Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The Joker and Harley Quinn; Venom; X-23 (Wolverine); Marvel 2099; Dark Horse Horror

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, things move into the Halloween season. DC discounts The Joker and Harley Quinn. Marvel slashes prices on Venom, X-23 (Wolverine) and the 2099 line. Dark Horse even has a horror sale.

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):

52 Pick-Up

The Joker: 80 Years of the Clown Prince of Crime  Joker War Saga  Harley Quinn

The DC Joker and Harley Quinn Sale runs through Monday, 10/14.

Villains running wild! You’d think there was a movie coming out or something?

Let’s break this down by character, since Harley has her own life these days.

Joker

Harley Quinn

  • Harleen – Stjepan Sejic; Black Label reimagining of Harley’s origin
  • Harley Quinn ’00-’04 – Karl Kesel / Rachael & Terry Dodson
  • Harley Quinn ’13-’16 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin / John Timms
  • Harley Quinn ’16-’20 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin / John Timms (Is there a difference between this and the ’13 series? Nope. It’s all one run with a company wide relaunch in the middle.)
  • Harley Quinn ’21 – present – Stephanie Phillips / Riley Rossmo

What’s good here? We’d say get The Joker: 80 Years of the Clown Prince of Crime for O’Neil/Adams, Englehart/Rogers, The Killing Joke and Mad Love (still the best Harley Quinn tale). There are some classics in that book.

If your ideal Joker is the Heath Ledger version, Joker by Azzarello & Bermejo is your huckleberry.

For Harley, see Mad Love above and we’ve always had a soft spot for the absurdist, almost Looney Tunes take of Connor/Palmiotti/Hardin/Timms.

Spider-Juice

Venom by Remender   Venom by Cates   Venom

The Marvel Venom Sale runs through Monday, 11/4.

This is a fairly scattered sale, with multiple formats and a lot of random early miniseries floating around. Browse for a better accounting of the listings.

For the early stuff, the better values are the somewhat scattered Epic Collections.

The early (mostly) Spider-Man appearances can be found in Venom Epic Collection: Symbiosis. That’s largely the David Michelinie / Todd McFarlane / Erik Larsen material.  That’s followed by Venom Epic Collection: Lethal Protector which has a few more villainous appearances and the original Lethal Protector mini. And then Venom Epic Collection: Carnage Unleashed continues the 90s appearances.

Eventually Venom gets his own series:

  • Venom  (2003-4) – The Daniel Way era
  • Venom  (2011-3) – Rick Remender/Tony Moore, then Cullen Bunn/Declan Shalvey
  • Venom (2016-8) – Mike Costa / Tradd Moore / Mark Bagley
  • Venom (2018-21) – Donny Cates / Ryan Stegman
  • Venom (2021-present) – Al Ewing / Ram V / Bryan Hitch

Let’s talk about the last 12 years or so. The ’11-’13 series is more interesting than you might think. That’s when Flash Thompson has the symbiote and uses it (among other things) to replace the legs his lost in the war. There are some interesting pathos floating around, particularly in the Remender/Moore run.

The Cates/Stegman run is probably the most famous right now. That’s where Venom gets Cosmic and leads into the King In Black Event.

The current Ewing / V / Hitch run, Ewing is wrapping up and Ram V has moved on,  but it’s something else. Al Ewing drives the Cosmic elements, which are the most interesting part. Eddie Brock is dead. But he isn’t. He’s separated from his body and he’s bouncing around in time as his son becomes Venom in the present. It’s a much, much stranger take on Venom than most others and really dives into the King in Black mythos and timeline.

So yes, between Cates and Ewing, Venom has been a Cosmic book for some time.

The _Other_ Clone Saga

All-New Wolverine    X-23

The Marvel X-23 Sale runs through Monday, 10/7.

Laura Kinney is X-23. She’s also the clone daughter of Wolverine. Eventually, she’ll take up the mantle of Wolverine, but this sequence starts earlier than that. This can all be grouped into three titles to simplify your browsing.

  • NYX: The Complete Collection – Joe Quesada / Josh Middleton. Marjorie Liu / Kalman Andrasofszky; X-23 debuted here
  • X-23: The Complete Collection – These two volumes contain everything through the 2010 series.
  • New X-Men – The “Childhood’s End” Complete collection gets you issues #16-32; then skip ahead to V.4 & 5 to actually complete the run.
  • X-Force ’08-’12 – Craig Kyle / Christopher Yost / Clayton Crain
  • All-New Wolverine – Tom Taylor / David Lopez; Juann Cabal; Laura picks up the Wolverine mantle while Logan is “dead.”
  • X-23 (2018-19) – Mariko Tamaki / Juann Cabal / Diego Olortegui

We absolutely love All-New Wolverine. Tom Taylor runs the gamut of story types from goofy to action to borderline horror/thriller and does a ton of character development. Recommended.

76 Years Away

Spider-Man 2099   Doom 2099   X-Men 2099

The Marvel 2099 Sale runs through Monday, 10/7.

Yes, 2099 was a line for Marvel in ’90s. Spider-Man  2099 was the flagship and longest lasting of the bunch. Peter David wrote it and Rick Leonardi is the artist most associated with it. Mind you, Spidey 2099 has had scrolling revivals over the years including (and currently discounted):

What else was in the line (that’s been collected and is on sale?)

  • Doom 2099 – This collection is the Warren Ellis run with Pat Broderick and Steve Pugh as the main illustrators
  • X-Men 2099 The beginning arc with John Francis Moore and Ron Lim
  • Deadpool 2099 – What? You don’t remember this? Ha ha! Marvel is slipping in a collection of a few Gerry Duggan / Scott Koblish issues from the ’15 run of Deadpool!
  • Marvel Knights 2099 – Robert Kirkman / Steve Epting
  • Timestorm 2009 – 2099 – Brian Reed / Eric Battle; 2009 crossover between “regular” Spidey, Wolverine and the 2009 universe
  • Secret Wars 2099 – Peter David / Will Sliney; Yes, Secret Wars had a tie-in for just about everything!

No Ravage 2099 / Punisher 2099 / Ghost Rider 2099 collections to be seen, if you were wondering.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Deadpool & Wolverine: World War III  Ultimate Black Panther The Spectacular Spider-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

Something in Parabellum?
Deadworld   The Realm    Jazz Age Chronicles

The Caliber Comics Library 50% off Fall Sale runs through Thursday, 10/31.

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

And plenty of Don Lomax war comics.

But if you want something a little more recent, Ageless might be of interest. It’s written by Torunn GrØnbekk, who’s been recently been writing Thor, with art by San Espina.

Ageless

Unannounced Sales

Grendel Omnibus  Hellboy  These Savage Shores

We have an unannounced Dark Horse on horror, or possibly Halloween. Here are a few things we noticed:

Also with discounts:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Fantastic Four (a full run); Secret Six; Gwenpool; Golden Age Jack Kirby

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, nearly the entire Fantastic Four catalog gets a discount, plus Gwenpool. DC has an exceptionally deep bench and we go diving for hidden gems. Plus, the Dark Horse work of Tyler Crook.

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):

Four Play

Fantastic Four - The Coming of Galactus    Fantastic Four by Waid   Fantastic Four by Hickman

Marvel’s Fantastic Four Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 10/7.

So, first let’s break down the various FF titles/volumes on sale

Yes, Fantastic Four has been relaunched less than other Marvel titles.  As to what’s good, the gold standard has always been the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. (And yes, we do think you can draw a straight line from Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC to Fantastic Four.) We’d say they start to hit their stride a few issues before Galactus shows up – V.3 of the Epic Collections (“The Coming of Galactus“) or V.4/5 of the Masterworks editions and you can ride a very fun train from there to the end of Lee/Kirby.

