Tag: James Bond

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America; Storm; Superman; 007; Critical Role; EC

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel celebrates the holiday with Captain America. Storm also gets a discount. Superman returns. Plus Dark Tower, James Bond, Critical Role and the EC Archives.

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):

Super Soldier Sale

Captain America: Secret Empire  Captain America Heroes Return  Captain America

The Marvel Captain America Sale runs through Monday, 7/14.

Seems like an appropriate call for the holiday.

First, a couple unusual things you might notice while browsing the sale.

  1. There is a single Masterworks Edition on sale. Stranger, it’s a pre-order. Hey, gift horse rules apply to this: Captain America Vol. 17 Masterworks – J.M. DeMatteis / Mike Zeck; It includes a notable Deathlok adventure and also the Christopher Priest / Mark Bright Falcon limited series.
  2. Captain America Epic Collection: The Swine – Jack Kirby is also a discounted pre-order, though it should be available by the time you see this newsletter. This wraps up Kirby’s 70s run.

There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved:

So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? The current JMS relaunch isn’t even in the sale… and it takes things on more of an urban fantasy spin than you’re likely expecting, too.

Some recommendations? Absolutely.  And no Masterworks on sale this time. (Masterworks seem to be on sale less often in ’24 for whatever reason.)

For Silver/Bronze Age adventures,  “Captain America Lives Again“ catches the bulk of the early Lee/Kirby run. Jump ahead to “Hero or Hoax,” which you’re getting for the final arc, which begins the superlative Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era. “The Secret Empire” is the bulk of the Englehart/Buscema run. “The Man Who Sold The United States” wraps up Englehart/Buscema and includes Madbomb, the beginning of Jack Kirby’s return run that is way more timely than it should be in the age of social media outrage.

Jump ahead to “By Dawn’s Early Light,” which you’re looking at for the all too brief Roger Stern / John Byrne run.  The highlight of the J.M. DeMatties / Mike Zeck run is their wrap up with the Red Skull in “Sturm und Drang.”

“The Captain“ is the sequence from the Mark Gruenwald run where Steve Rogers loses the shield and his Captain America identity for a time. That’s the famous one. You might consider backing up a volume for “Justice is Served,” which introduces the Super-Patriot and leads into the more famous sequence a bit.

Once you get past around the middle of the Gruenwald run, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker’s first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.

Hurricane Ororo

Black Panther: The Bride  Uncanny X-Men  Uncanny X-Men

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday 7/7.

This is _mostly_ flavors of X-Men with a bit of solo material, but let’s point out the unusual feature. After all these months of Masterworks disappearing, this sale has Uncanny X-Men Masterworks on sale through V. 12 (scroll down past the original series to find the new team and the sale prices.)

A Smattering of… Superman?

Superman: The Golden Age  Superman: Up in the Sky  Superman Smashes The Klan

The DC Summer of Superman 2025 Sale runs through Tuesday 7/22.

Are DC sales back? Let’s wait three weeks and find out. This could just be the publishing unit getting told by the film unit to show some corporate synergy and we see some warning flags here. To whit, not everything listed in the sale is actual bargain.

We’ve documented DC’s pricing quirks before, but it’s probably time for a quick summary: $5.99 for a collected edition or $0.99 for a single issue is a sale price. $9.99 for a collected edition is not a sale price, that’s the price their collected editions drop to after a few months. $11.99 and up – often something that’s hardcover in print and DC is insisting on pretending that the stiffness of the cover is something that’s relevant in digital, but still basing the pre-discounted price on cover format.

Fortunately, we’re seeing a lot more $5.99 and under than anything else, but do pay attention to the prices. (We’re not listing the otherwise excellent All-Star Superman because of pricing shenanigans. It’s actually worth the money, but we try not to encourage what we consider questionable ethical practices for SUPERMAN of all things.)

Here are the base links:

And a bit of space for the supporting cast of the upcoming film:

What’s good?

