Tag: Batman

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Guardians of the Galaxy; DC’s Greatest Hits; Scarlet Witch; Rogue & Gambit; Mass Effect

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Scarlet Witch and Rogue & Gambit. DC drops a “Greatest Hits” sale and Mass Effect gets a discount at Dark Horse.

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 Besties

All-Star Superman  Far Sector  Sandman

The DC Greatest Hits Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Something of a “best of” or “classics” sale… and some of the prices are good, particularly on older volumes. This is more of a “what haven’t I gotten around to reading” sale and it’s worth a browse.

A few things that caught our eye and/or are at a particularly good price:

  • All-Star Superman – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely – a love letter to the Silver Age tales and recommended by James Gunn
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton – return to the world of “Batman: The Animated Series” and it doesn’t miss a step
  • Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola – a Victorian/Steampunk Elseworlds with a new sequel coming out
  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale – since a final installment has been announced, here’s the original
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke – Cooke’s stone cold classic about the dawn of the Silver Age heroes. A+
  • Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles – Mark Russell / Mike Feehan – Snaggletooth recast as Tennessee Williams facing down the House Unamerican Activities Committee
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham – $2.99/volume for the long-running Epic of fairy tale heroes and villains in exile
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemison / Jamal Campbell – A new Green Lantern at the edge of the galaxy investigates the first murder in 500 years. Good luck finding better world building.
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood – It’s a serious noir that also has all the goofiness of the bwa ha ha era Justice League International. Great book.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us – Tom Taylor / Mike S. Miller / Bruno Redondo – You wouldn’t think this was a video game adaption + enter the team of Taylor & Redondo
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid / Alex Ross – the original dystopian DC epic
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / Stan Woch / John Totleben – Moore’s hugely influential run for $2.99/volume
  • Sandman – Neil Gaiman / a rotating cast of artists – Gaiman’s fantasy classic at $2.99/volume
  • Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons – you already know what this is.
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson – Diana wakes up in a dystopian hellscape and tries to piece together what destroyed civilization. “Metal” is a good way to describe it.
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid/ Dan Mora; contender for DC’s best current title and V. 3 is now discounted.
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra – All the men have died, save Yorrick and his monkey. $2.99 per DOUBLE volume. As cheap as it gets!

Groot? Groot Groot.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing   Guardians of the Galaxy Omnibus

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Let’s break this into incarnations.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

New GoG (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

What’s good here?  Well, we’ve always liked the original. Particularly the Steve Gerber bits. We also loved the recent Al Ewing / Juan Cabal run. And if you like the current incarnation, you should probably go back to the source with the DnA run. We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point out that Kev Walker did an amazing job on the art with the most recent run.

Which Witch?

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

We might reserve our largest praise for Wanda’s once and future husband, though. Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta is an excellent tale. The Vision has a synthezoid family in the suburbs and things slowly go horribly wrong.

‘Til Death Do Us Discount

Mr. and Mrs. X   Gambit Classic   Gambit: The Complete Collection

The Marvel Rogue and Gambit Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The series the best lives up to the sale’s theme is Mr. & Mrs. X by Kelly Thompson, Oscar Bazaldua and David Lopez. That would be Rogue and Gambit, if you missed the wedding.

While Gambit is the newer character, he’s had more exposure in solo titles. Gambit Classic collects the original Uncanny X-Men arc and the early mini’s, including the 1995 Rogue mini-series in V.2.

Gambit: The Complete Collection is the slightly better known 1999 series primarily by Fabian Nicieza / Steve Skroce / Yanick Paquette

Plenty of assorted X-Men volumes to go with all this, too.

Unlisted Sales

Mass Effect  Killer Queens

Over at Dark Horse, we find a Mass Effect sale, as in the video game from Bioware. It’s available in:

Also with a discount: Killer Queens by David M. Booher & Claudia Balboni, which sports the tagline, “putting the SASS in assassin.”

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Punisher; Batman; Superior Spider-Man; Detective Chimp; Dark Horse Fantasy

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts the MAX version of The Punisher and Superior Spider-Man. DC has a Memorial Day Sale on recent items. Dark Horse cuts prices on fantasy titles.

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):

Momento Mori

Justice Society of America  Detective Comics  The Detective Chimp Casebook

The DC Memorial Day Sale runs through Monday, 5/27.

This is an extra eclectic mix of books and there seem to be a fair amount that are new to being discounted or recently started being discounted. A few things we found notable:

Warner Must Find Punisher MAX Confusing…
Punisher PunisherMax

The Marvel Punisher MAX Sale runs through Monday, 5/27.

Yes, Marvel’s been using the MAX label for mature reader comics longer than Warner’s been using it for streaming. One of those quirks of branding, we suppose.

This sale really breaks down into two titles:

Punisher Max: The Complete Collection is the ’04-’09 run that’s most associated with Garth Ennis returning to the character (with art by Darick Robertson, Leandro Fernendez, Doug Braithwaite and Goran Parlov, among others). This is Ennis doing the serious Punisher, as opposed to the hilarity of Welcome Back, Frank. Mike Benson, Victor Gischler and Jason Aaron pop up at the end of the run.

Then you’ve got PunisherMax, the ’09-’12 relaunch by Jason Aaron/Steve Dillon, where Frank mixes it up with The Kingpin and Bullseye.

Superiority Complex

Superior Spider-Man Superior Spider-Man Companion Superior Spider-Man

The Marvel Superior Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 10/16.

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.

And for something a little different? The absolutely hilarious Superior Foes of Spider-Man by Nick Spencer & Steve Lieber. Boomerang tries to organize a gang of Spidey’s b-list foes and make a big score. Things… do not go as intended. Think an even more absurd Dortmunder novel with super villains and you won’t be far off.

