Tag: Guardians of the Galaxy

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
Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin  Warlock  Silver Surfer: The Return of Thanos

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

Silver Surfer by Lee/Kirby  Silver Surfer - Englehart  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

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino

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.

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

Nova Classic   Nova by Abnett & Lanning

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

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   Guardians of the Galaxy

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
Deadpool Classics  Cable & Deadpool  Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

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

Doctor Who

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?

Avatar

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.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Guardians of the Galaxy; Green Arrow; Injustice: Gods Among Us; Creepy and Eerie

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, The Guardian of the Galaxy get discounts at Marvel. DC cuts prices on Green Arrow and video game titles (like Injustice), while Dark Horse slashes Creepy and Eerie.

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):

Note: we covered the Marvel May the Fourth Star Wars Sale on May 4th, so click there for Darth Vader & Co.

Groot is the Word

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 5/15.

You’d think there was movie coming out or something?

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

New GoG (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

What’s good here?  Well, we’ve always liked the original. Particularly the Steve Gerber bits. We also loved the recent Al Ewing / Juan Cabal run. And if you like the current incarnation, you should probably go back to the source with the DnA run.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing   Guardians of the Galaxy Omnibus

The Bow’s Green, Too

The DC Green Arrow Sale runs through Monday, 5/8.

They have a couple anthologies of Green Arrow over the years (the 80 years version is cheaper), but the bulk of this sale are the solo titles from Longbow Hunters onward.

What’s good? While you’ll certainly have your Lemire/Sorrentino proponents, we prefer the earlier solo material. Mike Grell had an impressive run between The Longbow Hunters and the ongoing series. The ongoing was a bit less violent than Longbow Hunters and widely known for being both an enjoyable and quick read. We’d also give a look to the Kevin Smith / Phil Hester run, which was a fun time.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters   Green Arrow    Green Arrow by Kevin Smith

Shall We Play a Game?

The DC Video Game Tie-In Sale runs through Monday, 5/8

And if we are honest, there is a star in this sale. Injustice: Gods Among Us, a video game adaptation that had more legs than anyone ever would have guessed. It’s good! It’s written by Tom Taylor and, later, Brian Buccellato. Art is by Bruno Redondo and Mike S. Miller.  Hmmm… Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo. Wherever have we heard that pairing before?

Other things in a little more palatable browsing order:

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Mysterious and Spooky

The Dark Horse – 2023 Creepy Eerie Digital Sale runs through Monday, 5/15.

These would be the classic Warren horror magazines that had some pretty big names attached to them over the years.

Creepy was the first one and is available in both omnibus  format and “Creepy Presents” volumes spotlighting individual artists (Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, Steve Ditko).

Eerie was the companion series. By halfway through it’s run, it had evolved into something a little different with multi-part stories and characters who returned, the breakout character being The Rook (a time traveler with some western elements baked in). It’s also available in omnibus format and “Eerie Presents” for collecting individual features (El Cid and Hunter).

Creepy   Eerie

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Wolverine, Guardians of the Galaxy, $0.99 Recent Marvel Single Issues

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel opens the discount gates with Wolverine, Guardians of the Galaxy and a ton of recent first issues.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

Remember, DC’s got that sale with all the $1.99 collected editions still going. Meanwhile the indies seem to have slowed their sale announcements and are probably massing for the “official” holiday sale announcements…

Marvel’s Friend Finder

The Marvel Start a New Series Sale runs through Monday, 12/12.

And if you were wanting some Marvel single issue sales, there’s a bunch of them here.

The premise is that Marvel would like you to sample the discounted issues and maybe stick around for more issues, so these are all recent issues.  Let’s break this into new titles (i.e., #1 is on sale) and continuing titles (the sale picks up partially into the series). Here are the highlights:

New

Continuing (Standard disclaimer – you’ll probably need to scroll down a bit before the discounts kick in)

Gosh, seems like there are a lot more “new” titles than “continuing” ones, doesn’t it? And not all the X-Men family relaunches are listed here, either!  Such is the nature of relaunches, but let’s talk about some of those new titles that we can recommend from personal experience.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth by Tochi Onyebuchi and R.B. Silva came out of nowhere and knocked our socks off. This is Sam Wilson as Cap and the series has Sam and the new Falcon on the trail of super soldier serum smugglers, which leads them to human traffickers, which leads them to Latveria, which leads them to Wakanda. A vaguely Ludlum-esque chase from one facet of the conspiracy to next. Bonus points: it can be difficult to fit goofy ‘ole Deadpool in an otherwise serious plot, but it’s pulled off very well here!

