Tag: Batman

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Wolverine; Batman and… Bazooka Joe?

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Deadpool and Wolverine. DC has a Winter Sale with plenty of Batman. Dark Horse puts their Crime titles on sale and… Bazooka Joe?

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):

Administrative Note

It’s the holiday shopping season, which means a few more sales than usual and we’re breaking the week into two posts again. Last time out, we looked at the Infinity (Gauntlet), Thor and Image sales.

Whither Mister Freeze and Captain Cold?

Batman  The Brave and the Bold  Nightwing

The DC Winter Sale runs through Monday, 12/9.

Things could always get a little colder if you’re focused on Winter. (But apparently not Baron Winters?) Here are a few things that caught our eye while sifting through the listings:

  • Batman Vol. 1: Failsafe & Batman Vol. 2: The Bat-Man of Gotham – Chip Zdarsky / Jorge Jiménez / Mike Hawthorne; The first two volumes of the Zdarsky run for $1.99@
  • Batman/Catwoman – Tom King / Clay Mann / Liam Sharp; King continues the Bat/Cat relationship. $2.99 for 400+ pages is good value
  • Batman: One Bad Day – Ah, here’s Mr. Freeze. This is a series of ~80 page Euro-albums spotlighting Batman’s Rouges Gallery
  • The Brave and the Bold Vol. 1: Lords of Luck – Mark Waid / George Perez; Batman, Green Lantern and friends search for the stolen Book of Destiny; First time discounted for this September release
  • Creature Commandos – J.M. DeMatteis / Robert Khanigher / Fred Carillo; The original series from Weird War Stories; $1.99 – cheap
  • DCeased: War of the Undead Gods – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; The endcap to the DCeased Trilogy where the Anti-Life equation has gotten loose and transformed much of humanity (and the metahuman community) into zombie-like creatures
  • Gotham City: Year One – Tom King / Phil Hester; Gotham City starts to slide into the abyss when an heir to the Wayne fortune is kidnapped. Slam Bradley investigates and breaks eggs in a noir mystery set in pre-Batman times
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood; This series somehow manages to be a noir mystery AND accommodate the antics of the Bwa Ha Ha Justice League as doomed Christopher Chance investigates who poisoned him. Excellent series
  • Nightwing – Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo; As it’s nearing it’s wrap-up in the world of collected editions, the Taylor / Redondo Nightwing run has been a delight
  • Superman: Red Son – Mark Millar / Dave Johnson / Kilian Plunkett; What if baby Kal-El’s rocket crashed in Stalin’s U.S.S.R instead of Kansas?
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; The early days of the Batman/Superman team-up; Highly recommended

The Cheapest at What He Does

Wolverine: Spore  Wolverine: Enemy of the State  

The Marvel Wolverine Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

You ever see Wolverine shell out for expensive beer? He understands cheap.

This is the sale on the “main” Wolverine titles we said would be coming. Let’s start out by listing the various titles involved. (Relaunches? At Marvel? <faints>) The warning from earlier in the week still applies here: the Epic Collections are not on sale this time out and we’re waiting to see if they turn up on sale at a later date.

  • Wolverine (’82) – Chris Claremont / Frank Miller / Paul Smith; The miniseries that kicked off the solo stories and an X-Men 2-parter that’s a sort of follow-up
  • Wolverine (’88-’03) – The original ongoing solo title. Yes, it took six years after the mini… it was a different time
  • Wolverine (’03-’09) – Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson; Mark Millar / John Romita, Jr.; Jason Aaron/Ron Garney… among others
  • Wolverine: Origin (’06-’10) – Daniel Way / Steve Dillon
  • Wolverine: Weapon X (’09) – Jason Aaron / Ron Garney
  • Wolverine (’10-’12) – Jason Aaron / Renato Guedes / Ron Garney; “Wolverine Goes to Hell” was not a metaphor
  • Wolverine (’13-’14) – Paul Cornell / Alan Davis
  • Wolverine: Savage Land (’14) – Frank Cho
  • Death of Wolverine (’14) – All the mini’s in one volume
  • Old Man Logan (’16-’18) – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; While Logan is “dead,” his future dystopian self journeys to the present day. (And it’s actually pretty good, despite the wonky premise.)
  • Return of Wolverine (’18-’19) – Charles Soule / Steve McNiven; “They always come back”
  • Wolverine (’20-’24) – Ben Percy / Adam Kubert; The Krakoan era Logan. The first link is the “omnibus” page, here’s the individual collections page, which are discounted a little further into the series.

So, what’s actually good?

The  original miniseries is generally regarded as a classic.

With the original series, you’re pretty good from the beginning through the end of the Larry Hama run (a bit after #100), though towards the end of that, the X-Events get annoying. We’re particularly fond of the Archie Goodwin / John Byrne arc from #17-23.

The Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run is an enjoyable, lower key run.

Mark Millar did two great runs shortly after Rucka:

  • Enemy of the State w/ John Romita, JR introduces Gorgan and has Wolverine up against an unholy alliance of the Hand and Hydra
  • Old Man Logan w/ Steve McNiven has an aging Logan trying to keep to himself in a dystopian future when trouble comes looking. Yes, this should sound an awful lot like one of the films!

The Krakoan era, while it almost merged with X-Force (kind of like the triangle era Superman line), was quite enjoyable.

You Were Expecting a Dirty Harry Film?
Deadpool Classics Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan Deadpool by Joe Kelly

The The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line. And, of course, this time out we have the caveat that the Epic Collections are not on sale (nor is Cable & Deadpool).

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One (and selectively discounted this time)
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo
  • Deadpool (’22-’23) – Alyssa Wong / Martin Coccolo

Pick your preferred creator and go to town.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Avengers  Immortal Thor  Weapon X-Men

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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Air  Lobster Johnson  Mister X

Dark Horse appears to have all their crime-related titles (sometimes tenuously related) at ~50% off this week. Things we’re seeing discounts on:

And there’s a lot to like here. The paranoid art deco world of Dean Motter’s Mister X. The pulpy fun of the Mignolaverse’s Lobster Johnson (which proves to be very flexible in tone). Bendis and Oeming running a superpowered police procedural in Powers.

Also on sale:

Bazooka Joe and his GangBombing Nazi Germany

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Black Friday Sales, Part 2: DC’s “Black Friday Sale” w/ Batman, Birds of Prey and John Stewart; Plus, The Black Hammer

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Black Friday sales are early this year. In Part 2, DC offers up its “Black Friday Sale” with plenty of Batman. Dark Horse plays along with theme by extending The Black Hammer sale.

