Tag: Hulk

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Fantastic Four; another Batman sale; World War Hulk; The Witcher

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s a nearly full run of Fantastic Four with discounts, plus another Batman sale, World War Hulk and The Witcher.

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):

Four Play

Marvel’s Fantastic Four Legacy Sale runs through Tuesday, 9/26.

Take note that the end date is now Tuesday. (And let’s double check that on Tuesday, too.) Does this mean Marvel sales are now starting on Wednesday?  Wait and see. After the last few weeks, we haven’t a clue.

So, first let’s break down the various FF titles/volumes on sale

  • Fantastic Four ’61-’96 – The original run
  • Fantastic Four ’98-’12 – Heroes Return era through Hickman
  • Fantastic Four ’12-’14 – The Matt Fraction / Mark Bagley era
  • Fantastic Four ’14-’15 – The James Robinson/Leonard Kirk run
  • Fantastic Four ’18-’22 – The Dan Slott run with a rotating cast of artists
  • (The current North/Coello run is too recent to be discounted, if you were wondering.)

Yes, Fantastic Four has been relaunched less than other Marvel titles.  As to what’s good, the gold standard has always been the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. (And yes, we do think you can draw a straight line from Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC to Fantastic Four.) We’d say they start to hit their stride a few issues before Galactus shows up – V.3 of the Epic Collections (“The Coming of Galactus“) or V.4/5 of the Masterworks editions and you can ride a very fun train from there to the end of Lee/Kirby.

And at this point, we should talk about the “pick your poison” of Epic vs. Masterworks.  The Masterworks are built out straight into the Byrne era. We think the $6.99 Epic Collections are the best value here, though some of the newer ones are priced higher. The discounted Epics are now a little past the Lee/Kirby era, but stop with #146 and then pick up again after Byrne’s run. Pick the format that works for you and has the issues you’re looking for.

Speaking of Byrne’s run, that’s the next highpoint that everyone agrees on.  How to read Byrne? Well, there are 4 volumes of Masterworks on sale (V. 21-24) or you can hop on to Fantastic Four Visionaires: John Byrne. You’d need to cut over to the Visionaries run at V. 5 to pick up where the discounted Masterworks leave off.  These comics really ought to be in an Epic Collection, but Marvel doesn’t seem in any hurry to roll the Visionaires up into a more economical package. (Or should we say, economical when it’s on sale?)

Fast forward a bit to the Heroes Reborn era and there is a LOT to love about the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run. They brought back the “explorer” vibe from Lee/Kirby era that isn’t always there and upped the sense of wonder. You’d want the four Ultimate Collection volumes that start here. The “regular” collections don’t go all the way to the end.

And then, of course, there’s the the Hickman era. A long storyline that laid the groundwork for his Avengers run and you can certainly argue that his Secret Wars endcap to that is a Fantastic Four / Doctor Doom story. The omnibus editions we highlighted above include his FF spin-off comic that frequently crossed over with Fantastic Four, much like the Avengers titles flowed together. That packaging will be a better experience.

Fantastic Four - The Coming of Galactus    Fantastic Four by John Byrne   Fantastic Four by Waid

Behind the War Door

The  Marvel World War Hulk sale runs through Tuesday, 9/26.

Again, note the Tuesday end date.

So, this was quite an enjoyable Hulk event from that magical run Greg Pak had. (This followed Planet Hulk.)

The main event is Hulk: World War Hulk by Pak and John Romita, Jr. Hulk is back and he’s a little mad about getting shot out into space (the run-up to Planet Hulk). Someone is likely to get hurt as Hulk looks for revenge.

It’s an Event. You’ve got a few tie-ins available and those are at your discretion if you’re feeling into them. If you wanted to pick one, we’re probably start with World War Hulk: Frontline. The “Frontline” books were a tradition in this Event-driven era and Paul Jenkins would always spin a tale of Ben Urich in the middle of the action as a reporter, sometimes tracking down a conspiracy, sometimes documenting the effects of the Event on common folk. Ramon Bachs joint Jenkins on artist for this one.

Finally, there’s the sequel: Hulk: World War Hulk II by Pak and Carlos Barberi. This time it’s the Amadeus Cho Hulk returning from Planet Hulk (2) and going on a rampage.