And at this point, we should talk about the “pick your poison” of Epic vs. Masterworks.  The Masterworks are built out straight into the Byrne era. We think the $6.99 Epic Collections are the best value here, though some of the newer ones are priced higher. The discounted Epics are now a little past the Lee/Kirby era, but stop with #191 and then pick up again after Byrne’s run. Pick the format that works for you and has the issues you’re looking for.

Speaking of Byrne’s run, that’s the next highpoint that everyone agrees on.  How to read Byrne? Well, there are 6 volumes of Masterworks on sale (V. 21-26) or you can hop on to Fantastic Four Visionaires: John Byrne. You’d need to cut over to the Visionaries run in the middle of  V. 7 to pick up where the discounted Masterworks leave off.  These comics really ought to be in an Epic Collections, but Marvel doesn’t seem in any hurry to roll the Visionaires up into a more economical package. (Or should we say, economical when it’s on sale?) We figure the run will at least need to finish up in Masterwork format first and V. 27 is scheduled for June ’25, so there you go.

Move ahead a bit and Walt Simonson had a stint that may be a little more notable for being an early appearance of the Time Variance Authority (which actually debuted in his Thor run). This is most easily grabbed across Epic Collections V.20 and V.21.

Fast forward a bit to the Heroes Reborn era and there is a LOT to love about the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run. They brought back the “explorer” vibe from Lee/Kirby era that isn’t always there and upped the sense of wonder. You’d want the four Ultimate Collection volumes that start here. The “regular” collections don’t go all the way to the end.

Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier jumped in for an arc with Black Panther and Storm briefly joining the team.

And then, of course, there’s the the Hickman era. A long storyline that laid the groundwork for his Avengers run and you can certainly argue that his Secret Wars endcap to that is a Fantastic Four / Doctor Doom story. The omnibus editions we highlighted above include his FF spin-off comic that frequently crossed over with Fantastic Four, much like the Avengers titles flowed together. That packaging will be a better experience.

Universal Exports

Cosmic Odyssey  Marshal Law  Secret Six

The DC Universe Sale runs through Monday, 9/30.

This is one wide sale! Nearly 1,000 books on sale, including some deeper cuts that aren’t frequently on sale outside the holidays. This one is well worth your time for an extended browse over the weekend. In the meantime, we’re going to go through some of those deep cuts that are on our happy list that you might otherwise miss. (We figure you can find Batman without aid.)

  • Anarky: The Complete Collection – Alan Grant / Norm Breyfoggle; The Grant/Breyfoggle villain is briefly given the Joker treatment and spun off into his own series
  • America Vs. The Justice Society – Roy Thomas / Jerry Ordway; Batman’s lost diary fingers the JSA as Nazi collaborators
  • Aquaman: The Atlantis Chronicles – Peter David / Esteban Marato; OK, Aquaman is scarcely in this. This is a high fantasy about the history of Atlantis with exquisite art. Totally off most radars, but great stuff
  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams – Rucka / J.H. Williams III; Their superlative Detective Comics run introducing the current Batwoman
  • Camelot 3000 – Mike W. Barr / Brian Bolland; King Arthur returns to defend the planet against alien invaders
  • Cosmic Odyssey – Jim Starlin / Mike Mignola; Darkseid comes to the Justice League for help with something he can’t face alone
  • The DC Universe by Len Wein – One of the more important Bronze Age writers, but one who never really had long runs on a single title. Included here, a run from his fantastic Phantom Stranger w/ Jim Aparo and the DC Comics Presents sequence that introduces Mongul w/ Jim Starlin.
  • Doctor Fate – Paul Levitz / Sonny Liew; One of the better “re-imaginings” of recent times and Egyptian-mythology centric
  • Frank Miller’s Ronin – Frank Miller; Miller’s experimental tale mixing cyborgs and demons
  • Gotham Central Ed Brubaker / Greg Rucka / Michael Lark / Stefano Gaudiano / Jason Shawn Alexander / Kano; The Gotham PD attempts to handle things without Batman; One of these days the TV version will actually go through
  • Hard Time: The Complete Series – Steve Gerber / Mary Skrenes / Brian Hurtt; When a bullying “prank” goes wrong, something metaphysical emerges from a 15 year old boy and lands him in jail with a 50 year sentence
  • Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm BreyfogleVol. 1 and Vol. 2 – Great big chunks of the superior Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle years
  • Marshal Law – Pat Mills / Kevin O’Neill; Think Judge Dredd with superheroes, only much darker
  • Night Force – Marv Wolfman / Gene Colan; After moving to DC, the Tomb of Dracula team reunited for a horror series about a mansion with a portal through time and space… and its mysterious owner; Would’ve fit in at Vertigo
  • Secret Six: The original miniseries and the ongoing series – Gail Simone / Nicola Scott; Arguably Simone’s best work at DC as a group of villains go mercenary; It sort of zigs crime where Suicide Squad zags espionage
  • Seven Soldiers of Victory – Grant Morrison / J.H. Williams III / Simone Bianchi / Ryan Sook / Doug Mahnke; One of Morrison’s most creatively successful Events, told in a series of interlocking miniseries
  • Sleeper – Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips; set in the old Wildstorm universe; an undercover operative is left out in the cold as espionage and superpowers overlap.

Jack Kirby Corner

  • Boy Commandos Joe Simon / Jack Kirby; Extremely popular WWII era kids group
  • Challengers of the Unknown – What The King was doing at DC before heading to Marvel. Compare it to early Fantastic Four and be surprised.
  • The Newsboy Legion – Joe Simon / Jack Kirby; A crime fighting kids’ gang and their super hero “Guardian.” Kirby would revisit this in the ’70s as part of the Fourth World

The Other Side of the Pool

The Unbelievable Gwenpool  West Coast Avengers  Gwenpool Strikes Back

The Marvel Gwenpool Sale runs through Monday, 9/30.

Gwen Poole is a comics reader who woke up in the Marvel Universe… and then wackiness ensued.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Force  Deadpool & Wolverine: World War III  Ultimate Black Panther

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

As Seen on TV

Van Helsing

The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale Van Helsing Sale runs through Tuesday, 10/15.

You may be familiar with the Syfy Channel version (adapted by Neil LaBute, who’s not the first name you’d think of), but in the comics version, Liesel Van Helsing is battling Dracula and his minions across the multiverse.

Two options here:

Unannounced Sales

The Crow Harrow County Omnibus 1 When Bad Things Happen To Stupid People

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Tyler Crook comics, including:

Also with discounts:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Batman Day! Plus, West Coast Avengers, Ms. Marvel, Killadelphia, Lazarus

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s Batman Day and most of the line is discounted. Plus, West Coast Avengers (and the rest of the sundry titles), Ms. Marvel, and a fresh batch of Image titles on sale.

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 Dark Day Returns?

Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card  Batman: Venom   Batman: Year One

The DC Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/23.

And this is to say most, not quite all, of the Batman material is discounted.

Let’s break down some of the highlights by series/volume.

Your classic / pre-New 52 material is largely going to be in:

Now… you sorta need to browse both, because with how the two titles started crossing over from the 80s on up, you’re never quite sure which title a collection/story arc/Event will be filed under. And yes, we do like the 80s collections of Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective for $4.99. And yes, Knightfall, No Man’s Land, and the like are all in there.

Some more pre-New 52 ongoing titles:

  • Batman: Shadow of the Bat – Alan Grant’s title, w/Norm Breyfogle, early on. (Get more of them in Dark Knight Detective/Caped Crusader)
  • Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight – standalone arcs by different creative teams, but consistently good
  • Batman: Streets of Gotham – Paul Dini’s in-continuity series w/Dustin Nguyen
  • The Brave & The Bold – Batman team-ups. Bob Haney, Neal Adams and Jim Aparo were notable creators here. Haney/Aparo was the team on a LOT of comics. (Now if we could get a Nemesis collection…)

A couple one-offs of note:

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns   Trinity

New 52 and forward, your main titles are:

  • Batman (’11-’16) – The Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo run
  • Batman (’16-current) – starts with the Tom King era and the discounts straight through to Zdarsky’s last release (not for pre-release, though).
    • Save a couple bucks on the Tom King run with the “Deluxe” editions
  • Detective Comics (’11-’16) – originally Tony Daniels (how many printings did his first issue have?)
  • Detective Comics (’16-current) – Starts out with James Tynion’s first (and we’d say better) Batman run.