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):

Important Black Friday Administrative Notes:

This week, the Black Friday sales are out a week before Black Friday. (Everyone’s doing it!) There were some problems with the sale prices that were posted the morning of Tuesday, 11/19. If you bought something off the Deals page On Tuesday, double check and make sure the price isn’t a little lower right now. All the new sales were removed from the deals page Tuesday evening and reposted a few hours later. The new prices should be correct.

We also covered all of this year’s new entries in the Marvel Omnibus Sale in the previous post.

I See a Red Friday and I Want It Painted Black

Batman '89  Green Lantern War Journal  World's Finest

The DC Black Friday Sale runs through Monday, 11/25.

“But… if the Black Friday Sale is this week, what’s happening next week?” You ask.

We’ll all find out together.

As for this week, there’s no real theme (and the Deals page display is as jumbled as it gets), so here are a few things that caught our eye:

  • Batman Vol. 1: Failsafe – Chip Zdarsky / Jorge Jiménez; The start of the Zdarksy run for $2.99
  • Batman ’89 – Sam Hamm / Joe Quinones; The writer of the Tim Burton Batman films returns with what he had planned for Harvey Dent
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; A continuation of the ’90s animated series by people qualified to do so. Good stuff
  • Batman: Killing Time – Tom King / David Marquez; A noir caper as The Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman try to double cross each other while Batman keeps getting closer
  • Batman: Reptilian – Garth Ennis / Liam Sharp; Guess who’s running amok in the Gotham sewers? $1.99
  • Birds of Prey – Kelly Thompson / Leonardo Romero; The new series has Black Canary recruiting some heavy hitters for a raid on Paradise Island; Alternates between suspense and quirky
  • Crisis on Multiple Earths Book 3 – There’s more Justice League on sale, but this one gets you three of the better Justice Society team-ups, featuring the influential return of Darkseid, a Secret Society of Supervillains encounter and the All-Star Squadron team-up
  • Detective Comics Vol. 1: Gotham Nocturne: Overture – Ram V / Rafael Albuquerque; We’re enjoying this slow burn, gothic horror take on Batman a lot
  • Danger Street – Tom King / Jorge Fornés; Decidedly odd series tying together all the characters from the ’70s First Issue Special series. You already know if this is for you or not, based on that and the creators
  • Death: The High Cost of Living – Neil Gaiman / Chris Bachalo; Dream’s sister gets a spin-off miniseries
  • Gotham City: Year One – Tom King / Phil Hestor; A superior and dark noir private eye tale leading up to Gotham’s decline as Slam Bradley searches for a kidnapped baby with the last name of Wayne
  • Green Arrow (’23) – Josh Williamson /  Sean Izaakse; The current series, emphasizing a “Green Arrow Family,” similar to the “Flash Family” of recent years
  • Green Lantern: War Journal – Phillip Kennedy Johnson / Montos; John Stewart finds himself the target of a particularly horrific extra-dimensional incursion
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; The early adventures of the Batman/Superman pairing; Lots of fun (with occasional patches of darkness) and a must-read if you enjoy Silver Age mythos

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Amazing Spider-Man  Deadpool  X-Men '97

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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Black Hammer Omnibus  The Art of Daniel Clowes  Dramacon

Dark Horse still has the world of Black Hammer on sale this week.

This would be — we think it’s OK to call it a superhero universe at this point — the indie superhero saga by Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston and friends. There are a couple branches to how this saga unfurls.

The main Black Hammer series is here and that’s where you should start the journey. But, as with many long running titles, there are a few different editions to it and this is what we think the cheapest (if messy to sort) way to read the series is.

There are currently 7 volumes under the main series + a collection of specials + 2 volumes of “Visions” with guest creators playing in the Black Hammer standbox.

So what you want to do to cheap out is go to the omnibus page first.

Black Hammer Omnibus V.1 is basically the same thing as the first Library edition. That gets you the first two “regular” volumes (issues 1-13) + the Annual.

Black Hammer Library Edition V. 2 gets you the equivalent of “regular” volumes 3 &4 (“Age of Doom”) plus the Streets of Spiral material not in the Ominbus.

Then you can pick up again with V.5 of the regular editions.

Then you’ve got the World of Black Hammer collections, which are solo tales about the various heroes and villains like Barbalien and Sherlock Frankenstein.

And finally, there’s Black Hammer / Justice League: Hammer of Justice, the Lemire / Michael Walsh team up between… well, that’s in the title, isn’t it? This one offers savings in the single issue format.

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Also on sale (and branded as “Black Friday” sales, though we’re not sure if that’s out of mere convenience or not):

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s First Holiday Sale w/ Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman; Iron Man; X-Men

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has the first holiday sale of the season with their “Trinity” sale of Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman… as low as $1.99/book. Plus, Marvel puts almost the entire Iron Man catalog on sale, as well as some X-Men and Storm titles. Dark Horse chips in with an Erik Powell sale.

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):

DC’s First Holiday Sale Is Here

Batman: The Detective  Superman: The Man of Steel  Wonder Woman

The DC Trinity Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

This sale is often the first holiday sale. Why are we saying it this year? $1.99 collected editions. The rule of them is if a collected edition is $2.99, go ahead a pull the trigger. $1.99? Yeah, that’s rock bottom for DC in recent years.

As such we’re going to be taking a look here at the vast swatch of $1.99 and $2.99 books. (This is comics.CHEAP, after all.) There are definitely newer books on the sale, but they might be — gasp — $3.99 or $4.99.

Batman

  • All-Star Batman (’16 – ’17) – Scott Snyder / John Romita, Jr. / Jock / Rafael Albuquerque
  • Batman (’40 – ’11) – mixed pricing
  • Batman (’11 – ’16) – Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo; That’s right, you can stick the full Snyder/Capullo run in somebody’s stocking for $1.99@
  • Batman (’16 – present) – Most of the Tom King and James Tynion IV runs are $1.99@
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor / Andy Kubert; (yes, the first Taylor run for $1.99. Happy holidays.)
  • Batman: The Killing Joke – Alan Moore / Brian Bolland
  • Batman: Three Jokers – Geoff Johns / Jason Fabok
  • Batman: Year One – Frank Miller / David Mazzucchelli
  • Batman/Superman (’13 – ’16) – Greg Pak / Jae Lee
  • Detective Comics (’37 – ’11) – Mixed pricing
  • Detective Comics (’11-’16) – Tony Daniel, then John Layman / Jason Fabok
  • Detective Comics (’16 – present) – James Tynion IV / Eddy Barrows through Mariko Tamaki / Dan Mora (before the price starts inching up)

Superman

Wonder Woman

  • Wonder Woman ’87 – ’06 – Mixed pricing. Perez is one of the definitive runs, though not as cheap. The first Greg Rucka run is cheap, though, and it’s great.
  • Wonder Woman (’11-’16) – You want the first 6 volumes of the Brian Azzarello / Cliff Chiang / Goran Sudzuka run. It’s a divisive take on the character (see: Azzarello, Brian), but it’s a solid yarn. Treat it like an Elseworlds, if you like.
  • Wonder Woman (’16 – ’20) – You want the *excellent* first four volumes by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Liam Sharp

This is one you want to take some time and browse. Some interesting things in these lower price points? Sure.

