Christmas Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts the unique mix of Howard the Duck, Inhumans and Alien. Plus, Doctor Who and Ms. Tree.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn a commission.)

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

You can find the highlights of this week’s DC sale here (plenty of $1.99 collected editions).

And a quick word about the Marvel sales. There’s usually a Masterworks sale around the holidays. You want what you want, when you want it… but keep that in the back of your mind. At this point we’re not sure if they’re holding that back for NYE or not, but we can’t imagine it’s not coming. That said…

Duck Soup

The Marvel Howard the Duck Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

The original 27-issue Howard the Duck run by Steve Gerber/Frank Brunner/Gene Colan is a classic and a delight. (You may have noticed Gerber has several classics, too.) Wonderful comics.

Now, Howard was Geber’s baby and Gerber didn’t necessarily like other people writing Howard. We tend to feel that way, too, but you be you. After a handful of issues post-Gerber, the series was relaunched (outside the comics code) as Howard the Duck Magazine. That was largely written by Bill Mantlo with Gene Colan, John Buscema and Michael Golden on art.

Then in ’15 (possibly due to a movie cameo), Howard got brought back by Chip Zdarksy and Joe Quinones. First in a mini-series. Then in a regular series.

We’re So Glad Disney Re-Acquired the Film Rights and Ended the Nightmare…

The Marvel Inhumans Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

Yeah, sign us up for the “The Inhumans shouldn’t replace the X-Men” party. And yes, Ms. Marvel should have been a mutant the entire time. Notarize it.

With Inhumans comics there is one volume that stands far above the rest: Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, which was part of the old Marvel Knights imprint when it came out as a 12 issue maxi-series. That’s your gold standard.

Curiously, the Black Bolt series by Saladin Ahmend and Christian Ward isn’t in the sale. We’d have probably slotted that at #2. It’s quite good and the first six issues? Extra special.

There’s nothing wrong with going back to the beginning. Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans is a collection of the early Stan Lee & Jack Kirby appearances from Fantastic Four and Thor. It’s also a thick 425 pages.

For something under the radar? Inhumans: Once and Future Kings by Priest and Phil Noto. Inhuman politics from the younger days of Black Bolt and Maximus… plus, Lockjaw comics.

Foxy

The Marvel 20th Century Sale runs through Monday, 12/11.

And by “20th Century,” they mean 20th Century Fox. These are movie comics.

The Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus program is extended from last month’s omnibus sale. That’s the Dark Horse Aliens material. The first chunk of that Dark Horse Aliens material is also available in an Epic Collection, if you’d rather just dip a toe in. It’s likely the rest will eventually get in Epic format, but that will likely take a few years.

You may recall that Marvel was doing some new Aliens material. It’s true and we quite enjoyed it. Phillip Kennedy Johnson writes it. Salvador Larocca illustrates the first two volumes and Julius Ohta does the third. Weyland-Yutani Corporation is the through line for these tales, as you might expect, manipulating all manner of things as they look for that perfect weaponized life form. This one is split up oddly – Vol. 1 & 2 are here, while Vol. 3 is here.

And for something a little more odd, there’s Planet Of The Apes Adventures: The Original Marvel Years. What is this? Marvel’s Planet of the Apes magazine adapted the first two films. Marvel then reprinted the adaptations in color as the “normal” Adventures on the Planet of the Apes comic. Doug Moench writes, George Tuksa illustrates the first film and Alfredo Acala illustrates Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Unusually, they’ve got this “omnibus” priced at $6.99, although this is a lot skinner than the typical omnibus.

Hammer-isms

The Titan Ms. Tree Sale runs through Sunday, 12/31.

You don’t hear the name pop up that often, but Ms. Tree had a 50-issue run (plus specials) before DC Comics picked it up for a ~2.5 year run as an ~80 page quarterly, at which point everything stopped. Including the specials, that’s pushing the equivalent of a 100-issue run. Not something many 80s/90s indies can boast of.

Max Allan Collins, these days, is probably best known as the writer of The Road to Perdition. When this started he was fresh off some awards for his detective novels and was also writing the Dick Tracy comic strip. He was joined on his comic book adventure by Terry Beatty, who’s currently writing and drawing the Rex Morgan, MD comic strip.