Unlisted Sale

Air  Beasts of Burden  Elfquest

Dark Horse has a number of fantasy series on sale this week, including:

We’re going to stump a little for Air. This series was way under the radar at Vertigo and prior to G. Willow Wilson being a name author. It’s out there (in a good way) enough to be a little hard to describe, but it’s a strong book and it looks like the reissue is now complete.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Iron Man; DC in the ’90s; Absolute Carnage; Powers

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts most of their Iron Man catalog, plus Absolute Carnage. DC revisits the 90s. Dark Horse cuts prices on the many works of Bendis & Oeming.

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):

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, 5/27

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. Iron Man isn’t as goofy to follow as, say, Spider-Gwen… but there are “quirks.”

  • 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
  • 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 Superior Iron Man and Infamous Iron Man are not on sale. Why? We cannot say.

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.

Be Kind, Please Rewind

Hellblazer  League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  The Nail

The  DC 90s Rewind Sale runs through Monday, 5/20.

Yes, it’s a 90s sale… with a little late 80s/early 00s around the edges. It’s worth a browse, particularly if you want to go wide on the Batman of that period, but let’s hit some highlights, shall we?

  • Animal Man – Initially Grant Morrison / Chas Truog, the full run is on sale this time.
  • The Authority – Ellis & Hitch, then Millar & Quitely; Hugely influential at the end of the ’90s, this is what effectively started the “widescreen comics” trend. (Pity the Stormwatch lead-in isn’t in the sale.)
  • Batman: No Man’s Land: The epic line-wide crossover Event, where Gotham is cut off from the rest of the country and the villains set themselves up as Warlords. (Yes, this predates DMZ by several years.) We thought this was the peak of the 90s Bat-Events.
  • Green Arrow (’88-’98) – Mike Grell / Ed Hannigan / Dan Jurgens – the Grell version that did away with most of the trick arrows.
  • Hellblazer – The first 13 volumes are on sale from the original Vertigo run. Delano / Ennis / Jenkins / Ellis.  Strong, strong run and for what it’s worth, we enjoyed the less-talked about Paul Jenkins/Sean Phillips issues. Don’t sleep on them.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentleman – Alan Moore / Kevin O’Neil; Yes, DC (via Wildstorm) still has the first two volumes. And they’re good! It’s a literary team-up with satirical elements around the edges (pay attention to the ads…). Note: there is a demise in V. 2 that is very much NOT for kids.
  • The Nail – Alan Davis presents the tale of a world where the Kents didn’t find Kal-El’s rocket and the Justice League forms without Superman to bail them out.
  • Preacher – Garth Ennis & Steve Dillion; Since adapted for TV. God’s gone missing and Jesse Custer would like a word with him. A series as wrong as it is praised.
  • The Spectre – John Ostrander / Tom Mandrake; This would be on our best of the 90s list. Jim Corrigan is dead and tethered to the Wrath of God. He’s trying to work through that. It’s a lot.
  • Superman: The Death of Superman – The most famous line-wide Superman Event. The “Funeral for a Friend” and “Reign of the Supermen” sequences worked far better than one would have expected when solicited. This is also where John Henry Irons / Steel is introduced.
  • Transmetropolitan – Warren Ellis / Darick Robertson; The science fiction satire about a Hunter S. Thompson-esque future journalist and his war against a corrupt establishment. One of the more influential titles of the late 9os.

Absolute Hyperbole

Absolute Carnage  Venom: Absolute Carnage

The Marvel Absolute Carnage Sale runs through Monday, 5/20.

Absolute Carnage was, by Marvel standards, a small scope crossover between Donny Cates’s Venom run and the Nick Spencer era Amazing Spider-Man. Yes, in the context of an Event, only generating eight collected edition counts as restraint.

The Event miniseries holding it together is Absolute Carnage by Donny Cates & Ryan Stegman.

Venom: Absolute Carnage by Cates & Iban Coello collects the Venom tie-in issues.

Amazing Spider-Man: Absolute Carnage by Nick Spencer & Ryan Ottley collects, you guessed it, the Amazing Spider-Man tie-in issues.

From there, fill-in as your tastes dictate. We will say that the lead story in Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk And Other Tales is worthwhile, if not central to anything. Immortal Hulk being a high water mark in general.

Unannounced Sales

Powers  Goldfish  Fortune and Glory

Dark Horse has a big block of Brian Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming titles on sale. Let’s hit the numbers first:

We’d like to talk a little about the early Bendis, which doesn’t seem to be widely remembered after all his time at Marvel and DC. Bendis started out doing the full cartoonist and working on crime comics like Goldfish and Jinx.

He started getting a little more notice when he jumped over to Image for Powers w/ Oeming. Powers starts out as a police procedural in a world where super powers have to be registered (this is LONG before Marvel’s Civil War) and follows a police unit that handles “powers”-related crimes. There’s a lot of worldbuilding involved and things get quite a bit more complicated as the backstories of the main characters unfold.

Powers left Image for Marvel’s Icon imprint when Bendis blew up there and as he got deeper into Marvel, the shipping schedule got erratic. It’s relaunched a few times and seemingly lost a lot of audience momentum. Shipping schedules, have very little to do with the quality of the comic, however. It’s a good one and an influential one that’s worth dipping into the collected editions of. (And trust us, its so much easier with omnibuses where you don’t have to remember which relaunch a given issue is from!)

Also very worthwhile:  Fortune & Glory is Bendis recounting tales of interacting with Hollywood when Goldfish got optioned. It’s hilarious and multiple folks who work in TV/Film have assured us it’s frighteningly accurate.

