Batman Day Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we make a special mid-week appearance to break down the Batman Day Sale.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

Bat-Day

The Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/26.

We understand some people were having trouble getting into the full sale, and we sure haven’t been able to get at it on the desktop version of the site. No worries, we found the link for the full sale. Since there have been some complaints about that, we’re popping in a little earlier to get Batman sorted out and then we’ll be back at the usual time for everything else.

We’re not wild about there being zero sorting options (we’ll update the link if we find another), but it gets roughly alphabetical after a little scrolling. First the collected editions, then the single issues follow.

As is our custom, we’ll start out with the highlights by series, so you can sort through a bit more efficiently, but be warned – there are plenty of minor/stray volumes that didn’t make the highlights

Collected Editions

All-Star Batman ’16 – Scott Snyder’s version
All-Star Batman & Robin – The Frank Miller/Jim Lee version
Batman ’40 – ’11 – The original run through Morrison.
Batman ’11-’16 – The Scott Synder / Greg Capullo run
Batman ’16 – current – The Tom King / James Tynion IV eras
Batman ’66 – Volume 4 adapts the lost Harlan Ellison episode outline
Batman & Robin ’09-’11 – From the Grant Morrison era. ($3.99@)
Batman and Robin ’11 – ’15 – The Peter Tomasi/Patrick Gleason run
Batman and Robin Adventures ’95-’97 – Paul Dini and Ty Templeton working in the animated Batman universe, sorta like they’re doing now. First 2 volumes are $3.99
Batman: Shadow of the Bat – Alan Grant gets his own Bat-book, initially with Norm Breyfogle
Batman: The Adventures Continue: Paul Dini/Alan Burnett/Ty Templeton returning to the setting of Batman: The Animated Series… and it’s excellent
Batman: The Dark Knight ’11-14: The David Finch New 52 title with Greg Hurwitz hopping on shortly after
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Miller’s classic
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (original) – Individual arcs from the anthology
Batman: Universe – Brian Bendis and Nick Derington
Detective Comics ’37 – ’11 – The original run
Detective Comics ’11-’16 – New 52 relaunch – Tony Daniel, then Layman/Fabok (early volumes are $3.99)
Detective Comic ’16 – current – discounts run into the Tomasi run, the James Tynion IV era is $3.99 a pop
Superman / Batman – $3.99 is a good deal for the thick collections of the Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuiness run

Single Issues (the ones that aren’t all in collected editions and the older ones are all $0.99/issue)

So what’s good here? It’s Batman, so you can pick your flavor across the decades and zero in on that. Now, preferences aside, a lot of the less recent collections are $3.99, which is pretty low for DC these days.

We’d recommend having a browse through Legends of the Dark Knight, particularly the single issues, most of which haven’t been collected. With a few notable exceptions where it crosses over with a line-wide event, these are all self-contained story arcs. Teams are assembled for the individual story and the quality is pretty high throughout.

We also like the Batman: The Caped Crusader and Batman: The Dark Knight Detective reprint series that collect the mid-80s Batman and Detective runs (and are getting into the 90s). We particularly like the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run that bounces between those books, before ending in Shadow of the Bat. We’ve been reading that in the background for the last couple years and it’s a good time.

We also like $5.99 for the two volumes of the Greg Rucka / Shawn Martinbrough / Rich Burchett Batman: New Gotham. A good run with a unique look.

And for something odd and obscure? Batman Special #1, “The Player on the Other Side” wherein Mike W. Barr and Michael Golden (remember him?) introduce Batman’s opposite number, the original Wraith.

Still On Sale

The Marvel Monthly Sale – X-Men: Grand Design & Other Stories Sale runs through Monday, 10/3
The IDW Star Trek Sale runs through Thursday, 9/22
The Dark Horse World of Black Hammer Sale runs through Monday, 9/26
The IDW Recent Hits Sale runs through Thursday, 9/29

Batman Day

The DC Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/20 and it comes in three parts: Graphic Novels, Single Issues I and Single Issues II. Yes, that means a couple thousand single issues, including some oddities like Batman Family and the usually excellent – and mostly uncollected: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (the original run, not the later digital-first edition). Oddly enough, no Detective Comics single issues.

For collected editions, well… it’s mostly all there, from the current Tynion run (through Joker War) all the way back. You can easily pick your own flavor of Batman, but we’d point out a couple things…

Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle V. 1 is a nice thick volume containing the beginning of Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run. Early enough the John Wagner was involved. You get the debuts of The Ventriloquist and The Ratcatcher, a Clayface reunion and a tale of The Demon, among other things. Strong collection.

If you’d like something a little lighter on the wallet, while it’s included in the larger Archie Goodwin collection, Batman: Night Cries by Goodwin and Scott Hampton is a mere $1.99 for the standalone graphic novel.

Not the Ozzy Version

This one is a real jumbled mess to browse, so we’re going to break this down by series. The rule of thumb is that Epic Collections tend to be slightly better values than the Masterworks, but pick your format. Masterworks are released in order, Epics are… a little eclectic in their releases.

Iron Man’s story starts in Tales of Suspense. Call us heretics, but we don’t think Shellhead really soars until Archie Goodwin shows up at the end of this run and takes Tony into the solo title. That would be By Force of Arms if you go Epic or Masterworks V. 4.

So then the long running Iron Man series is one of eras. The opening run with Archie Goodwin is pure gold. While it’s not bad after Goodwin, it next takes a bit leap with David Michelinie and Bob Layton turn up. Both runs, really. The first run with John Romita, Jr. brings the classic “Demon in a Bottle” and the later run with Mark Bright brings “Armor Wars.” You can’t lose when those two are on Iron Man. And, honestly, the Denny O’Neil/(mostly) Luke Mc Donnell run in between the Michelinie/Layton runs is under-rated. The “Iron Monger” final arc ending in #200 is a good one that Hollywood embraced.

The next superlative run was dubbed Iron Man: Heroes Reborn. This is Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen. For inexplicable reasons, only about 1/2 of the series has been collected, but you can get all that has been in one volume. (Sorry Kurt, you can protest all you want, but your run is a highlight.)

And the final entry on the highlights list is the Matt Fraction/Salvador Larroca run. This run gets special recognition for the “World’s Most Wanted” arc. When Dark Reign’s “non-event” event dropped, Fraction put the story arc on pause and delivered a KILLER self-contained epic about Tony Stark on the run. And then popped back to what he was planning on doing a year later. Great run. You can save a little money by getting the omnibus edition that collects the first 3 volumes.

*The first volume of the current Christopher Cantwell/Cafu Iron Man is $2.99. We’re enjoying it, but we’re not ready to put it on the wall before the first arc is over. 😉