Trinity by Matt Wagner teams up Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman as Ra’s al Ghul has a plot involving Bizarro, a rogue Amazon and some nukes. Also… it’s Matt Wagner. $2.99

Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia by Greg Rucka and J.G. Jones finds Wonder Woman and Batman having a little trouble agreeing to disagree. $2.99

Batman: Venom – Denny O’Neil / Trevor Von Eeden / Russ Braun / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez; About a year before Bane appeared, this was the Legends of the Dark Knight arc that introduced “venom,” the super-steroid that bulked up Bane. (With as good a creative lineup as you could reasonably ask for.) $1.99 – cheap.

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, 11/11.

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. ‘Ole Shellhead hasn’t had as many relaunches as some titles, but there is a volume where the collection options are a little… odd. Note: the Masterworks aren’t included in this sale, so you’re looking at Epic Collections and “regular” collections for the classic material.

  • 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
  • Superior Iron Man ’14-’15 – Tom Taylor / Yildiray Cinar
  • 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 Infamous Iron Man are not on sale. Why? We cannot say. Too close to Doom assuming the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme?

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.

The Calm Before?

X of Swords  X-Men: Red  Resurrection of Magneto

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

It might be better to break up the highlights as pre-Krakoa and Krakoa era.

Pre-Krakoa

  • X-Men: Magik – Storm & Illyana – Chris Claremont / Brent Anderson / John Buscema; extra dark tale of Illyana’s abduction by demons
  • Storm (’06) – Eric Jerome Dickey / David Yardin; prequel to her marriage to T’Challa
  • Storm (’14-15) – Greg Pak / Victor Ibenez

Krakoa Era

  • Marauders (’19-’22) – Gerry Duggan / Matteo Lolli / Stefano Caselli; Kitty becomes a pirate captain w/ Storm in tow
  • Giant-Size X-Men by Jonathan Hickman (’20) – Jonathan Hickman / Russell Dauterman / Alan Davis
  • X of Swords (’20) – Hickman showrunning the full creative staff
  • X-Men: Red (’22-’23) – Al Ewing / Stefano Caselli; Storm rules Arrako (Mars)
  • Resurrection of Magneto (’24); Al Ewing / Luciano Vecchio; An X-Men: Red end cap of sorts, as it’s time for Magneto to return from the dead

What’s good? We’re partial to the Krakoa era. X of Swords is a satisfying Event – yes, that’s possible, it just doesn’t happen often enough. X-Men: Red was a highlight of the late-stages of Krakoa and Resurrection of Magneto was interesting… although if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know we’re usually in the bag for Al Ewing. (Mmm… ZOMBO!)

Villains of the Atom

X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga Complete Collection  Mystique  X-Men: Age of Apocalypse

The  Marvel X-Men Villains Sale runs through Monday, 11/11.

It’s true. The X-Men have villains and sometimes the villains eventually become friends. And sometimes friends become villains and then become friends.

The best thing here is the utter classic X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga Complete Collection by Chris Claremont & John Byrne. Yes, the comic is definitely better than the film in this case and that edition has some extra issues that are worthwhile.  (For Jean Grey’s initial resurrection, there’s also X-Men: Phoenix Rising)

Best thing under most radars? Mystique, where she’s repurposed as Xavier’s spy. The first Brian K. Vaughan / Jorge Lucas / Michael Ryan omnibus is particularly good.

You have a couple options for the Age of Apocalypse arc. X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse does appear to be slightly more complete.

The sequel is filed under the two volume X-Men Vs. Apocalypse.

Also under the radar: Magneto (’14-’15 ) by Cullen Bunn & Gabriel Hernandez Walta goes to some dark places.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ms. Marvel  Ghost Rider

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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Big Man Plans  1984  Godzilla: The Half-Century War

Dark Horse has a sale on Eric Powell’s comics:

Also on sale:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman; Vertigo; Creature Commandos; Carnage; Dark Horse Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has a Halloween sale with Batman, Vertigo and even the Creature Commandos. Marvel adds Carnage to the season’s sale rotation and Dark Horse has discounts on manga.

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):

A Batman + Vertigo Sale For Halloween?

Batman - Haunted Knight  Creature Commandos  Unwritten

The DC Horror and Mystery Sale runs through Monday, 10/28.

You did hear that the return of the Vertigo imprint was announced at New York Comic Con, right? Chris Conroy will be heading up that and Black Label for DC editorial and it sounds like the right things are happening with more announcements imminent.

This sale is a little bit of Vertigo, a little more Batman than necessarily fits Halloween and some superhero things that fall somewhere in-between. We’ll run down the Halloween-specific highlights, but there’s a good deal more in what’s a relatively deep sale.