We’d also point you to Scarlet as a more recent example of Bendis returning to that early crime vibe. It’s a strong comic.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Amazing Spider-Man (all of it); Blade; Dracula; Lazarus Planet; Dark Horse’s Cullen Bunn catalog

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts pretty much the full run of Amazing Spider-Man on sale and follows that up with Tomb of Dracula and Blade’s various titles. DC… has issues this week. Dark Horse celebrates the work of Cullen Bunn.

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 Many Spiders…

Amazing Spider-Man  Amazing Spider-Man  Amazing Spider-Man - Kraven's Last Hunt

Marvel’s Spider-Man Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 4/29.

There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so let’s break it down by series.

  • Amazing Spider-Man (1963-98) – The original run before Marvel became quite so obsessed with rebooting titles.
  • Amazing Spider-Man (1998 – 2013) – This run starts out with the controversial J. Michael Straczynski/John Romita, Jr./Mike Deodato, Jr. run, then goes into the Brand New Day era with rotating creative teams and segues into the beginning of the Dan Slott era. (Slott’s written a LOT of Spidey.)  Now… this Amazon’s listings, so you knew something had to be messed
  • Superior Spider-Man – Possibly the high point of the Dan Slott era – Doc Ock takes over Peter’s body and life. The Complete Collections are the way to go here.
  • Amazing Spider-Man (2014 – 15) – Peter’s back in control and the Slott era continues.
  • Amazing Spider-Man(2015-2018) – It’s a relaunch. (Hey, Spidey’s been relaunched a lot less than Captain Marvel!) This is the end run of the Slott era, culminating in the Red Goblin affair. The “Worldwide Collection” omnibuses are the better buy.
  • Amazing Spider-Man (2018 – 22) – The Nick Spenser era is here, PLUS the 4 volumes of Spider-Man Beyond with Ben Reilly stepping in that take place prior to:
  • Amazing Spider-Man (2022-Present) – The current Zeb Wells / John Romita, Jr. / Ed McGuinness run.

And there are a few more Slott era omnibus editions floating around.  That’s probably not getting cleaned up anytime soon.<sigh>

Recommendations?  Well, first off Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t really have very many BAD periods. Oh, some runs are definitely better than others, but there aren’t huge swaths of duds.

You can definitely pick your poison between the $5.99 Masterworks and $6.99 Epic Collections for the original run (although a few Epic’s run a little higher). The Epics are typically much larger collections for only a buck more, but it depends on which format you started buying and which era you’re interested in. Some stretches are only in Masterworks, some are only in Epic.

Of possible interest, since there’s a sequel mini-series out, but NOT included in the link for the V.1 of Amazing is the Kraven’s Last Hunt Epic Collection, so we’ll call that one out directly. You get the J.M. DeMatteis/Mike Zeck classic, plus the issues of Amazing around it, plus Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine for about the price of just getting the regular Kraven collection.

We’d also recommend a look at the Brand New Day collections. It’s not a run that’s immediately talked about, but we found it entertaining and a much better set of creators was assembled than Marvel was necessarily given credit for: Mark Waid, Bob Gale (we wish he did more comics), Marc Guggenheim, Joe Kelly, Dan Slott, John Romita, Jr., Steve McNiven, Salvador Larroca, Phil Jimenez, Barry Kitson, Marcos Martin, Paolo Rivera, Lee Week and… others. I’m not sure there are “hidden” gems with Spidey, just runs that get discussed less.

And yes, we are enjoying the current Zeb Wells / (mostly) John Romita, Jr. series. It’s a little more somber than we were expecting from Wells, but it’s been a good ride so far. And this is a series that plays the long game resolving subplots.

Could There Possibly Be an Event Approaching?
Blade: Black and White Tomb of Dracula Greenberg the Vampire

The  Marvel Blade and Marvel Vampires Sale runs through Monday, 4/29.

That would be the Daywalker and vampire slayer who’s better known through the films than the comic.

We feel pretty strongly that Blade is best experienced in his original context – a supporting character in Tomb of Dracula. It’s not clear you can call Tomb of Dracula an under-the-radar 70s classic anymore, since it’s gotten a fair amount of exposure since the Essentials line (finally) collected it ~20 years ago, but now it’s in color reprints. One note, though – you need to give the series six or seven issues to get moving. There were some false starts until Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan were paired up… but after they’ve got a couple issues under their belt, this one really takes off.

Blade: Black & White is a collection of… that’s right, the black & white adventures over the years and is built around some magazine appearances in Vampire Tales and Marvel Preview. Wolfman and Chris Claremont are the primary writers for that period. Colan and Tony DeZuniga are the primary artists.

If you’re looking for something has resembles the film franchise a bit more, there’s Blade: The Complete Collection by Marc Guggenheim (with Howard Chaykin as artist).

For something completely out of left field, J.M. DeMatteis, Steve Leialoha and Mark Badger present Greenberg the Vampire. He tries to avoid drinking blood, loves his Mama and occasionally has writer’s block.

DC’s Almost-Sale

Legion of Super Heroes The Great Darkness Saga  Batman Beyond: The Final Joke  Lazarus Planet

The DC Multiverse Sale runs through Monday, 4/29.

*Sigh* It appears to have happened again. Most of these books are are at higher price points than we’ve seen in months or set to a really strange price point. Precedent would suggest that someone at DC did not enter the sale data correctly. This was a BIG problem at various point last year. (Especially August.)  As we type this up, no prices have been corrected… maybe they will be by the weekend?

If not, here’s the much shorter list of things we think are at “normal” price points & discounts. Hopefully this doesn’t linger for a month like it did in August.

