Dragon Age Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Silver Surfer, Marvel Knights and X-Men “Crossovers.” DC has their annual Pride sale. Dark Horse discounts most of their manga, plus Dragon Age.

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):

Surfin’ Bird

The Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall 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. It does not appear to be on sale this time, but we’ll list it for the sake of completeness.

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. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet. We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

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.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

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.

Who Exactly Did the Knighting Ceremony?

The Marvel Knights Sale runs through Monday 6/10.

It’s probably best to put this in historical context. Prior to becoming Marvel EIC, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were co-running an imprint at Marvel called “Marvel Knights.” This started when Marvel was not exactly at a high point and Quesada & Palmiotti reinvigorated several titles. Eventually, Quesada got promoted.

The flagship title for Marvel Knights was probably Daredevil. It started out with Kevin Smith and Quesada as the creators, which was a hit. Then Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev had a storied run on it.

Garth Ennis wrote The Punisher for Marvel Knights, both the comedic series and the later series crime version that eventually moved over the MAX imprint.

Very little of it is in the sale, but the Christopher Priest version of Black Panther is still hugely influential.

Grant Morrison did a Fantastic Four mini-series with Jae Lee and Marvel Boy with J.G Jones.

Mark Millar and Terry & Rachel Dodson did a Spider-Man run.

There was also the infamous “we’re just going to pretend that never happened” Punisher miniseries where Frank returns from the grave as an angel of vengeance. No, really.

There’s a bit more there, but those are the highlights (and the famous misfire). It was a pretty influential imprint.

X Marks the Event

The Marvel X-Men Crossovers sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

This is really a sale on the various Events in the X-family of books. Some of them mostly internal to the X-line, some of them crossing over outside.

The bulk of the sale is the X-Men Milestones line which collects Events from Dark Phoenix through Age of X.

For something like Onslaught, you can simply get the Milestone edition or you can go whole hog:

Ditto for the slightly earlier Age of Apocalypse:

And then a couple more recent events are too new for the Milestones:

What’s good? We’d go back to that original “Milestone” – The Dark Phoenix Saga. There’s a reason it’s a classic and sent the X-Men into a legendary surge of popularity. Hard to go wrong with Claremont & Byrne. We also think extremely highly of the two most recent events: X of Swords & Sins of Sinister.

Pride

The DC Pride Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

This is a 288 book set of books related to Pride Month. (Some of them more closely related than others.) A few things we saw that were interesting, including some off the more beaten path:

Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III – Rucka /Williams; The excellent solo series from Detective
Batwoman (’11) – W. Haden Blackman / J.H. Williams III / Amy Reeder; Blackman & Williams mount a good follow-up to the above Detective run, but an editorial decision to nix the wedding hampers the ending
Doom Patrol – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; The classic… although it’s a shame there’s no Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol in this sale. It would be appropriate.
The Invisibles – Grant Morrison / Steve Yeowell / Jill Thompson / Chris Weston; An underground society battles a conspiracy to keep humanity in it’s place.
Seven Soldiers of Victory – Grant Morrison’s series of interlocking mini-series isn’t always mentioned, when Morrison’s name is brought up, but we thought it was the execution was on the money.
Shade: The Changing Man – Peter Milligan / Chris Bachalo; Early Vertigo as Milligan & Bachalo retool the Ditko hero. The original marketing description of “mind-bending” is apt.
Wonder Woman (’87) – There’s a lot to like about this run – George Perez. Phil Jimenez. The first Greg Rucka run. Even a Walt Simonson / Jerry Ordway collaboration. Be aware you need to toggle between the Omnibus page and Volumes page to see all the material

Unlisted Manga + Dragons

Dark Horse is having an extensive manga sale. By the numbers:

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Collected Editions
Omnibus Editions ( more bang for your buck)

Even More Unannounced Stephen King Comics

The Prisoner (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three Book 1) – Robin Furth / Peter David / Piotr Kowalski
House of Cards (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three Book 2) – Robin Furth / Peter David / Piotr Kowalski
The Lady of Shadows (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three Book 3) – Robin Furth / Peter David / Jonathan Marks
Bitter Medicine (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three Book 4) – Robin Furth / Peter David / Jonathan Marks

Still on Sale

The DC Greatest Hits Sale runs through Monday, 6/10
The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/10
The Kodansha Spring Into Summer Sale runs through Monday, 6/17
The Markosia Half Price Sale runs through Saturday, 6/15
Version 1.0.0
The Titan The Doctor Who Comic Sale runs through Monday, 6/24
The Zenescope The Jungle Book Sale runs through Friday, 6/7

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s the Batman Day 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):

Housekeeping

A couple things to be aware of this week:

#1 – The current Image sale is scheduled to end Friday. This means there will probably be a new sale of Image first volumes on Saturday, so you might want to hit the main link and look for it. We’ll likely cover that next week, since these sales have been running for multiple weeks. Warning: Amazon has been putting these Image sales on the same link, so you might have to reload 2-3 times before the new one shows up. That’s just how it’s been working for the last month or so.

And yes, it’s unusual for sales to start on a Saturday.

#2 – No Marvel this week. This happens every once in a while and we’ll see if something pops up over the weekend, since it looks like they might have a new Image sale scheduled.

Wouldn’t “Batman Night” Be More Appropriate?

The DC Batman Day Sale runs through Monday, 9/18.

Surprise, surprise – the prices look correct on this one. (Forgive us some cynicism after the last month.) Which 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:

Batman (1940-2011)
Detective Comics (1939-2011)

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 $3.99 – $5.99@ (mostly $4.99). And yes, Knightfall, No Man’s Land, and the like are all in there.

Some more pre-Crisis 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…)

And some pre-Crisis one-offs of note:

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller’s classic that upset the card table. $2.99 and your life will be fine if you miss the sequels.
Batman/Spawn – We’ll confess preferring the Chuck Dixon/Alan Grant/Doug Moench/Klaus Janson tale to the Frank Miller/Todd McFarlane one, but this collects both. $2.99
Trinity – Matt Wagner’s Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman team-up. $2.99

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 run through Joshua Williamson’s run
- 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: 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. $2.99
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. 2 volumes @$2.99
Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor (sorta “Mr. DC” right now) and Andy Kubert take Batman to Europe where his past rears its head and some actual detection is performed. $2.99

And above the $2.99 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 $7.99

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 $7.99 for this page count, but its a good collection with one of the key villains in the Bat-mythos.