Comixology Sales: 50% off Dark Horse, plus House of M, Squadron Supreme and Image Science Fiction

Highlights from this week’s Comixology sales include a line-wide 50% off Dark Horse for CU subscribers, Squadron Supreme and House of M from Marvel and a big batch of “Sci-Fi” titles from Image.

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50% off All Dark Horse

The parade of Comixology Unlimited half-off sales continues.  In the latest installment, all Dark Horse comics are 50% off through 11PM ET on Monday, 5/10 if you’re a Comixology Unlimited subscriber.

This includes new releases and pre-orders, so do yourself a favor. Go to the release date view and click forward to pre-order on the cheap.

And this discounts stacks on the “regular” sales, which means the current Stranger Things sale is extremely cheap! Especially the 50-cent single issues.

Stranger Things

The Pastiche Evolved

The Marvel Squadron Supreme Sale runs through Sunday, 5/9.

Yes, what started out as a pastiche of DC’s Justice League grew into something a little bigger Marvel, as these things have a way of doing.

The centerpiece here is the Mark Gruenwald / Bob Hall / Paul Ryan Squadron Supreme series that’s still the bar by which this franchise is judged.

For a more old school version, the Squadron appears in their traditional sinister mode in Avengers: Serpent Crown by Steve Englehart and George Perez.

Squadron Supreme   Avengers: Serpent Crown

Not WandaVision, but…

The  House of M Sale runs through Thursday, 5/13.

For those unfamiliar, this is the series where the Scarlet Witch snaps and rewrites reality to bring her children back into existence. It isn’t exactly the comics version of WandaVision, but it was surely an influence on it.  Also, “no more mutants.” As a comic, it may have broken more things at Marvel than it fixed, but you can’t deny it’s influential.

The way to go here is to start with the actual Brian Bendis / Olivier Coipel series and then go back for the supplemental titles if you want more.

House of M

She Blinded Me With Science Fiction

The Image Sci-Fi Sale runs through Wednesday, 5/26.

Lots of good stuff on sale here and it’s worth flipping through when you have a chance. Some highlights?

Saga: Compendium One is the first 54 issues for $23.99. That’s a bit under 45 cents/issue. That’s CHEAP.  We assume you haven’t been living under a rock and know what this Brian K. Vaughan/Fiona Staples masterwork is.  We keep hearing whispers that its return is imminent. Hopefully we hear something a little more concrete soon.

Farmhand is written and drawn by Chew’s Rob Guillory. If you like Chew, you’ll probably like Farmhand. Agriculture and pharma intersect as Jeddidiah Jenkins grows replacement organs on his farm. Harvest one and drop it into a patient – it’s plug and play. Except there’s a rot sinking to the organs and something lurking in the shadows.

That Jonathan Hickman guy who’s running the X-Men right now? He’s done a few things at Image.  One of them is The Manhattan Projects with Nick Pitarra. It’s a sort of alternate history where the Manhattan Project brain trust is working on mad science experiments far beyond the atomic bomb, taking them to space and other, stranger, destinations.  Sometimes silly and sometimes dark. It’s a good one.

Saga   Farmhand   The Manhattan Projects

Comixology Sales: Ant-Man, Hellboy & The BPRD, Saga & Image Science Fiction, Miles Morales: Spider-man and More

Marvel’s so excited about their Ant-Man sale on Comixology, they renamed Tales to Astonish! Plus Hellboy & the B.P.R.D., Saga, Outer Darkness, Elephantmen, Miles Morales: Spider-Man and a bunch more digital comics at deep discounts.

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

Marvel leads the weekend with its Ant-Man Sale.  Ant-Man comes in primarily two flavors: Hank Pym and Scott Lang.  (We’re going to ignore O’Grady.)  For Hank Pym’s original Tales to Astonish run, your best deal is picking up the two Marvel Masterworks volumes.  You should, regardless, click that link and see how Marvel has rebranded those Tales to Astonish issues as “Ant-Man.”  Even the ones after Pym had switched his identity to Giant Man.  It’s a hoot.  Those pre-Hulk Tales of Astonish are also available in the original format (i.e., as Tales to Astonish), but those versions aren’t on sale. This sale runs until Sunday (11/15).