Not on the sale page, but good prices:

An Unannounced Bunn in the Oven

Harrow County Omnibus 1  Tales From Harrow County  Shock Shop

It appears Dark Horse is having an unannounced sale on Cullen Bunn titles.

His flagship work for Dark Horse is most likely Harrow County with Tyler Crook. The two omnibus editions in that link are the best value here by a LOT.  Go to the bottom of the “regular” collection links for the Tales From Harrow County continuation.

Also on the list:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman (at good prices); Thor; Black Widow; Hawkeye; Blue Book

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC’s big Batman sale has REAL discounts. Marvel slashes prices on Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Plus, an unannounced Blue Book sale from Dark Horse.

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 Batman Sale

The DC Batman Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

Yes, this is the big one. 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 tell your friends.

Let’s try and make things a little easier list and light some highlights of the various series included in the sale:

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

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.

“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:

Jan Hammer?

Thor - The Wrath of Odin  Thor by Walt Simonson  Thor Road to War of the Realms

Marvel’s Thor Sale runs  through Monday, 4/1.

Pretty much the full Thor line, with the caveat that the Marvel Masterworks volumes are not on sale, so that trend from recent months continues. Which is to say, Epic Collections are your friend.

As per our custom, here’s the breakdown by series/volume:

  • Journey Into Mystery ’52-’66 – The earliest Thor stories from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
  • The Mighty Thor ’66-’96 – From Lee & Kirby until the relaunches started
  • The Mighty Thor ’96-’04 – The Heroes return Dan Jurgens era, initially with John Romita, Jr.
  • Thor ’07-’11 – Starts with J. Michael Straczynski & Olivier Coipel, ends with Matt Fraction & Pasqual Ferry. Gillen in the middle.
  • The Mighty Thor ’11-’12 – Fraction gets a relaunch with Coipel, Ferry and early Pepe Larraz
  • The Jason Aaron era ’12-’19 – It’s a LOT easer to look at the omnibuses across all the relaunches here
  • Thor ’20 to ’23 – The current Donny Cates run with Nic Klein as the primary artist; Torunn GrØnbekk tags end toward the end while Cates was recovering from his accident (and filled in well, we might add).

The current Al Ewing Immortal Thor gets a big thumbs up from us… but it’s too recent to be on sale yet, alas… or perhaps “fie!”

Of your point of reference for Thor is the most recent film, you want the Jason Aaron era. The God Butcher is the first arc. If you go with that set of omnibuses, Jane Foster picks up the hammer in V.2. We don’t think that starting with the first Jane Foster issues (and slimmer volumes) is a great jumping on point. It’s a saga and you’ll get a lot more out of it if you start at the beginning of Aaron’s run.

Past that, we’re all about the Walt Simonson Thor. It’s probably the most influential run since early days and it’s great. You’ll want the Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson set that starts here. (The Thor by Walter Simonson version of the reprints seems to be missing the final volume, or at least the last few issues. *sigh* These things happen.)

We also like to go back to the original Lee/Kirby. Not too early. We’d say stay closer to where it changed from Journey Into Mystery to Thor. The first year of JIM was a little rough. The Wrath of Odin  Epic Collection is a good chunk of prime Lee/Kirby Thor and also features the first time Jane Foster was elevated to godhood, since it turns out to now be foreshadowing.

Something under the radar? Ignore this being marketed as a kid’s comic – Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee had a short run on Thor: The Mighty Avenger that was just a good Thor comic, full stop. And you might expect that from those two.

If you want to move in the opposite direction, Thor: Vikings is a seriously violent Marvel MAX title from Garth Ennis and Glenn Fabry that has Viking zombies invading Manhattan. (No, not Fleet Week. That’s different.)

These Ex-‘s Aren’t From Texas

Black Widow  Hawkeye  Black Widow by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee

The Marvel Black Widow & Hawkeye Sale runs through Monday, 4/1.

That’s right. These two used to be an item.

First, the Natasha highlights:

There are two Black Widow Epic Collections that collect what were largely guest or co-starring spots (with a couple notable exceptions) through the early 80s.

Flash forward to 2004 and the highlight of a series of miniseries was a pair written by Richard K. Morgan with an art rotation of Bill Sienkiewicz, Sean Phillips and Goran Parlov. (!) Conveniently collected in a single volume.

A decade later, the team of Mark Waid & Chris Samnee (a known quantity) did their own Black Widow run. Predictably, another highlight. (Also conveniently collected in a single volume.)

Shortly after that, the Eisner winning Black Widow run of Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande kicked off. Yes, we enjoyed this run, too… and were kind of thinking there might be a follow up, but we haven’t seen one yet.

As for Mr. Clint Barton, let get it out of the way.  While there’s some debate to how well it fits into continuity, the series that towers above all other is Hawkeye by Fraction & Aja: The Saga Of Barton And Bishop. That would be the extremely quirky and beloved “Hawk-guy” series featuring Pizza Dog.

A bit further down on the listing page are two volumes of “Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts.” Mark Bagley is your lead artist and this covers the transition from Kurt Busiek to Fabian Nicieza as writer, while Hawkeye was leading the group.

If you want some older Hawkeye, there are a couple Epic Collections:

Unannounced

Blue Book

It has come to our attention that Dark Horse has placed Blue Book V.1: 1961 by James Tynion IV and Michael Avon Oeming on sale. “True stories of UFO abductions.”

 

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The New X-Men Writers; Batman; Patton Oswalt

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts the work of the three new X-Men writers… plus, Ghost Rider. DC has an essential sale (read: Batman) and Patton Oswald experiences unannounced price slashing.

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):

X-Writers of the Future

With the initial X-Men relaunch announcements dropping at SXSW, it looks like Marvel is inviting you to get to know the new writers of the X-line with 3 sales (and perhaps more to come as announcements continue).