World War Hulk   World War Hulk: Frontline   World War Hulk II

Bat-Sale Returns

The DC Batman Universe Sale runs through Monday, 9/25.

This is basically a reshuffled version of last week’s Batman Day sale, but with the Batman Family characters added in (so you’ll find Batgirl, Nightwing and Robin in this version) and a few more of the artist-specific collections.

What we’re going to highlight here, since they can be a pain to locate in the listings, are the 90s/00s Event collections. The Batman family of titles was crossing over so much, you’d think they were the X-Men for a few years!

Batman: Knightfall   Batman Contagion   Batman: No Man's Land

Toss a Coin for Recasting…

The Dark Horse 2023 The Witcher Digital Sale runs through Monday, 10/9.

While it’s usually presented as a video game adaptation, since these pre-date the TV series, we usually think of The Witcher as a series of novels.  We’re reasonably sure Andrzej Sapkowski would agree with that assessment.

You can partake here in three formats:

  1. $0.99 single issues
  2. The “regular” collected editions
  3. The omnibuses

The first omnibus is pretty good deal. Looks like you might be a couple bucks better off with single issues over the “Library Edition” of V.2, though.  (If the second Omnibus were on sale… but it’s not even released quite yet.)

Witcher Omnibus

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Hulk and Nick Fury – ALL the GNs; Plus Oh My Goddess and Zenescope

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts The Hulk and Nick Fury… nearly the whole catalog for each. Dark Horse Slashes Oh My Goddess and Zenescope has a graphic novel 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):

A Hulking Hunk of Burning Discounts

The Incredible Hulk Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

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.
  • Hulk (2021-23) – The Donny Cates / Ryan Ottley run
    • Hulk Vs. Thor: Banner of War – The Cates/Martin Coccolo cross-over that’s 100% part of this run, but listed separately.

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 with Planet Hulk and World War Hulk.

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

Spy Games

The Marvel Nick Fury and Agents of SHIELD sale runs through Monday, 7/10.

It’s a Nick Fury sale (both of him) and a SHIELD sale, because the two aren’t always the same thing. Let’s start with breaking this down by series:

  • Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (’63-’74) – Nick Fury started out fronting a WW II war book (as interpreted by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby)
  • Strange Tales (’51-’68) – originally splitting the book with Doctor Strange, Nick Fury started off with Lee/Kirby and ended up with the classic Jim Steranko run.
  • Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’68-’71)  – this Masterworks edition catches the last of Steranko and then the creators rotate a bit. Highlights include some Archie Goodwin stories and a bit of early Barry Windsor-Smith (pre-Windsor, technically)
  • Nick Fury Vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. (’88) – Bob Harras and Paul Neary restarted the franchise with a bang in what was originally published as a Prestige/Dark Knight format mini-series
  • Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’88-’92) – Spinning out of the hit mini-series, this had a few different teams. We associated it most with Bob Harras/Bob Hall and D.G. Chichester / Jackson Guice.
  • Wolverine & Nick Fury: Scorpio  (’89) – A collection of three Prestige format tales teaming up Logan & Nick. Archie Goodwin / Howard Chaykin; Tom DeFalco/John Buscema; Howard Chaykin / Shawn McManus
  • Secret Warriors (’08-’11) – Bendis is in on the beginning, but this is really a Jonathan Hickman series with Stefano Caselli and Alessandro Vitti as primary artists
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. (’10-’11) – Jonathan Hickman/Dustin Weaver, and this series is listed in a very confusing way. Here’s how you need to look at it:
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (’16) – Based on the TV show with Marc Guggenheim writing and German Peralta as the primary artist.
  • Secret Warriors (’16-’17) – Matthew Rosenberg / Javier Garron
  • Nick Fury: Deep Cover Capers (’17) – James Robinson / ACO

What’s good?  For many, the definitive Nick Fury is the Steranko run and if you only want that, the  whole thing is in one edition. (It’s unevenly split across the three masterworks.)

Nick Fury Vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. is the definitive “there’s something wrong at SHIELD and Fury is on the run” story. It’s emulated for a reason.

Nick Fury: Deep Cover Capers is your under the radar pick. Fun, breezy spy hijinks with a ’60s Bond/UNCLE/Avengers vibe and great art.

SHIELD by Steranko   Nick Fury vs. SHIELD   Nick Fury Deep-Cover Capers

Not Periscope, Not Necroscope…

The Zenescope $5 Graphic Novel Sale runs through Sunday, 7/23.

