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

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

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

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.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers – First volume is the original appearance through their Marvel Presents solo run; Second volume is 70s guest star appearances, particularly in Avengers.
Guardians of the Galaxy (’90-’95) – Best known for the very fun Jim Valentino run (i.e. the first 3 volumes here)
Guardians of the Galaxy 3000 – Dan Abnett / Gerardo Sandoval

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

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 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 by Abnett & Lanning – written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning / art by Brad Walker, Paul Pelletier and others. This is where the “movie” team in the current timeline was formed. Also known as the “Annihilation” team.
Guardians of the Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis – Bendis and so. many. artists.
All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (’17-’18) – Gerry Duggan / Aaron Kuder
Guardians of the Galaxy by Donny Cates (’19) – Donny Cates/Geoff Shaw
Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing (’20- ’21) – Al Ewing / Juan Cabal

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

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

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?

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.

Still on Sale

The DC Epic eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 3/4
The Kodansha Time & Again Sale runs through Wednesday, 3/6
The Media Do Libre BL Special Sale runs through Tuesday, 3/5
Zenoscope Grimm Spotlight Sale runs through Wednesday, 3/6

Posted on March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 by comics_p1pusl

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Vertigo, Hellblazer, War of the Realms, Silk, Doctor Who and an Unannounced Dark Horse Sale

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC discounts the Vertigo line and Hellblazer. Marvel drops prices on War of the Realms and Silk. Plus, Doctor Who and is that another unannounced Dark Horse 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):

So Much For Balance

The DC Vertigo Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

For an imprint DC shuttered years ago, it sure does have a prominent place on their online promotional list, doesn’t it? DC would probably tell you Black Label serves a similar purpose, but we keep expecting Vertigo to rise from the ashes one of these days. They had an awful lot of interesting material and some of it is starting to migrate to other publishers (like Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint, to the surprise of exactly no one).

The nickel tour of Vertigo titles:

100 Bullets – Classic revenge/crime/spies mashup by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso
- 100 Bullets: Brother Lono – The follow-up by Azzerello/Risso
American Vampire – The comic that first put Scott Snyder on the map as a new breed of Vampire emerges in the West and clashes with what came before. Rafael Albuquerque is the artist and Stephen King lends a hand at launch.
The American Way: Those Above and Those Below – John Ridley / George Jeanty; Just your average superhero alternate history tale written by an Oscar winner. Sequel to the Wildstorm series that isn’t collected/on sale.
Animal Man – While the Grant Morrison/Chas Troug run is what gets talked about, This is followed by Peter Milligan, Tom Veitch and Jamie Delano with Steve Dillon and Steve Pugh on art. Not exactly chopped liver.
Daytripper – Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba
Dead Boy Detectives – Toby Litt & Mark Buckingham. Young ghosts solve crimes. Coming soon to Netflix…
Doom Patrol ’89 – The Grant Morrison / Richard Case run. Legendary and adapted for television. Perhaps one day they’ll adapt the rest of the run.
DMZ – Brian Wood / Riccardo Burcchielli; As the US is in the middle of a civil war, a reporter becomes trapped in the no man’s land that is NYC and navigates of landscape of warlords and political intrigue from both sides. Doesn’t get hype anymore, but a solid series that hasn’t exactly gotten stale.
Ex Machina – Brian K. Vaughan (Saga) / Tony Harris (Starman); Originally Wildstorm, now Vertigo, this political thriller/powers genre bender finds a world’s only superhero being elected mayor of NYC. (Long before Lucas Cage or even Wilson Fisk.)
Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham
Flex Mentallo – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; A delightfully odd/surreal tale that starts out as parody of the old Charles Atlas ads. And an early Morrison/Quitely pairing. They work well together.
iZombie – Chris Roberson / Mike Allred; A zombie detective dramedy adapted for television
Jew Gangster – Joe Kubert; Kubert lets loose with a ’30s crime tale.
Lucifer – Before he was M.R. Carey and handing out “all the gifts,” Mike Carey had a long run on this Sandman spin-off. Peter Gross is the artist.
Preacher – Garth Ennis / Steve Dillion; Another Vertigo TV adaption (you might be noticing a pattern), God has gone missing and Jesse Custer would like to have a word with him. Also, power abhors a vacuum.
Punk Rock Jesus – Sean Murphy’s tale of reality TV, religion and Punk (before his solo Batman work)
Saga of the Swamp Thing – The classic Alan Moore years (he’s good, that one); plus the Mark Millar years.
Sandman Mystery Theater – Matt Wagner / Steven T. Seagle / Guy Davis; The Golden Age Sandman in a pulpy mystery series (but with a bit more character work than your average pulp). Highly recommended.
Sandman – By some chap named Gaiman. You may have heard of it.
Scalped – Jason Aaron / R.M. Guera – An FBI agent goes undercover (as himself) on the reservation he thought he’d escaped to investigate the reservation casino. Aaron starting out in the crime genre we wish he could do more of.
Sweet Tooth – Jeff Lemire; As seen on Netflix.
Top 10 – Alan Moore / Gene Ha / Zander Cannon – Another Wildstorm (OK, technically America’s Best Comics) series now dubbed “Vertigo,” this is Alan Moore’s delightful excursion into the Hill Street Blues style of police procedural… but with superheroes as the law. Good stuff.
The Unwritten – Mike (M.R.) Carey and Peter Gross reunite for the tale of a boy one whom a Harry Potter-esque series of books was based discovers he might actually be the literary character made flesh and the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.
- The final two volumes are list separately. (And you wonder why the retailer want better metadata?)
- The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice – The prequel
Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan (him again) and Pia Guerra in the tale of the last man alive after a mysterious incident kills everyone else on Earth with a Y chromosome. Well, except his monkey. You may have even seen the TV series.