Jed MacKay

Moon Knight  The Death of Doctor Strange  Taskmaster

The Marvel Jed MacKay Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Of the three announced writers, MacKay’s written the most material for Marvel and most of it in the last ~6 years or so. If you want to see him on a team book, the first volume of his Avengers with C.F. Villa is on sale.

Our favorite work of his is the Doctor Strange sequence, which should absolutely be read in order:

  • The Death of Doctor Strange – w/ Lee Garbett… and yes, Stephen gets himself killed.
  • Strange – w/ Marcelo Ferreira & Garbett, where Clea becomes Sorcerer Supreme.
  • Doctor Strange – w/ Pasqual Ferry, where Stephen’s back (and there IS fallout)

The breakout title for him was probably Moon Knight w/Alessandro Cappuccio, which we’ve also enjoyed quite a bit. And let’s give some credit here: piecing together the various incarnations of Moon Knight of the last 10-15 years is not a small task! Yet, it was done well.

And for something a bit more off the radar… Taskmaster w/ Alessandro Vitti. Maria Hill has been murdered. Taskmaster has been framed. The Black Widow wants blood for said murder. Taskmaster finds himself on the trail of a doomsday weapon as he tries to extricate himself from a situation not of his making. And it’s a very witty farce.

Gail Simone

Domino  Deadpool Classic

The  Marvel Gail Simone Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Gail’s big break was Deadpool, but she’s written less Marvel over the years that you might realize. She’s not the main scribe for most of the volumes listed in the sale.

The closest you’re going to get to an X-Men preview is probably the Domino series she did with David Baldeon. (Note, there was a follow-up to this: Domino: Hotshots that is not part of the sale.)

Her Deadpool / Agent X run with art by Udon Studios & Alvin Lee is collected across Deadpool Classic V. 9 and Deadpool Classic V.10.

The final “solo” collection in this sale is The Variants, a Jessica Jones mystery with art by Phil Noto.

Eve Ewing

Black Panther  Ironheart  Champions

The Marvel Eve Ewing Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Eve Ewing has the smallest backlist of the three newly announced X-scribes.

Her current run on Black Panther w/ Chris Allen is probably her highest profile project.

Ironheart with Luciano Vecchio is probably the title Ewing is most strongly associated with.

If you’d like to see an example of Ewing on a team book, there’s Champions w/ Kim Jacinto.

Shouldn’t He Be In the Sky?

Ghost Rider  Ghost Rider  Ghost Rider / Wolverine

The Marvel Ghost Rider Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

This one is similar to a legacy sale, with the recent caveat that most of the original series in only in Masterworks editions and those aren’t included in the sale, just the single Epic Collection.

Let’s run this one down by series… and yes, there have been a TON of relaunches and mini’s.

As a bonus, the absurdity of Cosmic Ghost Rider:

Essential Equals… Batman?

Batman: The Court of Owls  Detective Comics by Tynion  Watchmen

The DC Essentials Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

What’s essential? Flipping through this sale, one gets the impression that New 52 (and forward) Batman titles are what DC considers it’s most essential product and there are a ton of them here.

Lets do a quick look at some notable items:

  • Batman ’11-’16 – The Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo era (You may have heard of them.)
  • Batman ’16 – present – Starts with the Tom King run, then James Tynion IV, currently Chip Zdarsky
  • DCeased – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; Kicking off the series of miniseries about the Anti-Life Equation getting loose, turning most of the population (including the metahuman community) into a sort of zombie and the survivors trying to stay alive.
  • Detective Comics ’11-’16 – Starts with Tony Daniel, then John Layman / Jason Fabok, then Francis Manapul/Brian Buccellato
  • Detective Comics ’16 – present – Starts with James Tynion IV’s run, then Peter Tomasi, then Mariko Tamaki (Ram V’s run isn’t yet on sale, it appears). And way too many artists to list.
  • Mister Miracle – Tom King / Mitch Gerads – The Eisner winner
  • Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age – Len Wein/Bernie Wrightson; A legit classic and trendsetter… even before Alan Moore showed up
  • Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons; this one needs no introduction
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson; Wonder Woman awakens in a post-apocalyptical hellscape and has some monsters to slay. “Heavy Metal” may be the best description. A great ride.

Unannounced…

Minor Threats

Minor Threats by Patton Oswalt / Jordan Blum / Scott Hepburn is an exercise in subverting tropes (subversion from that group… surely not…) as some low level supervillains go after the A-list villain who’s been bringing the heat down on them.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Ultimate Spider-Man; Doctor Strange; DC Team-Ups; The Goon

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts Ultimate Spider-Man on sale and almost the entire Doctor Strange catalog. DC discounts their Team-Ups and Dark Horse has an Eric 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):

The Original Ultimate Spider-Man

Ultimate Spider-Man

The Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man Sale – The Life & Death of Peter Parker runs through Monday, 3/18.

While the contents of the sale don’t match the name, this is the original Brian Bendis/Mark Bagley Ultimate Spider-Man. The first Ultimate title and (along with Daredevil) what originally made Bendis his reputation at Marvel.  And it’s a good run, too.

What this isn’t is the Death of Peter Parker. Neither that, nor the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (relaunched) series that led into it are included in the sale. It’s puzzling, to be honest.

That said, it makes it really easy to sum up the sale:

Ultimate Spider-Man – essentially, the Peter Parker years. Mark Bagley is artist for most of the run. Skip the omnibus (too expensive for V.1-3 of these larger collections), get the regular editions.

And seriously, Bendis and Bagley do a great job with it.