Portions of this have been in previous Zenescope sales, but one thing that stood out to us in this one that hadn’t been in the previous sales is the Wonderland material. We’re not particularly familiar with it, but back in the day, the Zenescope title that seemed to have the most positive comments was always the Raven Gregory revival of Wonderland with Alice’s daughter venturing back down the rabbit hole.  We think this is the reading order for that:

And several more mini-series/collections sprinkled in as the ongoing series progresses.

Return to Wonderland   Tales From Wonderland

Is This a Veiled George Takei Reference?

The  Dark Horse Oh My Goddess Sale runs through Monday, 7/3.

What we have here is a repeat of last week… only this time, the Lone Wolf & Cub sale is sharing the same URL with the Oh My Goddess Sale. Yes, two weeks in a row. (And the Viz sale is also doubled up, although by the time you see this, it will probably be over.)

Instead of linking to the sale page and telling you to reload a few times until the right page turns up, we’re just going to link directly to the actual Oh My Goddess series page and save you some time. Who knows? Maybe this won’t happen next week?

Oh My Goddess

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sale: X-Men, X-Force, Greg Pak-a-Mania, Prelude to Lazarus Planet

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel has TWO flavors of X-books on sale, plus Greg Pak. DC’s prepping for the Lazarus Planet and Top Shelf is tossing some discounts around.

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):

Let’s Put the X in Sale

The Marvel Dawn of X/Reign of X Sale runs through Monday, 1/16.

What is this sale? Following House of X/Power of X, the X-Men line of comics has a suggested reading order in the back of the books. If you read from issue to issue, particularly during the Dawn of X era, you really did get an additive experience and more of a view of the X-universe.  These two runs collect the individual issues of ALL the X-titles in a reading order for the line.

Dawn of X picks up after HoX/PoX and runs up to X of Swords (which isn’t on sale). Reign of X picks up after X of Swords and ends just before Trial of Magneto and Inferno.

Dawn of X   Reign of X

An Extra X Sale

The Marvel X-Force Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 1/16

Uncanny X-Force by Rick Remender with art by Jerome Opeña, Phil Noto, Esad Ribic and a whole bunch of others would be our top choice. A particularly dark take on X-Force as black ops, much of it weaving in and out of the labyrinthian plans of Apocolypse.

The original X-Force has come Epic Collections available and we always like the value of those. You can pick your era here.

The X-Force portion of Peter Milligan & Mike Allred’s run that would soon become X-Statix is conveniently available as a single volume. 

X-Force   X-Force   X-Force

Send Them Pak-ing

The Marvel Greg Pak Sale runs through Monday, 1/16.

Pak’s been over in the Star Wars universe lately, and that’s on sale, but we always associate him very strongly with Hulk.

Planet Hulk, written by Pak with art by Carlo Pagulayan, Aaron Lopresti and Gary Frank was where Pak really broke wide. This one has Hulk exiled to a planet where he effectively becomes that world’s Conan. It’s now a classic.

For unknown reasons, World War Hulk is not in the sale. (Yes, that seems boneheaded to us, too.)

But Pak was on Hulk for the ’09-’11 series with Paul Pelletier as the lead artist.

A bit less remembered, Pak returned to Hulk in ’17 with Greg Land and Carlo Barberi to revisit the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines.

Planet Hulk   Incredible Hulk   Hulk

Resurrecting A Sale From the Dead

The DC Journey to Lazarus Planet Sale runs through Monday, 1/16.

That’s a mouthful of a sale title, but DC’s got an event in the offing that will raise some things from the dead like Lazarus… or a Lazarus Pit.

Scroll down a bit here and you’ll find the James Tynion 4.0/Jorge Jiménez and first volume of the Josh Williamson (and so many different artists) run of Batman on sale. Here’s a quirk for you. The collected editions started a new Volume 1 for Tynion’s run, but because the single issues didn’t renumber, the collected editions are on the same page as the Tom King run.  And they wonder why it confuses the bookstore managers?

Nightwing looks to have a big role in DC’s next wave, so the current volume is mostly on sale. (A couple volumes in the middle aren’t for whatever reason.) The current Tom Taylor/Bruno Redondo run being one of DC’s most celebrated offerings.