  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale; you knew this was going to be here
    • Batman: Dark Victory – the Loeb / Sale sequel
    • Batman: Haunted Knight – This collects the Halloween specials Loeb & Sale did prior to The Long Halloween, so it’s probably the most Halloween volume of the trio.
  • Detective Comics: Gotham Nocturn: Overture – Ram V  / Rafael Albuquerque; As long as we’re on Batman, Ram V’s been doing a long form, slow burn, horror-tinged Batman run that we’re enjoying quite a bit. This is part 1.
  • American Vampire – Scott Snyder / Rafael Albuquerque; A new strain of vampire appears and we follow him through history
  • Basketful of Heads – Joe Hill / Dave Stewart; From Hill’s short-lived imprint
  • The Books of Magic – Neil Gaiman / John Bolton / Charles Vess / Scott Hampton; pre-dating Harry Potter, the ultimate destiny of a boy destined to be a power wizard is debated by Constantine, The Phantom Stranger, Mister E and Doctor Occult
  • Creature Commandos – J.M. DeMatteis / Robert Kanigher / Fred Carrillo; The original Weird War stories that inspired the new cartoon
  • Creature Commandos Present: Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. – Grant Morrison / Doug Mahnke & Jeff Lemire / Alberto Ponticelli
  • DCeased – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; The Anti-Life Equation gets loose and turns most of the population – including superheroes – into zombie-like creatures, while the survivors look for a way out. Shockingly good and there are more collections in the main link.
  • Deadman – Neal Adams / Paul Levitz / Len Wein / Jim Aparo / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez; The original run plus the 70s appearances (the very definition of a cult hero)
  • Death: The High Cost of Living – Neil Gaiman / Chris Bachalo / Mark Buckingham
  • The Demon ’72-’74 – Jack Kirby’s fantasy-action classic about a Demon bound to a mortal host throughout the ages
  • The Demon ’87 – Matt Wagner’s take on Kirby’s creation
  • Hellblazer – The legendary (and consistently good) Vertigo run for $3.99-$5.99/volume
    • John Constantine: Hellblazer – Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell / Matias Bergara; This recent Black Label series is right up there with the best of the Vertigo run – which is saying a LOT
  • I… Vampire – J.M. DeMatteis / Tom Sutton; The original run from House of Mystery
  • Lucifer – Mike Carey / Peter Gross; Sandman spin-off where Lucifer leaves Hell for Los Angeles… a bit different from the TV version
  • Justice League Dark ’18 – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; That’s right, before The Nice House on the Lake; Tynion & Bueno were doing the Justice League horror title
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; A group of friends find themselves trapped in a vacation home at the end of the world; This link is the whole series in one volume
  • Night Force – Marv Wolfman / Gene Colan; Marv’s favorite work; The Tomb of Dracula team regroups for a series about a mansion with a portal through time and space, it’s mysterious resident and the agents he sends out on occult missions
  • Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon; As seen on TV, God has gone missing and Jesse Custer would like a word with him. Double volumes for $3.99
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – The Alan Moore / Steve Bissette / John Totleben / Stan Woch classic run (the Mark Millar / Phil Hester run is also listed here)
  • The Sandman – Neil Gaiman and a rotating cast of artists
  • The Spectre – John Ostrander / Tom Mandrake; under the radar classic as a dead man struggles with his existence and the spirit of wrath that’s tethered to him
  • Swamp Thing – Len Wein / Bernie Wrightson; The legendary original run by Wein & Wrightson through the pre-Moore ’80s revival.
  • The Unwritten – Mike Carey / Peter Gross; Yes, that’s M.R. Carey from The Girl With All the Gifts; The son of a novelist tries to figure out if he’s really the boy-wizard from his father’s books
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra; A mysterious event leaves one man alive on Earth (and his monkey). He’s looking for his missing girlfriend and the “Daughters of the Amazon” are looking for him.

More Hot Symbiote Action

Carnage  Carnage  Absolute Carnage

The Marvel Carnage Sale runs through Monday, 10/28.

If Venom has a sale (and movie), might as well have Carnage as a sequel sale, right?

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.

Jump forward to 2015 and you’ll find what’s probably our favorite take on  Carnage: Gerry Conway & Mike Perkins have a run that’s got a real 70s Marvel horror flavor to it. Carnage is seeking the Book of Darkhold and is pursued by Flash Thompson in his Toxin era, Man-Wolf and the Order of the Midnight sun.

Absolute Carnage was a big 2019 Event spinning out of Venom by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman.

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 third volume of this series is listed separately as Carnage Reigns with Alex Paknadel tagging in as writer.

The next series of Carnage follows that up with the team of Torunn GrØnbekk & Pere Perez.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Blood Hunt   Incredible Hulk  Miles Morales: Spider-Man

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

  • Blood Hunt – Jed MacKay / Pepe Larraz – $9.99

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Astro Boy Elfen Lied Path of the Assassin

Dark Horse has a wide selection of their manga titles on sale this week. Some titles we noticed:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Teams; Thanos; The Spider-Verse; Captain Marvel; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts teams and team-ups. Marvel slashes prices on Thanos, Captain Marvel and the Spider-Verse. Plus, Usagi Yojimbo.

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):

Let’s Fight and Then Team Up

Batman and the Outsiders  Legion of Superheroes: The Curse  Suicide Squad

The DC United Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

This is a deep, 600+ item sale that’s _mostly_ centered around team books and team-ups. Mostly. The sale page is almost completely unorganized, but it’s worth an extended browse. There’s a lot there.

Some things we found interesting and in a semblance of order? Sure, we can do that.

The OG Marvel Cosmic Sale
Avengers Vs. Thanos Silver Surfer: The Return of Thanos Infinity Gauntlet

The Marvel Thanos Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock.  You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating). Thanos got VERY involved in things, starting with The Return of Thanos and continuing with Thanos Quest and Silver Surfer: The Infinity Gauntlet. And yes, the first two volumes absolutely set up the famous The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim).  And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material.  “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a couple graphic novel trilogies:

and

And, for good measure, while not really part of the above – Avengers: The Legacy of Thanos by Roger Stern, John Buscema and John Byrne is a highly entertaining tale of Nebula (yes, the Granddaughter of Thanos who’d later be in Guardians of the Galaxy) attempting to conquer the Skrulls.

The most recent big blip on the radar was the Donny Cates / Geoff Shaw Thanos Wins and its spin-off, Cosmic Ghost Rider.

Not A Big Red Cheese?

Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin Captain Marvel Captain Marvel

The Captain Marvel Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Right. This one is a little goofy to define (and the beginning overlaps a bit with Thanos).

First off, the original Kree Captain Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel:

Is Starlin’s Mar-Vell, the best Mar-Vell? We’d say so. We’d also say the Englehart/Milgrom follow-up is well worth your time, but it’s not included here.

Carol Danvers as Ms./Captain Marvel:

OK… brace yourselves… this one has a ton of relaunches:

We think that’s the overly complicated chronology, anyway. For recommendations, we’re not really experts on this set of books, but we’re inclined to say go with the current Thompson run. Kelly Sue DeConnick has a very dedicated fanbase, so maybe browse the sample pages there and see if that catches your fancy, too?

Then there’s Mar-Vell’s son Genis:

This one is a Peter David joint, through and through. We did read the ’22 version last year and enjoyed it. It has a little more going on than you might think at first.

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

Spider-Verse  Superior Spider-Man  Spider-Gwen

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 9/23.

So, the Spider-Verse is basically a celebration of the Spider-Man cast expanding with a lot of Spidey-related characters and then throwing in some Spidey-equivalents from different dimensions. Miles Morales being the most important one, important enough to be ported into the main “616” universe when the Ultimate line was shuttered.