Some shorter runs of note in the New 52 era:

  • Batman ’89 Sam Hamm / Joe Quinones; The screenwriter of Tim Burton’s Batman films continues that continuity
  • Batman: Universe (’19) – Brian Bendis and Nick Derington go against the current trend and deliver and light and fun Batman romp across the DCU that has a certain old school The Brave & the Bold vibe to it… but with more snark. Recommended. $3.99
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – The Animated Series brain trust of Alan Burnett & Paul Dini continue where the cartoon left off with Ty Templeton on art. 3 volumes @$3.99
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Winning Card – Tom King and Mitch Gerads tell a Joker tale
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor (was this his Detective Comics audition?) and Andy Kubert take Batman to Europe where his past rears its head and some actual detection is performed. $3.99

Batman Universe   Batman: The Adventures Continue   Batman: The Detective

And above the $3.99 level?

Tales of the Batman: Steve Englehart – Englehart’s Detective run with Marshall Rogers and Walt Simonson is one of the “definitive runs” of all-time and in a contender for best run. This has the sequel runs, plus the Aquaman (with some Batman) sequel to “The Laughing Fish” with Trevor Von Eeden. 452 pages for $8.99

Batman: Killing Time – Tom King and David Marquez get their noir on with Batman following the trail of a heist gone bad as his rogues gallery double-cross each other. We read this recently and liked it a lot. $4.99

Batman: Tales of the Demon Denny O’Neil / Neal Adams / Don Newton. This would be a collection of the original Ra’s al Ghul. Which is to say, the more famous original arc in the early ’70s and when O’Neil revisited the character a few years later in DC Special and the dollar-sized run of Detective. Ideally, we’d like to see a lower price than $8.99 for this page count, but its a good collection with one of the key villains in the Bat-mythos.

Tales of the Batman: Steve Englehart   Batman: Killing Time   Batman: Tales of the Demon

Prefer the 90s Event era where the Batman family of books crossed over?  Most of those collections are $3.99 – $5.99. Here’s a cheat sheet for that (we have a soft spot for No Man’s Land):

Plenty more here and worth a weekend browse.

The Other Avengers(es)

Avengers West Coast  Avengers West Coast  Savage Avengers

The Marvel Avengers West Coast & Beyond Sale run through Monday, 9/23.

That sale name is a nice way of saying “all the Avengers titles, except the main one.” It just happens the main spin-off title everyone thinks about is West Cost Avengers / Avengers West Coast(I mean even DC moved to the West Coast. It’s a thing.)

Let’s run down the highlights of the rest of it:

  • All-New, All-Different Avengers ’15-’16 – Mark Waid / Adam Kubert / Mahmud Asrar
  • Dark Avengers ’09-13 – Brian Bendis / Mike Deodato, then Jeff Parker/ Declan Shalvey; When Norman Osborn was running a fake Avengers squad during Dark Reign
  • Mighty Avengers ’07-10 – Brian Bendis / Dan Slott / Frank Cho / Koi Pham
  • Mighty Avengers ’13-14 – Al Ewing / Greg Land; Where Al Ewing starts some of the Blue Marvel sub-plots
  • New Avengers ’04-’12; Brian Bendis and So. Many. Artists.; It’s easier to get all the Bendis New Avengers (including relaunches) in the “Complete Collection” format
  • New Avengers ’13 -’15 – Jonathan Hickman / Steve Epting / Mike Deodato / Simone Bianchi / and friends; Warning – you only get 1/2 of Hickman’s saga with this format
  • New Avengers ’15-’16 – Al Ewing / Gerardo Sandoval; Sunspot’s Avengers Idea Mechanics (and Squirrel Girl)
  • Savage Avengers ’19-’22; Gerry Duggan / Mike Deodato / Patrick Zircher; Think of this as Conan forming the Defenders to hunt down Kulan Gath in the modern day… quite entertaining, as it happens
  • Savage Avengers ’22-’23 –  David Pepose / Carlo Magno; relaunched for a new creative team
  • Secret Avengers ’10 – ’12 – Initially Ed Brubaker / Mike Deodato; The Avengers’ black ops squad
  • Secret Avengers ’13-14 – Nick Spencer / Luke Ross
  • Secret Avengers ’14-’15 – Ales Kot / Michael Walsh
  • Uncanny Avengers ’12-’14 – Rick Remender / John Cassaday / Daniel Acuna
  • Uncanny Avengers ’15 – ’17 – Gerry Duggan / Ryan Stegman
  • Uncanny Avengers: The Resistance ’23 – Gerry Duggan / Javier Garron
  • West Coast Avengers ’18-’19 – Kelly Thompson / Stefano Casseli; More of a Hawk-guy & Kate Bishop series than traditional WCA.
  • Young Avengers ’05 – ’06 – Allan Heinberg / Jim Cheung
  • Young Avengers ’13-’14 – Kieron Gillen / Jamie McKelvie

What’s good? We’re partial to the original Englehart / Milgrim West Cost Avengers and we don’t think there’s been a sale on this since that series filled out in Epic Collections? There’s a case to be made for the Byrne run, but that one is a lightning rod for strong opinions.

We also thought the Dan Slott Mighty Avengers run was a fun slice of “traditional” Avengers in the middle of the Bendis “New Avengers” era.

The real under the radar one here is the Gerry Duggan Savage Avengers run. If you’ve had an itch for some classic Defenders, this (of all things) might scratch it. It’s offbeat, fun and the sequence where Conan humiliates/shames Doctor Doom while having dinner with him has to be experienced to be believed.

Kamala Sale

Ms. Marvel  Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant

The  Ms. Marvel Sale runs through Monday 11/20.

Thank goodness they’re not calling this “The Marvel Ms. Marvel Sale!” This would be Ms. Marvel as in Kamala Khan, not the current Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers. Is there a movie coming out? 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 recent mini-series by Samira Ahmed and Andrés Genolet.
  • Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant – Iman Vellani / Sabir Pirzada / Carlos Gomez; Yes, that’s right, the actress who plays Ms. Marvel is co-writing this with the show’s supervising producer

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.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Venom  Dead X-Men  X-Force

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

A Pocket Full of Posies?

Kill or Be Killed  Killadelphia  Lazarus

The Image All Falls Down Sale runs through Monday, 9/30.

No, we’re not sure where they got the name either, we’re just glad they’re back having sales again. This is another small, vaguely alphabetical slice of titles.

A few things we’ve enjoyed enough to put at the top of the list:

  • Kane – Paul Grist; A largely under the radar (and quirky) crime series from the UK. Originally from Dancing Elephant Press, no less!
  • Kill or Be Killed – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips; Is he nuts or possessed? Either way, a vigilante is in an ever-deepening amount of trouble with the Russian mob. Top form for Brubaker & Phillips, just don’t ask us what’s up with the pricing on the back half of the series
  • Killadelphia – Rodney Barnes / Jason Shawn Alexander; This one’s a particular favorite. A cop who grew up in Philly returns for his father’s funeral and discovers he’s at ground zero of a vampire invasion. One with… let’s call it a sense of history
  • Lazarus – Greg Rucka / Michael Lark; 20 minutes into the future, the world is run by corporations and the families that own those corporations are feuding. The genetically engineered bodyguard/warlord of one of these families is rapidly becoming unsatisfied with the status quo. Some of the early predictions of this series are starting to be a bit uncomfortable…

All top of the line stuff!

