Bloom County Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops six sales (one of which you might have trouble seeing in the US), plus… Opus.

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):

Housekeeping: Your eyes do not deceive you. There are plenty of $2.99 single volumes scattered amongst the Marvel offerings this month. Most of Jed MacKay’s Doctor Strange, for example. Enjoy.

Surfin’ Bird

The Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

So… we’re seeing last month’s X-Force sale for this link in the US (minus most of the discounts). Perhaps the link will be fixed by the time you click on it, but since we know what’s REALLY on sale, we’re going to drop the highlights below and save you the headache. And perhaps we’ll follow up if the link gets fixed.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall into three periods:

First, the classic original series by Stan Lee and (mostly) John Buscema. This ran from ’68-’70 and is a minor legend for a reason.

There wasn’t much solo Surfer for the better part of 17 years because the Surfer was considered to be Stan’s character in a similar way to how Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s. That changed in ’87 when Silver Surfer relaunched under the team of Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers. (Yes, the Batman pairing.) Predictably, it was excellent. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet. We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

Then next major addition to the cannon was the Dan Slott / Michael Allred Silver Surfer in 2014. It is confusing listed in two places. The first three volumes here and the final two volumes here.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

And if you’re interested in cherry picking the Surfer’s original appearances in Fantastic Four, the very definition of classic, there’s an Epic Collection that does just that.

The Doctor Will See You Now

The Marvel Doctor Strange Sale runs through Monday, 2/3.

And it’s most of the Doctor Strange material that’s been collected in book form.

Strange Tales – A bit further down that cluttered page, you’ll find the original Lee/Ditko run in Masterworks and Epics
Doctor Strange ’68-’69 – This is there the Epics and Masterworks start containing different titles, so pay attention if you’re mixing formats. (Some next level Gene Colan art in this run, btw.)
Doctor Strange ’74-’87 – The Epics pick up with the tale end of the ’68 series, catch the Marvel Premiere issues (enter: Englehart & Brunner) and then into the regular series, then you’ll need “regular” collections for the Stern/Smith run.
Strange Tales ’87-’88 – The rest of the Peter B. Gillis run from Strange Tales with art by Chris Warner, Kevin Nowlan, Terry Shoemaker and Richard Case. Not in the sale, but included for completeness
Doctor Strange ’88-’96 – Probably best known for the Roy & Dann Thomas run with Butch Guice and Geoff Isherwood as notable artists.
Doctor Strange ’15-’18 – Initially Jason Aaron/Chris Bachalo with Donny Cates tagging in towards the end. (The omnibuses here are the better buy)
Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme ’16-’17 – Robbie Thompson / Javier Rodriguez
Doctor Strange ’18-’19 – The Mark Waid / Jesus Saiz / Barry Kitson era with Strange in space.
Doctor Strange, Surgeon Supreme (’19) – the very much under-rated and too short Mark Waid / Kev Walker run. Walker knocks it out of the park here.
Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise – Tradd Moore
Jed McKay’s saga, which needs to be read in order
- The Death of Doctor Strange – Jed MacKay / Lee Garbett; No, really… he actually dies and it’s clever
- Strange – Jed MacKay / Marcelo Ferreira; With Stephen dead, Clea assumes the mantle of Sorceress Supreme… and she’s feeling a little tetchy
- Doctor Strange (’23-’24) – Jed MacKay / Pasqual Ferry; How can a dead man not be dead? The answer is complicated…

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.

The Jed MacKay sequence is very good and Marvel’s best death and rebirth sequence in quite some time, but you really need to start with The Death of Doctor Strange. We seldom give a big thumbs up to this kind of arc, but sometimes the needle gets threaded.

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.

That’s the solo pack. There’s also quite a bit of team material available:

Blood Hunt – Jed MacKay / Pepe Larraz; the recent vampire Event
Clandestine Classic – Alan Davis; An original super team/family from Alan Davis
- ClanDestine: Family Ties – Alan Davis; The sequel
Defenders (’72-’86) – The original run, but some fool forgot to discount the Gerber run…
Defenders: Return Of The Defenders (’92) – Peter David / Ron Marz / Roy Thomas / Travis Charest / James Fry / Tom Morgan / M. C. Wyman
Defenders: Indefensible (’05) – J.M. DeMatteis / Keith Giffen / Kevin Maguire
Defenders: There Are No Rules (’21) – Al Ewing / Javier Rodriguez
- Defenders: Beyond (’22) – Al Ewing / Javier Rodriguez

We’d draw your attention to two under the radar things from this second list. Clandestine is Alan Davis doing his own thing, which is always a good time. The Al Ewing / Javier Rodriguez Defenders titles are the very definition of trippy, living at the intersection of Sorcery Marvel and Cosmic Marvel. We’re usually in the bag for a Ewing run, but if you discovered Javier Rodriguez on the excellent Absolute Martian Manhunter, this is him getting cosmic a few years earlier when fewer people were paying attention.