Spider-Verse was the original Spider-Man family event in the comics that formalized much of this. You’re best off getting the omnibus edition that has the entire thing and all the crossovers, else it gets complicated figuring out reading order between the various series-specific collections.  There are a ton of creators working on this, as you might expect, but this is effectively a Dan Slott as show-runner affair. (Which means, yes, Christos Gage is not far behind.) You can also grab the lead-in series,

If you’re a film fan, the first thing you’re probably thinking of when you hear Spider-Verse is Miles. We broke it down last week, but the  Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale is still running through Monday.

There’s also a bunch of Spider-Gwen / Ghost-Spider material.

The original Spider-Gwen run was Jason Latour writing with Robbie Rodriguez on art.

The first series is collected as Volume 0. Then the second series is collected as Vol. 1-6, but you can get Unmasked instead of V. 4&5 and save a little money. (We warned you this was messy!)

A bit later, famed fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire (sometimes known as Mira Grant) wrote some Spider-Gwen, as the feature was re-named Ghost-Spider. The first series is here.  The second series, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa and Ig Guara, is here.

And the most recent installment in the sale is Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse by Tim Seeley and Jodi Nishijima.

And then we have a Superior Spider-Man section.

Yes, that would be the run when Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body. One of the greatest moments of “wait… this is actually good” in recent history. (Everyone we knew winced at the high concept, but the execution was on the money!)

The primary Superior Spider-Man series by Dan Slott and Ryan Stegman is best packaged in the 2-volume Complete collection, that also includes the “Dying Wish” arc that sets up the run.

Superior Spider-Man Companion gets you the first 12 issues of Superior Spider-Man Team-Up and some tie-in issues.

Superior Spider-Man (’18-’19) is the Christos Gage / Mike Hawthorne revival that returns Otto Octavious to his Spidey persona.

Of course, we all know who the real star of the Spider-Verse is: Spider-Ham!

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ultimate Spider-Man She-Hulk  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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Usagi Yojimbo  Seconds The Hunger and the Dusk

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it. The strange thing is, only the later volumes are showing the good discounts? Usagi Yojimbo Saga is the omnibus version and the better buy. Single volumes are here.

Also with discounts:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Miles Morales – Spider-Man; DC’s Top 100; House of M; Groo; The Crow; Nova

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC drops a Top 100 sale. Marvel offers discounts on Miles Morales, Nova and House of M. Dark Horse cuts prices on Groo, along with several unannounced offerings.

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):

So Much For Top 10

Kingdom Come  Superman  Watchmen

The  DC Top 100 Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

Top 100 what? We have no idea what the criterion would be, here. It’s a mix of recent and evergreen titles. Not a bad mix, either. A few things standing out:

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

  Miles Morales: Spider-Man  Miles Morales

The Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Miles, of course, was the second Ultimate Spider-Man, but that world no longer exists and now there’s a new Ultimate Spider-Man and… we wouldn’t want to explain that to somebody walking in off the street.

For the first Brian Bendis/David Marquez/Sara Pichelli run, you’re probably best off with the Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection set.

Then jump to the  Spider-Man for the ’16 Bendis/Pichelli/Nico Leaon run. (Yes, constant relaunching and it’s confusing to follow.)

Before we’re done with Bendis, there’s the very good Spider-Men series of mini-series where the “traditional” Peter Parker crosses paths with Miles. Get them both in one volume with Spider-Men: Worlds Collide by Bendis & Pichelli.

And after that wraps, it’s time for Miles Morales by Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garron.

And then, Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Cody Ziglar and Federico Vicentini. 

No More Mutants

House of M  X-Men: Reload  X-Men: The Day After

Marvel’s House of M and Decimation Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

This would be the Event Miniseries where Wanda snaps and rewrites reality… forming the basis for the WandaVision TV series.  Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel are your creators. This is the sort of Event where we recommend getting the main series and then dipping your toe into the supporting collections in the sale at your own discretion.  A good chunk of the Marvel line shifted their storylines to participate in the Event, buy how relevant they were to the main storyline varied widely and a lot of it would firmly be considered side stories. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not always presented as such.

The “Decimation” part of the sale refers to the aftermath in the X-Men line after Wanda proclaims “no more mutants” and decimates the population. X-Men: Reload By Chris Claremont Vol. 2: House Of M by Claremont/ Chris Bachalo / Billy Tan covers House of M and Decimation in Uncanny X-Men. X-Men: Decimation – The Day After by Peter Milligan / Salvador Larocca / Roger Cruz covers Decimation in X-Men.

Corpsman
Nova Classic  Nova by Abnett & Lanning

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Theft

Criminal  Gideon Falls  Stray Bullets

The Image Summer Crime Sale runs through Sunday, 9/15.

Crime? Maybe crime, horror and science fiction? The sale’s title might be a bit reductive.

What we’d put at the top of it:

  • Criminal – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips; While this was their second series (after the lesser known Sleeper), their mid-00s revival of crime comics locked in Brubaker & Phillips as a long term team… and Image would soon lure them away from Marvel
  • Fell – Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith; A creepy, surrealist detective feature and we seem to recall the plots often resembling actual “News of the Weird” newspaper columns.
  • Gideon Falls – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; A wild SF/horror/time travel tale of a mysterious barn that appears and disappears, always leaving a trail of bodies
  • Stray Bullets – David Lapham; This was Criminal, long before Criminal came to be. Along with AKA Goldfish and Jinx by Bendis, this was the main crime comic of the late ’90s.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Men Ultimate Spider-Man

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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Robbin’

Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood

The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale – Robyn Hood Sale  runs through Sunday, 9/22.

This sale is in three flavors with three links:

Looks like the Omnibus is cheaper than the collected editions and the collected editions are cheaper than the single issues, but you can double check that on individual collections. 99-cent single issues make that easy.

And yes, those really are Chuck Dixon and Howard Mackie on runs towards the bottom of the listings.

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

The Crow  Groo  Barbaric

Over at Dark Horse, everyone’s favorite stupid barbarian is on sale. Yes, that’s right… it’s Groo by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier!

And taking a wider view:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Image Comics Returns; X-Men; Moon Knight; Green Arrow; Minor Threats

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Image Comics returns to the discount listing for the first time in a year. DC offers sale prices on some more recent titles like Green Arrow. Marvel cuts prices on Moon Knight, X-Men, and Avengers vs. X-Men. Plus, Minor Threats.

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):

Holy Crap! Image Is Back?!?

Black Magick  Chew  Nailbiter

The Hooked on Image Comics Sale runs through Thursday, 8/29.

We get a lot of questions about why Image hasn’t had any sales lately. Interestingly, this is right about when Image resurfaced for a few weeks of sales in mid-August 2023. Um, ’tis the season?