Also of possible interest:

  • Happy! – Grant Morrison / Darick Robertson; the basis for the TV show a few years back
  • Local Man – Tim Seely / Tony Fleecs; A noir that’s also a sendup of 90s anti-hero comics as a failed superhero slinks back to the small town he grew up in
  • M.O.M.: Mother of Monsters – Emilia Clarke / Marguerite Bennett / Leila Leiz; The Game of Thrones actress tries her hand at comics

Unannounced Sales

Mob Psycho 1000 BarbaricThe Hunger and the Dusk

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Mob Psycho 100 by ONE.

Also with discounts:

  • Barbaric – Michael Moreci / Nathan C. Gooden
    • V.3 is listed separately because of course it is
  • The Hunger & The Dusk – G. Willow Wilson / Chris Wildgoose (still $1.99)

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Teams; Thanos; The Spider-Verse; Captain Marvel; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts teams and team-ups. Marvel slashes prices on Thanos, Captain Marvel and the Spider-Verse. Plus, Usagi Yojimbo.

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):

Let’s Fight and Then Team Up

Batman and the Outsiders  Legion of Superheroes: The Curse  Suicide Squad

The DC United Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

This is a deep, 600+ item sale that’s _mostly_ centered around team books and team-ups. Mostly. The sale page is almost completely unorganized, but it’s worth an extended browse. There’s a lot there.

Some things we found interesting and in a semblance of order? Sure, we can do that.

The OG Marvel Cosmic Sale
Avengers Vs. Thanos Silver Surfer: The Return of Thanos Infinity Gauntlet

The Marvel Thanos Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock.  You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating). Thanos got VERY involved in things, starting with The Return of Thanos and continuing with Thanos Quest and Silver Surfer: The Infinity Gauntlet. And yes, the first two volumes absolutely set up the famous The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim).  And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material.  “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a couple graphic novel trilogies:

and

And, for good measure, while not really part of the above – Avengers: The Legacy of Thanos by Roger Stern, John Buscema and John Byrne is a highly entertaining tale of Nebula (yes, the Granddaughter of Thanos who’d later be in Guardians of the Galaxy) attempting to conquer the Skrulls.

The most recent big blip on the radar was the Donny Cates / Geoff Shaw Thanos Wins and its spin-off, Cosmic Ghost Rider.

Not A Big Red Cheese?

Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin Captain Marvel Captain Marvel

The Captain Marvel Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Right. This one is a little goofy to define (and the beginning overlaps a bit with Thanos).

First off, the original Kree Captain Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel:

Is Starlin’s Mar-Vell, the best Mar-Vell? We’d say so. We’d also say the Englehart/Milgrom follow-up is well worth your time, but it’s not included here.

Carol Danvers as Ms./Captain Marvel:

OK… brace yourselves… this one has a ton of relaunches:

We think that’s the overly complicated chronology, anyway. For recommendations, we’re not really experts on this set of books, but we’re inclined to say go with the current Thompson run. Kelly Sue DeConnick has a very dedicated fanbase, so maybe browse the sample pages there and see if that catches your fancy, too?

Then there’s Mar-Vell’s son Genis:

This one is a Peter David joint, through and through. We did read the ’22 version last year and enjoyed it. It has a little more going on than you might think at first.

Invasion of the Spider-Riffs

Spider-Verse  Superior Spider-Man  Spider-Gwen

The Marvel Spider-Verse Sale runs through Monday, 9/23.

So, the Spider-Verse is basically a celebration of the Spider-Man cast expanding with a lot of Spidey-related characters and then throwing in some Spidey-equivalents from different dimensions. Miles Morales being the most important one, important enough to be ported into the main “616” universe when the Ultimate line was shuttered.

Spider-Verse was the original Spider-Man family event in the comics that formalized much of this. You’re best off getting the omnibus edition that has the entire thing and all the crossovers, else it gets complicated figuring out reading order between the various series-specific collections.  There are a ton of creators working on this, as you might expect, but this is effectively a Dan Slott as show-runner affair. (Which means, yes, Christos Gage is not far behind.) You can also grab the lead-in series,

If you’re a film fan, the first thing you’re probably thinking of when you hear Spider-Verse is Miles. We broke it down last week, but the  Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale is still running through Monday.

There’s also a bunch of Spider-Gwen / Ghost-Spider material.

The original Spider-Gwen run was Jason Latour writing with Robbie Rodriguez on art.

The first series is collected as Volume 0. Then the second series is collected as Vol. 1-6, but you can get Unmasked instead of V. 4&5 and save a little money. (We warned you this was messy!)

A bit later, famed fantasy novelist Seanan McGuire (sometimes known as Mira Grant) wrote some Spider-Gwen, as the feature was re-named Ghost-Spider. The first series is here.  The second series, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa and Ig Guara, is here.

And the most recent installment in the sale is Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse by Tim Seeley and Jodi Nishijima.

And then we have a Superior Spider-Man section.

Yes, that would be the run when Doctor Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body. One of the greatest moments of “wait… this is actually good” in recent history. (Everyone we knew winced at the high concept, but the execution was on the money!)

The primary Superior Spider-Man series by Dan Slott and Ryan Stegman is best packaged in the 2-volume Complete collection, that also includes the “Dying Wish” arc that sets up the run.

Superior Spider-Man Companion gets you the first 12 issues of Superior Spider-Man Team-Up and some tie-in issues.

Superior Spider-Man (’18-’19) is the Christos Gage / Mike Hawthorne revival that returns Otto Octavious to his Spidey persona.

Of course, we all know who the real star of the Spider-Verse is: Spider-Ham!

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Ultimate Spider-Man She-Hulk  Venom

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

Usagi Yojimbo  Seconds The Hunger and the Dusk

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it. The strange thing is, only the later volumes are showing the good discounts? Usagi Yojimbo Saga is the omnibus version and the better buy. Single volumes are here.

Also with discounts:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Miles Morales – Spider-Man; DC’s Top 100; House of M; Groo; The Crow; Nova

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC drops a Top 100 sale. Marvel offers discounts on Miles Morales, Nova and House of M. Dark Horse cuts prices on Groo, along with several unannounced offerings.

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):

So Much For Top 10

Kingdom Come  Superman  Watchmen

The  DC Top 100 Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

Top 100 what? We have no idea what the criterion would be, here. It’s a mix of recent and evergreen titles. Not a bad mix, either. A few things standing out:

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

  Miles Morales: Spider-Man  Miles Morales

The Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Miles, of course, was the second Ultimate Spider-Man, but that world no longer exists and now there’s a new Ultimate Spider-Man and… we wouldn’t want to explain that to somebody walking in off the street.

For the first Brian Bendis/David Marquez/Sara Pichelli run, you’re probably best off with the Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection set.

Then jump to the  Spider-Man for the ’16 Bendis/Pichelli/Nico Leaon run. (Yes, constant relaunching and it’s confusing to follow.)

Before we’re done with Bendis, there’s the very good Spider-Men series of mini-series where the “traditional” Peter Parker crosses paths with Miles. Get them both in one volume with Spider-Men: Worlds Collide by Bendis & Pichelli.

And after that wraps, it’s time for Miles Morales by Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garron.

And then, Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Cody Ziglar and Federico Vicentini. 

No More Mutants

House of M  X-Men: Reload  X-Men: The Day After

Marvel’s House of M and Decimation Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

This would be the Event Miniseries where Wanda snaps and rewrites reality… forming the basis for the WandaVision TV series.  Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel are your creators. This is the sort of Event where we recommend getting the main series and then dipping your toe into the supporting collections in the sale at your own discretion.  A good chunk of the Marvel line shifted their storylines to participate in the Event, buy how relevant they were to the main storyline varied widely and a lot of it would firmly be considered side stories. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not always presented as such.