The Doctor Will See You Now

Doctor Strange in Strange Tales  Doctor Strange by Englehart  Doctor Strange - The Oath

The  Marvel Doctor Strange Sale runs through Monday, 3/18.

And it’s most of the Doctor Strange material that’s been collected in book form. Alas, the Masterworks are not in this sale and they’re a little further along the 70s/80s series than the Epics are.

For reasons unknown, the Jed MacKay material isn’t in this sale…

What’s good?  The original Lee/Ditko run is great and you can get that in the first Epic Collection. Things pick up again when Englehart and Brunner show up towards the end of the Marvel Premiere run and the whole ’74-’87 run is solid, though we have a particular soft spot for the Roger Stern / Marshall Rogers / Paul Smith material towards the end.  Yes, Doctor Strange had A list creators most of the time.  That’s your core.

Another personal favorite is Doctor Strange: The Oath by a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin. They’ve both moved on to bigger things, but a long run by those two would have been a real highlight.

Something under the radar?  The final Waid/Walker run is also a lot more under the radar than it should be.

Let’s Fight and Then Team Up

World's Finest   New Teen Titans  Suicide Squad

The DC Team-Ups Sale runs through Monday, 3/18.

This sale is fairly straight forward – teams and team-ups.

The more recent series we’d recommend the most is Batman/Superman: World’s Finest by Mark Waid and Dan Mora. This is probably the best example of the “classic DC feel” of anything they’ve put out in the last decade or so. And let’s be real: an awful lot of the classic DC feel was thrown out the window when New 52 came around. The first two volumes are on sale, the third one just came out (it’s on our shortlist) and it’s a good time to jump on.

Other things that caught our eye:

  • Batman and Robin ’11-’15 – The Peter J. Tomasi / Patrick Gleason run
  • Doom Patrol ’87-95 – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; One of Morrison’s early breakout books and still one of his best. The Brotherhood of Dada is a creative high point. It looks like the Rachel Pollack omnibus never made it to digital?
  • Justice League International – Keith Giffen / J.M. DeMatties / Kevin Maguire / Bart Sears / Adam Hughes; The bwa ha ha ha era was not without it’s dark moments, but there was more bwa ha ha and it was fabulous.
  • JLA – Grant Morrison/Howard Porter reset the Justice League with a classic run and were followed by Mark Waid/Bryan Hitch, Joe Kelly / Doug Mahnke and Chris Claremont/John Byrne.
  • New Teen Titans – Marv Wolfman / George Perez – arguably DC’s flagship book for at least the first half of the 80s. Marv had a looooooong run, too. $3.99/volume for a classic.
  • Suicide Squad ’87-’92 – John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell/Geoff Isherwood; Establishing the super villain equivalent of The Dirty Dozen, nobody realized how influential this would become 30 years later.

Unannounced Goons and Hillbillies

Spook House Hillbilly Big Man Plans

We’re discovered an unpublished Eric Powell sale over at Dark Horse

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men and Daredevil (nearly) Full Runs; Batman; Infinity Gauntlet; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts nearly all the Daredevil and Uncanny X-Men collections on sale. And an Infinity (Gauntlet / War / Crusade) sale on top of that. DC does another installment of their “Epic” sale and Dark Horse slips in 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):

X Marks the Price Tag

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

The Marvel Uncanny X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

It’s a legacy sale, so it’s the Uncanny X-Men core… although this may shorter list than some of the legacy sales. For instance,  X-Men wasn’t part of Heroes Reborn, so no relaunch there.

As is our custom, let’s run through the key series included, first:

  • Uncanny X-Men ’63-’11 – The original X-Men, the “new” X-Men, Morrison… it’s a long run.
  • Uncanny X-Men  ’11-’12 – The original Kieron Gillen era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’13-’15 – The Brian Bendis / Chris Bachalo era (Battle of the Atom fits in with this run as a crossover)
  • Uncanny X-Men ’16-’17 – The Cullen Bunn / Greg Land / Ken  Lashley era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’18-’19 – The Mathew Rosenberg era

And you might be asking yourself, “aren’t there usually more than one X-Men title and don’t they cross over a lot?” Yes, that would be a potential issue… pun intended. Not so much with the Epic Collections and the Masterworks as with the later series, and there are some Event collections in the sale, too.

You should know our general advice right now. There’s a slight preference for the value of Epic Collections over Masterworks collections, but it depends on the exact price point and the Epic Collections sometimes have gaps.  That still applies here.  The wild card with X-Men is that it can get impenetrable with continuity and all the characters floating around. You can’t always just jump in.

So, recommendations with that in mind.

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 that are discounted only take you to #153, at which point you need to start cutting in the Masterworks editions with V. 7 through 12. (The next Epic with a discount only takes you to #198, which is short of the finish line!)

For an alternate jumping on point, perhaps the Ed Brubaker era, which is collected in three volumes starting with Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.

We thought the Bendis era was better than it’s reputation, but aware that it runs parallel with All-New X-Men, which isn’t in this sale.

If you were wondering, Grant Morrison is filed under New X-Men and not part of this sale.

Also be aware that X-Men: Reload is effectively the omnibus version of Uncanny X-Men: The New Age, where Chris Claremont returned to the book with Alan Davis.

Hornhead

Daredevil  Daredevil Epic Collection  Daredevil by Zdarsky

The Marvel Daredevil Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

Let’s break this down by series. Like X-Men, Daredevil has had fewer relaunches than some titles.