This is a rather small and… almost alphabetical slice of Image?

Things we’ve read and can happily recommend:

  • Black Magick – Greg Rucka / Nicola Scott; a police detective who happens to be a witch has her worlds collide. What were Rucka and Scott doing before the Wonder Woman relaunch? This.
  • Cassanova – Matt Fraction / Gabriel Ba; Extra trippy adventures with a dimension-hopping thief caught up in a conspiracy with a very Jerry Cornelius vibe to it.
  • Chew – John Layman / Rob Guillory; Absurdist adventures in a world where eating chicken is outlawed with a federal agent who experiences the sense of what he eats. So if he ate your thumb, he’d know where it had been. Black humor abounds, as to vampires and a death-dealing rooster. It’s a favorite. Layman’s now working on Spawn and Titans. This is the book that really launched Layman.
  • Nailbiter – Josh Williamson / Mike Henderson; Why does a small town in Oregon produce so many serial killers? A federal agent descends upon the town with one of those prodigal serial killers in tow, looking to find out. One of the things Williamson was doing before Superman and GI Joe took over his hours.

And By Recent, We Mean Within 5 Years

Danger Street  Green Arrow  The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country

The DC Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

It does have some new releases in it, though. More importantly, there are plenty of $2.99 collected editions. Let’s work through some highlights.

X-Men: The Glory Years

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live   X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix  

The Marvel X-Men Masterworks/Epic Collections Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

To paraphrase The Blues Brothers, “We’ve got both kinds, Epics and Masterworks.”

Which is to say this is all contained in the original X-Men series link.

Pick your preferred format. In general, the Epics have a more pages and end up being more bang for your buck… although the more recent Masterworks have been pretty thick volumes.

From a pragmatic standpoint, the Masterworks volumes have everything in order through issue #243 (Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 16 – which covers Inferno).

The Epic Collections exist in order through #198… and then they start jumping ahead to Jim Lee / Whilce Portacio era. If you’re looking for 90s X-Men, you want the Epics.

If you’ve never tried the original X-Men, we’d say go with The Sentinels Live Epic Collection. It’s at the very tail end of the original run that the original X-Men run is at its best: a bit of Jim Steranko and then a Roy Thomas / Neal Adams sequence that ended all too quickly.

For the “new” X-Men, we’re cool with the theory that Giant-Sized X-Men #1 / Uncanny X-Men #94 through #200 is one big arc. That’s where we’d start if we were new. The Epic Collections stop at #198 before jumping ahead and that’s super annoying. #200 is a landmark issue.

The Light of the Silvery Moon

Moon Knight  Moon Knight Epic Collection   Moon Knight

The Marvel Moon Knight Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

The original Moon Knight run is mostly in Epic Collections, but it’s in two separate links because… well, we shouldn’t be surprised by this, should we?  The first link has two volumes that are not closely related. Bad Moon Rising is the Werewolf by Night appearances through the backups in Hulk Magazine and the first issues of 1980 solo series. The other volume in that link… we’re not as big on. That was later volumes.

You can go here for the rest of the 1980 Moon Knight series, which was the most famous version for quite some time. If you came into the character through the TV series, know that the original Moon Knight was a lot closer to Batman and The Shadow. Oh, sure the werewolf showed up, but most of the mystical things around Konshu were kept in the background and a lot more mysterious. The multiple identities were originally more like the cover identities adopted by the Shadow (and the original series editor, Denny O’Neil, adapted The Shadow for DC.) This is where Moon Knight got popular.

If you came in through the TV show, there really isn’t a comic that quite matches that version of the character, but the series did draw on the Jeff Lemire / Greg Smallwood Moon Knight series in which Moon Knight has a run-in with the Egyptian gods and his personalities run amok. It’s also a good run.

We also have been enjoying the current Jed MacKay/Alessandro Cappuccio Moon Knight series. This one takes up the unenviable task of rationalizing the various incarnations over the years (and there have been a lot of different takes on the character). Mr. Knight is in therapy for his multiple personality issues. He’s running the Midnight Mission and conduct himself as Konshu’s ambassador… after a fashion, although he’s not really happy with Konshu. And there are vampires. Lots of vampires.

Highlights of the rest:

  • Moon Knight ’89-’94 – Most of this is only collected in omnibus form  for the longest running volume. This is largely the Terry Kavanaugh years with Gary Kwapisz and James Fry on art. Possibly more interesting, it also includes a Bruce Jones/Denys Cowan special and a Doug Moench/Art Nichols team-up with Shang Chi. (A second volume with earlier issues drops in October.)
  • Moon Knight ’10-12 – Brian Bendis / Alex Maleev; Controversial to say the least, this one really leans into Moon Knight’s multiple personality disorder and breaks the character if you prefer the original concept. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly witty and funny. One of the oddest takes on the character.
  • Moon Knight  ’14-’15- Most notable for the style-forward Warren Ellis/Declan Shalvey reworking (introducing the business suit)

The novelist corner, because Marvel has put a couple name novelists on the property:

Friday Night Fights

Avengers Vs. X-Men A.X.E. Judgement Day

The Marvel AvX & A.X.E. Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

And by “AvX,” they mean Avengers vs. X-Men. “Go along to get along” doesn’t necessarily apply here.

The “primary” Avengers Vs. X-Men was an Event back in ’12 with all sorts of creators contributing to it. Were there tie-in books? It’s Marvel, so there were plenty. Avengers vs. X-Men: VS was essentially the “all-fights” series.

Also included is the more recent A.X.E.: Judgment Day, the Kieron Gillen/Valerio Schiti – driven Event that crossed over Avengers, X-Men and The Eternals.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Beware the Planet of the Apes  Resurrection of Magneto  Cable: United We Fall

The trend returns after a short break. 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

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Minor Threats  Daisy

That Patton Oswalt guy has recently been seen in comic shops promoting his “Minor Threats” franchise. Guess what’s on sale?

Also from Dark Horse:

  • Daisy – Colin Lorimer
  • UXB – Colin Lorimer

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Huge Batman Sale; Justice League; Black Hammer; Matt Kindt

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC breaks out a very deep and cheap Batman sale with lots of $2.99 ebooks… and the Justice League, too. Marvel cuts prices on Elektra. Dark Horse highlights Black Hammer and Matt Kindt amidst a line-wide sale.

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 Had Me at $2.99 Batman

The DC Batman: The Caped Crusader Sale runs through Monday, 8/12.

Well, now… this is certainly an interesting and relatively exhaustive sale. Most of the collected editions are on sale and at good prices. You see $2.99 at DC and it’s time to pull the trigger, so take note and lord it over your friends.