The “Decimation” part of the sale refers to the aftermath in the X-Men line after Wanda proclaims “no more mutants” and decimates the population. X-Men: Reload By Chris Claremont Vol. 2: House Of M by Claremont/ Chris Bachalo / Billy Tan covers House of M and Decimation in Uncanny X-Men. X-Men: Decimation – The Day After by Peter Milligan / Salvador Larocca / Roger Cruz covers Decimation in X-Men.

Corpsman
Nova Classic  Nova by Abnett & Lanning

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

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).

Theft

Criminal  Gideon Falls  Stray Bullets

The Image Summer Crime Sale runs through Sunday, 9/15.

Crime? Maybe crime, horror and science fiction? The sale’s title might be a bit reductive.

What we’d put at the top of it:

  • Criminal – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips; While this was their second series (after the lesser known Sleeper), their mid-00s revival of crime comics locked in Brubaker & Phillips as a long term team… and Image would soon lure them away from Marvel
  • Fell – Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith; A creepy, surrealist detective feature and we seem to recall the plots often resembling actual “News of the Weird” newspaper columns.
  • Gideon Falls – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; A wild SF/horror/time travel tale of a mysterious barn that appears and disappears, always leaving a trail of bodies
  • Stray Bullets – David Lapham; This was Criminal, long before Criminal came to be. Along with AKA Goldfish and Jinx by Bendis, this was the main crime comic of the late ’90s.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Men Ultimate Spider-Man

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

Robbin’

Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood

The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale – Robyn Hood Sale  runs through Sunday, 9/22.

This sale is in three flavors with three links:

Looks 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.

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

The Crow  Groo  Barbaric

Over at Dark Horse, everyone’s favorite stupid barbarian is on sale. Yes, that’s right… it’s Groo by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier!

And taking a wider view:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC Labor Day Sale; Doctor Doom; Ant-Man; Scarlet Witch; EC Archives

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has some new items in their Labor Day Sale, Marvel discounts Doctor Doom, Deathlok, Ant-Man and some witch-centric titles. Dark Horse slashes prices on the EC Archives and Crime Does Not Pay.

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):

DC Labors To Find You a Deal

Green Lantern  Shazam  Titans

The DC Labor Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/02.

And this sale features a few new collections for $2.99 that are either new to discounts or haven’t been discounted very long. Let’s run down the highlights.

Recent Discounts

  • Danger Street Vol. 2 – Tom King / Jorge Fornés; Did you get V.1? Here’s the conclusion. Recent Discount
  • Green Lantern ’23 – Jeremy Adams / Xermanico; More of a Silver Age feel to the current series as Hal Jordan is back on Earth and the classic supporting cast turns up. Recent discount
  • Hawkgirl Vol. 1: Once Upon a Galaxy ’23 – Jadzia Axelrod / Amancay Nahuelpan; Recent discount
  • Shazam! Vol. 1: Meet the Captain! ’23 – Mark Waid / Dan Mora; Very fun launch as Waid & Mora steer the franchise a little closer to the whimsical original tone. Recent discount
  • Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows ’23 – Tom Taylor / Nicola Scott; The Titans step up to take over the Justice Leagues duties and Brother Blood is back. Sets up Beast Wars. Good book. Recent discount
  • World’s Finest: Teen Titans – Mark Waid / Emanuela Lupacchino; An adventure of the original squad, similar in tone to Waid’s World’s Finest. Recent discount

Older Titles Worth a Look

  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; The *right* people doing an excellent continuation of The Animated Series
  • Batman / Spawn – Frank Miller / Todd McFarlane & Doug Moench / Alan Grant / Chuck Dixon / Klaus Janson; Both crossovers and $2.99 is a good price for it
  • Bizarro Comics – Alternative cartoonists, like Matt Groening, have their way with DC in this entertaining anthology
  • OMAC: One Man Army Corps – Jack Kirby’s ’70s satire of a corporate dystopia
  • One-Star SquadronMark Russell / Steve Lieber; Brilliant satire of on-demand apps and the gig economy… with Red Tornado
  • Prez – Mark Russell / Ben Caldwell; Social media accidentally elects a president; An election farce that we wish was not so relevant right now, but it’s a great comic that deserved a longer run
  • Rorschach – Tom King / Jorge Fornés; A meditation on identity in the world of Watchmen
  • Suicide Squad: BlazeSi Spurrier / Aaron Campbell; A very dark take on super powers and the government… even by Black Label standards
  • Superman: Birthright – Mark Waid / Leinil Francis Yu; Influential exploration of Superman’s coming of age
  • Swamp Thing ’21 – Ram V / Mike Perkins; The origin of the current Swamp Thing… all three volumes are not on sale simultaneously as one might think, too…

Victor Von Doom Bows Before No Man!

Doctor Doom  Avengers - The Private War of Doctor Doom  Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment

The Marvel Doctor Doom Sale runs through Monday, 9/9

The top dog here is the Doctor Doom series by Christopher Cantwell and Salvador Larroca. Its an instant classic well worth your time. Doom has been framed. For now he’s on the run, but his vengeance will be terrible. Featuring Kang in a highly amusing frenemy role.

Avengers: The Private War of Doctor Doom has a lot of creators with Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart and Jim Shooter as the primary writers and George Perez as the primary artist. This is a cross-over between Super Villain Team-Up (a better than you might think series that was basically Namor and Doom plotting against each other) and Avengers.

Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment by Roger Stern and Mike Mignola has Strange and Doom invading Hell to free Doom’s mother from the clutches of Mephisto.

Also of possible interest – Iron Man: Doomquest collects a famous pair of David Michelinie / Bob Layton tales (w/John Romita, Jr. on the first) that have a time travelling Doom clashing with Iron Man.  Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is the lesser-known Michelinie/Layton/Ron Lim follow-up.

Witches

Vision and the Scarlet Witch  Strange Academy Strange

The Marvel Agatha, Marvel Witches, and The Darkhold Sale runs through Monday, 9/30.

There’s a new TV show coming out… but there aren’t a lot of Agatha comics (especially in this sale), so we get a little bit of everything else, instead.

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.

Also of interest:

  • Strange Academy – Skottie Young / Humberto Ramos (Omnibus editions)
  • Strange – Jed MacKay / Marcelo Ferreira; Clea’s turn as Sorceress Supreme

What Did the Pink Panther Say To The Ant?

Ant-Man    Ant-Man: World Hive

The Marvel Ant-Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/2.

Since there are multiple formats for much of this, we’re going to walk through the highlights in the cheapest formats (which means omnibus, if available).

Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection: The Man in the Ant-Hill is a collection of the early Hank Pym stories from Tales to Astonish

Ant-Man/Giant-Man Epic Collection: Ant-Man No More follows Pym from the final Tales to Astonish issues through Scott Lang’s debut in the suit in Marvel Premiere.

Ant-Man: Scott Lang is a compilation book of the early appearances of Scott Lang in the Ant-Man suit. i.e., Lang before Lang became more of a comedy character. This is a relatively David Michelinie-driven volume with the solo 2-parter in Marvel Premiere, an Avengers arc and an Iron Man arc.

Irredeemable Ant-Man is the Robert Kirkman / Phil Hester run with Eric O’Grady finding the Ant-Man suit. At this point, O’Grady’s an unethical SHIELD agent playing both sides against the middle and it’s a bit of a farce. And this is where Ant-Man starts being played as an action comedy. Something that’s still largely the case.

The Astonishing Ant-Man: The Complete Collection is the omnibus for the Nick Spencer era, with art by Ramon Rosanas, Anapaolo Martello and Brent Schoonover. This is where Ant-Man is reset closer to the films as more of an action-farce. Scott Lang has worse luck than Peter Parker and he tries to get his life together, get a job and start co-parenting his daughter… but things are seldom that easy.