And for something off the beaten path, that’s also interesting to see in the runup to an Event, there’s Zatana by Paul Dini. Yes, after marrying a magician, you’d think Dini would have a feel for the material, wouldn’t you? The artists on this include Stephanie Roux, Jamal Igle and Cliff Chiang.

Batman: Abyss   Nightwing   Zatana by Paul Dini

Also of potential interest, $0.99/$1.99 single issues. Highlights include:

Shelving Sale

The Top Shelf Sale runs through Monday, 1/23.

Top Shelf is an imprint of IDW and much of it is on sale right now.

They Called Us Enemy is probably the de facto flagship title for Top Shelf and it’s won a lot of Awards. That would be the graphic novel adaption of George Takei’s memoir and play of growing up in an internment camp by Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott and Harmony Becker.

For something a little more out of left field, The Bojeffries Saga is Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse from the early 80s doing a darker, more horror-forward riff on The Adams Family/Munsters spliced with Monty Python. The originals mostly ran in Warrior and A1. It’s a entertaining series from a different side of more than you usually see.  (The March of the Sinister Ducks side.)

They Called Us Enemy   The Bojeffries Saga

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Factor, The Hulk vs. The Thing, and Mickey Mouse

Recent additions to the Comixology (at Amazon) sales include – the many incarnations of X-Factor, the ongoing slugfest between The Hulk and The Thing and Disney’s Mickey Mouse across the years… and continents.

Since the dates the sales are getting announced have been shuffled, we’re playing this week a little differently and will be back Friday to talk about the new DC sale and what else pops up during the week.

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):

Mutations

The Marvel X-Factor Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/13.

This one can basically be defined as the actual “X-Factor” titles and various crossovers, Events and guest appearances.  Let’s focus on the X-Factor titles.

  • X-Factor ’86-’98 – The first run, and a long one in the days before constant relaunches. The two things highlighted by the collections are Louise & Walt Simonson run and Peter David’s first run with Joe Quesada and Larry Stroman.
  • X-Factor ’05-’13 – commonly referred to as the Peter David era, and yes, he’s written a ton of X-Factor. This is where Madrox the Multiple Man steps in with the detective agency motif.   (You can save a couple bucks on the early volumes with the X-Factor by Peter David: The Complete Collection omnibuses)
  • All-New X-Factor ’14-’15 – I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know X-Factor was relaunched in Marvel’s “All-New” era. Still Peter David.
  • X-Factor ’20-’21 – The House of X / Powers of X era run by Leah Williams and David Baldeon

And then all manner of X-Men family Event/Crossover collections.

Recommendations? It depends on what you’re looking for.  The first two Epic Collections of the original run are more of the traditional X-Men school (and since it’s reuniting the original team, it should be). When Peter David pops up later in that run, things get quirky in a hurry.  It’s not like David is exclusively a humorist, but there’s a lot more humor in his work. His second run is a completely different creature than the how X-Factor began.

X-Factor   X-Factor by Peter David

The Classic Marvel Punch-Up

The Marvel Hulk Vs. Thing Sale runs through Thursday, 6/9.

Oh, yes… this is a reoccurring confrontation that goes back to the EARLY days of Marvel: Ben Grimm facing off with the Hulk. More often than not, this would happen in the pages of Fantastic Four and the various writers would go back to it every so often.

What you’re looking at here depends on whether you’re more of a Hulk person or FF person. After all that first Hulk Epic Collection is duplicating content from the FF Epic Collection and we personally find FF to be the stronger feature at the time.  And actually, that’s probably what we’d recommend here if you were only picking one – Fantastic Four Epic Collection Book 2, which also gives you some early Doctor Doom, Namor and X-Men, in addition The Hulk.

Fantastic Four

House of Mouse

The Fantagraphics Disney Masters and Mickey Mouse Sale runs through Wednesday, 6/22.

This is really two sales under one umbrella:

First, it’s a sale on the Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse comic strip. While perhaps not as heralded as Dick Tracy or Terry and the Pirates, Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse was an influential adventure strip and he stayed on it for decades.

Second, it’s a sale on the “Disney Master’s” line, which probably needs a word of explanation. It’s not clear that ALL of these titles are from the international markets, but certainly a number of them are Disney comics produced for the European markets (where Disney is very popular) and are making a US market debut.