And yes, it’s named after the new animated series, which we’ve started watching and is starting out astonishingly dark and pulpy. (Both good things in our book.)

Let’s try and make things a little easier list and mark off the more notable of the various series included in the sale:

Batman Special Batman: The War of Jokes and Riddles  Batman '89

What’s that? You’re still not satisfied? *Sigh* Fine, there’s some Harley Quinn in this one, too.

  • Harley Quinn ’00-’04 – Karl Kesel / Terry & Rachel Dodson
  • Harley Quinn ’13-’16 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin
  • Harley Quinn ’16-’20 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin
  • Harleen ’19 – Stjepan Sejic
  • Harley Quinn ’21- current – Stephanie Phillips / Riley Rossmo

What’s good? That depends on what flavor of Batman you like. It seems the caped crusader is flexible and has had different tones over the years.

Do you like the 90s Event era where the Batman family of books crossed over?  Most of those collections are $2.99/$3.99. Here’s a cheat sheet for that (we have a soft spot for No Man’s Land):

Prefer the mid-to-late 80s era? Starlin/Aparo or Grant/Breyfogle? Those collections are running $3.99/$4.99 and filed under the original Batman and Detective runs.

“The Caped Crusader” branded volumes collect the Batman issues and start here

“The Dark Knight Detective” branded volumes collect the Detective Comics issues and start here.

We’re also going to call out a few things that are a hair more expensive, but normally have a much higher price point:

Coincidentally, This Title is Returning Soon

Justice League of America  Justice League International Justice League

The DC Justice League Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

That’s right, as it’s announced at Comic-Con that Mark Waid & Dan Mora are launching a new Justice League Unlimited series, a sale on the Justice League follows. To paraphrase Casablanca, “We’re shocked. Shocked to find Justice League on sale.” We also note some decent prices and a chunk of $2.99 books sprinkled in.

Let’s start out by counting down the many flavors available:

For some of the side series:

What’s good?

The Nail is Alan Davis with an A+ Elseworlds take on a Justice League on a world where Superman did not emerge as the first hero.

You can get a big chunk (500+ pages) of the BWA HA HA era in omnibus format for $5.99.

$2.99 for Dwayne McDuffie’s run (starting here) is a good deal.

$2.99 for the first pair of Silver Age collections is also a good deal.

Under the radar?  The Christopher Priest / Pete Woods arc from ~3 years back. It’s just good comics without silly crossovers.

Miss Natchios If You’re Nasty…

Elektra Assassin  Daredevil: Fall From Grace  Daredevil The Man Without Fear

The Marvel Elektra Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

That would Elektra, the former Hand assassin and on-again-off-again love interest of a certain Mathew Murdoch.  Strangely, the original Daredevil run isn’t included here, but let’s do a quick rundown in rough chronological order.

What’s good here? Elektra: Assassin is the undisputed classic. A very odd series, originally from Epic (not for kids) about Elektra rebelling against The Beast (the demon behind The Hand, not the X-Man) and stalking a politician controlled by The Beast.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is essentially Miller doing “Daredevil: Year One.” It isn’t Elektra-heavy, but it’s good.

Daredevil & Elektra by Chip Zdarsky is quite good, though it’s also the final act of Zdarsky’s run and isn’t the best place to start.

The Chichester / McDaniel Daredevil era seems to be getting a critical reappraisal these days. We liked it the first time around and it’s when Elektra was re-introduced into the supporting cast (on order from editorial, IIRC).

Unannounced Sale of the Week – Held Over

The Hunger and the Dusk

The Hunger & The Dusk, V.1 – G. Willow Wilson / Chris Wildgoose; We were startled this was on sale for $1.99 last week (it hasn’t even been out for 2 months yet), we’re still startled… but it was probably our favorite read of the last month and it’s well worth a look if you like intelligent Epic Fantasy.

All Kinds of Unannounced Dark Horse Sales

Apache Delivery Service

There are two new unannounced Dark Horse Sales:

1)  The wide world of Matt Kindt, who’s done quite a bit of work for them:

2) Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston

And then the line-wide sale

Goldfish  Martha Washington  Nexus

.Dark Horse has a mostly line-wide 50% off sale, excepting recent releases and a few things where perhaps the price wasn’t updated. This is stilted towards the collected editions. It’s been going on since last week and we think it should still be active through Monday, maybe Tuesday? How does a person properly browse this?

Not very easily. Amazon does not make it easy to sort by publisher.

This link will get you a _very_ unsorted stream of Dark Horse titles to pick through.

And let’s drop links for some of the usual suspect series while we’re at it:

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Still on Sale

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Comic-Con Edition – Batman; The Hunger and the Dusk; Line-Wide Dark Horse Discounts

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC celebrates SDCC with discounts, Dark Horse goes half-off and The Hunger and the Dusk should be cheap enough for you.

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):

We’re smack dab in the middle of San Diego Comic-Con, which is partially reflected by this week’s sales. We say partially, because Marvel didn’t see fit to issue a new sale this week. They’re content to keep a Wolverine and a couple Deadpool sales we’ve covered in previous weeks active (see links at the bottom). But that’s not to say there aren’t some new things to look at:

Unannounced Sale of the Week

The Hunger and the Dusk

The Hunger & The Dusk, V.1 – G. Willow Wilson / Chris Wildgoose; This collected edition has only been out for around 6 weeks. It really should not be $1.99, but somehow it is. (And we’re not sure for how long, so don’t sleep on it.)

As it happens, we read this very collection a couple weeks back and loved it. It’s an Epic Fantasy where despite deteriorating land conditions drawing the humans and orcs into deeper conflict, the two must form a shaky alliance to fend off invaders. Invaders that just might be smarter than they let on. And it’s character-driven, to boot.

We think this is Wilson’s best work since maybe Cairo and Air back at Vertigo. (Cairo is vastly underappreciated.)  If you like Epic Fantasy / sword and sorcery, take a $2 flier on this one.

For the Love of Comic-Con

Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card  The Human Target  World's Finest

The DC at SDCC Sale runs through Monday, 7/29.

Yes, the San Diego Comic-Con is going on through the weekend. You might even be there? (We’re not. This is comics.cheap and there is no such thing as ComiconHotel.cheap!)