Ms. Tree’s premise is essentially “what if Mike Hammer got killed and Velda took over?” (Velda being Hammer’s secretary who’s quite a bit more hardboiled in the books than in the TV adaptations.) So this is a Mickey Spillane/Mike Hammer-esque detective series. And yes, these days Collins – at Spillane’s request – has been completing the manuscripts and manuscript fragments from Spillane’s files. So if you’re looking for Spillane-esque, this is pretty close to official.

Now, these collections are somewhat out of order. V. 1 and V.2 are actually collecting the Ms. Tree Quarterly stories from DC, which weren’t collected before. V. 3 goes back to the beginning and starts going through the original material, which did have a couple different book collections (including mass market paperback).

V.1 – 3 are here.

V.4 (and the upcoming, not discounted, V.5) are here.

Knock Knock

The Titan 10th Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 1/15.

That’s 10th Doctor as in David Tennant’s first run on Doctor Who. Nick Abadzis is your writer, initially with Elena Casagrande and then Giorgia Sposito on art.

It’s available as single issues and collected editions.

We would point out that five issues @ $0.99 is cheaper than a five issue collection for $5.99. Just saying…

Still on Sale

The DC Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 12/11
The Zenescope Tis the Saeaon, Zenescope’s Holiday Fear Sale runs through Wed, 12/27
The Kodansha Season’s Savings Sale runs through Monday, 12/18
The Titan The Tenth Doctor Sale runs through 1/15
The Titan Dark Souls Sale runs through Sunday, 12/31
The Titan Life is Strange Sale runs through Sunday, 12/31
The Titan Robotech Sale runs through Sunday, 12/31
The Dark Horse 2023 Star Wars Digital Sale runs through Monday, 12/25
The Media Do Black Friday BL Special Sale runs through Friday, 12/8
The Dark Horse 2023 The Orville-Space Job Digital Sale runs through Monday, 12/18

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, holiday sales from DC (it’s a doozy), IDW, Archie and BOOM!.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

(Disclosure: If you buy something we link to on our site, we may earn commission.)

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

A clerical note before we jump into things. Comics.Cheap will probably be on a strange holiday schedule, like everyone else. We’re not sure if we’ll be putting out the usual Friday round-up this week. That will be determined largely by whether any more notable sales dropping between now and then. (There’s an Image sale listed, but as we’re typing this, it sure doesn’t look like the sale prices are appearing yet… but if it’s not more than 50% off, we’ll wait for next week.) Next week, we’ll have a closer look at the BEST of the Marvel Masterworks sale and catch up on any interesting sales dropping between now and then.

DC’s Insane Holiday Sale

The DC Holiday Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

WOW. This is like the last few DC sales, only more of it. And with over 3K items this is approaching a line-wide sale. Not quite, but getting there. If you scroll back to the last few $1.99/$2.99 sales between Black Friday and now, we think most of that material is back on sale, so we’ll focus on things that caught our eye this time around that maybe weren’t previously on sale. Yes, some of these items are giving the Marvel Masterpieces sale a run for your money.

This is 3600+ items, so remember – when browsing the main sale link, right click on comics and open them in a new window or you’ll lose your place and have to start over at the top!

Here’s an extended list of what caught our eye:

$1.99 Collected Editions

DC Meets Looney Tunes – Which you get for the astounding (no, really – it’s excellent) Batman / Elmer Fudd by Tom King and Lee Weeks
Deadman – The original run by Neal Adams and follow-ups by Paul Levitz / Len Wein / Jim Aparo / Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
The Demon (’87) – Matt Wagner
Doctor Fate – Paul Levitz / Sonny Liew
Doom Patrol – The classic Grant Morrison/Richard Case run
The Flintstones –Mark Russell / Steve Pugh
Gotham Central – Ed Brubaker/Greg Rucka/Michael Lark/Stefano Gaudiano/Kano – double volumes
Hellblazer – original series
Invasion – Keith Giffen / Bill Mantlo / Todd McFarlane / Bart Sears
John Constantine, Hellblazer – Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell / Matias Bergara
Justice League International – Bwa ha ha! Keith Giffen / J.M. DeMatteis/Kevin Maguire
The Road to Perdition – The film was based on the Max Allan Collins / Richard Piers Rayner
Ronin – by Frank Miller
Saga of The Swamp Thing – Alan Moore / John Totleben / Stephen Bissette / Rick Veitch / Stan Woch
Sandman – Neil Gaiman’s best known work, as seen on Netflix
Suicide Squad (’87) – John Ostrander / Kim Yale / Luke McDonnell / Geoff Isherwood
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow – Tom King / Bilquis Evely
The Unwritten – Mike (M.R.) Carey / Peter Gross