The Great White North

The Marvel Alpha Flight Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

We know what you’re thinking: “If Spider-Man could team up with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, why couldn’t Alpha Flight team up with Bob and Doug McKenzie?” The way we heard it, this was proposed, but Guy Caballero nixed it.

The main item of note here is Alpha Flight Classic, 3 volumes that comprise the John Byrne run on the original series and a Bill Mantlo/Mike Mignola issue and Byrne essentially traded Alpha Flight for The Incredible Hulk. (We recall the Mantlo run being better than advertised, but there doesn’t currently seem to be interest in collecting it.)

Of possible related interest is X-Men: Asgardian Wars by Chris Claremont / Paul Smith / Arthur Adams. X-Men / Alpha Flight is the first half of the book and it’s a fun romp. Plus, Smith and Adams on art? There are a lot worse things to drop $2.99 on.

And for something out of left field, there’s the more recent Gamma Flight, which is an Alpha Flight adjacent spin-off of Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Crystal Frazier and Len Medina.

A bit more tangentially related:

A semi-random selection of Wolverine collections (starting with the Hama/Silvestri era)
The first appearance of Alpha Flight, tucked in the middle of X-Men Epic Collection: Proteus, from the excellent Claremont / Byrne era
X-Men By Jed Mackay Vol. 2: Hostile Takeover (Jed Mackay / Ryan Stegman / Netho Diaz) from the current run, which guest stars Alpha Flight and might be the first time it’s discounted?

Stabbing Time

The Marvel Elektra Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

Strangely, this sale excludes Elektra: Assassin.

What are we seeing? The original Miller Daredevil run is available in multiple formats.

Elektra (’96 – ’98) – Peter Milligan / Larry Hama / Mike Deodato, Jr.
Elektra (’01 – ’04) – Greg Rucka / Chuck Austen (drawing, not writing) / Joe Bennett / Carlo Pagulayan / Carlos Meglia / Greg Horn

Hurricane Ororo

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday 2/23.

We noticed something strange when going through this sale. The original X-Men / Uncanny X-Men (’63-’11) series has come undone in Amazon listings. Only the Epic Collections are still attached to the series. The Masterworks volumes or things like Lifedeath are still in the system, but they’re not attached to the series, effectively just floating out there unmoored in the digital aether. It’s really odd and it applies to things in the Cyclops sale, too.

Storm ’06 – Eric Jerome Dickey / David Yardin
Storm ’14-’15 – Greg Pak / Victor Ibanez
Uncanny X-Men by Kieron Gillen: The Complete Collection – Gillen and So. Many. Artists. This would be Gillen’s run from ’11
X-Men: Gold – Marc Guggenheim / Ken Lashley / R.B. Silva / Ardian Syaf

Here’s Mud in Your Eye

The Marvel Cyclops sale runs through 2/23.

This sale is even less organized than the Storm sale, partially because of the X-men books becoming unstuck from their home series.

A few things to look at:

X-Men (current) – Jed MacKay / Ryan Stegman / Netho Diaz
X-Factor (’86-’98)
X-Men: Cyclops & Phoenix – Past & Future – Scott Lobdell / Peter Milligan / Tom DeFalco / Gene Ha / John Paul Leon / Kyle Hotz

Unannounced Sales

Also on sale:

MrBallen Presents: Strange, Dark & Mysterious: The Graphic Stories – MrBallen / Andrea Mutti / Robert Venditti
False Knees: An Illustrated Guide to Animal Behavior – Joshua Barkman
Happily Ever After & Everything In Between – Debbie Tung
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection –Bill Watterson
How I Broke Up with My Colon: Fascinating, Bizarre, and True Health Stories – Nick Seluk / The Awkward Yeti
Little Moments of Love – Catana Chetwynd
Marvel Black Panther Wakanda Atlas – Evan Narcisse / Shawn Martinbrough
OPUS: 25 Years of His Sunday Best – Berkeley Breathed
Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg – Kate Evans / Paul Buhle
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”: The Authorized Graphic Adaptation – Miles Hyman

The Creepy / Eerie sale appears to be continuing, so let’s revisit that, too. Creepy was the first one and is available in both archive format and “Creepy Presents” volumes spotlighting individual artists (Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, Steve Ditko). Eerie was the companion series. By halfway through it’s run, it had evolved into something a little different with multi-part stories and characters who returned, the breakout character being The Rook (a time traveler with some western elements baked in). It’s also available in archive format and “Eerie Presents” for collecting individual features (El Cid and Hunter).