Defenders Beyond by Al Ewing and Javier Rodríguez is their second go-round with everyone’s favorite “non-team.” We’re two issues into this one and so far, a spell cast by Doctor Strange from beyond the grave has assembled a new group of heroes, some familiar, and a notable artifact from the the last series. The threat they’re confronting? The Beyonders. Including that Beyonder. Wild cosmic stuff that starts with the Celestials and the destruction of universes. Great art and writing.

Carnage by Ram V and Francesco Manna is a deeply weird relaunch with the atmosphere of a horror comic. The Carnage symbiote has become separate from Cletus Kasaday and is seeking a new host. Or hosts. Preferably with superpowers and the symbiote might just have a plan. The symbiote also has a sort of groupie in tow and is pursued by a detective who’s been… touched by Carnage. And that’s before the Dark Elves show up. When we said deeply weird, we weren’t joking. But Ram V does well when the going gets weird.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth   Defenders Beyond   Carnage

SNIKT!

The Wolverine: The Best There Is Sale runs through Thursday, 12/15.

Wolverine sales are goofy because these issues have been packaged in so many different ways.

If you want early Wolverine, the Wolverine Omnibus will get you, among other things, the first Hulk appearance, the first mini-series, the Kitty Pride & Wolverine mini-series, a couple Marvel Comics Presents serials and the first 10 issues of the ongoing Wolverine comic.

Here’s the link for the original Wolverine ongoing series. Yes, that’s a bit of an overlapping mess. There are those who prefer the Larry Hama run. For this sale, we’d probably point to a couple self-contained arcs: Wolverine Classic V. 3 is “The Gehenna Stone Affair” written by Peter David with art by John Buscema inked by Bill Sienkiewicz. It’s romp with Logan and Jessica Drew racing against vampires trying to retrieve an artifact. Wolverine Classic V.5 is “Spore” by Archie Goodwin and John Byrne with Klaus Jansen inks. Logan runs up against a sentient bio-weapon and… cocaine. Did you notice both of these have some unusual penciller/inker combos?

Wolverine Omnibus   Wolverine: The Gehanna Stone Affair   Wolverine: Spore

Here’s the link for the ’03-’09 version of Wolverine. The highlights here are the lower key Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run and two Mark Millar runs.

Enemy of the State is Millar with John Romita, Jr. having Logan encounter an unholy alliance between The Hand and Hydra, which ends up with his getting brainwashed before extracting a bloody revenge. Also introduces Gorgan.

Old Man Logan by Millar and Steve McNiven is probably the most famous arc of this run. Movie-inspiring, even. In a dystopian possible future, an aging Logan is trying to mind his own business, but will anyone leave him alone? Nope. And a road trip ensues. This format has had more legs than anyone could have imagined when it was pitched!

Wolverine by Greg Rucka   Wolverine: Enemy of the State   Wolerine: Old Man Logan

After that, you might have a look at the current Benjamin Percy/Adam Kubert Wolverine (First two volumes are cheaper in omnibus form.)

Finally, don’t sleep on All-New Wolverine by Tom Taylor / David Lopez / Juan Cabal. Yes, it’s an X-23 book, but it’s really good.

All-New Wolverine

Groot? Groot. Groot!

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 12/19.

Wow, but this sale has become a sprawling thing with “legacy” even pulling in Adam Warlock… although Starlin’s Warlock is amazing, so there’s that.  Let’s try to break down the highlights.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

New GoG (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

Solo titles

What’s good here?  Well, we’ve always liked the original. Particularly the Steve Gerber bits. We also loved the recent Al Ewing / Juan Cabal run. And if you like the current incarnation, you should probably go back to the source with the DnA run.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing   Guardians of the Galaxy Omnibus

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Hulk, Nightwing, Robin, Groot and Usagi Yojimbo

This week in Comixology (at Amazon) sales, the Hulk is on sale. As in, most of the Hulk comics. Groot gets a small sale, Nightwing and Robin get a larger sale and Usagi Yojimbo goes on sale ahead of next week’s Netflix debut.

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

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

Hulk Smash Prices

The Incredible Hulk Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 4/28.

Oh, yes. There is a LOT of Hulk on sale.  Most of it, really.  So we’re going to start out by doing what we do (and what Amazon can’t be bothered to do) and break it down by series.

