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.

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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:

  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 DCeasedTom 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

Comixology Sales: Lots of Avengers, Nick Fury, Scott Pilgrim and Valiant “Fierce Females”

Highlights from this week’s Comixology sales include Marvel breaking out a deep slab of Avengers and Nick Fury, Scott Pilgrim’s omnibuses get discounts and Valiant unleashes Secret Weapons.

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

All Avengers, All the Time

The awkwardly named “Marvel Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Sale” runs through Thursday, 4/8.  There’s a lot of quality material on sale, but it can be a little hard to parse because of how poorly Marvel manages it’s backlist. You can browse the main sale page or follow the links to the individual series and scroll down to the Collected Edition sections.  But if in a collected edition, it’s most in there.  Hickman and Aaron runs, too.

The  original ’63 – ’96 Avengers series is broken up into the Masterworks editions (chronological), the Epic editions (seemingly random chunks) and a few stray mostly one-off collections. The Epic editions are your best value, particularly the $7.99 ones. Eventually, the Epic editions should be a continuous run, but Marvel isn’t there yet.  We particularly like the Englehart era “The Avengers Defenders War,” “The Final Threat” is primarily Gerry Conway/Jim Shooter era with George Perez and John Byrne as primary artists collecting the Private War of Doctor Doom and Bride of Ultron arcs AND the Jim Starlin Thanos showdown.  “Under Siege” and “Judgement Day” will get you most of the delightful Roger Stern/John Buscema/Tom Palmer run, which is one of the best.

Avengers Assemble is what you want from the ’98-’04 run. This is the Kurt Busiek era (with a few side series with folks like Roger Stern and Roy Thomas popping in as writers). George Perez is the initial art and it ends with a rotation of artists. This is also one of the best periods of the franchise. Vol. 1-5 will keep you out of trouble for awhile.

One you might not be familiar with that we liked back in the day was The Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott – The Complete Collection. It wasn’t particularly long lived, but Slott’s run was the rare Avengers book with a classic Avengers feel during the Bendis era.

Avengers   Avengers Assemble   The Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott

Cloak & Dagger & Eyepatch

The Marvel Nick Fury Sale runs through Sunday, 4/4.

Frankly, we’ve read and enjoyed most of the things on sale here. First a heads up on something that’s on sale, but we’re not seeing the collected editions list on the sale page: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD Masterworks Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3Vol. 1 starts the Strange Tales run, Vol. 2 is where Steranko turns up and starts the Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD solo series. Vol. 3 collects the rest of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, so more Steranko, a bit of Archie Goodwin and early Barry Windsor-Smith.

One thing that most people appeared to sleep on was Nick Fury: Deep-Cover Capers by James Robinson and ACO from ’17. This is simply an extremely fun book.  007 spy hijinx beautifully illustrated in a slightly modernized pop art style.  We were hoping for a sequel.  Our personal favorite Nick Fury, Jr. tale.

The plot of SHIELD being infiltrated and compromised has been done a few too many times.  That said, Nick Fury vs. SHIELD did it the best and sparked the late 80s/early 90s Nick Fury revival. Bob Harras and Paul Neary sent Fury on the run, framed for treason and trying to work out exactly what’s happened to his agency.

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

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Sale

The Oni Scott Pilgrim Sale runs through Thursday, 4/15.

Oni’s conveniently collected the iconic Bryan Lee O’Malley series an omnibus. The choice is between the original black & white or the colorized edition.

Scott Pilgrim   Scott Pilgrim in Color

Maternal Mayhem

The  Valiant Fierce Female Sale runs through Thursday, 4/8.

We enjoyed War Mothera future dystopian science fiction tale by Fred Van Lente, Stephen Segovia and Tomás Giorello.

Secret Weapons by Academy Award nominee Eric Heisserer, Raúl Allén and Patricia Martin is in the conversation for the best comic Valiant has published. Psiots are essentially the Valiant equivalent of mutants.  Livewire, a technopath psiot, discovers that the recently deposed big bad of the universe had been “activating” psiots and unbeknownst to the world at large, was discarding the kids whose powers weren’t useful as weapons. As Livewire’s trying to track them down, something else is trying to consume them. A little bit of X-Men, a little bit of Legion of Substitute Heroes (but not as goofy).

War Mother   

Still on Sale