Phoenix Archives - Comics.Cheap

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel’s offering up discounts on Phoenix, Black Cat and Blade. If you look closely, you might also find some unannounced Daredevil and Elektra on sale, too…

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

Going Down in Flames as a Form of Progression

The Marvel Phoenix Sale runs through Monday, 8/18.

Jean Grey, if you prefer.

For many, the character is defined by “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” arguably the high point of an already great run by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Pick up X-Men Epic Collection: The Fate Of The Phoenix and get “Days of Future Past” in the same package.

Then Jean/Phoenix was dead for several years. Phoenix Rising is slightly mislabeled as being an X-Men book. The resurrection of Jean Grey is the birth of X-Factor, which crosses over with Fantastic Four and Avengers for the tale. Which means you get John Byrne, Roger Stern, John Buscema, Bob Layton and Butch Guice all contributing to the tale.

New X-Men is the Grant Morrison run with a fairly sick rotating cast of artists including Frank Quitely, Leinil Francis Yu, Igor Kordey, John Paul Leon, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo and Marc Silvestri. As you’ve doubtless heard, it’s a very good run.

The current Phoenix series is by Stephanie Phillips / Alessandro Miracolo and is more of a cosmic adventures series.

Some other sale highlights:

All-New X-Men – Brian Bendis / Stuart Immonen (and friends); Despite the “All New” title, it’s the original X-Men plucked from the past
Avengers Vs. X-Men
Fall Of The House Of X/Rise Of The Powers Of X
Jean Grey – Dennis Hopeless / Victor Ibanez
X-Men: The Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix – Scott Lobdell / Jeph Loeb / John Francis Moore / Gene Ha / Kyle Hotz
X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong/Warsong Ultimate Collection – Greg Pak / Greg Land / Tyler Kirkham

Scratch

The Marvel Black Cat Sale runs through Monday, 8/11.

And that would be Spidey’s occasional girlfriend / frenemy (depending on the author/era).

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection: Nine Lives Has The Black Cat is mostly a Marv Wolfman / Keith Pollard run and features the debut of a certain Felicia Hardy.

Fast forward to 2002 and Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do by Kevin Smith & Terry Dodson begins. It didn’t actually finish up until early ’06, but it was vaguely the next act for the character.

Jump to ’04, which was the middle of the “pause” on Spidey/Black Cat and you’ll find that the first year of Marvel Knights Spider-Man by Mark Millar and the aforementioned Terry Dodson featured Black Cat in a prominent role.

Black Cat next turns up on the Heroes for Hire team by Jimmy Palmiotti/Justin Gray/Billy Tucci, with Zeb Wells/Al Rio/Clay Mann later in the run.

She pops back into Petey’s life in ’09’s Spider-Man: Return of the Black Cat, with that arc being a Joe Kelly / Mike McKone production.

Jed MacKay starts his Black Cat run in ’19. Lots of artists tagging in and out, with Travel Foreman and CF Villa being prominent on the list. This also is one of those single issue relaunches that they ignore when numbering the collected editions. Since Amazon sorts by single issue series, V.1-3 are here and V.4-6 are here.

Iron Cat is an ’02 follow-up by MacKay and Pere Perez.

Did You Say “Stake?”

The Marvel Blade Sale runs through Monday, 8/11.

Now there’s a character that’s changed a little bit since his introduction.

Blade: Undead By Daylight is a collection of some of the original Tomb of Dracula appearances by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.

Blade: Black and White is built around Blade’s appearances in Marvel’s black and white magazines of the 70s, Marv Wolfman/Chris Claremont/Tony DeZuniga being the primary creators here.

Flash forward not quite 20 years and you get the material in Blade Epic Collection: Nightstalkers, which is (primarily) the ’91 Tomb of Dracula revival by Wolfman & Colan, plus the first six issues of Nightstalkers by DG Chichester and Ron Garney, which was part of the Midnight Sons line.

Jump ahead to ’06 and you get a Blade run (pun intended) by Marc Guggenheim and Howard Chaykin.

The more recent Blade saga comes in a sort of cluster.