And have a look at the $5 and under page.

Still on Sale

The DC Vertigo Sale runs through Tuesday, 2/24
The Kodansha I Love You But I’ve Chosen Manga Sale runs through Monday, 2/16

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we’ve got discounts on Kieron Gillen’s Marvel work – Eternals / Uncanny X-Men / Journey Into Mystery / etc.; Marvel’s Original Sin Event; another big block of DC collections, including Sandman; IDW cuts the prices on some classic newspaper strip collections; and we couldn’t really have a new season of Umbrella Academy without a sale on the original material, could we?

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

Journey into Gillen

The Marvel Kieron Gillen Sale runs through Monday, 6/27.

We find it really sad that a “Marvel” Gillen sale does not include our two favorite works of the bunch: Darth Vader and Doctor Aphra. Yes, there will other Star Wars sales, but if you’re talking Gillen, that’s what we’d put at the top of the heap.

So let’s start out with a cleaner recap of the major items in this sale:

The Eternals with Eric Ribić. $0.99 single issues only and the collected edition is NOT on sale for reasons known only to Amazon and/or Marvel.
War Hammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar with Jacen Burrows
Journey Into Mystery (i.e. Loki) with Doug Braithwaite and Richard Elson (among others) – omnibus editions
Uncanny X-Men – omnibus editions
Young Avengers with Jamie McKelvie – omnibus edition
Thor with Billy Tan / Richard Elson / Doug Braithwaite – omnibus edition
Iron Man with Greg Land / Dale Eaglesham / Joe Bennett / Luke Ross

What’s good? This one’s going to be more personal preference than with many sales and to that end, we’d point out that we did read the War Hammer volume and it felt like that’s a book you’ll get a LOT more out of it if you’re a gamer. (But if you’re already into War Hammer, you’ll probably love it.) Past that, Journey Into Mystery is where Gillen really popped onto the Marvel radar, Young Avengers is the familiar team of Gillen/McKelvie and Gillen’s Mr. Sinister in Uncanny X-Men definitely has had influence.

Casting the First Stone

The Marvel Original Sin Sale runs through Monday, 6/27.

We’d probably call this a one book sale – Original Sin is a big Event by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato. Someone’s killed the Watcher, dirty secrets are bubbling up from everyone’s past and… more would get into spoilers. There are a few tie-in volumes also listed, but our recollection is that the tie-in volumes are not really necessary. While this is often the case with Events, it might be even more so here. Proceed with tie-ins only if they’re scratching an itch for you.

When they say “Multiverse,” they mean “Infinity”

The DC Multiverse and Beyond eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 7/4.

This is another entry in the new DC trend of dropping ~2000 collections without much noticeable curation, so you can pick through it at your leisure. Lowest prices are $4.99, but most non-YA doesn’t get below $5.99.

With the Netflix adaptation looming a little over a month away, they’re leading this sale off with Sandman. And it’s certainly a classic series. The question is whether it will dip below $5.99 when the show drops and we don’t have an answer for that. DC’s been holding the line at $5.99 for most of their sales in the last couple months.

Of possible interest from the more recently published volumes (DC does wait awhile before applying discounts):

Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Fighting Corps is listed at $5.99. If you’re not familiar with it, OMAC is a surprisingly subversive dystopian take on a future where billionaires/corporations are running amok. There are superhero trappings, but it’s really a science fiction adventure/satire.

And for something else out of left field in a good way, $5.99 will get Manhunter: The Deluxe Edition. This collects the Detective Comics serial by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson. An absolute classic run, it’s not as mainstream well-known because the Paul Kirk character wasn’t continued in his own title (for obvious reasons). It’s just an excellent stand-alone tale by two legends of the art form.

Where’s My Umbrella?

The Umbrella Academy Sale runs through Tuesday, 6/28.

Why yes, there’s a new season on Netflix and we might even start on that tonight. Funny how sales line up with such things…

This one’s a lot easier to define: it’s a series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba about an extremely dysfunctional family of superhumans who are more than a little scarred by their adoptive upbringing. One series link for the collected editions and no fuss. Good comic, too. We enjoyed it.