Mickey Mouse   Mickey Mouse

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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: Deadpool, Naomi, Hulk / Maestro, Spidey Meets Invincible… plus Micky Mouse

In this week’s Comixology sales: Deadpool breaks out some omnibus editions almost as wide as his mouth, Marvel highlights its eclectic Team-Ups, the Maestro gets discounted, Naomi goes on sale to celebrate the TV review and Fantagraphics has a deep bench.

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

Team-Ups Assemble

The Marvel Team-Ups Sale runs through Sunday, 1/6. (Amazon link)

This is actually a grouping of a variety of team up titles. We’ll ignore the Masterworks that we really hope you picked up a few weeks ago when they were 99-cents and look at some other, odder things.

We read Super-Villains Unite: The Complete Super-Villain Team-Up back when it was Essential Super-Villain Team-Up.  We were surprised how much fun it was.  Until you get to the final arc, this is essentially a Sub-Mariner/Doctor Doom tale where Namor flips between hero and anti-hero and the two are constantly trying to manipulate and/or backstab each other. That extended arc ends up crossing over memorably with Avengers. There were a lot of hands involved with this one, but Steve Englehart, Bill Mantlo and Jim Shooter are prominent. Artists range wildly and include Herb Trimpe, Keith Giffen and George Perez (for the Avengers issues). When Namor exits, Doom takes over and then things get darker with the Red Skull.  All-in-all, a good example of the 70s Marvel style.

And sticking with obscure, do you remember the ’04-’06 run of Marvel Team-Up? That was one of Robert Kirkman’s titles when he spent a couple years at Marvel. The primary artists for the run would be Scott Kolins, followed by Paco Medina. The oddest thing about this run would be in V. 3 where Invincible (with Cory Walker on art) comes visiting from the Image/Kirkman-verse!

Super-Villain Team-Up   Marvel Team-Up

Grumpy Old Hulks

The Marvel Maestro Sale runs through Sunday, 1/16. (Amazon link)

That would be Maestro, as in the Hulk’s despotic future self… in certain timelines.

You could go slim with the original (and classic) Future Imperfect by Peter David and George Perez. [Note: Hulk: The End has the same contents, just a different cover] You could also go with The Incredible Hulk Epic Collection: Future Imperfect, which has the series in the context of the ongoing Hulk title of the time (Gary Frank era of the PAD run).  Either one will introduce you to the character.

The most recent entries for the character are Maestro: Symphony in a Gama Key by PAD & German Peralta and Maestro: War & Pax by PAD and Javier Pina. These are tales of the Maestro arriving in that future hellscape and ascending to power. We read these a few months back and gobbled them up as a sort of dark and twisted flavor of bubblegum.

Hulk: Future Imperfect   Hulk Epic Collection   Maestro   Maestro

Not the Dirty Harry Film

The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 1/20. (Amazon link)

Your value buy here is probably the double-sized Deadpool by  Joe Kelly, The Complete Collection.  You can get 2 volumes of that before cutting back over to Deadpool Classics.

Others would say you want Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan, in which case we caution you that a single omnibus edition is almost half the price of a thinner “regular” collection, so omnibi are the way to go here!

Deadpool by Joe Kelly   Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

CW Comix & Stories

The “DC on TV Sale: Naomi Sale” runs through Monday, 1/17. (Amazon link)

No, we’re not going to grammar check that sale name… but, as you may have heard, Naomi made a quick leap to TV.

Naomi: Season One is the initial comic by Brian Bendis, David Walker and Jamal Campbell. It’s a good thing “season” has been interchangeable with “miniseries” for a few years or we’d think this was a “developed for TV” thing from the get-go. 😉

We’d call it a riff on the Superman legend as a teen explores her emerging superpowers and her mysterious origins.

Naomi

Stripping

The Fantagraphics Massive Sale runs through Sunday, 1/20. (Amazon Link)

It seems like Fantagraphics is starting to have sales just a tiny bit more regularly, but it’s not like they’ve gone monthly.  This is a pretty wide selection… and really, idiosyncratic content is one of their strengths, so we’re going to focus in a little and look at their lineup of comics strips.

Barnaby by Crockett Johnson (yes, the Harold and the Purple Crayon guy… this is before that) is a strip about a boy and his fairy godfather. Popular with the literary set of the late 40s, this is a fantasy strip with a sense of the absurd and quick to float a sly reference in. Johnson is a master of mood and creating his own peculiar atmosphere.

