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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?

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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.