Ant-Man: World Hive by new Spidey scribe Zeb Wells and Dylan Burnett finds Scott Lang forced to team up with Swarm. Yes, a Nazi scientist with a body made up of bees. There’s an honest-to-goodness invasion/conspiracy to create an insect uprising and he’s having the hardest time getting the Avengers… or Spidey… or even Black Cat to take him seriously. We particularly enjoyed this one.

The Al Ewing trilogy. Ewing did this sneaky trilogy that wasn’t billed as such. Three miniseries that build on each other with Ant-Man and the Wasp. Naturally, the third one (which was GREAT) isn’t included in the sale.

Lok… Because Spelling Is Kewl

Deathlok Masterworks Deathlok Deathlok

The Marvel Deathlok 50th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 9/2.

Originally a cyborg (against his will) in a dystopian future, the original Deathlok was a Rich Buckler creation and the whole run of that incarnation can be had in the Deathlok Masterworks, nice and easy.

The next time Deathlok popped up in a major way was the 90s and it was a hot comic for a short period of time. Dwayne McDuffie/Gregory Wright/Butch Guice/Denys Cowan reinvented a modern day Deathlock in Deathlok: The Living Nightmare of Michael Collinswhich was followed by an ongoing series.

Since then, there have been a few revivals:

  • Deathlok ’99-’00- Joe Casey / Leonardo Manco
  • Deathlok ’09-’10 – Charlie Huston / Lan Medina
  • Deathlok ’14-’15 – Nathan Edmondson / Mike Perkins

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Men  Avengers: Twilight  Wolverine

The trend returns after a short break. 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

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

EC Crime SuspenStories  Tales From the Crypt Crime Does Not Pay

Dark Horse has their EC Archives on sale. Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales and that whole family of famous titles.

They also have Crime Does Not Pay on sale. This isn’t an EC book. It actually predates EC, but it eventually had a narrator called “Mr. Crime” who was a few years ahead of the Crypt Keeper and company… although the mysterious host was a radio tradition going back to the 1930s. (The Shadow was the narrator of Detective Story Hour in 1930 before the pulp magazine turned him into a fleshed out character, for instance.)

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Force; Winter Soldier; Gillen at Marvel; Kirby at DC

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops prices on X-Force, Winter Soldier and the work of Kieron Gillen. DC highlights some deeper cuts in the catalog (and Jack Kirby). Oni may or may not be having a sale.

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):

Paths Less Taken

Far Sector  Omega Men  Orion

The DC Summer Sizzle Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

And this week, DC’s mix of titles has a LOT of what we’d call “under the radar” books, many of which are featured a little less frequently. Fortunately, this is firmly in our wheelhouse to navigate.

Some highlights:

  • Checkmate – Greg Rucka / Jesus Saiz; Rucka’s take on the intersection of spies and superheroes
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke’s look at the dawn of the Silver Age isn’t really under the radar, but it’s a truly great comic.
  • Deathstroke – Christopher Priest / Carlo Pagulayan; Missing the Titans crossovers, but this is a smart comic about villain that makes few bones about it.
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemisin / Jamal Campbell; Superior worldbuilding as a new Green Lantern with an experimental ring investigates the first murder in living memory on a world without feelings. You could count Jemisin’s SF/F awards, but you’d need some time on your hands.
  • Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; An even further-out-there delight & Doom Patrol spin-off that, for legal purposes, has NOTHING to do with Charles Atlas ads…
  • Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation – Robert Venditti / Eddy Barrows; Just a very well done reworking of the original Freedom Fighters concept. Very under the radar, but we really enjoyed it. (Would work as an Elseworlds or Black Label.)
  • Jonah Hex Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and an absurd rotation of high end artists; Fun westerns, some arcs, some done in one
  • Omega Men – Tom King / Barnaby Bagenda; Before he blew up, King penned this meditation on line between terrorism and freedom fighters, which is arguably a Green Lantern tale (Kyle Rayner). Often overlooked.
  • Orion – Walt Simonson’s entry in the New Gods saga. We liked it as much as his Thor, which is to say, a lot! Totally under most radars.

Kirby Korner

A good chunk of the King’s DC work is on sale:

Forced Entry

X-Force X-Force X-Force

The Marvel X-Force Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

Yes, the mutant black ops team, as originally established by Cable (and morphing out of New Mutants). There absolutely have a been a few incarnations and relaunches over the years. Let’s start out with an overview of that:

  • X-Force ’91-’02 – Originally Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza with Greg Capullo tagging in early on. The first edition, if you will.
    • Counter-X: X-Force From the period when Warren Ellis was showrunning some of the X-titles, by Ian Edgington & Jorge Lucas
  • Uncanny-Force ’10-’12 – Rick Remender and rotating roster of Raphael Albuquerque, Esad Ribic, Jerome Opena, Billy Tan and Phil Noto
  • Uncanny X-Force ’13-’14 – Sam Humphries / Ron Garney / Dalibor Talajic
  • Deadpool vs. X-Force ’14 – Duane Swierczynski / Pepe Laraz
  • X-Force ’19-’24 – Ben Percy / Joshua Cassara / Robert Gill

What’s good? Our top pick is the Remender Uncanny-ForceBlack ops and a wide ranging, but complete story unit when taken as a whole. We’re also fans of the Ben Percy / Krakoa era X-Force.  If you want something off-beat, start here for the Milligan/Allred run, which is a satire.

Journey into Gillen

Darth Vader  Journey Into Mystery  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel Kieron Gillen Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

Yes, has has written quite a bit for Marvel over the years. Our favorites? An absolutely brilliant turn on Darth Vader with Salvador Larocca and his evil Star Wars analogue of Indiana Jones, Doctor Aphra w/Kev Walker. When the glass cracks in his Vader run… well, see for yourself. Great moment.

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

What’s good?  This one’s going to be more personal preference than with many sales and to that end, we’d definitely say Immortal X-Men and particularly Sins of Sinister, which was as good as X-Men Event as there’s been… but needs context from Immortal and the X-line of books. Past that, Journey Into Mystery is where Gillen really popped onto the Marvel radar, Young Avengers is the familiar team of Gillen/McKelvie and Gillen’s Mr. Sinister in Uncanny X-Men definitely has had influence.

The Sidekick in Winter

Captain America  Winter Soldier  The Winter Soldier: The Bitter March

The Marvel Winder Soldier Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

This is a slightly odd sale, in that it encompasses most – but apparently not all – of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run and then several miniseries and abortive attempts at an ongoing series… including a few creator names you’ll recognize.

The originating storyline runs in the 2004 series of Captain America by Ed Brubaker and a rotating squad of artists including Steve Epting, Michael Lark, Butch Guice and Mike Perkins. There are a couple omnibuses available, but this doesn’t really have a definitive larger collection like, say, the Hickman Avengers era.

Note: if you’re going to read the Winter Soldier saga, you’re going to need Captain America: Reborn, the Ed Brubaker /Bryan Hitch mini-series that wraps up the “Death of Captain America” sequence.

For solo series, the first choice is Winter Soldier by Ed Brubakerwhich is Brubaker and Butch Guice in a spin-off.

Also of possible interest:

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Resurrection of Magneto  Cable: United We Fall  Avengers: Twilight

The trend returns after a short break. 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

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

Apex Legends  Anthem

Dark Horse has a couple of their video game adaptations showing up discounted:

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Image Comics Returns; X-Men; Moon Knight; Green Arrow; Minor Threats

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Image Comics returns to the discount listing for the first time in a year. DC offers sale prices on some more recent titles like Green Arrow. Marvel cuts prices on Moon Knight, X-Men, and Avengers vs. X-Men. Plus, Minor Threats.

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):

Holy Crap! Image Is Back?!?

Black Magick  Chew  Nailbiter

The Hooked on Image Comics Sale runs through Thursday, 8/29.

We get a lot of questions about why Image hasn’t had any sales lately. Interestingly, this is right about when Image resurfaced for a few weeks of sales in mid-August 2023. Um, ’tis the season?

This is a rather small and… almost alphabetical slice of Image?

Things we’ve read and can happily recommend:

  • Black Magick Greg Rucka / Nicola Scott; a police detective who happens to be a witch has her worlds collide. What were Rucka and Scott doing before the Wonder Woman relaunch? This.
  • Cassanova – Matt Fraction / Gabriel Ba; Extra trippy adventures with a dimension-hopping thief caught up in a conspiracy with a very Jerry Cornelius vibe to it.
  • Chew – John Layman / Rob Guillory; Absurdist adventures in a world where eating chicken is outlawed with a federal agent who experiences the sense of what he eats. So if he ate your thumb, he’d know where it had been. Black humor abounds, as to vampires and a death-dealing rooster. It’s a favorite. Layman’s now working on Spawn and Titans. This is the book that really launched Layman.
  • Nailbiter – Josh Williamson / Mike Henderson; Why does a small town in Oregon produce so many serial killers? A federal agent descends upon the town with one of those prodigal serial killers in tow, looking to find out. One of the things Williamson was doing before Superman and GI Joe took over his hours.

And By Recent, We Mean Within 5 Years

Danger Street  Green Arrow  The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country

The DC Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

It does have some new releases in it, though. More importantly, there are plenty of $2.99 collected editions. Let’s work through some highlights.

X-Men: The Glory Years

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

The Marvel X-Men Masterworks/Epic Collections Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

To paraphrase The Blues Brothers, “We’ve got both kinds, Epics and Masterworks.”

Which is to say this is all contained in the original X-Men series link.

Pick your preferred format. In general, the Epics have a more pages and end up being more bang for your buck… although the more recent Masterworks have been pretty thick volumes.

From a pragmatic standpoint, the Masterworks volumes have everything in order through issue #243 (Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 16 – which covers Inferno).

The Epic Collections exist in order through #198… and then they start jumping ahead to Jim Lee / Whilce Portacio era. If you’re looking for 90s X-Men, you want the Epics.

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 stop at #198 before jumping ahead and that’s super annoying. #200 is a landmark issue.

The Light of the Silvery Moon

Moon Knight  Moon Knight Epic Collection   Moon Knight

The Marvel Moon Knight Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

The original Moon Knight run is mostly in Epic Collections, but it’s in two separate links because… well, we shouldn’t be surprised by this, should we?  The first link has two volumes that are not closely related. Bad Moon Rising is the Werewolf by Night appearances through the backups in Hulk Magazine and the first issues of 1980 solo series. The other volume in that link… we’re not as big on. That was later volumes.

You can go here for the rest of the 1980 Moon Knight series, which was the most famous version for quite some time. If you came into the character through the TV series, know that the original Moon Knight was a lot closer to Batman and The Shadow. Oh, sure the werewolf showed up, but most of the mystical things around Konshu were kept in the background and a lot more mysterious. The multiple identities were originally more like the cover identities adopted by the Shadow (and the original series editor, Denny O’Neil, adapted The Shadow for DC.) This is where Moon Knight got popular.

If you came in through the TV show, there really isn’t a comic that quite matches that version of the character, but the series did draw on the Jeff Lemire / Greg Smallwood Moon Knight series in which Moon Knight has a run-in with the Egyptian gods and his personalities run amok. It’s also a good run.

We also have been enjoying the current Jed MacKay/Alessandro Cappuccio Moon Knight series. This one takes up the unenviable task of rationalizing the various incarnations over the years (and there have been a lot of different takes on the character). Mr. Knight is in therapy for his multiple personality issues. He’s running the Midnight Mission and conduct himself as Konshu’s ambassador… after a fashion, although he’s not really happy with Konshu. And there are vampires. Lots of vampires.

Highlights of the rest:

  • Moon Knight ’89-’94 – Most of this is only collected in omnibus form  for the longest running volume. This is largely the Terry Kavanaugh years with Gary Kwapisz and James Fry on art. Possibly more interesting, it also includes a Bruce Jones/Denys Cowan special and a Doug Moench/Art Nichols team-up with Shang Chi. (A second volume with earlier issues drops in October.)
  • Moon Knight ’10-12 – Brian Bendis / Alex Maleev; Controversial to say the least, this one really leans into Moon Knight’s multiple personality disorder and breaks the character if you prefer the original concept. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly witty and funny. One of the oddest takes on the character.
  • Moon Knight  ’14-’15- Most notable for the style-forward Warren Ellis/Declan Shalvey reworking (introducing the business suit)

The novelist corner, because Marvel has put a couple name novelists on the property:

Friday Night Fights

Avengers Vs. X-Men A.X.E. Judgement Day

The Marvel AvX & A.X.E. Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

And by “AvX,” they mean Avengers vs. X-Men. “Go along to get along” doesn’t necessarily apply here.

The “primary” Avengers Vs. X-Men was an Event back in ’12 with all sorts of creators contributing to it. Were there tie-in books? It’s Marvel, so there were plenty. Avengers vs. X-Men: VS was essentially the “all-fights” series.

Also included is the more recent A.X.E.: Judgment Day, the Kieron Gillen/Valerio Schiti – driven Event that crossed over Avengers, X-Men and The Eternals.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Beware the Planet of the Apes  Resurrection of Magneto  Cable: United We Fall

The trend returns after a short break. 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

Minor Threats  Daisy

That Patton Oswalt guy has recently been seen in comic shops promoting his “Minor Threats” franchise. Guess what’s on sale?

Also from Dark Horse:

  • Daisy – Colin Lorimer
  • UXB – Colin Lorimer

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Factor; Star Wars: The High Republic; Scarlet Spider; Aliens; Predator; Avatar: The Last Airbender

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Aliens, Predator, X-Factor, Scarlet Spider and Star Wars: The High Republic. Dark Horse cuts the price on Avatar the Last Airbender. Batman’s still on sale, plus some more unannounced discounted items.

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 Mutant Variable

X-Factor by Peter David   X-Factor by Peter David   X-Factor

The Marvel X-Factor Sale runs through Monday, 8/12.

This one’s a little different from most of the Legacy sales in that it’s mainly a Peter David X-Factor sale. Let’s walk through that.

Of the original X-Factor run, you’re really looking at the Epic Collections, here. While the book started out with Bob Layton/Butch Guice, Louise & Walt Simonson tagged in and had one of the defining runs on the book. A bit later, Peter David started his first run, which had Joe Quesada and Larry Stroman as part of the artist rotation, while it was definitely funnier, this was still basically the original X-Factor setup, just tweaked a little.

When people think of Peter David and X-Factor, the run they’re most likely thinking of is the 2005-13 run that starts out with Madrox (The Multiple Man) opening a detective agency. Yes, this is the run where Layla Miller knows stuff. (If you know, you know.)

Technically, this all started in the Madrox mini-series, originally under the Marvel Knights banner.

There are also two X-Factor by Peter David: The Complete Collection  volumes. Vol. 1 is the original Madrox mini-series and X-Factor 1-12. Vol. 2 collects #13-24, 28-32 and two specials. You can save a couple bucks there.

There was also a ’14-’15 X-Factor relaunch by David and Giuseppe Camuncoli. This sale is all about the Peter David runs!

Out from under the shadow of Mr. David, there are two other notable titles in the sale.

Back in 2010, X-Factor Forever saw Louise Simonson returning to the situation as she left it on the book (prior to Peter David taking over) along with Dan Panosian.

And then, in the aftermath of House of X / Powers of X, Leah Williams and David Baldeon relaunched X-Factor as the mutants who investigate the circumstances of death and missing persons for Krakoa.

Not of this Earth

The Marvel Aliens & Predators Sale runs through Monday, 8/12.