Ant-Man Masterworks

For Scott Lang, there have been a few recent titles and they’ve tended towards tongue-in-cheek.  There were two Nick Spencer/Ramon Rosanas runs: Second Chance Man sets up the new status quo as the bumbling hard luck father seeking approval.  Astonishing Ant-Man then continues that arc.

Ant-Man: Second Chance Man  Astonishing Ant-Man

Ant-Man & The Wasp: Lost and Found by Mark Waid and Javier Garron finds Scott Lang and Nadia Pym lost in subatomic space.  Ant-Man: World Hive by Zeb Wells and Dylan Burnett finds Scott Lang wearing out his welcome as a house guest in an ant hill while encountering an insect conspiracy and is forced to team up with Swarm.  Yes, that would be the Swarm whose body is made of bees.

Ant-Man and the Wasp  Ant-Man: World Hive

Then there’s the Dark Horse Hellboy & BPRD Sale  through Monday (11/16). I had occasion to go back and re-read most of these a few months ago and it’s high quality work.  BPRD is also very much an ongoing saga told in large acts.  There are a lot creators involved in the saga, with Mike Mignola and John Arcudi being the primary writers through Hell on Earth.  Guy Davis is the primary artist for most of  Plague of Frogs and Hell on Earth.

The prequel is B.P.R.D. 1946 – 1948 featuring Prof. Bruttenholm and his original agents running down Nazi vampire experiments.  That’s a 469 page volume with three series in it.

The BPRD sequence really starts with The Plague of FrogsSpecifically, it starts picking up about halfway through the first omnibus as the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense investigates the increasing appearances of frog-like monsters and slowly come to realize something very bad is on the way.  This leads into the next sequence, Hell on Earthwhich is accurately named.  Ancient powers get unleashed and the world is just trying to survive.  You know how with a lot comics, you can be pretty sure they’re not going to that dark, disaster-ridden place?  Well, BPRD goes there.  And does it well.  The best value for these titles is the omnibus editions, which are all 400+ pages (i.e., 3 of the regular collected editions).  There’s a bit more in the series, but those three sequences are the backbone and everything I’ve ever read of the series has been high quality.

BPRD - Plague of Frogs  BPRD - Hell on Earth

Let’s also talk a little more about the ongoing Image Science Fiction Sale that runs through Thursday (11/19).  So much good stuff in this one. Farmhand by Rob  Guillory is about a farm that grows replacement organs instead of corn and the strange things that are starting to happen to the transplants. You may remember Rob as the artist of Chew.  If you liked Chew, you should like Farmhand. It might be a little darker, but the two are very much compatible.  Speaking of Chew, Outer Darkness  by Chew writer John Layman and Afu Chan is also on sale.  Outer Darkness is about ghosts and demonic possessions in the outer reaches of space and it’s fantastic.  It also ends with a Chew crossover.  Saga  is also on sale.  What else really needs to be said about the Brian K. Vaughan/Fiona Staples classic, other than we’re all impatiently waiting for new issues to resume?  Note: as is often the case with Image, it’s slightly less expensive to get the “Collected Editions” than the “Omnibuses” in digital.  It usually works the other way with Dark Horse digital sales.

Farmhand   Outer Darkness  Saga

The Elephantmen Sale contains the Image run of Richard Starking’s long-running Elephantmen series.  Comixology scooped this series up as an exclusive title, post-Image.  The “elephantmen” are genetically engineered human/animal hybrids bred and trained to be mercenaries by a company the sought to own them and rent them out.  Eventually, things changed and the survivors seek to integrate back into society with a lot of baggage from their wars and old scores that pop up wanting to be settled.  Starking assembled a wonderful set of artists like Moritat and Ladronn for the series and it’s definitely worth a look.

Elephantmen

Still on sale

The Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale through Sunday 11/22.
The DC Back in the 90s Sale through Monday 11/16.

Miles Morales - Spider-Man  

The Eternals through Sunday 11/15
The Image Donny Cates Sale  through Monday 11/16

Eternals by Jack Kirby  Redneck by Donny Cates

The IDW Judge Dredd Sale through Monday 11/16
Resident Alien 
through Monday, 11/16

Judge Dredd   Resident Alien