Blade Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel’s offering up discounts on Phoenix, Black Cat and Blade. If you look closely, you might also find some unannounced Daredevil and Elektra on sale, 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):

Going Down in Flames as a Form of Progression

The Marvel Phoenix Sale runs through Monday, 8/18.

Jean Grey, if you prefer.

For many, the character is defined by “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” arguably the high point of an already great run by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Pick up X-Men Epic Collection: The Fate Of The Phoenix and get “Days of Future Past” in the same package.

Then Jean/Phoenix was dead for several years. Phoenix Rising is slightly mislabeled as being an X-Men book. The resurrection of Jean Grey is the birth of X-Factor, which crosses over with Fantastic Four and Avengers for the tale. Which means you get John Byrne, Roger Stern, John Buscema, Bob Layton and Butch Guice all contributing to the tale.

New X-Men is the Grant Morrison run with a fairly sick rotating cast of artists including Frank Quitely, Leinil Francis Yu, Igor Kordey, John Paul Leon, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo and Marc Silvestri. As you’ve doubtless heard, it’s a very good run.

The current Phoenix series is by Stephanie Phillips / Alessandro Miracolo and is more of a cosmic adventures series.

Some other sale highlights:

All-New X-Men – Brian Bendis / Stuart Immonen (and friends); Despite the “All New” title, it’s the original X-Men plucked from the past
Avengers Vs. X-Men
Fall Of The House Of X/Rise Of The Powers Of X
Jean Grey – Dennis Hopeless / Victor Ibanez
X-Men: The Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix – Scott Lobdell / Jeph Loeb / John Francis Moore / Gene Ha / Kyle Hotz
X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong/Warsong Ultimate Collection – Greg Pak / Greg Land / Tyler Kirkham

Scratch

The Marvel Black Cat Sale runs through Monday, 8/11.

And that would be Spidey’s occasional girlfriend / frenemy (depending on the author/era).

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Nine Lives Has The Black Cat is mostly a Marv Wolfman / Keith Pollard run and features the debut of a certain Felicia Hardy.

Fast forward to 2002 and Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do by Kevin Smith & Terry Dodson begins. It didn’t actually finish up until early ’06, but it was vaguely the next act for the character.

Jump to ’04, which was the middle of the “pause” on Spidey/Black Cat and you’ll find that the first year of Marvel Knights Spider-Man by Mark Millar and the aforementioned Terry Dodson featured Black Cat in a prominent role.

Black Cat next turns up on the Heroes for Hire team by Jimmy Palmiotti/Justin Gray/Billy Tucci, with Zeb Wells/Al Rio/Clay Mann later in the run.

She pops back into Petey’s life in ’09’s Spider-Man: Return of the Black Cat, with that arc being a Joe Kelly / Mike McKone production.

Jed MacKay starts his Black Cat run in ’19. Lots of artists tagging in and out, with Travel Foreman and CF Villa being prominent on the list. This also is one of those single issue relaunches that they ignore when numbering the collected editions. Since Amazon sorts by single issue series, V.1-3 are here and V.4-6 are here.

Iron Cat is an ’02 follow-up by MacKay and Pere Perez.

Did You Say “Stake?”

The Marvel Blade Sale runs through Monday, 8/11.

Now there’s a character that’s changed a little bit since his introduction.

Blade: Undead By Daylight is a collection of some of the original Tomb of Dracula appearances by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.

Blade: Black and White is built around Blade’s appearances in Marvel’s black and white magazines of the 70s, Marv Wolfman/Chris Claremont/Tony DeZuniga being the primary creators here.

Flash forward not quite 20 years and you get the material in Blade Epic Collection: Nightstalkers, which is (primarily) the ’91 Tomb of Dracula revival by Wolfman & Colan, plus the first six issues of Nightstalkers by DG Chichester and Ron Garney, which was part of the Midnight Sons line.

Jump ahead to ’06 and you get a Blade run (pun intended) by Marc Guggenheim and Howard Chaykin.

The more recent Blade saga comes in a sort of cluster.

First, Jason Aaron’s Avengers run. Then there’s the Blade series by Bryan Edward Hill / Elena Casagrande / Valentina Pinti, where Blade becomes the sheriff of Vampire Nation. All of the above leads in the the Blood Hunt Event by Jed MacKay and Pepe Larraz. (There are a couple tie-ins available in the sale, but the Avengers one strangely isn’t included.)

“Normal” Unannounced Sales

As usual, we’re not sure when these sales are ending, but here’s what we’re seeing:

The Curse: A Graphic Ballad (The Path of None Book 1) – Alexander Gabriel Zoderot
Daredevil & Elektra – Chip Zdarsky / Marco Checchetto
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear – Frank Miller / John Romita Jr.
Elektra (’14- ’15) – W. Haden Blackman / Michael Del Mundo
A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir – Brian Fies
Infinite Frontier – Josh Williamson / Xermanico
When Sharks Attack With Kindness – Andrés J. Colmenares

Additionally, it looks like most of the Wolverine and Deadpool material from recent weeks is still on sale. The Under $5 Page has the lower priced volumes. Go back a couple columns for the links to find the Epic Collections.

And if you’re REALLY cheap, the first Powers collection seems to be free at the moment. Great series that sort of fell in the background when Bendis was kicking out all those Events at Marvel. (Seriously, it seems like he was doing 10 comics/month and his creator owned material got put on the backburner.) Powers is the real deal.

Still on Sale

Kodansha Sirius Magazine Spotlight Sale runs through Monday, 8/11

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…

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
- The omnibus editions are here, including the JMS “Ultimate Colletion” and Big Time
- The “Brand New Day” era is broken out in omnibi here
- The “regular” collections are here
  Yeah… the listings here are a mess.
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?

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

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:

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga ($5.99)
Multiversity ($5.99)

An Unannounced Bunn in the Oven

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: