) Thunderbolts for ’06-’12, starting Nicieza/Grummett and then including runs by Warren Ellis / Mike Deodato and Jeff Parker/Kev Walker/Declan Shalvey

Thunderbolts relaunched for ’12-’14 with Daniel Way and then Charles Soule writing it. The artist rotation included Steve Dillon and Phil Noto.

Jim Zub and Jon Malin were behind the ’16-’17 Thunderbolts run.

’20 saw King in Black: Thunderbolts by Matthew Rosenberg/Gerry Duggan/Juan E. Ferreyra/Luke Ross.

’22 saw Thunderbolts: Back on Target by Jim Zub and Sean Izaakse.

The most recent volume in the sale is Thunderbolts: Worldstrike by Colin Kelly / Jackson Lanzing / Geraldo Borges.

With Thunderbolts, we feel pretty strongly you need to read the first sequence or two and get a flavor for the concept before jumping into the later evolutions.

Winter Soldier

The originating storyline runs in the 2004 series of Captain America by Ed Brubaker and a rotating squad of artists including Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Butch Guice and Mike Perkins. There are a couple omnibuses available, but this doesn’t really have a definitive larger collection like, say, the Hickman Avengers era. We’d probably point you to the Captain America Modern Era Epic Collection: The Winter Soldier volume. It’s a couple bucks more, but it gives you #1-19 straight through and that’s a very good run.

For solo series, the first choice is Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker, which is Brubaker and Butch Guice in a spin-off.

Also of possible interest:

Taskmaster

    • Taskmaster: Anything You Can Do… – <all sorts of creators>; Taskmaster’s early villain appearances fighting the Avengers, Spidey, Daredevil, etc.
    • Taskmaster: The Rubicon Trigger – Jed MacKay / Alessandro Vitti; A very funny adventure finds Taskmaster blackmailed into doing a job for Nick Fury. Should he refuse, the Black Widow will likely hunt him down and kill him.

 U.S. Agent

    • Captain America Epic Collection: The Captain – Mark Gruenwald / Kieron Dwyer; The famous arc where former Super Patriot and soon-to-be U.S. Agent John Walker assumes the mantle of Captain America
    • U.S. Agent: American Zealot – Christopher Priest / Georges Jeanty; In something of a deadpan political satire, John Walker develops some issues with his handlers when sent to a small town threatened by a corporate entity… if only the optics matched reality. Smart, but you figured that with Priest involved.

The Sentry

The Sentry is a character that is not always used well in the comics. We’d stick to the original Paul Jenkins / Jae Lee series and the Paul Jenkins / John Romita, Jr. sequel.

Not of this Earth

The Marvel Aliens & Predators Sale runs through Monday, 4/28.

Alien  Aliens: What If...?  Aliens

It’s probably best to divide this into the Marvel section and the Dark Horse section.

On the Marvel side of the fence, we are big fans of the Philip Kennedy Johnson Alien sequence (V.1 & 2 here; then V. 3 here — yeah, we know… comics publishers need to work on the meta data) with Salvador Larroca, followed by Julius Ohta; is essentially one winding tale of Weyland-Yutani Corporation conspiracies that starts out with hiding a few of those eggs that couldn’t possibly get out of control, moves on to interstellar pioneers and religion, then comes back to the living conditions of rogue androids. Effective slow burn storytelling.

Also on the Marvel side:

  • Declan Shalvey’s Alien run
    • V.1 w/ Andrea Broccardo
    • V.2 w/Danny Earls
  • Aliens: What If…? –Paul Reiser /Leon Reiser / Adam F. Goldberg / Hans Rodionoff / Brian Volk-Weiss / Guiu Vilanova – Yes, that Paul Reiser (and son, and friends) returns to explore what would happen if his Aliens villain, Carter Burke, had survived the film

From the original Dark Horse material:

A Note on This One

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

“Amazon Book Sale: Limited time savings of up to 75% on select titles” – unknown duration.

This extra-eclectic sale appears to be intact for the time being and we should probably talk about Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath. That was on this week’s reading list and it’s a very unusual book that lives up to the hype.

The elevator pitch is “Richard Scarry’s Dexter.” Which is to say, it’s drawn in an extra cute style reminiscent of children’s book legend Richard Scarry. A little more detail and fully rendered, but very Scarry. It (mostly) takes place in a happy little town, like the Scarry books. Except one of the residents is a serial killer who is alarmed when another serial killer turns up in town and goes on a very messy and public spree.

Hovarth even manages to get pacing and narrative style that’s similar to those children’s books… until it’s time to whip out the blood and swearing. This is from the Mouse Guard school of “it looks like a kid’s book until you get a little further in.” Is it a parody? Perhaps. It’s embracing the tradition more than mocking it, so we’d probably go with ironic pastiche.

This one isn’t going to be for everyone, but if that setup sounds appealing, you’ll probably love this. Excellence of execution and all. And we do mean execution. We hereby affirm the hype.

The discount could be better, but we just don’t see many discounts coming out of IDW these days.

Unannounced Sales

Star Wars: Tales from the Rancor Pit   Brandon Sanderson's Dark One  You Are Home

First, a Dark Horse Star Wars section. (May the Fourth is coming.)

And some more likely suspects:

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Deadpool Team-Up  Fantastic Four Vs. Galactus  Kid Venom

The trend continues. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Dropping Next Week

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Howard the Duck; Doctor Who; Aliens; Inhumans; Planet of the Apes and Ms. Tree

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts the unique mix of Howard the Duck, Inhumans and Alien. Plus, Doctor Who and Ms. Tree.