$2.99 Collected Editions

Dark Knights of Steel – Tom Taylor / Yasmine Putri
The Demon – Jack Kirby
The Forever People – Jack Kirby
I… Vampire – J.M. DeMatteis / Tom Sutton
Mister Miracle – Jack Kirby
Scalped –Jason Aaron / R. M. Guera
Sheriff of Babylon – Tom King / Mitch Gerads
Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen – Jack Kirby
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson

Over $3

Bizarro Comics – Matt Groening / Kyle Baker / Harvey Pekar and bunch more
Marshal Law – Pat Mills / Kevin O’Neill
Mister Miracle – The second series with Steve Englehart / Marshall Rogers and then Steve Gerber / Michael Golden / Russ Heath – that’s right, Heath inking Golden!
Night Force – The first Marv Wolfman / Gene Colan run (Marv’s favorite series)

What’s the cream of the crop? More so than most weeks, it depends on your individual tastes. We will definitely say that the double volume editions of Gotham Central for $1.99 seems like an absolute steal. We might slightly favor Jimmy Olsen (essentially, Kirby’s Superman title), but all of those 70’s Jack Kirby books for $2.99 are great deals. And we’re leaning toward Justice League International for the third slot because it’s just never this cheap.

What’s that? You say you’d rather have single issues? Preferably for $0.99? It seems DC would like to placate your tastes. Note: these are fairly recent issues being discounted, so on longer running titles, you’ll need to scroll down a bit to see the 99 cent issues. There’s a lot more than list here, but you’ll need to get below the collected editions on the main page.

Holidays go BOOM!

The BOOM! Holidays Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

This looks to be a line-wide 50% off sale, so let’s look at some things might be slightly below the radar.

Steed & Mrs. Peel is an adaption of the British TV Avengers, the often absurdist spy-fi show. This is a relatively early Grant Morrison script and drawn by Ian Gibson, who’s best known for his 2000 AD work on Robo-Hunter and Judge Dredd.

Is this the first time BRZRKR has been discounted? This one made a big splash on Kickstarter and variant covers, but you know what? Despite all the hype that wasn’t about the interior pages, this is actually a very enjoyable action/SF/dark fantasy comic. It’s written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt with art by Ron Garney and concerns a seemingly immortal warrior from centuries past who’s ready to leave immortality behind. It’s bloody as all get out, but alternates the violence with character work.

And for something completely different: Jeremy Bastian’s Cursed Pirate Girl. You need to see the art in this fantasy tale for yourself. A delightfully unique experience.

A Different Side of Riverdale

The Archie Holiday Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

Since this looks line wide, we’ll draw your attention to something well off the beaten path:

The Black Hood by Duane Swierczynski / Michael Gaydos / Howard Chaykin / Greg Scott is more a crime book than a superhero caper. Vigilante if you must. In the wake of a shooting, involving a vigilante called The Black Hood, an injured cop develops a pain killer addiction, dons the Black Hood’s mask for less than puritanical reasons and finds himself in over his head in a world of vendettas. Very dark, very good. For some reason V. 3 is listed separately.

IDW Does the Holidays

The IDW Holidays Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

Much like with BOOM!, this looks to be a near line wide sales at 50%-ish off, so we’ll highlight some under the radar books. If you’ve had your eye on something specific, have a browse and you’ll likely find it.

Popeye by Roger Langridge and Bruce Ozella is just straight up fun. A satisfying and amusing entry in the Popeye library.

The One by Rick Veitch is very dark superhero satire steeped in cold war politics. It’s effectively the younger sibling of Brat Pack and one of the earlier deconstructionist superhero comics (After Marvelman/Miracleman’s run in Warrior, but before Watchmen).

Sachs and Violens by Peter David and George Perez was originally a mini-series for Marvel’s Epic imprint, near the end of Epic’s original run. It’s a lighthearted adventure contrasted with heavy material (snuff films) as a model and photographer mete out street justice. Oddly, David later included the characters in his Fallen Angel series.