What the Hel…

The DC John Constantine, Hellblazer Sale runs through Monday, 1/22.

While perhaps not the original Vertigo flagship book, Hellblazer ended up being the longest running title and something DC has tried to revive (with mixed results) post-Vertigo. Let’s run it down:

Hellblazer ’88 – DC would like to call it “John Constantine, Hellblazer” in the post-Keanu world, but that’s not what anyone calls it. The first run is just Hellblazer. And it’s as solid a 300 issues as you’ll find. Jamie Delano. Neil Gaiman. Garth Ennis. Brian Azzarello. Mike Carey. Paul Jenkins. John Ridgeway. David Lloyd. Steve Dillon. The list goes on quite a while. A parade of top talent, if we’re honest. Good horror comics!
John Constantine: Hellblazer – City of Demons ’11- One-off graphic novel by Si Spencer and Sean Murphy. We seem to recall liking it.
Constantine ’13 – The new 52 relaunch. Mostly Ray Fawkes / Renato Guedes
Constantine: The Hellblazer ’15 – Ming Doyle / James Tynion IV / Riley Rossmo
The Hellblazer ’16 – Rotating creators; we haven’t read this one, but it’s notable that V. 4 is co-written by Sandman Slim novelist Richard Kadrey
John Constantine, Hellblazer ’19 – This is the Si Spurrier/Aaron Campbell version we’ve been stumping for around here. Right up there with the best runs and DC just started a new series of it. Both volumes make for 1 story and it’s great.
Hellblazer: Rise and Fall ’20 – Tom Taylor/Darick Robertson Black Lablel tale. (And with that team, you should know if you want it.)
The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher: A Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel ’21 – Ryan North / Derek Charm YA tale
Constantine: Distorted Illusions – Kami Garcia / Isaac Goodhart do teen Constantine and his band

This Means War

The Marvel War of the Realms Sale runs through Monday, 1/22.

This would be the Jason Aaron Thor Event.

You know how all these Events have “The Road to” type lead-ins? That’s the case here, except it’s part of the Thor series: Thor V.2: The Road to War of the Realms (Jason Aaron / Mike del Mundo / Tony Moore).

There’s also War of the Realms Prelude, which is a collection of issues from various Thor titles that have some bearing/build-up to the Event.

The meat of the Event is the collection of the miniseries (War of the Realms – Aaron/Russell Dauterman). If it were us, we’d probably have included Thor V.3 – War’s End (Aaron/Del Mundo), but that’s not actually part of the sale for whatever reason.

As usually there are a lot of tie-in books. Choose those at your liberty, though Aaron writes the Avengers tie-in (with Ed McGuinness).

Not Just For Handkerchiefs

The Marvel Silk Sale runs through Monday, 1/22

We know what you’re thinking: “I thought Silk belonged to Quality Comics.” And you’d be right, but that’s “Her Highness and Silk,” the Kid Eternity foes who got spun off into their own feature. This is the Marvel Spidey spin-off.

Silk starts out in the ’14 edition of Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos.

Then Silk gets handed off to Robbie Thompson, whom we can safely call Cindy Moon’s primary writer.

There was a ’15 mini-series that Marvel identifies as a Vol. 0 by Thompson and Stacy Lee.
Followed by the ’15 ongoing Silk series by Thompson with Lee as the primary artist.
Both of the ’15 series, plus the Amazing Spider-Man material are also collected in Silk: Out of the Spider-Verse, because… well, you know how it goes with Marvel collections. They like to rebrand.
During the above run, there was also an Amazing Spider-Man & Silk: Spider(Fly) Effect infinity comic (i.e. webcomic) by Thompson and Todd Nauck
There was a ’21 Silk series by Maurene Goo and Takeshi Mitazawa (Amazon appears to have incorrect creator credits on this.)

Who Dat?

The Titan The Eleventh Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 2/26.

That’s Eleventh Doctor, as is Matt Smith’s Doctor.

These comics come in two formats:

The single issues are cheaper. (Collected editions tend to be 5 issues.)

We would like to point out some creator names you might recognize. Early in the run, you’ve got writing by Al Ewing and Simon (Si) Spurrier. Both of whom get mentioned around here a fair amount.

Unannounced Dark Horse Sale

We’re not sure how long this is running, but the omnibus editions of Adam Warren’s Empowered on sale. It’s superhero satire about a heroine with terrible luck and unreliable powers.

Still on Sale

The Marvel Best of 2023 Sale runs through Monday, 2/5
The Kodansha In Case You Missed It Sale runs through Monday, 01/29

Posted on January 19, 2024 by comics_p1pusl

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Howard the Duck; Doctor Who; Aliens; Inhumans; Planet of the Apes and Ms. Tree

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

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

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

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

Duck Soup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foxy

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

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

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

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

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

Hammer-isms

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

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

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

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

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

V.1 – 3 are here.

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

Knock Knock

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

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

It’s available as single issues and collected editions.

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