  • Incredible Hulk (1962 – 1999) The original run and then the long running series that picked up a few years later.
  • Tales to Astonish (1964-68) In between the two Hulk solo runs above, Hulk was splitting Tales to Astonish with Ant-Man/Giant Man and then Namor. A lot of the foundational work was really in this run, with Stan Lee/Steve Ditko responsible for a lot of it.
  • Incredible Hulk (1999-2007) – Best known for the Bruce Jones / Lee Weeks/ Mike Deodato run towards the beginning and the Greg Pak / multi-artist “Planet Hulk” and “World War Hulk” epics at the end… though World War Hulk is at this different link.
  • Hulk (2008-13) This is the Red Hulk run (and the title changes to that after awhile). It starts out with the better known Jeph Loeb/Ed Mc Guiness run and then Jeff Parker takes over with Gabriel Hardman, Dave Eaglesham and Patrick Zircher in the artist rotation.
  • Incredible Hulk by Jason Aaron (2011-12) – Lots of artists rotating through here, Marc Silvestri, Steve Dillon and Carlos Pacheco among them
  • Indestructible Hulk (2012 – 14) – Mark Waid’s the writer with an artist rotation including Leinil Francis Yu, Matteo Scalera and Walt Simonson draws the Thor team-up.
  • Hulk by Waid and Duggan (2014-15) – That would be Mark Waid and Gerry Duggan with Duggan doing the bulk of the run. Mark Bagley is the main artist here.
  • The Totally Awesome Hulk (2015-17) – This would be Amadeus Cho’s turn as Hulk, which mean Greg Pak is you primary writer with an artist rotation including Frank Cho, Alan Davis and Luke Ross
  • Immortal Hulk (2018-21) – Al Ewing’s masterpiece as the Hulk slides over towards horror and find a green door that leads to Hell.

What’s good? We like the value of the Epic Collections in the original series (and Tales to Astonish) for $6.99.  The Masterworks editions for $5.99 aren’t bad either, so pick your period and format.

As for “the best of” Hulk…

We think this Epic Collection of the Tales to Astonish run is a good introduction to the Hulk. A rock solid creator rotation of Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Kane/Everett/Buscema/Severin. The introductions of The Leader and the Abomination (among others). Cold war paranoia and you get to the the original evolution of the Hulk as a character that changes formats and approaches every so often.

Immortal Hulk is a high water mark and well worth your time, though not really what you’d call a traditional Hulk tale.  Peter David’s lengthy run is a classic (and we’re not going to divide it up by artist periods – it’s all good). Greg Pak has gone big like few others.

Something under the radar?  There’s a Paul Jenkins/Ron Garney/John Romita Junior run that preceded the better known Bruce Jones era. It’s collected with some other things, but the two volumes are The Dogs of War and Past Perfect. It goes darker than a lot of the Hulk tales, but we sure liked it.

Hulk Epic Collection   Hulk Dogs of War   Hulk - Past Perfect

I Am… Rocket?

The Marvel Groot sale runs through Thursday, 4/28.

This is a fairly small sale. The real question here is one of direction. You can head for the Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Brad Walker Guardians of the Galaxy run or in the Skottie Young direction with Rocket Raccoon and Groot.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Batman Family

The DC Spotlight: Nightwing & Robin Sale runs through Monday, 4/25.

The now standard warning on DC digital sales at Amazon – the pricing gets screwed up on these sales. A lot of prices initially get set at strange amounts like $9.32 and $13.98. Sometimes the prices get adjusted down to something more palatable like $5.99 or $7.99… but not always.  We don’t know if this is a problem on the Amazon side or the DC side, but it’s a problem. If the price ends in $*.99 (like $5.99), that’s probably the real sale price and you can proceed.  If not… the price might drop.  Yeah, it’s goofy in a bad way.  That said, what’s on sale?

The Grant Morrison era Batman & Robin for $5.99 per volume is not a bad deal. It’s a revolving door at artist, but when the revolving door is folks like Frank Quitely and Frazier Irving, one doesn’t mind as much…

Here’s another good deal, clocking in at around 300 pages for $5.99 – Robin: Reborn. This one starts out with the Alan Grant / Norm Breyfogle tales leading up to Tim Drake taking up the cape. Then it collects the first Robin solo mini-series by Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle.  Tim Drake had a moment in the mid-90s (more volumes of his original solo run are here and here).

For Nightwing, we’re going to point you at Grayson, written by Tim Seeley & Tom King and drawn (mostly) by Mikel Janin. This ambitious series has Dick Grayson going undercover as a spy for a mysterious espionage agency called “Spyral,” which is spying on superheroes.

Batman & Robin   Robin: Reborn   Grayson

Rabbit Rabbit

And let’s not forget the Usagi Yojimbo Sale, running through Monday, 5/2.

Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit is getting a cartoon adaptation and this is the odd sale with two different publishers under the same umbrella.  Fantagraphics comes first and then the Dark Horse material.

Usagi Yojimbo

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Comixology Sales: Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shang-Chi, SHIELD, Kingdom Come, Red Son and Matt Kindt

This week’s Comixology sales include a bunch of Marvel with Spidey, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shang-Chi and SHIELD getting discounts. DC has a “Top 100” Sale and Matt Kindt’s Dark Horse work gets slashed.

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

Why Not “Fabulous Spider-Man?”

The  Marvel Spectacular Spider-Man Sale runs through Thursday, 9/2.

This sale is so small and organized, we don’t have to link to the individual series, you can just look at the sale page, no sweat.