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):

You can find the highlights of this week’s DC sale here (plenty of $1.99 collected editions).

And a quick word about the Marvel sales. There’s usually a Masterworks sale around the holidays. You want what you want, when you want it… but keep that in the back of your mind. At this point we’re not sure if they’re holding that back for NYE or not, but we can’t imagine it’s not coming.  That said…

Duck Soup

Howard the Duck  Howard the Duck  Howard the Duck

The Marvel Howard the Duck Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

The original 27-issue Howard the Duck run by Steve Gerber/Frank Brunner/Gene Colan is a classic and a delight. (You may have noticed Gerber has several classics, too.) Wonderful comics.

Now, Howard was Geber’s baby and Gerber didn’t necessarily like other people writing Howard. We tend to feel that way, too, but you be you.  After a handful of issues post-Gerber, the series was relaunched (outside the comics code) as Howard the Duck Magazine. That was largely written by Bill Mantlo with Gene Colan, John Buscema and Michael Golden on art.

Then in ’15 (possibly due to a movie cameo), Howard got brought back by Chip Zdarksy and Joe Quinones. First in a mini-series. Then in a regular series.

We’re So Glad Disney Re-Acquired the Film Rights and Ended the Nightmare…

Inhumans.  The Origin of the Inhumans  Inhumans: Once and Future Kings

The Marvel Inhumans Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

Yeah, sign us up for the “The Inhumans shouldn’t replace the X-Men” party. And yes, Ms. Marvel should have been a mutant the entire time. Notarize it.

With Inhumans comics there is one volume that stands far above the rest: Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, which was part of the old Marvel Knights imprint when it came out as a 12 issue maxi-series. That’s your gold standard.

Curiously, the Black Bolt series by Saladin Ahmend and Christian Ward isn’t in the sale. We’d have probably slotted that at #2. It’s quite good and the first six issues? Extra special.

There’s nothing wrong with going back to the beginning. Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans is a collection of the early Stan Lee & Jack Kirby appearances from Fantastic Four and Thor. It’s also a thick 425 pages.

For something under the radar? Inhumans: Once and Future Kings by Priest and Phil Noto. Inhuman politics from the younger days of Black Bolt and Maximus… plus, Lockjaw comics.

Foxy

The Marvel 20th Century Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

Aliens: The Original Years  Alien  Planet of the Apes Adventures

And by “20th Century,” they mean 20th Century Fox. These are movie comics.

The Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus program is extended from last month’s omnibus sale. That’s the Dark Horse Aliens material. The first chunk of that Dark Horse Aliens material is also available in an Epic Collection, if you’d rather just dip a toe in. It’s likely the rest will eventually get in Epic format, but that will likely take a few years.

You may recall that Marvel was doing some new Aliens material. It’s true and we quite enjoyed it. Phillip Kennedy Johnson writes it. Salvador Larocca illustrates the first two volumes and Julius Ohta does the third. Weyland-Yutani Corporation is the through line for these tales, as you might expect, manipulating all manner of things as they look for that perfect weaponized life form. This one is split up oddly – Vol. 1 & 2 are here, while Vol. 3 is here.

And for something a little more odd, there’s Planet Of The Apes Adventures: The Original Marvel Years. What is this? Marvel’s Planet of the Apes magazine adapted the first two films. Marvel then reprinted the adaptations in color as the “normal” Adventures on the Planet of the Apes comic. Doug Moench writes, George Tuksa illustrates the first film and Alfredo Acala illustrates Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Unusually, they’ve got this “omnibus” priced at $6.99, although this is a lot skinner than the typical omnibus.

Hammer-isms

Ms. Tree

The Titan Ms. Tree Sale runs through Sunday, 12/31.

You don’t hear the name pop up that often, but Ms. Tree had a 50-issue run (plus specials) before DC Comics picked it up for a ~2.5 year run as an ~80 page quarterly, at which point everything stopped. Including the specials, that’s pushing the equivalent of a 100-issue run. Not something many 80s/90s indies can boast of.

Max Allan Collins, these days, is probably best known as the writer of The Road to Perdition. When this started he was fresh off some awards for his detective novels and was also writing the Dick Tracy comic strip. He was joined on his comic book adventure by Terry Beatty, who’s currently writing and drawing the Rex Morgan, MD comic strip.

Ms. Tree’s premise is essentially “what if Mike Hammer got killed and Velda took over?” (Velda being Hammer’s secretary who’s quite a bit more hardboiled in the books than in the TV adaptations.) So this is a Mickey Spillane/Mike Hammer-esque detective series. And yes, these days Collins – at Spillane’s request – has been completing the manuscripts and manuscript fragments from Spillane’s files. So if you’re looking for Spillane-esque, this is pretty close to official.

Now, these collections are somewhat out of order. V. 1 and V.2 are actually collecting the Ms. Tree Quarterly stories from DC, which weren’t collected before. V. 3 goes back to the beginning and starts going through the original material, which did have a couple different book collections (including mass market paperback).

V.1 – 3 are here.

V.4 (and the upcoming, not discounted, V.5) are here.

Knock Knock

Doctor Who

The Titan 10th Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

That’s 10th Doctor as in David Tennant’s first run on Doctor Who. Nick Abadzis is your writer, initially with Elena Casagrande and then Giorgia Sposito on art.

It’s available as single issues and collected editions.

We would point out that five issues @ $0.99 is cheaper than a five issue collection for $5.99. Just saying…

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