One of the somewhat rare ’80s reprints that we’ve enjoyed is Superman: The Phantom Zone by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan. This is a very odd, horror-flavored Superman tale as he confronts something unnatural that’s been living in the Phantom Zone… but you weren’t expecting Gerber & Colan to give you the ’50s TV version, were you?

Emperor Joker is a 2000 storyline from Jeph Loeb / Ed McGuinness / Joe Kelly / Doug Mahnke that finds the Joker acquiring godlike powers and remaking the world in his image. Not an Elseworlds, but entertainingly over the top.

Superman Smashes the Klan has Gene Yang and Gurihiru revisiting and revising the original Superman radio show arc, “Clan of the Fiery Cross.” It’s on the YA side of Superman, but has picked up a LOT of good reviews.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow is an very witty collection of tales by Robert Venditti and Paul Pelletier that went under most radars because it was originally serialized digitally.

Superman, the current series by Josh Williamson and Jamal Campbell is also on sale and it’s a good one.

And for something under the radar, the Warworld saga from a couple years back is worth a look. Phillip Kennedy Johnson wrote Action Comics for a spell and there was very little discussion on it. We’ve since had it recommended a couple times and just finished reading it. Severely under-rated and we’d go so far as to call the first two volumes great. The set up is there’s a new Mongul running Warworld. Mongul has been subjugating a lost tribe from Krypton and uses them to lure Superman to Warworld (with The Authority in tow). A trap is sprung and Superman has to lead a rebellion.

Now, you might be saying “haven’t we seen this before on Apokolips?  And the answer is, not exactly. Kennedy Johnson takes a full arc to set this up with signs of portent and excels at creating an atmosphere of foreboding leading into the final act. The characterization is strong and there’s an interesting thread about the problem of leading a revolution when the underclass has never known freedom. (And a bit of political skullduggery in the background.) Several artists tag in and out, but the more prominent ones are Daniel Sampere, Riccardo Federici and Will Conrad.

This storyline is collected across three volumes:

The optional fourth volume to the arc, which takes place in the background during Warlord Rising, is Superman and The Authority by Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin. This is where Superman recruits The Authority for his mission to Warworld… and trust us, this series works better in the greater context of the Warworld arc than it does as a standalone.

Unannounced Sales

Tales From the Crypt  James Bond 007: Your Cold Cold Heart  Zombie Survival Guide

As always, we don’t know how long these sales will last.

Critical Role from Dark Horse is currently on sale. That would be the comics based on the campaigns from the popular web series about Dungeons & Dragons campaigns… and this will take a moment to explain.

There’s an omnibus format that’s a little better value and a “regular”  collected edition sale. There are some OGNs/albums filed under the single issue format. (Hey, don’t look at us.)

Dark Horse also has their EC Archives on sale. Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales and that whole family of famous titles. Some would say these are a perfect pairing with cable news.

Plus:

Additionally, it looks like most of the Iron Man and Ghost Rider material from recent weeks is still on sale. The Under $5 Page has the lower priced volumes. Go back a couple columns for the links to find the Epic Collections.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Marvel Max (Miracleman / Punisher / Alias), Thanos, James Bond 007 and a Metric Ton of Kodansha Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel Max doles out discounts, which means Miracleman, Alias, Punisher and… Conan? Thanos is also on sale, and is James Bond and seemingly the whole Kondansha line if you’re in a manga kind of mood.

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):

A little housekeeping first. We’re going to be travelling the rest of the week, so we’re posting on Tuesday. We’ll see you next week at the usual spatio-temporal coordinates.  Also, there doesn’t appear to be a new DC sale this week. They seem to be standing pat with the Sandman sale (see: still on sale at the end of the column or the last couple weeks’ columns).

Is THAT Where HBO Max Got the Name?

The Marvel Max Sale runs through Thursday 9/8.

In this case, “Marvel Max” refers to Marvel’s old, on and off, mature readers line. (Yes, that does mean a lot of Garth Ennis material.) They generally only float this one once or twice year, so let’s have a look.

Since it looks like new material is finally getting back on the schedule, there’s a couple Miracleman runs that are a little more topical.