This week sees another mix of DC products whose display is incredibly random on the Amazon/Comixology page, so let’s run down some of the things we found interesting:

  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card – Tom King / Mitch Gerads… we’re assuming you’re familiar with that pairing by now?
  • Batman: Killing Time – Tom King / David Marquez; Something of a villain-centric noir caper… that comes recommended from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, no less
  • Gotham City: Year One – Tom King / Phil Hester; A proper hardboiled detective story about a kidnapping that also details how Gotham City got the way it is. This is Slam Bradley story with a little Batman around the outer edges
  • Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood; All-round excellent 2-volume series where the Human Target looks for who poisoned him and the Bwa Ha Ha Ha Justice League are the main suspects; Manages to dance between a dark mystery and Bwa Ha Ha flawlessly. And that art!
  • JLApe: The Complete Collection – A collection that just might make a monkey out of you
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; This very effective horror tale of the end of the world (with imminent sequel) is now in one volume
  • One-Star Squadron – Mark Russell / Steve Lieber; A brilliant seriocomic send-up of the gig economy as Red Tornado tries to run a sort of heroes for hire app
  • Superman (’23) – Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; The current series is a rock solid “classic” Superman series; recommended
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; A serious contender for DC’s best title. Mora will be taking on the “normal” Superman title soon, too.

Events

You may have noticed DC’s been leaning into the Events lately. Here are the last few:

Feeling Grimm About Comicon?
Grimm Tales of Terror  Grimm Tales of Terror

The Zenescope Grimm Tales of Terror Sale runs through Saturday, 8/17

This sales comes in two flavors:

Wide-Scale Unannounced Sale

Goldfish  Martha Washington  Nexus

It seems that Dark Horse has a mostly line-wide 50% off sale, excepting recent releases and a few things where perhaps the price wasn’t updated. This is stilted towards the collected editions. The question is how does a person properly browse this?

Not very easily. Amazon does not make it easy to sort by publisher.

This link will get you a _very_ unsorted stream of Dark Horse titles to pick through.

And let’s drop links for some of the usual suspect series while we’re at it:

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Still on Sale

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Wolverine; Umbrella Academy; Batman; Manhunter

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops the “real” Deadpool and Wolverine sales. DC discounts some more Batman, Superman and friends. Dark Horse celebrates the comics of Gerard Way and Umbrella Academy.

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):

The Cheapest at What He Does

Wolverine  Wolverine: Enemy of the State  

The Marvel Wolverine Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

You ever see Wolverine pay for expensive beer? Our boy is CHEAP!

This is the sale on the “main” Wolverine titles we said would be coming. Let’s start out by listing the various titles involved. (Relaunches? At Marvel? <faints>)

  • Wolverine (’82) – Chris Claremont / Frank Miller / Paul Smith; The miniseries that kicked off the solo stories and an X-Men 2-parter that’s a sort of follow-up
  • Wolverine (’88-’03) – The original ongoing solo title. Yes, it took six years after the mini… it was a different time
  • Wolverine (’03-’09) – Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson; Mark Millar / John Romita, Jr.; Jason Aaron/Ron Garney… among others
  • Wolverine: Origin (’06-’10) – Daniel Way / Steve Dillon
  • Wolverine: Weapon X (’09) – Jason Aaron / Ron Garney
  • Wolverine (’10-’12) – Jason Aaron / Renato Guedes / Ron Garney; “Wolverine Goes to Hell” was not a metaphor
  • Wolverine (’13-’14) – Paul Cornell / Alan Davis
  • Wolverine: Savage Land (’14) – Frank Cho
  • Death of Wolverine (’14) – All the mini’s in one volume
  • Old Man Logan (’16-’18) – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; While Logan is “dead,” his future dystopian self journeys to the present day. (And it’s actually pretty good, despite the premise.)
  • Return of Wolverine (’18-’19) – Charles Soule / Steve McNiven; “They always come back”
  • Wolverine (’20-’24) – Ben Percy / Adam Kubert

So, what’s actually good?

The  original miniseries is generally regarded as a classic.

With the original series, you’re pretty good from the beginning through the end of the Larry Hama run (a bit after #100), though towards the end of that, the X-Events get annoying. We’re particularly fond of the Archie Goodwin / John Byrne arc from #17-23. Since there are multiple formats for these issues, you can pick your format.

The Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run is an enjoyable, lower key run.

Mark Millar did two great runs shortly after Rucka:

  • Enemy of the State w/ John Romita, JR introduces Gorgan and has Wolverine up against an unholy alliance of the Hand and Hydra
  • Old Man Logan w/ Steve McNiven has an aging Logan trying to keep to himself in a dystopian future when trouble comes looking. Yes, this should sound an awful lot like one of the films!

We’ll Put $20 on Uncle Ben
Deadpool Classics  Cable & Deadpool  Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

The The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One
  • Deadpool Max (’10 – ’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker in a Max (“adult”) series
  • Deadpool Max 2 (’11 – ’12) Lapham / Baker, back for more
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Spider-Man / Deadpool (’16-’19) – Initially, Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

Pick your preferred creator and pay attention to the Epic Collections in the ’97 run.

Did Oberon Authorize This?

Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds  Manhunter  Superman: Man of Tomorrow

The DC Midsummer Sale runs through Monday, 7/22.

The sale page on this is possibly the most disorganized one we’ve seen in months. Not much order to it, if any. Let’s have a peek at some highlights, though.

  • The Authority – Warren Ellis / Brian Hitch, then Mark Millar/Frank Quitely; The hugely influential spin-off (OK, continuation) of Stormwatch
  • Batman: Reptilian – Garth Ennis / Liam Sharp; There’s something nasty in the Gotham sewers
  • Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds – Gene Yang / Ivan Reis; We’re big fans of this dimension hopping tale that distills a lot from the Silver Age tales.
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor / Andy Kubert; Batman scours Europe for the perp – and yes, Tom Taylor will be taking over Detective Comics soon
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; The first half of the classic series about refugee fairy tale beings hiding out in NYC while plotting to regain their lands in on sale for $5.99@ in the “Deluxe Format.”
  • Justice League: Last Ride – Chip Zdarsky / Miguel Mendonca
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin / Walt Simonson; One of the best adventure comics of all time
  • Strange Adventures – Tom King / Mitch Gerads / Doc Shaner; Possibly not for Adam Strange fans, this is a political thriller about war crimes and political identity
  • Superman: Man of Tomorrow – Robery Venditti / Paul Pelletier; It flew under the radar as a digital-first title, but this sequence is a witty delight

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

White Widow

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. 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.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

  • No prices are making us raise an eyebrow next week? Is this a pricing experiment that’s winding down? It’s unclear.

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced Indie Sales

Umbrella Academy   The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

Dark Horse has put the works of Gerard Way on sale. At Dark Horse, that means two series:

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Still on Sale

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