Predator versus Wolverine  Alien  Aliens

It’s probably best to divide this into the Marvel section and the Dark Horse section.

On the Marvel side of the fence, there are two big winners, we’ll happily point you to.

Predator Vs. Wolverine by Ben Percy / Ken Lashley / Andrea Di Vito / Greg Land is exactly what it sounds like… except that it’s actually very enjoyable. You’d think this would be a trite cash-in, but that’s not the case. Predator Vs. Wolverine in a vendetta-ish scenario across the years. $2.99 even qualifies as Cheap!

The Philip Kennedy Johnson Alien sequence (V.1 & 2 here; then V. 3 here — yeah, we know… comics publishers need to work on the meta data) with Salvador Larroca, followed by Julius Ohta; is essentially one winding tale of Weyland-Yutani Corporation conspiracies that starts out with hiding a few of those eggs that couldn’t possibly get out of control, moves on to interstellar pioneers and religion, then comes back to the living conditions of rogue androids. Effective slow burn storytelling.

Also on the Marvel side:

  • Declan Shalvey’s Alien run
    • V.1 w/ Andrea Broccardo
    • V.2 w/Danny Earls
  • Ed Brisson’s Predator run
    • V.1 w/ Kev Walker
    • V.2 w/ Netho Diaz

From the original Dark Horse material:

Spiders

Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Saga Epic Spider-Man: The Complete Ben Reilly Epic Spider-Geddon

The Marvel Ben Reilly and Kaine – Scarlet Spiders Sale runs through 8/12.

Yes, it’s a clone sale! Let’s take this roughly in order.

Your Clone Saga choices are:

After the Clone Saga, Ben Reilly takes over as the Scarlet Spider (for about a year). That’s collected in:

Then in ’12 (spinning out of Spider Island, which isn’t in the sale), Kaine takes over for:

Then we pop back to Amazing Spidey in ’16 for a storyline

Then back to a solo book:

Then an Event:

Then a solo mini:

And finally, Ben Reilly is mixed up in another Event:

See? Nothing complicated about all those clones! <If you have a cheat sheet, that is.>

How High?

Star Wars: The High Republic   Star Wars: The High Republic - Season 2   Star Wars: The High Republic - The Blade

The Marvel Star Wars: High Republic Sale runs through Monday, 8/12.

For the uninitiated, this is a time period set “a long time ago” relative the first two film trilogies.

What are we looking at here?

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Beware the Planet of the Apes  Resurrection of Magneto

The trend returns after a short break. 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.

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Avatar: The Last Airbender  The Blue Flame  Verse

BATMAN

Last week’s big and cheap Batman sale is still going on through Monday evening.

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Still on Sale

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Huge Batman Sale; Justice League; Black Hammer; Matt Kindt

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC breaks out a very deep and cheap Batman sale with lots of $2.99 ebooks… and the Justice League, too. Marvel cuts prices on Elektra. Dark Horse highlights Black Hammer and Matt Kindt amidst a line-wide sale.

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):

You Had Me at $2.99 Batman

The DC Batman: The Caped Crusader Sale runs through Monday, 8/12.

Well, now… this is certainly an interesting and relatively exhaustive sale. Most of the collected editions are on sale and at good prices. You see $2.99 at DC and it’s time to pull the trigger, so take note and lord it over your friends.

And yes, it’s named after the new animated series, which we’ve started watching and is starting out astonishingly dark and pulpy. (Both good things in our book.)

Let’s try and make things a little easier list and mark off the more notable of the various series included in the sale:

Batman Special Batman: The War of Jokes and Riddles  Batman '89

What’s that? You’re still not satisfied? *Sigh* Fine, there’s some Harley Quinn in this one, too.

  • Harley Quinn ’00-’04 – Karl Kesel / Terry & Rachel Dodson
  • Harley Quinn ’13-’16 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin
  • Harley Quinn ’16-’20 – Jimmy Palmiotti / Amanda Connor / Chad Hardin
  • Harleen ’19 – Stjepan Sejic
  • Harley Quinn ’21- current – Stephanie Phillips / Riley Rossmo

What’s good? That depends on what flavor of Batman you like. It seems the caped crusader is flexible and has had different tones over the years.

Do you like the 90s Event era where the Batman family of books crossed over?  Most of those collections are $2.99/$3.99. Here’s a cheat sheet for that (we have a soft spot for No Man’s Land):

Prefer the mid-to-late 80s era? Starlin/Aparo or Grant/Breyfogle? Those collections are running $3.99/$4.99 and filed under the original Batman and Detective runs.

“The Caped Crusader” branded volumes collect the Batman issues and start here

“The Dark Knight Detective” branded volumes collect the Detective Comics issues and start here.

We’re also going to call out a few things that are a hair more expensive, but normally have a much higher price point:

Coincidentally, This Title is Returning Soon

Justice League of America  Justice League International Justice League

The DC Justice League Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

That’s right, as it’s announced at Comic-Con that Mark Waid & Dan Mora are launching a new Justice League Unlimited series, a sale on the Justice League follows. To paraphrase Casablanca, “We’re shocked. Shocked to find Justice League on sale.” We also note some decent prices and a chunk of $2.99 books sprinkled in.

Let’s start out by counting down the many flavors available:

For some of the side series:

What’s good?

The Nail is Alan Davis with an A+ Elseworlds take on a Justice League on a world where Superman did not emerge as the first hero.

You can get a big chunk (500+ pages) of the BWA HA HA era in omnibus format for $5.99.

$2.99 for Dwayne McDuffie’s run (starting here) is a good deal.

$2.99 for the first pair of Silver Age collections is also a good deal.

Under the radar?  The Christopher Priest / Pete Woods arc from ~3 years back. It’s just good comics without silly crossovers.

Miss Natchios If You’re Nasty…

Elektra Assassin  Daredevil: Fall From Grace  Daredevil The Man Without Fear

The Marvel Elektra Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

That would Elektra, the former Hand assassin and on-again-off-again love interest of a certain Mathew Murdoch.  Strangely, the original Daredevil run isn’t included here, but let’s do a quick rundown in rough chronological order.

What’s good here? Elektra: Assassin is the undisputed classic. A very odd series, originally from Epic (not for kids) about Elektra rebelling against The Beast (the demon behind The Hand, not the X-Man) and stalking a politician controlled by The Beast.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is essentially Miller doing “Daredevil: Year One.” It isn’t Elektra-heavy, but it’s good.

Daredevil & Elektra by Chip Zdarsky is quite good, though it’s also the final act of Zdarsky’s run and isn’t the best place to start.

The Chichester / McDaniel Daredevil era seems to be getting a critical reappraisal these days. We liked it the first time around and it’s when Elektra was re-introduced into the supporting cast (on order from editorial, IIRC).

Unannounced Sale of the Week – Held Over

The Hunger and the Dusk

The Hunger & The Dusk, V.1 – G. Willow Wilson / Chris Wildgoose; We were startled this was on sale for $1.99 last week (it hasn’t even been out for 2 months yet), we’re still startled… but it was probably our favorite read of the last month and it’s well worth a look if you like intelligent Epic Fantasy.

All Kinds of Unannounced Dark Horse Sales

Apache Delivery Service

There are two new unannounced Dark Horse Sales:

1)  The wide world of Matt Kindt, who’s done quite a bit of work for them:

2) Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston

And then the line-wide sale

Goldfish  Martha Washington  Nexus

.Dark Horse has a mostly line-wide 50% off sale, excepting recent releases and a few things where perhaps the price wasn’t updated. This is stilted towards the collected editions. It’s been going on since last week and we think it should still be active through Monday, maybe Tuesday? How does a person properly browse this?

Not very easily. Amazon does not make it easy to sort by publisher.

This link will get you a _very_ unsorted stream of Dark Horse titles to pick through.

And let’s drop links for some of the usual suspect series while we’re at it:

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Still on Sale