First is the Alan Moore / Gary Leach / Alan Davis / John Totleben run. Originally started WAY pre-Watchmen, this is an early and influential post-modern superhero reconstruction with Moore resurrecting a 50s era UK superhero that’s a bit a of Captain Marvel (Shazam) clone and taking things to their logical conclusion with a mad scientist foe, a conspiracy and a sidekick gone wrong.  It’s been half-forgotten after being out of print for a long time and Marvel botched the initial rollout of the reprints. (Don’t ask about the pricing on their original reprints.)

So then Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham got passed the torch when Moore finished his story. “The Golden Age” shows an age where Miracleman sits atop Olympus, presiding over an “age of miracles,” like a god over the mere mortals on the ground. This is where the story will picked up from after all these years.

Miracleman   Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham

We have no idea what a Conan book is doing in this sale, but… we like the material. Conan Chronicles: Return to Cimmeria is from the Dark Horse era and features the endcap to the Kurt Busiek/Cary Nord run and the beginning of the Tim Truman/Tomas Giorello run.  Can’t complain about a Conan sale and we’re a little fuzzy what’s going to be happening with the reprints after the new material switches over to Titan.

Alias, which made it to Netflix as “Jessica Jones” is the Brian Bendis/Michael Gaydos hard drinking superpowered private eye series, now conveniently in 2 volumes.

Conan Chronicles   Alias

Oh, you want Ennis Punisher?  Well, browse the main link for some of his one-offs (there are several), but here’s an overview:

If you were expecting Thanatos…

The Marvel Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet Sale runs through Monday, 8/22.

Thanos has become a saga, at least with the Starlin-driven material.

Avengers Vs. Thanos is a meaty ~470 page collection of the original ’70s appearances that were centered in Captain Marvel and Warlock.  You could make an argument that this is where “cosmic” Marvel was born. (It’s one of a handful of candidates.) Recommended.

And then Thanos was mostly on the shelf for ~13 years until Jim Starlin started writing Silver Surfer (with Ron Lim drawing… oh yes, those two would do some collaborating).  The Rebirth of Thanos arc was the “oh, snap” moment (pun intended) where Thanos resurfaced and the wheels were set in motion for The Infinity Gauntlet (with art by George Perez and Ron Lim).  And both of those are recommended, too.

There were two more Infinity sequels:

And a ton of supporting material.  “Infinity” and Adam Warlock were practically a sub-imprint for a couple years.

Starlin did more Thanos follow-ups over the years, culminating in a graphic novel trilogy:

Avengers Vs. Thanos   Rebirth of Thanos   Infinity Gauntlet

Bondage

The Dynamite James Bond Sale runs through Monday, 8/29.

There is one 007 comic we recommend above all others. Kill Chain by Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida is a great updating of the literary James Bond.  SMERSH is back and trying to undermine NATO… and assassinate a few people. This may be the best executing of melding the current political situation with Bond’s Cold War roots.  Highly recommended if you’re into this sort of thing.

While we’ve been waiting for the collected edition and can’t review, we have been really curious about James Bond: Himeros,  which has Rodney Barnes from Killadelphia and HBO’s Winning Time putting 007 up against sex traffickers. The single issues are $0.99.

James Bond Kill Chain   James Bond: Himeros

All-In Manga

The Kodansha End of Summer Line-Wide Sale runs through Monday, 8/22.

Cards upfront, we’re not as familiar with manga as we could be.  That said, (along with the rest of the world), we’ve really enjoyed Attack on Titan, a surprisingly complex series combining elements of horror and political thriller with a little bit of steampunk around the edges. It’s a little hard to discuss without a steady stream of spoilers. But it lives up to the hype.

$1.99 for the first volume of old school classic Ghost in the Shell strikes us as a good deal.

Although, in this case, it might be expensive. Most of the first volumes in the sale are $0.99.  So if you have a manga itch, it would behoove you to browse this one.

Attack on Titan   Ghost in the Shell

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