We’re looking at 4 things here. In order of presentation:

  1. The more recent Spectacular Spider-Man, mostly by Chip “I have a Substack now” Zdarsky and Adam Kubert.  You should already know if that sounds good.
  2. Masterworks editions of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. Masterwork editions tend to be good value and we’d point out that V.2 has Frank Miller’s first Daredevil work and the Carrion storyline would turn out to be an important one, if controversial.
  3. The ’03-’05 Spectacular Spider-Man. We’ve always found Paul Jenkin’s Spidey to be under-appreciated. He writes the first 4 volumes with Humberto Ramos as the primary artist… with some early Paolo Rivera in V. 3. Feel free to skip the Sins Remembered tie-in in V. 5 and then Jenkins is back for V.6
  4. And the last thing listed is a collection of the 1968 magazine version of Spectacular Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr.

If you like Spidey, it’s a decent menu.

Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man

Who Guards the Guardians?

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

The Guardians have been around quite a while and were originally based in the future. We always recommend going back to the original Steve Gerber/Roger Stern/Al Milgrom run.  Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers covers that.  Vol. 1 is the first appearance through the primary solo run in Marvel Presents. Vol. 2 covers the rest of their guest appearances, notably including the Korvac Saga in Avengers.

The Guardians popped up again in ’90 in a very popular (and very fun) series by Jim Valentino. Yes, we know everyone reading this is old school enough to associate Valentino more with Normalman, but GoG was the direct line leading him to co-found Image comics. This version of GoG spends quite a bit of time exploring the legacy of the Marvel universe… and some of the less mortal characters who are still floating around far in the future. Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino collects his run.

The current run start with Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing with Juan Cabal on art, which finds the Guardians at war with the gods… and, as you might expect with Ewing, setting up a longer game.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing

SHIELD’s Up

The Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D. sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

Many would still sale the best SHIELD is Jim Steranko’s SHIELD, which is conveniently collected in… can you guess the name?  Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. by Steranko – the Complete Collection.  There’s nothing wrong with the Lee/Kirby material, and if you go the Masterworks route, there’s some Archie Goodwin to be read, but Steranko is still the bar for many.

Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD by Bob Harras and Paul Neary was the late 80s reappraisal and still the “SHIELD has been infiltrated compromised” arc that everyone apes. (This led to the ’89-’92 series.)

SHIELD by Steranko   Nick Fury vs. SHIELD

The Deadly Hands of Reboot

The Marvel Shang-Chi Sale runs through Sunday, 9/12.

Gosh, you’d think there was a movie coming out or something?

Shang-Chi is kind of an odd character in the world of Marvel. He essentially has had three lives:

First was the Master of Kung Fu era. This was originally a licensed comic and the license was Fu Manchu. Shang, an original creation (thus, owned by Marvel) was Fu Manchu’s virtuous, rebellious son who worked with MI-5 against his father. It was blend of espionage, pulp and Hong Kong cinema. Doug Moench was the writer for the bulk of the period. Paul Gulacy is the artist most associated with the feature, but Jim Craig, Mike Zeck and Gene Day had their runs.  This was considered one of Marvel’s finest comics of the 70s, but… let’s put it mildly and say Fu Manchu is a little out of favor.

The second life was when Marvel tried to revive the character, mostly intact, and just not mention who his father is. Or assign a different father.  This never went very far.

Right now, we’ve entered the third life where Shang-Chi is now more of a fantasy comic with a more mystical evil father, weapons/caste-based secret societies and the undead. Oh, there’s still some MI-5 around the edges, but it’s a very different comic than where it started.  Gene Yang, Dike Ruan and Philip Tan.  You can feel the influence from Jimmie Robinson’s Five Weapons, too!

Master of Kung Fu   Shang-Chi

We Thought The 100 Were Villains?

The DC Top 100 eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 8/30

DC’s back at the sub-50% discount game again.  You have been warned.  Items of interest include:

Kingdom Come is the 90s classic by Mark Waid and Alex Ross that defined the dystopian future sub-genre for a spell (and we still think it’s the true inspiration for the Injustice video game).

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson and Killian Plunkett is the tale of infant Kal-El’s spacecraft landing in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. It’s on the short list for Millar’s best work.

We’ve mentioned before how pleasantly surprised we were with DCeased, Tom Taylor’s and Trevor Hairsine’s Anti-Life Equation zombie(ish) epic. We’re not recanting.

Kingdom Come   Superman: Red Son   DCeased

Sale MGMT

The Dark Horse Matt Kindt Sale runs through Monday, 8/30.

Matt Kindt has done a fair amount of work for Dark Horse, but his opus there will likely always be the psychic espionage series, Mind MGMT.

Mind MGMT

Still On Sale

Posted on by comics_p1pusl