Blade Archives - Comics.Cheap

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?

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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: