Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: *Eight* Marvel Sales This Week!

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel has no less than EIGHT sales.

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 note: Yes, this is a much longer installment than you’re used to seeing mid-year. Marvel dropped eight sales and they’re all running for nearly the entire month. Does this mean there won’t be new Marvel sales the rest of the month? We have no idea. We do think the timing is interesting when Disney operates on an October to September fiscal year, but we’re sure that has nothing to dowith Marvel having a high volume of deal at the fiscal year’s end.

When you click through to see the full sale listing, you’re going to notice a change. Instead of the grid layout that’s been used for a while, the sale defaults back to the standard, single column Amazon search result layout. Yes, it’s less than ideal, but we’ve been down this road before, haven’t we? Where appropriate, we’ll still be dropping links when a series (or at least multiple volumes in a series) is on sale. Somebody has to be organized and that responsibility seems to have fallen on us this week…

Ultimate… Everything?

Ultimate Spider-Man The Ultimates Ultimate Black Panther

The  Marvel Ultimate Universe Sale runs through Monday 9/29.

Yes, this is pretty much EVERYTHING Ultimate – old and new universes. Perhaps it’s less clunky if we break this into segments?

The New Ultimate Universe

The setup for the new Ultimate Universe is Ultimate Invasion by Jonathan Hickman & Bryan Hitch. The original Ultimate Universe was destroyed, but not everyone from that dimension was destroyed. Miles Morales survived and moved over the “616” or main Marvel universe. As did Reed Richards… except the Ultimate Reed Richards went bad and has been calling himself “The Maker.” That’s the setup before Invasion where The Maker escapes captivity, escapes into the multiverse and causes the origins of a new world’s heroes not to happen. Peter Parker is never bitten by a radioactive spider for instance. He’s just a photographer with a family by the time this series hits and this sets up the new line of titles.

Ultimate Spider-Man is a definite contender for the best thing Marvel’s putting out right now and we’re big on Ultimates, too.

Ultimate Spider-Man

Ultimate Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man   Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Fallout

This is the original Brian Bendis/Mark Bagley Ultimate Spider-Man. The first Ultimate title and (along with Daredevil) what originally made Bendis his reputation at Marvel.  And it’s a good run, too. Afterwards… enter Miles Morales, who’s become celebrated in his own right.

Ultimate X-Men

Ultimate X-Men  Ultimate Comics X-Men

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

The Ultimates, Ultimate FF and the greater Ultimate Universe

Ultimates Ultimate Fantastic Four Ultimate Comics - The Ultimates

There a bit more to the sale, but that’s the bulk of the highlights. What’s good? The Millar/Hitch Ultimates are hugely influential (especially to the film world). Ultimate FF absolutely has it’s moments. Not everybody realizes that the Marvel Zombies debuted in V. 3 (omnibus version) and are not played for laughs.  Now, we don’t often issue “avoid” warnings around here, but there are a couple things here that we’ll advise against. The Orson Scott Card Ultimate Iron Man? Don’t bother. It’s awful. Ultimatum? Nope! That very nearly killed the line. There are MUCH better things to read in this imprint than those two.

Dirty Harry Called. He Wants His Movie Back.
Deadpool Classics Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan Deadpool by Joe Kelly

The Marvel Deadpool Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these (except Cable/Deadpool and the Daniel Way era) are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line.

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (with Priest and Gail Epic Collections expanding the section)
  • Cable and Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Mark Brooks / Patrick Zircher
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One (and selectively discounted this time)
  • Deadpool Max (’10-’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker
  • Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe (’12) – Cullen Bunn / Dalibor Talajic
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo
  • Deadpool (’22-’23) – Alyssa Wong / Martin Coccolo
  • Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII (’24) – Joe Kelly / Adam Kubert
  • Deadpool (’24 – present ) Cody Ziglar / Rogê Antônio

Pick your preferred creator and go to town.

Hawkguy

Hawkeye  Hawkeye  Avengers West Coast

The Marvel Hawkeye Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

It’s been a while since there was a Hawkeye sale. Let’s put the crown jewel up top: Hawkeye by Fraction & Aja: The Saga Of Barton And Bishop. As in Matt Fraction / David Aja. This is a goofy quasi-reinvention of the character (giving him a faithful companion in Pizza Dog, among other things) that probably started being considered a classic before the series even wrapped up.

This transitions into the Clint/Kate Bishop All-New Hawkeye by Jeff Lemire / Ramon Perez (Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 — yes, Marvel tried to continue the collected edition numbering, but let’s call this what it is.)

And then it’s time for Kate to headline the Hawkeye books:

OK… this gets kind of complicated. Kelly Thompson effectively gets custody of Kate and after a solo series, moves her over to West Coast Avengers.

Hawkeye: Private Eye (Thompson / Leonardo Romero / Mike Walsh) covers the first 12 issues of the Kate version of Hawkeye. Hawkeye: Go West (Thompson / Romero / Stefano Caselli) finishes off the Hawkeye run and starts collecting the West Coast Avengers run. Finally Hawkeye: Kate Bishop – Team Spirit (Thompson / The McElroys /Daniele Di Nicuolo / André Lima Araújo) finishes up West Coast Avengers and adds a War of the Realms tie-in.

And then Hawkeye: Freefall (Matthew Rosenberg / Otto Schmidt) brings Clint Barton back into the lead.

Now, if you’re looking for the more traditional representation of Hawkeye:

There’s a bit more here to browse, but we’d call that the highlights. Recommendations?

Hawkeye by Fraction & Aja: The Saga Of Barton And Bishop for the modern take. Avengers West Coast for the traditional take.

Fan out from those starting points.

