In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts the 90s. Marvel slashes sales prices on the Avengers vs. X-Men line of Events and also Hawkeye. Dark Horse offers up Critical Role and Zenescope slips Robyn Hood into the mix.
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):
After the 80s…
The DC 90s Rewind Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.
DC in the 90s… well, we’ll tell you straight off the bat, they’re missing Starman. And they’re missing the Strazeswki/Parobeck Justice Society. (The lead-in mini is collected, but not the lost classic ongoing.) Some of the better 90s material from DC isn’t currently in print. That said, let’s look at some deals and maybe a little off the beaten path.
Batman: Haunted Knight is the Batman material that Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale did before they did The Long Halloween. It doesn’t get talked about as much, but trust us, that first Halloween special they did came out of nowhere and was a jolt to the system.
Aztek: The Ultimate Man is quite the oddity today. For a little while, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were a writing team. This was their superhero offering, who would later show up in JLA. N. Steven Harris was the artist.
The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake was one of the best under the radar books of the 90s. A character study, too, as Jim Corrigan comes to grips with being dead and sharing an existence with an avenging spirit. We wish the entire run was available.
And some of the better 90s DC comics were outside the confines of the DC imprint.
Ignore that awful film, the original League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic was great. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil assembled (on behalf of the government, naturally) a team of characters drawn from Victorian fantasy and horror novels. Alan Quarterman, Captain Nemo, Mina Harkness, Mister Hyde and The Invisible Man. It’s a fun one… in a dark way. Originally set up at Wildstorm, DC was the early publisher.
You could probably argue that Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon was Vertigo’s flagship title, post-Sandman and it ran for the back half of the 90s as Jesse Custer goes on a rather angry quest to find out why God has gone missing. You may have seen it on TV.
And then there’s Hellblazer. It technically started in ’88, but was Vertigo’s longest lived title and supported a parade of high end writers and artists. The first two volumes, ironically the 80s material, are at a particularly good price and this was a consistently good title.
Crossovers!
The Marvel Uncanny X-Men/Avengers Crossover Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.
This is quite a jumble of Events. Let’s try and put a little context around them.
This batch starts with X-Men Vs. Avengers/Fantastic Four, which collects two miniseries from 1987. X-Men Vs. Avengers (Roger Stern/Marc Silvestri for three issues, the Tom DeFalco/Jim Shooter/Keith Pollard) and X-Men vs. Fantastic Four (Chris Claremont / Jon Bogdanove).
Fast forward to 1993 and Avengers/X-Men: Bloodties, a Genosha-centric arc that spanned the Avengers and X-Men titles.
In 1996, X-Men/Avengers: Onslaught (yes, most people just call it “Onslaught”) was more of an X-event, but spanned a number of Avengers titles… and Spidey, and FF… as it set things up for the Image founders to take over some titles in the aftermath.
2000 brought us Maximum Security, wherein The Supreme Intelligence manages to get Earth designated a penal colony for dumping off the worst intergalactic offenders. Kurt Busiek & Jerry Ordway handle the miniseries and it crosses over with many Avengers and X-Men family titles.
In 2009, Avengers/X-Men: Utopia isn’t really an Avengers/X-Men event in the traditional sense. This is set during the “Dark Reign” period and the X-Men have a run in with Norman Osborn’s “Dark Avengers” team as Normy tries to set up a “Dark X-Men.”
Alrighty, then! Now, we’re to the part where things start to bleed together (in the name of circulation, naturally). Hold tight.
Things kick off with Avengers Vs. X-Men (promoted as AVX). Who were the creators? Almost everyone at Marvel in 2012. Check out all the varieties of companion books in the main listing!
In the aftermath of AVX, Uncanny Avengers debuts. This is an attempt to have a sort of merged Avengers/X-Men personnel unit. Naturally, the Red Skull shows up to cause trouble. Rick Remender is the writer. John Cassaday is the launch artist and Daniel Acuna is the primary artist after he leaves. The end of the first volume/run leads right into…
Avengers & X-Men: Axis, wherein the Red Skull powers up, gets some allies and turns everything upside down. Remender’s the writer with Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson and Jim Cheung hopping in and out on art. There were quite a few tie-ins at the time, but those collected editions don’t appear to be on sale.
In the aftermath of Axis, Remender and Acuna return for one more Uncanny Avengers outing. Then Uncanny Avengers relaunches with Gerry Duggan writing and an artist rotation of Ryan Stegman / Carlos Pacheco / Pepe Larraz.
Hawk-Guy
The Marvel Hawkeye Sale runs through Monday, 8/7.
Let’s run through the highlights of the sale, knowing that Hawkeye’s typically been in fairly short runs.
- Hawkeye Epic Collection – This builds around the Mark Gruenwald (yes, writer/artist) miniseries from ’83 and fills it out with various earlier appearances from Avengers, Marvel Team-Up, Tales of Suspense, etc.)
- Hawkeye (2012-15) – The famous Matt Fraction/David Aja run, now in one volume.
- Hawkeye (2015-16) – The Jeff Lemire/Ramon Perez follow-up to Fraction/Aja
- Hawkeye (2016-18) – The Kate Bishop run by Kelly Thompson & Leanardo Romero
- Old Man Hawkeye (2018) – Ethan Sacks and Marco Checcetto craft a prequel to Old Man Logan
What’s good? While a little goofier than the traditional portrayal of Clint Barton, the Fraction/Aja run is almost universally acknowledged at the best Hawkeye run. We’re not going to argue with that. Nope. It’s a good one.
If you’re looking for the Kate Bishop version of Hawkeye, the Thompson/Romero run is the one you want.
Dice Can Be Very Critical of You
The Dark Horse Critical Role Sale runs through Monday, 8/28
Yes, this would be the comic adaption of the web series about a Dungeons & Dragon campaign. (That would be comics about the campaign and characters in it.)
This one is organized a little oddly, so lets walk through that.
- The “volumes” or collected editions of the “true” single issues are here.
- There’s an omnibus of the first two collected editions here.
- The single issues are here.
Price-wise, it doesn’t really matter which format you go with, however… if you scroll down to the bottom of the single issues, you’ll find a series of original graphic novels that are closer to the European album format. Should they be listed elsewhere? Maybe. But know that they’re at the bottom of the single issues page.
The Other Hood
The Zenescope Robyn Hood Sale runs through Monday, 8/21.
Much like Critical Role, this sale is in three flavors with three links:
- An omnibus with the first three collected editions
- Collected editions
- Single issues
Unlike Dark Horse, this is looking like the Omnibus is cheaper than the collected editions and the collected editions are cheaper than the single issues, but you can double check that on individual collections. 99-cent single issues make that easy.
And yes, those really are Chuck Dixon and Howard Mackie on runs towards the bottom of the listings.
