Mark Millar Archives - Comics.Cheap

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.

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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:

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.
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.
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
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.

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.

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.)

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!

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.

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.

Still On Sale

The Small Press Graphic Novel Mega Sale runs through Thursday, 9/9
The Dynamite Omnibus Sale runs through Monday, 9/13
The IDW GI Joe Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16
The IDW Transformers Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16

DC’s Got a $4.99 Sale

DC’s got multiple sales going on… they even have their own special Black Friday Sale page. At the top of that page is the $4.99 section we’re going to pay a little more attention to, as DC doesn’t go down to $4.99 every week. You’ve got until Monday (11/30) to browse this one.

The Unwritten is a long-running Vertigo title by Mike Carey (perhaps better known these days as M.R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts) and Peter Gross. Tom Taylor’s father wrote books about a boy wizard named Tom Taylor. Is Tom his father’s son, the actual character from the books or something else? Magic, conspiracies and unwanted celebrity collide in this one. Save a couple bucks – Unwritten Deluxe Book One collects the first two tpbs for less.

Prez may not have seen it’s natural end, but it’s so timely right now. This Mark Russell/Ben Caldwell/Mark Morales book tells the tale of the Corndog Girl when a series of coincidences involving social media and a contested election sent to Congress for a vote land her in the Oval Office. Worth it just for the “how to pick a Vice President” sequence.

Batman: Gothic is one of Grant Morrison’s early Batman tales. Drawn by Klaus Jansen, it finds Batman drawn into a conflict between Gotham’s mobsters and killer who won’t stay dead. It’s called “Gothic” because Morrison was heavily influenced by gothic horror when writing it.

Dark Horse discounts for Black Friday

Dark Horse has just about everything except the original run of Dark Horse Comics Presents on sale. Today, we’ll have a look at Part 1 of their Graphic Novel sale. (We’ll hit Part 2 on Friday, but feel free to skip ahead if you’re itching for Lone Wolf and Cub.) As is our custom, we’ll try and highlight things that haven’t been part of recent sales, but rest assured that the usual suspect are also 50% off.

Have you tried Blacksad yet? Blacksad is a Raymond Chandler-esque detective series that happens to be done in anthropomorphic style. The characters are animals, but it’s absolutely not a funny animal comic, it’s hard boiled detective stories. Old school. It’s by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. It’s one of the best illustrated comics out there, too.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: The Complete Joe Kubert Years is just what it says it is: Kubert’s complete early 70s Tarzan run for DC. A labor of love from one of the most influential artists… and that complete edition is a lot more convenient than when I had to go tracking down the archive editions in print!

Finder is Carla Speed McNeil’s long running science fiction series. It’s heavy on world building and especially culture building. Finder racks up awards: Igantz, Eisner and even an LA Times Book Prize. It’s criminal that its not better known. Also, the first two “Finder Library” volumes are over 600 pages each, so an excellent value on top of the quality work.

This sale runs through Monday (11/30). There are also two single issue sales: Part one takes you from the beginning of the alphabet into “I.” Part 2 finishes the set.

Image goes Black Friday, too

Image also has pretty much the entire catalog on sale for Black Friday. 1,463 items for you to browse between now and Cyber Monday (11/30). This is a 50% off sale, so if you were meaning to pick up a digital collection, dig around for it and the odds are good it’ll be there. A few items of possible interest?

Die (as in “dice”) is a fantasy adventure by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans about a middle-aged group of friends discovering an otherworldly incident involving a role-playing game in their teen years isn’t over after all. If you wanted to do the Hollywood cliche elevator pitch on this one, “The Dungeons & Dragon cartoon meets It” would not be unreasonable. It’s very good, but be aware it’s as darkly-themed a comic as there is on the market.

Kane is Paul Grist’s cult harboiled detective series about a cop in corrupt department. He might be a little better known in the U.S. for Jack Staff or his Doctor Who work, but this is where he made his name.

Kick-Ass has been over at Image for a spell. This comes in two flavors: the better known “Dave” years are by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. After the opening arc for “The New Girl,” they tag out for Steve Niles and Marcelo Frusin.