Walt Kelly’s Pogo was an innovator in the social and political satire field. You can draw a fairly straight line between it and Bloom County. All sorts of shenanigans go on the swamp and all sorts of critters would really like to be in charge…

It’s not the first thing you necessarily think of for the character, but Mickey Mouse was an adventure strip in the 1930s.  Floyd Gottfredson was the cartoonist putting Mickey through is paces and if you were wondering where The Phantom Blot came from, he came from the comic strip.

Barnaby  Pogo   Mickey Mouse

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Comixology Sales: Spider-Man/Doc Ock, Red Hulk, DC in the 90s and Berger Books

This week’s Comixology Sales highlights include Marvel wheeling out Spidey’s old pal, Doctor Octopus; the Red Hulk; DC’s 90s nostalgia sale and Dark Horse’s Berger Books.

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

Tentacle Comics – Marvel Version

The Marvel Doctor Octopus Sale runs through Sunday, 10/14.

Personally, we would’ve included the Fraction/Larroca  Iron Man arc with Doc Ock in this say, but what do we know?

As usual, we think the Epic Collections are your value buys here. They’re semi-conveniently  grouped at the top of the sale page (and are an absolute mess on the Amazing Spider-Man page).  It’s hard to go wrong with Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Great Power, the first half of the Lee/Ditko run.

If you’re looking for Superior Spider-Man, the landmark run where Otto is occupying Peter’s body, your best buy are the two “Complete Collection” volumes in the Omnibuses section.

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Great Power   Superior Spider-Man

Hulk See Red

The Marvel Red Hulk Sale runs through Sunday, 11/14.

Yes, there are times when the Hulk extended family starts to resemble the Green Lantern Corps with all the colors of the spectrum. This sale is about the Red Hulk… or as we like to put it: Ross, Stress For Less.

Honestly, we weren’t in the bag for the Jeph Loeb/Ed McGuinness run that opened that volume of Hulk. We thought the Jeff Parker / Gabriel Hardman / Patrick Zircher / Dale Eaglesham run was the more interesting stretch of that era.  The collected editions for this volume aren’t well numbered, so go to the Collected Editions section of the series page and start with “Scorched Earth.”

Red Hulk Scorched Earth

Age of the Super-Mullet

The DC Back in the 90s Sale runs through Monday, 11/15.

And some of the discounts are even 60%-ish. On the high side for DC!

Sales stunts and character deaths aside, the quintessential 90s DC title was probably the Grant Morrison / Howard Porter JLA. A sort of back to basics reboot, although Justice League really had already been resetting from the BWA HA HA era of the late 80s/early 90s.

A lot of the better 90s material was in the smaller books. Titles whose full runs haven’t been collected (and, of course, the single issues aren’t on sale to go along with the theme… we do wonder who makes these sales sometimes.)

John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake had a superlative run on The Spectre. Underneath the magic and horror-adventure lies a philosophical tale about the dead man who’s become the earthly host for the Wrath of God and his attempts to come to grips with his situation.

Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris (or at least its the Tony Harris era currently collected) was another high point of the 90s. While people like to talk about Justice Society as a “legacy hero” title, this is the REAL legacy hero title.  Jack Knight very reluctantly picks up the cosmic rod of Starman after his brother is shot. He wanted no part of the Knight heritage, but he’s dragged in anyway. Aside from the heroics, it’s a tale of families and family traditions that should be celebrated more than DC has.  Also, The Shade. And the steady editorial hand of Archie Goodwin.

Take some time to sift through the haphazard selection of $0.99 single issues, which are more comprehensive than the collected editions… yet still have odd gaps.  You might take a close look at Legends of the Dark Knight, too.

JLA   The Spectre   Starman

Definitely Not Vertigo II (Said the Lawyer)

The Dark Horse Berger Books Sale runs through Monday, 11/22.

Yes, that’s Karen Berger who ran Vertigo (and editing Legion of Super-Heroes before that). She set up shop at Dark Horse after DC shut down Vertigo.  Berger Books is a little more genre-diverse than Vertigo was, but there’s a similar vibe.

Invisible Kingdom by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward might be the de facto flagship book. This Eisner Award winner finds a religious acolyte and a starship freighter crew on the run after discovering corporate interests conspiring with religious leaders for control and profit.  We wouldn’t have minded a fourth volume.