  • Daredevil ’64-’98 – The original run. Oddly, as we type this up, the Epics are on sale and the Masterworks mostly aren’t?
  • Daredevil ’98-11 – The Marvel Knights relaunch. Kevin Smith / Brian Bendis / Ed Brubaker
    • For the Bendis and Brubaker runs, you want the Omnibus section and scroll down for their respective “Ultimate Collections”
  • Daredevil ’11-15 – This was really two volumes with an arbitrary relaunch in the middle, but the excellent run by Mark Waid / Chris Samnee / Paolo Rivera / Javier Javier Rodriguez is a better buy in this 5 volume set that collects both volumes and treats it like the single run it was.
  • Daredevil ’15-’18 – The Charles Soule era with Ron Garney as the main artist.
  • Daredevil ’19-’21 – Chip Zdarsky’s breakout title as a writer. Marco Checcetto is the primary artist.
  • Daredevil: Woman Without Fear ’22 – Zdarsky / Rafael de Latorre; Sort of a bridge title during the Devil’s Reign event, but part of the ongoing plot. Note: this is included in the final DD omnibus for the ’19-’21 run.
  • Daredevil ’22-’23 – Also known as Daredevil & Elektra. The final act to the Zdarsky/Checcetto era

What’s good here? Honestly, with the exception of the “Shadowlands” Event at the end of the Marvel Knights run, DD has been consistently good to great since Frank Miller showed up. You don’t hear us saying that about every title! We will say that Gene Colan’s return to DD (with Joe Kelly writing) seems to be under the radar these days.  But starting with Miller, just pick a run (Miller / O’Neil / Nocenti / Chichester / Kessel / Kelly / Smith / Bendis / Brubaker / Waid / Soule / Zdarsky) and dig in.

Infinite Jest

The  Marvel Infinity Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

On the one hand, this sale would seem to be a continuation of last week’s Cosmic sale, which naturally segues into The Infinity Guantlet. On the other hand, they’re throwing in anything else with “Infinity” in the title, so we’re going to have to separate this out a little more than we normally would.

Starlin’s Infinity Saga

As you may recall from last week, Jim Starlin returned to Marvel and re-introduced Thanos in Silver Surfer, which lead up to Thanos getting his hands on the Infinity Gems and kicking off a series of Event mini-series.

Alongside those titles, Warlock & the Infinity Watch (Starlin / Angel Medina / Tom Grindberg and others) ran parallel and filled some gaps between Events.

And then some more Thanos/Infinity mini’s and graphic novels:

Avengers

Not part of the Starlin Infinity world, but thrown in for… reasons (?)

Avengers Infinity by Roger Stern / Sean Chen is a cosmic/Avengers in space tale.

Infinity is roughly the middle act of Jonathan Hickman’s massive Avengers run. That volume pulls in all the various parts and is how you want it, although we’ve said in before and we’ll say it again – Hickman’s Avengers is one long epic and if you’re going to sample, read the whole thing. The sheer scope of it adds to the experience when you start at the beginning.

Sounds Like a Marvel Brand – Week Two

Batman: Venom   Manhunter  Jimmy Olsen

The  DC Epic eBooks Part 2 Sale runs through Monday, 03/11.

This time out it’s a seriously eclectic set of volumes. Occasionally just one or two from the middle of a run.  Some things that jumped out at us?

  • Batman: Venom – Denny O’Neil / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Russ Braun;  Long before Knightfall, or even Vengeance of Bane, O’Neil and company did a Legends of the Dark Knight arc to introduce “Venom,” the drug that originally fueled Bane’s strength.
  • DCeased – which they really ought to file together, but don’t. It’s still entertaining stuff (and, of course, the opening volume isn’t included):
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; the first half of the series is on sale (in double-volume format) for the classic tales of fairy tale creatures hiding out in Manhattan after their worlds are overrun by invaders.
  • Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation – Robert Venditti / Eddy Barrows – in a world where the Nazis discovered the payload of a certain rocket from Krypton and over-ran the world, the Freedom Fighter form up as the resistance. A vastly overlooked take on the original concept.
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson tell a superb tale of spies, ninjas, clone and a certain caped crusader. One of the best adventure comics of all-time.
  • The Road to Perdition – Max Allen Collins / Richard Piers Rayner – A mob enforcer and his son go into hiding after a betrayal. You may have seen the film version.
  • Superman: The Phantom Zone – Steve Gerber / Gene Colan / Rick Veitch – Leave it to Gerber to come up with a creepy, horror-tinged take on Superman. There are much stranger things in the Phantom Zone that you realized. (Big thumbs up.)
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? – Matt Fraction / Steve Lieber – Jimmy wakes up hungover and married in Gorilla City… and that’s not even the silliest part. One of the funniest comics of the last few years. A+

Rabbit Rabbit

Usagi Yojimbo

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 real bargain is the $6.99 “Saga” omnibus editions.

Filed separately, is the  Saga “Legends” volume, which includes things like Space Usagi.

If you’re in the market for single volumes, those are $4.99… but only for Vol. 8 and higher. (Hey, don’t look at us! We think that’s peculiar, too… but the Saga volumes are a better buy.)

Also Unannounced…

BAKEMONOGATARI

Vertical’s manga series BAKEMONOGATARI is on sale for $3.99/volume (although we can’t tell you where V. 1 went to…)

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman; Spider-Man; Resident Alien

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC slashes prices on some newer titles, Marvel discounts Axis and a variety of clone adventures; Dark Horse cuts Resident Alien and Avatar the Last Airbender prices, too.

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):

But… Epic is a Marvel Brand?

Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo Danger Street World's Finest

The DC Epic eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 3/4.

Hard to see a theme here, though there are a few newer titles on sale, some for the first time at a deep discount.