Crime and Punisher-ment

Punisher: Circle of Blood   Punisher: The Resurrection of Ma Gnucci  Punisher

The Marvel Punisher Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

First, the “general audience” Punisher:

  • The Punisher ’87-’95 – Note that the first Epic Collection here collects the ’86 Steven Grant/Mike Zeck Circle of Blood mini-series that kicked off the Punisher’s rise to prominence. Yes, Whilce Portacio drew Punisher before X-Men
  • Punisher War Journal ’88-’95 – This volume is notable for the Carl Potts / Jim Lee work. Yes, Jim Lee drew Punisher War Journal before X-Men.
  • Punisher War Zone ’92-’95 – Yes, Frank Castle was holding down three titles/month in the early ’90s! Collected here are a pair of Chuck Dixon tales with John Buscema and Joe Kubert as the respective artists.
  • Punisher War Journal ’06-’09 – Probably best known for Matt Fraction and Ariel Olivetti
  • Punisher ’00 – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon; Collects the immortal “Welcome Back, Frank”
  • Punisher: The Resurrection of Ma Gnucci (Punisher War Zone) ’08-’09 – Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon team for a sequel to Welcome Back, Frank
  • Punisher ’09-’10 – The Rick Remender run, for which the third volume is Franken-Castle
  • The Punisher ’11-’12 – The Greg Rucka / Marco Checchetto (now more associated with Daredevil) run
  • The Punisher ’14-15 – Nathan Edmondson / Mitch Gerads. Yes, Mitch Gerards as in Mister Miracle and Sheriff of Babylon
  • The Punisher ’16-18 – Starts out with Becky Cloonan / Steve Dillon
  • The Punisher ’18-’19 – Matthew Rosenberg / Szymon Kudranski (not on sale, but included for completeness)
  • Punisher ’22-’23 – Jason Aaron / Jesus Saiz / Paul Azaceta (not on sale, but included for completeness)
  • Punisher War Journal ’22-’23Torunn GrØnbekk / Djibril Morissette-Phan
  • Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe – Garth Ennis / Jonathan Maberry / Doug Braithwaite / Goran Parlov

What’s good? Actually, we like the original Marvel Super Action magazine version by Archie Goodwin and Tony DeZuniga, but that’s not on the menu.

Our favorite run of the above is probably the Ennis/Dillon “Welcome Back, Frank.” We also were pretty fond of the Rucka / Checchetto run when it was coming out. It’s also worth going back and seeing where all the fuss started with the Grant/Zeck mini and the Baron/Janson/Portacio ongoing.

Then there’s the Max line. “Mature Readers” Punisher, if you will.

Punisher Max: The Complete Collection is the ’04-’09 run that’s most associated with Garth Ennis returning to the character (with art by Darick Robertson, Leandro Fernendez, Doug Braithwaite and Goran Parlov, among others). This is Ennis doing the serious Punisher, as opposed to the hilarity of Welcome Back, Frank. Mike Benson, Victor Gischler and Jason Aaron pop up at the end of the run.

Then you’ve got PunisherMaxthe ’09-’12 relaunch by Jason Aaron/Steve Dillon, where Frank mixes it up with The Kingpin and Bullseye.

And, of course, Ennis will pop back every so often for another tale.

Hocus Pocus

Magik  New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga

The Marvel Magik Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

This sale is a largely a volume here and a volume there, so let’s run through some highlights.

If you’re going to get one book, then it’s The Demon Bear Saga.

Corpsman
Nova Classic  Nova by Abnett & Lanning Annihilation

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Plus, a selection of Annihilation titles:

  • Annihilation – The original Event
  • Annihilation 2099 – Steve Orlando / Dale Eaglesham / Ibraim Roberson / Jose Luis / Pete Woods / Ario Anindito
  • Annihilation: Scourge – Matthew Rosenberg / Dan Abnett / Michael Moreci / Christos N. Gage / Juanan Ramirez / Ibraim Roberson / Paul Davidson / Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque / Diego Olortegui / Manuel Garcia

Seeing Ghosts

Spider-Gwen  Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse  Spider-Gwen The Ghost-Spider

The Marvel Ghost Spider Sale runs through Monday, 9/29.

Ah, the always amusing struggle to balance a character’s movie name with their comics name. Yes, this is really a Spider-Gwen sale.

I Am Not a Number

Spider-Man: Sinister Six  Sinister War

The Marvel Sinister Six Sale runs through Monday 9/29.

This is fairly random selection of titles, most of which feature a member or two of the team that’s a convergence of Spidey’s original villains.

Something in Parabellum?
Deadworld   The Realm    Jazz Age Chronicles

The Caliber Comics Library 50% off Fall Sale runs through Tuesday, 9/30.

There are a few titles here that were notable in the ’80s indie boom.

And plenty of Don Lomax war comics.

Unannounced Sales

Money Shot  Through the Woods

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

Additionally, it looks like most of the Superman material from recent weeks is still on sale. The Under $5 Page has the lower priced volumes.

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales, SDCC Edition: Deadpool, She-Hulk

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel deals some discounts on Deadpool and She-Hulk. Plus, the Dark Horse Comic-Con sale marches on.

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 note: For those of you wondering if the Superman sale at the beginning of the month meant that DC was back to offering regular sales: as of Friday afternoon, the answer would appear to be no. We found a couple minor price drops that we’ve thrown into the unannounced section, but the Superman sale currently looks like a one-off corporate synergy promotion. If you’re thinking this is a small number of sales for Comic-Con week, you’re correct. There’s a possibility most of the usual suspects are distracted by all the shenanigans in the Diamond Bankruptcy saga. (Something that doesn’t directly affect you as a digital reader, but is a seismic problem in the print world.)

$20 on Uncle Ben
Deadpool Classics Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan Deadpool by Joe Kelly

The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 7/28.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these (except Cable/Deadpool and the Daniel Way era) are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line.

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (with Priest and Gail Epic Collections expanding the section)
  • Cable and Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Mark Brooks / Patrick Zircher
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One (and selectively discounted this time)
  • Deadpool Max (’10-’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker
  • Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe (’12) – Cullen Bunn / Dalibor Talajic
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo
  • Deadpool (’22-’23) – Alyssa Wong / Martin Coccolo
  • Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII (’24) – Joe Kelly / Adam Kubert
  • Deadpool (’24 – present ) Cody Ziglar / Rogê Antônio

Pick your preferred creator and go to town.

Hulk File Injunction

The Marvel She-Hulk Sale runs through Monday, 7/28.

Sensational She-Hulk   She-Hulk by Dan Slott   She-Hulk

  • The Savage She-Hulk (’80-’82) – mostly by David Anthony Kraft and Mike Vosburg
  • Sensational She-Hulk (’89-’94) – John Byrne, then the unlikely team of Steve Gerber & Bryan Hitch
  • She-Hulk (’04-’05) – Dan Slott / Juan Bobillo
  • She-Hulk (’05 – ’09) – Initially Dan Slott / Juan Bobillo, then Peter David takes over.
  • She-Hulk (’14-’15) – Charles Soule & Javier Pulido in one omnibus
  • She-Hulk (’16-’18) – Mariko Tamaki / Nico Leon in one omnibus
  • She-Hulk (’22-’23) – Rainbow Rowell / Roge Antonio / Luca Maresca

If you’re coming into She-Hulk through the TV show, the legal angle for the character really started getting emphasized with the Dan Slott era and then was followed up on by Charles Soule (who just might be a lawyer in his secret identity). Rainbow Rowell’s also picking up a pretty dedicated following with her current runs.

Unannounced Sales

Hellboy  Martha Washington  Minor Threats

Dark Horse is still  having a “Comic-Con @Home digital sale” and has most of their collected editions discounted, but not the newest material and not the single issues.  Here’s a link that will *eventually* get you through their catalog in a very laborious way and with the single issues mixed in. (It’s not perfect, but we’re trying.) Figure this will be around 50% off, but it might vary a little from book to book. Our understanding is that this will run through August 4th.

Here are some direct links to various series:

Also on sale, and we’re not clear on when these will stop being discounted:

Additionally, it looks like most of the Captain America and Wolverine 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.

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Spider-Man Team-Up; Scarlet Witch and The Vision; Titan’s MCM London Sale; Monkey Vs. Robot

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Spider-Man teams up with all sorts of people. Marvel drops a discount on the Scarlet Witch and the Vision. Titan has a convention sale. Plus, Elfquest, Monkey Vs. Robot and The Dark Crystal.

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):

Spider-Friends

Marvel Team-Up  Spider-Man / Deadpool  Uncanny Spider-Man

The Marvel Spider-Man Crossovers and Team-Ups Sale runs through Monday, 5/26.

What’s this? A collection of various Spidey team-up titles and a few Events he appeared in.

What’s interesting?

Which Witch?

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast  The Vision

The Marvel Scarlet Witch and Vision Sale runs through Monday, 5/26.

Hey, they’re a couple again… at least for this sale.

First: Wanda-centric comics:

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

Avengers West Coast Epic Collection: Vision Quest has Wanda’s original heel-turn in John Byrne’s run that was an influence on the TV show. (It also has the end of the Englehart run and that counts for something, too.) This apparently replaces House of M in this sale for Wanda heel-turns?

The current Steve Orlando / Sarah Pichelli / Lorenzo Tammetta / Jacopo Camagni run got a relaunch (yes, we’re shocked a Marvel book relaunched with minimal to no changes), so it’s listed in two places:

Yes, a relaunch so deeply meaningful, they didn’t bother restarting the numbering for the collected editions. One run, as far as we’re concerned.

Over the Vision side of the aisle, there is a CLASSIC tome you should read if you have any interest in the character:

Vision: The Complete Series – Tom King / Gabriel Hernandez Walta. After his split with Wanda, The Vision moves to the suburbs with a synthezoid wife and two synthezoid kids in tow? What could go wrong? Plenty, as his new world slowly unravels. Probably the best early King book.

Avengers Epic Collection: Behold… The Vision – starts out with the classic two-part debut of The Vision (ending in “Evan an Android Can Cry). This volume is essentially the middle third of the Roy Thomas run. John Buscema / Barry Windsor Smith / Gene Colan / Sal Buscema are. Plenty of Ultron and the debuts of the Squadron Sinister and Invaders towards the end.

Avengers: Absolute VisionBook One and Book Two – Roger Stern / Al Milgrom / Bob Hall; contain a long arc (that mostly executes in the second volume) where the Vision goes slightly mad and tries to take over the world’s computers.

Con Adjacent

A Call To Cthulhu  Death Sentence: London  Killtopia

The Titan Comics MCM London 2025 Sale runs through Friday, 5/30.

MCM London is a British comic convention. (We’ll let you guess which city it’s in.) No, no Conan in this one, but what we do have is:

Unannounced Sales

As usual, we’re not 100% sure how long this discounts will stick around.

Additionally, it looks like most of the Star Wars, Thor and Thunderbolts 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.

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Wolverine; Batman and… Bazooka Joe?

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Deadpool and Wolverine. DC has a Winter Sale with plenty of Batman. Dark Horse puts their Crime titles on sale and… Bazooka Joe?

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):

Administrative Note

It’s the holiday shopping season, which means a few more sales than usual and we’re breaking the week into two posts again. Last time out, we looked at the Infinity (Gauntlet), Thor and Image sales.

Whither Mister Freeze and Captain Cold?

Batman  The Brave and the Bold  Nightwing

The DC Winter Sale runs through Monday, 12/9.

Things could always get a little colder if you’re focused on Winter. (But apparently not Baron Winters?) Here are a few things that caught our eye while sifting through the listings:

  • Batman Vol. 1: Failsafe & Batman Vol. 2: The Bat-Man of Gotham – Chip Zdarsky / Jorge Jiménez / Mike Hawthorne; The first two volumes of the Zdarsky run for $1.99@
  • Batman/Catwoman – Tom King / Clay Mann / Liam Sharp; King continues the Bat/Cat relationship. $2.99 for 400+ pages is good value
  • Batman: One Bad Day – Ah, here’s Mr. Freeze. This is a series of ~80 page Euro-albums spotlighting Batman’s Rouges Gallery
  • The Brave and the Bold Vol. 1: Lords of Luck – Mark Waid / George Perez; Batman, Green Lantern and friends search for the stolen Book of Destiny; First time discounted for this September release
  • Creature Commandos – J.M. DeMatteis / Robert Khanigher / Fred Carillo; The original series from Weird War Stories; $1.99 – cheap
  • DCeased: War of the Undead Gods – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; The endcap to the DCeased Trilogy where the Anti-Life equation has gotten loose and transformed much of humanity (and the metahuman community) into zombie-like creatures
  • Gotham City: Year One – Tom King / Phil Hester; Gotham City starts to slide into the abyss when an heir to the Wayne fortune is kidnapped. Slam Bradley investigates and breaks eggs in a noir mystery set in pre-Batman times
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood; This series somehow manages to be a noir mystery AND accommodate the antics of the Bwa Ha Ha Justice League as doomed Christopher Chance investigates who poisoned him. Excellent series
  • Nightwing – Tom Taylor / Bruno Redondo; As it’s nearing it’s wrap-up in the world of collected editions, the Taylor / Redondo Nightwing run has been a delight
  • Superman: Red Son – Mark Millar / Dave Johnson / Kilian Plunkett; What if baby Kal-El’s rocket crashed in Stalin’s U.S.S.R instead of Kansas?
  • World’s FinestMark Waid / Dan Mora; The early days of the Batman/Superman team-up; Highly recommended

The Cheapest at What He Does

Wolverine: Spore  Wolverine: Enemy of the State  

The Marvel Wolverine Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

You ever see Wolverine shell out for expensive beer? He understands cheap.

This is the sale on the “main” Wolverine titles we said would be coming. Let’s start out by listing the various titles involved. (Relaunches? At Marvel? <faints>) The warning from earlier in the week still applies here: the Epic Collections are not on sale this time out and we’re waiting to see if they turn up on sale at a later date.

  • Wolverine (’82) – Chris Claremont / Frank Miller / Paul Smith; The miniseries that kicked off the solo stories and an X-Men 2-parter that’s a sort of follow-up
  • Wolverine (’88-’03) – The original ongoing solo title. Yes, it took six years after the mini… it was a different time
  • Wolverine (’03-’09) – Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson; Mark Millar / John Romita, Jr.; Jason Aaron/Ron Garney… among others
  • Wolverine: Origin (’06-’10) – Daniel Way / Steve Dillon
  • Wolverine: Weapon X (’09) – Jason Aaron / Ron Garney
  • Wolverine (’10-’12) – Jason Aaron / Renato Guedes / Ron Garney; “Wolverine Goes to Hell” was not a metaphor
  • Wolverine (’13-’14) – Paul Cornell / Alan Davis
  • Wolverine: Savage Land (’14) – Frank Cho
  • Death of Wolverine (’14) – All the mini’s in one volume
  • Old Man Logan (’16-’18) – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; While Logan is “dead,” his future dystopian self journeys to the present day. (And it’s actually pretty good, despite the wonky premise.)
  • Return of Wolverine (’18-’19) – Charles Soule / Steve McNiven; “They always come back”
  • Wolverine (’20-’24) – Ben Percy / Adam Kubert; The Krakoan era Logan. The first link is the “omnibus” page, here’s the individual collections page, which are discounted a little further into the series.

So, what’s actually good?

The  original miniseries is generally regarded as a classic.

With the original series, you’re pretty good from the beginning through the end of the Larry Hama run (a bit after #100), though towards the end of that, the X-Events get annoying. We’re particularly fond of the Archie Goodwin / John Byrne arc from #17-23.

The Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run is an enjoyable, lower key run.

Mark Millar did two great runs shortly after Rucka:

  • Enemy of the State w/ John Romita, JR introduces Gorgan and has Wolverine up against an unholy alliance of the Hand and Hydra
  • Old Man Logan w/ Steve McNiven has an aging Logan trying to keep to himself in a dystopian future when trouble comes looking. Yes, this should sound an awful lot like one of the films!

The Krakoan era, while it almost merged with X-Force (kind of like the triangle era Superman line), was quite enjoyable.

You Were Expecting a Dirty Harry Film?
Deadpool Classics Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan Deadpool by Joe Kelly

The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 12/16.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line. And, of course, this time out we have the caveat that the Epic Collections are not on sale (nor is Cable & Deadpool).

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One (and selectively discounted this time)
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo
  • Deadpool (’22-’23) – Alyssa Wong / Martin Coccolo

Pick your preferred creator and go to town.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Avengers  Immortal Thor  Weapon X-Men

The trend continues. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Air  Lobster Johnson  Mister X

Dark Horse appears to have all their crime-related titles (sometimes tenuously related) at ~50% off this week. Things we’re seeing discounts on:

And there’s a lot to like here. The paranoid art deco world of Dean Motter’s Mister X. The pulpy fun of the Mignolaverse’s Lobster Johnson (which proves to be very flexible in tone). Bendis and Oeming running a superpowered police procedural in Powers.

Also on sale:

Bazooka Joe and his GangBombing Nazi Germany

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Wolverine; Umbrella Academy; Batman; Manhunter

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops the “real” Deadpool and Wolverine sales. DC discounts some more Batman, Superman and friends. Dark Horse celebrates the comics of Gerard Way and Umbrella Academy.

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):

The Cheapest at What He Does

Wolverine  Wolverine: Enemy of the State  

The Marvel Wolverine Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

You ever see Wolverine pay for expensive beer? Our boy is CHEAP!

This is the sale on the “main” Wolverine titles we said would be coming. Let’s start out by listing the various titles involved. (Relaunches? At Marvel? <faints>)

  • Wolverine (’82) – Chris Claremont / Frank Miller / Paul Smith; The miniseries that kicked off the solo stories and an X-Men 2-parter that’s a sort of follow-up
  • Wolverine (’88-’03) – The original ongoing solo title. Yes, it took six years after the mini… it was a different time
  • Wolverine (’03-’09) – Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson; Mark Millar / John Romita, Jr.; Jason Aaron/Ron Garney… among others
  • Wolverine: Origin (’06-’10) – Daniel Way / Steve Dillon
  • Wolverine: Weapon X (’09) – Jason Aaron / Ron Garney
  • Wolverine (’10-’12) – Jason Aaron / Renato Guedes / Ron Garney; “Wolverine Goes to Hell” was not a metaphor
  • Wolverine (’13-’14) – Paul Cornell / Alan Davis
  • Wolverine: Savage Land (’14) – Frank Cho
  • Death of Wolverine (’14) – All the mini’s in one volume
  • Old Man Logan (’16-’18) – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; While Logan is “dead,” his future dystopian self journeys to the present day. (And it’s actually pretty good, despite the premise.)
  • Return of Wolverine (’18-’19) – Charles Soule / Steve McNiven; “They always come back”
  • Wolverine (’20-’24) – Ben Percy / Adam Kubert

So, what’s actually good?

The  original miniseries is generally regarded as a classic.

With the original series, you’re pretty good from the beginning through the end of the Larry Hama run (a bit after #100), though towards the end of that, the X-Events get annoying. We’re particularly fond of the Archie Goodwin / John Byrne arc from #17-23. Since there are multiple formats for these issues, you can pick your format.

The Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run is an enjoyable, lower key run.

Mark Millar did two great runs shortly after Rucka:

  • Enemy of the State w/ John Romita, JR introduces Gorgan and has Wolverine up against an unholy alliance of the Hand and Hydra
  • Old Man Logan w/ Steve McNiven has an aging Logan trying to keep to himself in a dystopian future when trouble comes looking. Yes, this should sound an awful lot like one of the films!

We’ll Put $20 on Uncle Ben
Deadpool Classics  Cable & Deadpool  Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

The The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One
  • Deadpool Max (’10 – ’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker in a Max (“adult”) series
  • Deadpool Max 2 (’11 – ’12) Lapham / Baker, back for more
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Spider-Man / Deadpool (’16-’19) – Initially, Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

Pick your preferred creator and pay attention to the Epic Collections in the ’97 run.

Did Oberon Authorize This?

Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds  Manhunter  Superman: Man of Tomorrow

The DC Midsummer Sale runs through Monday, 7/22.

The sale page on this is possibly the most disorganized one we’ve seen in months. Not much order to it, if any. Let’s have a peek at some highlights, though.

  • The Authority – Warren Ellis / Brian Hitch, then Mark Millar/Frank Quitely; The hugely influential spin-off (OK, continuation) of Stormwatch
  • Batman: Reptilian – Garth Ennis / Liam Sharp; There’s something nasty in the Gotham sewers
  • Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds – Gene Yang / Ivan Reis; We’re big fans of this dimension hopping tale that distills a lot from the Silver Age tales.
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor / Andy Kubert; Batman scours Europe for the perp – and yes, Tom Taylor will be taking over Detective Comics soon
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; The first half of the classic series about refugee fairy tale beings hiding out in NYC while plotting to regain their lands in on sale for $5.99@ in the “Deluxe Format.”
  • Justice League: Last Ride – Chip Zdarsky / Miguel Mendonca
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin / Walt Simonson; One of the best adventure comics of all time
  • Strange Adventures – Tom King / Mitch Gerads / Doc Shaner; Possibly not for Adam Strange fans, this is a political thriller about war crimes and political identity
  • Superman: Man of Tomorrow – Robery Venditti / Paul Pelletier; It flew under the radar as a digital-first title, but this sequence is a witty delight

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

White Widow

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

  • No prices are making us raise an eyebrow next week? Is this a pricing experiment that’s winding down? It’s unclear.

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced Indie Sales

Umbrella Academy   The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

Dark Horse has put the works of Gerard Way on sale. At Dark Horse, that means two series:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool, Wolverine, Teen Titans, Ultimate X-Men, Resident Alien, Neil Gaiman and some Unannounced Sales

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops sales with Deadpool, Wolverine and Ultimate X-Men / The Ultimates, plus some more of these oddly discounted new releases. DC discounts Teen Titans, plus mysterious price reductions on Superman and Wonder Woman.  And then, Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales from Dark Horse.

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):

Oh, look… the Marvel sales came back.

Ghosts of Ultimates Past

Ultimate X-Men  Ultimates Ultimate Comics X-Men

The Marvel Ultimate X-Men and Ultimates Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

This is effectively two sales in one: the highly influential original Ultimate Universe rebootings of X-Men and Avengers.

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

The Ultimates is a little harder to explain because of how it was rolled out. They treated it as miniseries “seasons.” Suffice it to say, you saw a lot of it’s influence on the Avengers films.

The core material here is the Mike Millar-penned Ultimates material.  His run is:

Ultimates 3 is in the sale, but here at the Tower of Cheap, we like to pretend Jeph Loeb never got involved in the Ultimate universe.

But when the Ultimate Comics relaunch started, Jonathan Hickman turned up to work on The Ultimates and isn’t he a bigger name these days?

SNIKT

Wolverine and the X-Men  All-New Wolverine  

The Marvel Wolverine and the X-Men Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

This is a fairly unusual mix of various characters using the “Wolverine” code name and some X-Men titles, too. There’s a bit more to the sale, but here’s rundown of the highlights.

  • All-New Wolverine – Tom Taylor / David Lopez / Juan Cabal; A top notch series feature X-23/Lauren Kinney taking on the costume while Logan is “dead.” The best thing to come out of The Death of Wolverine by a wide margin.
  • Marvel Comics Presents – Ever notice they rarely show anything from MCP aside from the Wolverine serials? The first one from Chris Claremont / John Buscema is a lead-in to the original ongoing solo series.
  • Uncanny X-Men – scroll down a bit and you’ll find 16 volumes at $5.99@. From the birth of the new team roughly through Inferno.
  • Wolverine & The X-Men – Jason Aaron / Chris Bachalo / Nick Bradshaw; Logan takes his turn as headmaster
  • Wolverine Legends – Collections of some mini’s and story arcs. V.2 is the excellent “Meltdown” series from Walt Simonson/Louise Simonson/Jon J. Muth/Kent Williams

AARP Titans

New Teen Titans  Silver Age Teen Titans  Teen Titans

The DC Teen Titans 60th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

Hmmm… perhaps 60 is the new 16?  What’s here? Quite a variety of things, really. Let’s hit some highlights.

“Original” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans (’66-’78) – Bob Haney / Nick Cardy

“New” Teen Titans

  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – Marv Wolfman / George Perez / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Eduardo Baretto
  • New Titans (’84-’96) – Wolfman / Tom Grummett

“Post-Wolfman” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans  (’03-’11) – Geoff Johns / Mike McKone
  • Teen Titans (’11-’14) – Scott Lobell / Brett Booth / Eddy Barrows
  • Teen Titans (’14-’16) – Will Pfeifer / Kenneth Rocafort
  • Teen Titans (’16-’21) – Ben Percy / Adam Glass / Jonboy Meyers / Bernard Chang
  • Titans (’16-’19) – Dan Abnett / Brett Booth
  • Teen Titans: Earth One – Jeff Lemire / Terry & Rachel Dodson

“Kids” Teen Titans

What’s good? The Wolfman / Perez run is still the gold standard (and it’s hard to understate its importance to DC at the time). With the original series, the question is whether you like Bob Haney’s brand of quirk, although Nick Cardy is consistently great.  For something later in the feature, maybe give a look to the Geoff Johns / Mike McKone run. This is one of the things Johns was working on just before he really blew up with Green Lantern.

$20 on Hugh Jackman’s Dignity

Deadpool & Cable  Spider-Man / Deadpool  Deadpool Corps

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a large and wide collection of those secondary titles. You’ll want to browse yourself, but here are some of the more prominent titles being featured.

The longest running of the set is Deadpool & CableFabian Nicieza and Patrick Zircher being the team most associated with it. Amusingly, the monthly comic was called Cable & Deadpool, but the character popularity has flipped since then.

Spider-Man / Deadpool also ran 50 issues. Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness was the early creative team with Robbie Thompson / Chris Bachalo tagging in later.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it and for… reasons rumored to be in the new film, we suppose…

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

New X-Men  Hawkeye  Captain Marvel

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

  • New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection: E Is For Extinction – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely / Leinil Francis Yu; $6.99 is definitely a sale price for Epic Collections and we’re astonished the price is still active on it’s debut week.
  • Captain Marvel by Margaret Stohl – Stohl / Ramon Rosanas; Listed 484 pages, this is essentially an Epic Collection. $44.99 list price for print. $24.99 digital list price. As we type this, the “Kindle price” is $10.99.  Not quite as low one of the Deal Page sales, but plenty cheap for the page count on the debut week.

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced DC Sales?

Wonder Woman New 52   Wonder Woman by Gail Simone  Wonder Woman

We’re a little puzzled by this one. It might be next week’s sale loaded early. It might be remnants of an old sale. We’re not sure, but we’ll give you some links to browse through if you’re curious.

We also saw some Batman prices that looked like what you get when the sale prices are broken, so MAYBE they’re starting to load the sale prices in for a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman “Trinity” sale next week? Or it could be something else.

Unannounced Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales.

Resident Alien Norse Mythology  Neil Gaiman Library

Over at Dark Horse, we found two sales.

Resident Alien is a comic by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse about a stranded alien posing as a doctor and solving murders. It got a little more famous when a TV adaptation hit and a lot more famous when the TV show moved over to Netflix. (And will now be moving over to the USA cable network.) We read the first omnibus a few months back and if your point of reference is the TV show, the comic is a little more mystery-oriented. It’s available in

Note: the 7th series is only available as a collected edition at this time.

Over on the Gaiman side of things, there are a couple flavors – New comics material by Gaiman and adaptions of his prose work. P. Craig Russell is involved with much of the adapted work and check to see if a series is in the Neil Gaiman Library collections, because several are.

For original material,

  • Signal to Noise – Gaiman / Dave McKean
  • Mister X: The Archives – An explanation is order. This is a very good SF/noir series by Dean Motter / Los Bros. Hernandez / Ty Templeton (among others), but there’s also a Gaiman / Dave McKean story in it

Adaptions of prose work…

First not in the Gaiman Library editions

Then the Library and the individual titles collected within

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Marvel “Cosmic” (GoG, Silver Surfer, Annihilation); Doctor Who; Avatar

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Deadpool and their Cosmic heroes – Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Annihilation Saga.  Keeping it Cosmic, Titan has a Doctor Who sale and Dark Horse has cut prices on Avatar.

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):

Cosmic Slop

The Marvel Cosmic Sale runs through Monday, 3/4.

This is, after a fashion a convergence of smaller sales as we follow the thread of cosmic tales and characters through Marvel. The threads weave in and out, but for the sake of easy processing, let’s look at them this way:

The Marvel World of Jim Starlin
Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin  Warlock  Silver Surfer: The Return of Thanos

Jim Starlin defined “cosmic” for Marvel in the 70s and then returned in the late 80s to revive it (and his signature villain, Thanos) in the run-up to The Infinity Gauntlet, after which things kinda blew up.

You can get the original 70s cosmic saga, which is effectively the original Thanos saga, across two books: Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection and Warlock by Jim Starlin: The Complete Collection. Both are highly recommended and foundational works for a lot of what is to come.

The Silver Surfer run is most easily collected in a pair of Epic Collections: The Return of Thanos and Thanos Quest. All good stuff and leading directly into The Infinity Gauntlet, which isn’t in the sale.

Silver Surfer

Silver Surfer by Lee/Kirby  Silver Surfer - Englehart  Silver Surfer

The Surfer is cosmic, but was also mostly stuck on Earth until Englehart & Rogers freed him in the 80s.  You can pretty much break the character 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. Starlin followed (with Ron Lim), as mentioned above. Ron Marz tagged in for Starlin and had a long run, too and effectively an “Infinity” title for much of the next few years.

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.

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.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino

No, not like the movies or spinning out of Annihilation (we’ll get to that in a bit), this was a super team in the future that occasionally returned to our present. They weren’t created by Steve Gerber, but he built them up in Defenders and then Marvel Presents before moving on.

Honestly, this is our preferred GoG. The originals are solid. The Valentino run is a trip (and seems like it must’ve been an influence on Bendis when he rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes). Very different from what came later, though.

Nova

Nova Classic   Nova by Abnett & Lanning

High school student Richard Rider becomes a centurion of the Nova Corps and tries to figure out his powers in the initial run. By the time DnA get ahold of the character, he’s a veteran and the road to Annihilation has begun.

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Annihilation

Annihilation

Annihilation was a crossover Event for Marvel’s fledging “cosmic” line in which Annihilus mounted a deadly invasion from the Negative Zone. It struck a nerve.

Annihilation is the first series of mini-series.

Annihilation: Conquest is the sequel as Ultron and the Phalanx make their move.  This leads into the formation of the new Guardians of the Galaxy.

Annihilation: Scourge is 2019 entry in the series.

New Guardians of the Galaxy (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

Guardians of the Galaxy   Guardians of the Galaxy

We LOVED the final Ewing/Cabal series, which ends with “The Final Annihilation.” And if you liked Nova and the Annihilation Events, the DnA run is the continuation of that format.

We’ll Put $20 on Uncle Ben
Deadpool Classics  Cable & Deadpool  Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

The Marvel Deadpool Sale runs through Monday, 3/4

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One
  • Deadpool Max (’10 – ’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker in a Max (“adult”) series
  • Deadpool Max 2 (’11 – ’12) Lapham / Baker, back for more
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Spider-Man / Deadpool (’16-’19) – Initially, Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

There’s a lot more there, including some Epic Collections under the ’97 series link.

Pick your flavor of Deadpool, he’s does seem to have creators stick with him for runs.

XII

Doctor Who

The Titan The Twelfth Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

That’s twelfth Doctor, as in Doctor Who. Or as in Peter Capaldi’s Doctor.

The primaries writers here are Robbie Morrison, George Mann and Richard Dinnick. Artists include Dave Taylor, Rachael Stott and Mariano Laclaustra.

This sale comes in 2 flavors:

Avatar, the um… Unbent?

Avatar

There is an unlisted sale on Dark Horse Avatar comics. Not Avatar: The Last Air Bender (although may still be on sale from last week), this would be Avatar, as in the James Cameron films.

And for DC, last week’s sale is still going on.

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, DC Black Label, Deadpool, Attack on Titan

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts X-Men and Deadpool. DC drops deals on Black Label. Plus, Attack on Titan and Wonderland.

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):

Paint It Black

The DC Black Label Sale runs through Monday, 11/6.

What is Black Label? Something of a cross between Vertigo and Elseworlds. Stories of DC characters that are… not necessarily in continuity. (We say not necessarily because  things like Batman: The Three Jokers might end up in continuity.) A little more on the mature reader side. Sometimes fantasy or horror that has nothing to do with the DCU.

What’s good? An awful lot of it. A few highlights (and yes, Tom King does do some of his best work for this imprint):

We’re not listing the Spurrier/Campbell Hellblazer because only the first volume is on sale. A oversight we disapprove of for a wonderful comic.

Best o’ the best?

If you’re looking for a Vertigo replacement at DC, direct your attention to The Nice House on the LakeTynion and Bueno deliver an excellent SF/Horror fusion series about the end of the world. The bestselling horror comic DC’s seen in quite a while, too.

The Human Target by King and Smallwood is a very unique comic. One part hardboiled noir as Christopher Chance tries to figure out who poisoned him before he died. One part loving homage to the Bwa Ha Ha era Justice League. Amazingly the JL cast is mostly in goofy character, despite popping up in a noir. Quite a feat. Well written and you really can’t say enough about Smallwood’s art.

Rorschach by Tom King & Jorge Fornés is even more unusual than The Human Target. It’s a Watchmen sequel that we actually like and don’t think is a cash grab. OK, it’s not so much a sequel as a tale that takes place in the same universe and in the aftermath of the original graphic novel. It’s a detective story about conspiracy, identity, mythology and… Frank Miller?  Yes, Frank Miller. It’s a keeper.

Nice House on the Lake   The Human Target   Rorschach

Brand X

The Marvel Uncanny X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 11/6.

It’s a legacy sale, so it’s the Uncanny X-Men core… although this may shorter list than some of the legacy sales. For instance,  X-Men wasn’t part of Heroes Reborn, so no relaunch there.

As is our custom, let’s run through the key series included, first:

And you might be asking yourself, “aren’t there usually more than one X-Men title and don’t they cross over a lot?” Yes, that would be a potential issue… pun intended. Not so much with the Epic Collections and the Masterworks as with the later series, and there are some Event collections in the set.

You should know our general advice right now. There’s a slight preference for the value of Epic Collections over Masterworks collections, but it depends on the exact price point and the Epic Collections sometimes have gaps.  That still applies here.  The wild card with X-Men is that it can get impenetrable with continuity and all the characters floating around. You can’t always just jump in.

So, recommendations with that in mind.

If you’ve never tried the original X-Men, we’d say go with The Sentinels Live Epic Collection. It’s at the very tail end of the original run that the original X-Men run is at its best: a bit of Jim Steranko and then a Roy Thomas / Neal Adams sequence that ended all too quickly.

For the “new” X-Men, we’re cool with the theory that Giant-Sized X-Men #1 / Uncanny X-Men #94 through #200 is one big arc. That’s where we’d start if we were new. The Epic Collections only take you to #153, at which point you need to start cutting in the Masterworks editions with V. 7 through 12.

For an alternate jumping on point, perhaps the Ed Brubaker era (# to # ) which is collected in three volumes starting with Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.

We assume you already know about the Morrison run.

And if you were looking for the Events that started after #200… well, that’s next.

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live   

No, Not the Dirty Harry Film

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 11/6.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a collection of those secondary titles.

The longest running of the set is Deadpool & CableFabian Nicieza and Patrick Zircher being the team most associated with it. Amusingly, the monthly comic was called Cable & Deadpool, but the character popularity has flipped since then.

Spider-Man / Deadpool also ran 50 issues. Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness was the early creative team with Robbie Thompson / Chris Bachalo tagging in later.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it.

Deadpool & Cable    Spider-Man / Deadpool    Deadpool Corps

Attaaaaaaack of the Killer Tomatoes

The Kodansha Attack on Titan Sale runs through Monday, 11/13.

By cosmic coincidence, this is what we’ve been reading here at the Tower of Cheap. 2/3 of the way through V. 33 as this is being typed.

Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama is a genre-bender and a half. It starts out as more of a horror story with people living inside a barrier of giant walls, besieged by “Titans.” Mindless giants who roam around eating people. And since the technology level in this world is roughly ~1920, there’s a touch of steampunk around the edges. Then some Titans appear who aren’t mindless. As the heroes try to solve the mystery of the Titans, it turns into a political conspiracy. Then the applecart gets turned over and there’s more political conspiracy on a wider scale, Titans as weapons of mass destruction and ethnic cleansings. This one really is something else and is operating on a very wide scale as it wraps up. It goes to some very dark places and doesn’t really back away from them, either.

There are also several spin-offs in the sale.

Attack on Titan

You’re a Wonder

The Zenescope Return to Wonderland Digital Sale runs through Wednesday, 11/22.

Zenescope’s Wonderland titles were their buzziest titles when Raven Gregory was writing them.

The original trilogy was

Beyond that (pun intended)

Tales from Wonderland will fit in-between various volumes and the rough order of the rest is:

Return to Wonderland   Beyond Wonderland   Escape From Wonderland

Additionally, we think the unlisted Dark Horse sale from last week is still in effect, but we’re unsure for how much longer.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men, Deadpool and Ms. Marvel

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s Marvel on parade with X-Men, Deadpool and Ms. Marvel getting the discount treatment.

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):

Note: Looks like our projections from last week were off. The DC sale was extended a week — so we’re not sure if DC’s sales are now going to be bi-weekly or not. The Dark Horse sale was also not updated, so… maybe they’re just not going to display the rest of the alphabet? It’s bad form. As far as we know, everything is on sale, not just what’s displayed.

X-Sale

The Marvel X-Men: Epic Collections & Milestones Sale runs through Monday, 7/24.

Our appreciate for an Epic Collection sale is well documented, and we like the value of 400-500 pages for $4.99, as some of these are priced.  But let’s do some cherry picking for the more interesting things.

For Excalibur, you’re better off when Alan Davis is attached, be it with Chris Claremont writing or Davis as writer/artist (and we might even put Davis higher while doing the full cartoonist).