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja got an awful lot of attention towards the beginning of the year and it’s certainly an interesting one that blends a lot of dispirate elements: climate collapse, aliens, exclusion zones, journalism and conspiracies.  Plus… Aja’s art!

Invisible Kingdom   The Seeds

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Comixology Sales: MARVEL BOGO! Plus, Doctor Strange, Neil Gaiman, X-Men’s Inferno and World War Hulk

This week in Comixology sales, Marvel has a Buy One, Get One Free Sale, plus there’s deep dive into the worlds of Doctor Strange and Neil Gaiman, plus World War Hulk and the X-Men’s plunge into Inferno.

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

BOGO!

Yes, Marvel Buy One, Get One Free is back. Click that link, get that code and stack the BOGO on top of the current sales.  The sale ends on Monday, 9/27 at 11PM ET.  Fine print says the offer is no good on comics that came out after 8/25/21, pre-orders or Max titles, among other things.  So have at it… and those Doctor Strange discounts are looking twice as good.

The Doctor is In

The Marvel Doctor Strange Legacy Sale runs through Thursday, 9/30.

Doctor Strange is a character where we very much recommend the original run through the 80s.  He’s also one of the characters to find his legs the quickest.

As always, we find the Epic Collections to be slightly better values, but the Masterworks go all the way through the series, where the Epic’s tend to jump around.  So either look at the listing in the sale link or follow through the sequence of titles and look in the collected editions section there.

Doctor Strange debuts in Strange Tales. This is the Stan Lee / Steve Ditko run and the original clashes with Baron Mordo and the Dormammu. (And that Lee/Ditko Epic Collection is a good one.)

Doctor Strange in Strange Tales

Then there was the late ’60s Doctor Strange solo series that (along with the first half of the Marvel Premiere run) is collected across two Masterworks editions.

Doctor Strange '68 series

And then there’s “main” Doctor Strange series of the 70’s and 80’s.  The second half of Marvel Premiere run is lumped in here, as that where Steve Englehart enters the picture.  The Englehart/John Brunner run is considered a classic, right up there with Lee/Ditko’s psychedelic masterpiece.  Gene Colan hops on for a long tenure after Brunner leaves (with the odd artist switch) and then Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern and Chris Claremont tag in and out as writers, until Peter Gillis jumps in at the very end of the run.  It’s a strong series and the later Stern issues with Marshal Rogers and Paul Smith on the art are a particular joy.

Doctor Strange by Englehart

You say you want the more recent Jason Aaron / Donny Cates era?  Mark Waid era? It’s all on sale too, just remember to grab the BOGO code and apply it to your shopping cart for Maximum Cheap.

Burning Love

The Marvel X-Men Inferno Sale runs through Thursday, 9/30.

This one takes us back to the beginning of the age of X-Men crossovers as Mister Sinister and the demons of Limbo converge to cause all sorts of problems for the X-Men (and Spidey… and Daredevil… and the Avengers).

X-Men: Inferno

The War of Smash

The Marvel World War Hulk Sale runs through Sunday 9/26.

It’s a small sale with the Event spin-offs available… but the “main event,” World War Hulk by Greg Pak and John Romita, Jr., is one of the classic Hulk stories.

World War Hulk

Neil’s Limelight

The DC Spotlight on Neil Gaiman and Sandman Sale runs through Monday, 9/27.

We’re going to assume you haven’t been living under the Rock of Eternity and are familiar with Sandman already. That said, there are a couple less famous items here. (We say less famous, because Neil’s too popular for much of his catalog to truly be obscure.)

Black Orchid is a very early piece by the now celebrated team of Neil and Dave McKean. Originally pitched in ’87 and coming out at the end of ’88, it actually pre-dates Sandman. The series is an origin of sorts for the ’70s character (Why of sorts?  Therein lay spoilers.) Batman, Swamp Thing and Lex Luthor are involved in this tangled web.

DC Universe by Neil Gaiman is a collection of several non-Vertigo projects. The best known ones are probably the “Whatever Happened to the Cape Crusader?” Batman project, the Superman/Green Lantern “Legend of the Green Flame” sequence from Action Comics Weekly and the Metamorpho strip from Wednesday Comics.

Black Orchid   DC Universe by Neil Gaiman

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