First, Jason Aaron’s Avengers run. Then there’s the Blade series by Bryan Edward Hill / Elena Casagrande / Valentina Pinti, where Blade becomes the sheriff of Vampire Nation. All of the above leads in the the Blood Hunt Event by Jed MacKay and Pepe Larraz. (There are a couple tie-ins available in the sale, but the Avengers one strangely isn’t included.)

“Normal” Unannounced Sales

As usual, we’re not sure when these sales are ending, but here’s what we’re seeing:

The Curse: A Graphic Ballad (The Path of None Book 1) – Alexander Gabriel Zoderot
Daredevil & Elektra – Chip Zdarsky / Marco Checchetto
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear – Frank Miller / John Romita Jr.
Elektra (’14- ’15) – W. Haden Blackman / Michael Del Mundo
A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir – Brian Fies
Infinite Frontier – Josh Williamson / Xermanico
When Sharks Attack With Kindness – Andrés J. Colmenares

Additionally, it looks like most of the Wolverine and Deadpool 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.

And if you’re REALLY cheap, the first Powers collection seems to be free at the moment. Great series that sort of fell in the background when Bendis was kicking out all those Events at Marvel. (Seriously, it seems like he was doing 10 comics/month and his creator owned material got put on the backburner.) Powers is the real deal.

Still on Sale

Kodansha Sirius Magazine Spotlight Sale runs through Monday, 8/11

The Spiders From Another Dimension

Which is to say, the Spidey family, as built around a couple Events that you go into prelude and post-Event volumes, because… Marvel’s sales department.

The center of the activity here is the titular Spider-Verse omnibus. Morlun’s up to his old tricks and ALL the Spider-Men across the various dimension must act. The omnibus contains the Amazing issues and the crossovers, so you’re looking at Dan Slott, Christos Gage (yes, Gage covering deadlines — it’s a thing!), Peter David, “Hopeless” Dennis, Adam Kubert, Olivier Copiel, Mark Brooks and a ton of others. Roughly 600 pages of Spidey to keep you out of trouble.

And the follow-up to that is Spider-Geddon. This one has a little smaller scope than Spider-Verse.

Now, if you’re talking the extended Spider-family, Miles Morales is the character we most associate with the phrase “Spider-Verse.” The omnibus editions are the ones on sale here and you can do a lot worse than the Bendis / Marquez /Pichelli run. Some would say this (particularly Spider-Men, which followed) was top of the final Marvel years for Bendis.

Sappho Suffered For This Sale, Part 2

Last time out, we looked at earlier Wonder Woman titles, this time we’ll take a look at New 52 on.

Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang (with Tony Akins and Goran Sudžuka drawing a few issues) launched the New 52 edition of Wonder Woman. It’s a darker, alternate take on Wonder Woman’s origins. Some would prefer you treat this one like an Elseworlds story. A sacrilegious a take on the mythos as it maybe be, it’s also one of the best comics to come out of the New 52. That said, when the Azzarello/Chiang era stops with Volume 6, we would advise you to stop there.

For the Rebirth Era of Wonder Woman, we love the first arc(s) where Greg Rucka returns to undo the Azzarello run (no, really) with Liam Sharp and Nicola Scott alternating parallel stories. Save a couple bucks with the first omnibus editions in the run or get the first 4 regular collections for this.

And for something a little different, do you remember Matt Wagner’s Trinity? Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman get together to thwart a Ra’s al Ghul plot. Save yourself a buck and get the original (prestige format) issues for $0.99 each.

Revenge of the Trick or Treaters

Yes, it’s the most magical time of the year… for the undead. There’s plenty for your Halloween appetite rite now, er… right now. Two things that spring to mind are:

From Hell – Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell collaborate on a very dark exploration of the tale of Jack Ripper. It’s a thick volume and has garnered a veritable ton of accolades over the years. The current edition is in color, “with pictorial revisisions for color by Eddie Campbell, as the cover says.” Be aware, in League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Alan Moore does more of a Victorian pastiche. The tone here is way different. This is a horror sale.

30 Days of Night is an important book for IDW. Never mind the movies, this Steve Niles/Ben Templesmith comic was an important early hit that helped put IDW on the map. The premise is one so obvious, you’ll hate yourself for not thinking of it first. (Those are always the best ones.) Bad Things happen when a group of vampires realize that in rural Alaska, the sun goes down for a whole month at a time.