Some annotations:

  • Batman & The Joker: Deadly Duo – Marc Silvestri’s high profile Batman project (we think this is the first discounting)
  • Batman: The Dark Detective – if you’re getting the ’90s Detective collections, there are three more for $3.99:
  • Batman: Earth One: Complete Collection – The Geoff Johns / Gary Frank trilogy in one volume for $5.99. You already know whether you want it.
  • Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola; The Victorian Batman Elseworlds, which just had an Andy Diggle-helmed sequel announced.
  • Danger Street – Tom King/Jorge Fornés using all the First Issue Special characters in one series, as the high concept. Again, we think this is the first discounting.
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemisin / Jamal Campbell; Hugo winner! (Without voting shenanigans, either!)
  • Gotham City: Year One – Tom King / Phil Hestor; This is a noir detective story w/ Slam Bradley. And a good noir, too.
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood. Great title… but is this an Elseworlds, now that the imprint is back?
  • Kamandi by Jack Kirby – The whole Kirby run is now available on the cheap. Think Kirby riffing on Planet of the Apes… but with the entire animal kingdom. Extremely fun title and Kirby’s longest running at DC.
  • Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow – Tom King / Bilquis Evely; James Gunn sure seems to like it!
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid/Dan Mora show what the old school DC feel is like.

There’s a whole lot more to browse here. Lots of Batman/Superman/Nightwing, too.

Clone Wars… Nothing But Clone Wars

All-New Wolverine  Spider-Man: The Original Clone Saga  Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Saga Epic

The Marvel Clones Sale runs through Monday, 2/26.

Yes, yes… you’re initially thinking Spidey, but our favorite clone series might be the Tom Taylor / David Lopez / Juan Cabal run on All-New Wolverine. You know, the one where Logan’s clone daughter takes up the Wolverine mantel while he’s dead. It’s a very good comic. Astonishingly good when you consider it was almost there as a placeholder after the Death of Wolverine stunt. But what do we always say about Tom Taylor making lemonade? Drink up.

As for Spidey, before there was the “Clone Saga,” there was the original Clone Saga and there’s a couple ways you can get this. The Epic Collection with The Jackal’s initial clone plot by Gerry Conway & Ross Andru and several non-clone related tales as the Len Wein era begins. You can also opt for Spider-Man: The Original Clone Saga which includes that Jackal tale, plus the Bill Mantlo / Jim Mooney arc from Peter Parker that introduces Carrion (and includes Frank Miller’s first Daredevil work), plus some later Gerry Conway/Sal Buscema Carrion appearances.  We’d probably go Clone Saga for Carrion and a few more pages at the same price, but there’s not really a wrong answer there.

As for the 90s Clone Saga.  Again, you have options:

  • The Complete Clone Saga – and that’s a lot of clones
  • The Complete Ben Reilly Epic – because Ben Reilly was Spidey in the aftermath of the Clone Saga
  • Spider-Man: The Real Clone Saga – Years later, Tom DeFalco, Howard Mackie and Todd Nauck get back together to tell the story of Clone Saga with the original ending, before Marvel’s marketing department decided the storyline needed to be extended.

There’s a bit more to it, but we’d call those the highlights.

OK Axis, Here We Come

Uncanny Avengers Access Prelude  Avengers & X-Men: Axis

The Marvel Axis Sale runs through Monday, 2/26.

What’s Axis? It was an Avengers / X-Men team-up event spinning out of Uncanny Avengers and dealing with the (then) ongoing situation of the Red Skull stealing Xavier’s powers and becoming Onslaught.

The run-up to the Event, Uncanny Avengers: Axis Prelude is probably a little more appropriate here than the usual “Road to” offering.  This is by Rick Remender / Salvador Larroca / Daniel Acuna / Sanford Greene .

The main event is Avengers & X-Men: Axis by Remender /Lienil Francis Yu / Terry Dodson / Jim Cheung.

Grimm Negaband Sale

Grimm Spotlight

The Zenoscope Grimm Spotlight Sale runs through Wednesday,  3/6… but there’s a catch…

Amazon has placed this sale on the same URL as the Media Do Valentine’s Day Fair BL Sale.  (And we’re not sure those sales appeal to the same demographic, either.)  So, whichever one you’re looking for, if you see the other, reload a few times and the sale you seek should eventually appear as you appreciate the attention to detail paid by whoever assigned the URLs!

Incidentally, this is a small sale on – you guessed it – Grimm Spotlight.

Unlisted Dark Horse Sales

Resident Alien  Avatar: The Last Airbender

The know the drill on this – we’re not 100% sure how long these sales are going to last, but the discounts are there.  This time out… TV tie-in sales!

Resident Alien 

This Peter Hogan / Steve Parkhouse comic was around before the TV show. The Omnibus editions are the better buy for V. 1-6; V. 7 needs to be bought as a “regular” volume.

Funny this should go on sale when the first two seasons hit Netflix and the third season hits SyFy.  Must be a coincidence…

Avatar the Last Airbender

The Omnibus editions are the better buy here. And yes, many of them are by the team of Gene Yang and Gurihiru.

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Still on Sale

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: This Week’s Unannounced DC Discounts

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we ferret out the as-yet unannounced DC sale items.

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):

Amazon’s a little late with the new sales again. You can see the Marvel sales on the Deals page, but DC hasn’t updated yet. Will it be up Tuesday night? Wednesday?  We’ve ferreted out a few things that seem to be on sale. This is a quick and dirty rundown and then we’ll be back Friday evening at the usual time with recommendations and to talk about the Marvel releases.

DC Unannounced Discounts?
Batman / Catwoman Swamp Thing Kamandi

It’s not clear how tight a theme there is to what we’re seeing. There’s a lot of Batman, but that’s often the case.

There’s doubtless more on sale out there, but that ought to get your browsing started and we’ll see you at the end of the week.

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Still on Sale

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