Excalibur    Excalibur

For New Mutants, we’ve always thought The Demon Bear Saga‘s period, which paired Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, as the high point of the whole series.

 x New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga

For X-Factor, two titles stand out:

  • Angel of Death – a big chunk of the Louise & Walt Simonson run, notable for Apocalypse, Cameron Hodge and Angel’s transformation into Death.
  • All-New, All-Different X-Factor – this collects the bulk of Peter David’s first run with art by Larry Stroman, Joe Quesada and Dale Keown

X-Factor Epic Collection

For X-Men… you can pick your poison.

We’d say the highlight of the original run would be Roy Thomas/Neal Adams (as well as Jim Steranko) sequences in The Sentinels Live.

For the “New” X-Men, we’d say the golden period starts somewhere around issue 100 and runs through 200, although you’ll hear a lot of opinions about the golden period of X-books. That would be:

No, they don’t have that full period complete in the Epic format yet. There are some as-yet uncollected volumes between I, Magneto and The Gift, and The Gift stops just short of 200, but that’s what we’d call the best period.

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live   X-Men Epic Collection   X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix

No-Prize Winning Sale Title

The Marvel Ms. Marvel Sale runs through Monday 7/17.

This would be Ms. Marvel as in Kamala Khan, not the current Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers. Is there a movie coming out in a few months? Hmm…  Let’s break this down by volume, since there have been relaunches.

  • Ms. Marvel ’14-15 – The original run with G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona as the primary artist
  • Ms. Marvel ’15-’19 – How silly is this relaunch? The collected edition number doesn’t even reset! It’s still Wilson and Alphona, although the artist rotate a bit as it goes on.
  • Magnificent Ms. Marvel ’91-’21 – Relaunched after Wilson’s departure, this is written by Saladin Ahmed with Minkyu Jung and Joey Vazquez as the lead artists
  • Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit – The most recent mini-series (only single issues are on sale) by Samira Ahmed and Andrés Genolet.

There’s a selection of Champions, where Ms. Marvel was a member, also on sale.

Recommendations? We thought Ms. Marvel was at its best early in the run, before it got too integrated into the Marvel universe, but that’s just us.  Definitely start with Wilson’s run, though.  It made quite the mainstream splash.

Ms. Marvel

Not the Dirty Harry Movie

The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 7/17

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

 

Deadpool Classics  Deadpool by Joe Kelly  Cable & Deadpool

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Star Wars, Superman, Daredevil, Deadpool and Lone Wolf and Cub

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Superman’s “recent” work; Marvel discounts Star Wars, Daredevil and Deadpool; and Lone Wolf and Cub does some slashing.

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):

Last Sale of Krypton

The DC Superman Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 11/14.

The somewhat recent critical darling here is definitely the Gene Luen Yang / Gurihiru Superman Smashes the Klan which is a reinterpretation of an old Superman radio serial. Good comic and definitely YA-appropriate.

The slightly more recent and totally under most radars option is Superman: Man of Tomorrow by Robert Venditti and Paul Pelletier. Solid “classic” Superman tales with a sly sense of humor that quietly lead into a finale. The running gag about Clark Kent’s clothes is very well done, indeed.

And from the “we have no idea how this counts as recent” category, All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely really is a great Superman comic and a love letter to the Silver Age. Very much worth your time if you’ve never partaken of it.

Superman Smashes The Klan   Superman: Man of Tomorrow   All-Star Superman

Not the Holiday Special

The Marvel Star Wars by Aaron and Gillen Sale runs through Monday, 11/14.

That would be Jason Aaron and Kieron Gillen.

The Janson Aaron run is conveniently collected in the Star Wars by Jason Aaron Omnibus. Aaron writes most of it (you’ve got some Kieron Gillen crossover issues in there) and there’s an artist rotation of John Cassaday, Stuart Immonen, Leinil Francis Yu, Mike Deodato, Jr., and Salvator Larroca, among others. And when we say “conveniently,” it also includes crossover issues of Darth Vader, Vader Down, Doctor Aphra, The Screaming Citadel and so forth. Saves a lot of reading order headaches, so thumbs up to that.

There is a convenient Star Wars by Kieron Gillen & Salvador Larroca Omnibus, but it’s not sale. (Booo…) It’ll put you back $40. You can pick up their run as volumes 7-11 of the regular Star Wars collections for $3.99@ and it’s effectively half price compared to the omnibus. (And you’ll note there are a couple Greg Pak/Phil Noto volumes in the sale after the Gillen/Larocca run.)

Star Wars by Jason Aaron   Star Wars

Zdarksky’s Event

The Marvel Daredevil Devil’s Reign Sale runs through Monday, 11/21.

And really, this is a Chip Zdarsky Daredevil sale.

The order you want to follow goes like this:

  • Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky: To Heaven Through Hell is what they’re calling the double volumes of his excellent run. And no, the comics aren’t as pretentious as the name it’s been given. Marco Checchetto is the lead artist for this. The through lines of the series are the competing gang interests in Hell’s Kitchen, the saga of Mayor Fisk and insurgencies by some sinister billionaires.
  • Devil’s Reign is the Event mini-series where Mayor Fisk makes his moves, declares super heroes illegal (in a sort of spin on Civil War’s Superhero Registration Act) leaving Hornhead and the heroes of New York City to resist. Let’s be honest… these are really Daredevil issues with guest stars for the purpose of the series. Zdarsky and Checchetto are still the creative team.
  • Daredevil: The Woman Without Fear by Zdarsky and Rafael de Latorre is the adventures of Elektra during Devil’s Reign. Why it’s called this would be mild spoilers territory, though you can probably guess.

The other spin-off minis are purely optional.

Daredevil   Devil's Reign   Daredevil: The Woman Without Fear

The Merc with the… Discounts?

The Marvel Deadpool Massive Sale runs through Monday 11/14.

And yes, there’s a LOT here. Let’s hit the highlights of the longer running series:

  • Deadpool Classic – Starting at the beginning, it’s something of a catch-all series of collections
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Most associated with Fabian Nicieza and Patrick Zircher
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way era
  • Deadpool (’12-’15) – The Brian Posehn/Gerry Duggan era
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein

Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan   Deadpool by Joe Kelly   Deadpool & Cable

The Baby Cart Assassin

The Dark Horse Digital Manga 2022 Sale runs through Monday, 11/26.

We highly recommend Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. The Shogun’s executioner’s family is killed and the executioner framed for treason. He escapes with his infant son and undertakes work as an assassin while biding his time to gain revenge on those who plotted against him.

Lone Wolf and Cub

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