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 Imperfectwhich 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

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Still on Sale

Comixology Sales: Invincible (and The Walking Dead), X-Men, Giant-Size Man-Thing and the DCU

Highlights of the Comixology Sales this week include Robert Kirkman taking a discount victory lap for the debut of the Invincible animated series, X-Men and Steve Gerber’s Man-Thing at Marvel and a DC universe mass sampling event.

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

Foundational X-Men Spin-Offs

The Marvel X-Men Universe Sale runs through Sunday, 3/28.

There’s a lot of X-Men material here, some of which we’ve discussed before, so we’ll look at some ’80s foundational pieces here.

X-Men: Kitty Pride & Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Al Milgrom was a sequel of sort to the Wolverine mini-series and is where Kitty got her martial arts training.

Longshot by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams is the original Longshot/Mojo tale. Nocenti’s having a moment over at Berger Books with The Seeds and… it has been awhile since we’ve seen Art Adams doing extended interior work.

Magick by Chris Clarement with a succession of John Buscema, Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema all finished by Tom Palmer on the art. This was a fairly dark story when it came out: the tale of how Illyana Rasputin was kidnapped to Limbo, taught sorcery by the demon Belasco and emerged as the Magick we know today.

Kitty Pride & Wolverine   Longshot   Magick

Includes Giant-Size Man-Thing (yes, that’s a real comic)

The Marvel Man-Thing Sale runs through Sunday, 3/28… but let’s call this a Steve Gerber sale because his runs on the feature are the prize here.  Gerber being one of the finest writers to grace a comics page.

The original run is collected in Man-Thing by Steve Gerber: The Complete Collection.  Yes, these do collect the infamous Giant-Size Man-Thing issues. A third volume isn’t out yet (thus, not on sale) and it even contains the late 80s Marvel Comics Presents serial, so they aren’t kidding about complete.

The Infernal Man-Thing is more recent, a posthumously published tale by Gerber with art by Kevin Nowlan. (!) It’s actually a sequel to “Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man” from the original run (which is included in the book).

Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection is probably Gerber’s signature work. It’s also a Man-Thing spin-off. Here at the Tower of Cheap, we try to avoid non-Gerber Howard the Duck (though we’re quite happy with Destroyer Duck), you need the first two volumes. Past that… it ain’t Gerber.

Man-Thing by Steve Gerber   Infernal Man-Thing   Howard the Duck

 

Across the Multiverse

The DC Explore the Multiverse Sale is split into to parts, A-L and M- Z.  The sale runs through Monday, 4/1.  There’s quite a bit here, so it’s worth and extended browse.  Some of the better material:

Man and Superman (Deluxe Edition) by Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini is something of a miracle. It was sitting in a draw at DC for YEARS before someone had the good sense to publish it. There have been several “how Clark Kent came to Metropolis and became Superman.” This is one of, possibly THE best of those.  They’d be well served to make it the jumping off point next time Superman gets reset. Excellent comic and a love letter to the Man of Steel.

Speaking of Superman, you’ve probably heard good things about Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Yuen Yang and Gurihiru. Believe them. This is the top shelf of the Young Adult superhero comics from DC.

If you’d like something rare, Batman Death Mask, the manga by Yoshinori Natsume is one of the few comics DC is discounting over 50%.  60% off is not common for DC these days!

Man and Superman   Superman Smashes The Klan   Batman Death Mask

Everything’s Coming Up Kirkman

The Robert Kirkman Sale Featuring Invincible runs through Tuesday, 5/4.

You might have heard that the Invincible animated series has dropped on Amazon Prime, but this is actually a sale on pretty much all of Kirkman’s Image output.  As always, the “Compendium” omnibus editions are incredible values, particularly Invincible and Walking Dead.  The Astounding Wolf-Man Complete Collection is not quite as good a buy, but you know what?  It still comes out to less than 99-cents per issue and it’s not on sale as often.

Invincible   Walking Dead   Astounding Wolf-Man

 

Still On Sale

Comixology Sales: Holiday Sale Roundup – even more Marvel, Image, BOOM!, Dark Horse and Archie

If you thought the holiday Comixology sales were over, think again.  Those sales don’t *start* ending until Sunday.  Joining our last batch are even more Marvel titles, wide sales from Image and BOOM!

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

Remember, a lot of publisher listed sales before Christmas that are still going on, including that ridiculously good $0.99 Marvel Masterworks sale – everything we covered last time is still on sale.

Even More Marvel Sales

The “Marvel 2020 Instant Classics Sale” is perhaps a bit overstating what’s in it, but there a bit of interesting material… even if some of it looks like random volumes of ongoing series.

Black Bolt by Saladin Ahmed/Christian Ward/Frazier Irving/Stephanie Hans is the real deal.  It won an Eisner and was a Hugo finalist.  It opens as Black Bolt’s trying to figure out exactly how he got into this space prison and what happened to his powers.  That prison sequence is something else.

Doctor Doom by Christopher Cantwell and Salvador Larroca was another delightful title that seemingly came out of nowhere. Doom’s been framed, he’s on the run and his enemies are moving on Latveria.

As with all the Marvel sales right now, this one expires on Sunday 1/3.

Black Bolt   Doctor Doom

Image digital Graphic Novels are 1/2 off

Image has a graphic novel sale that’s broken up into two parts: A-N and O-ZFor the most part, this is 50% off the Image graphic novel catalog.  So if you were waiting on something, there’s a good chance it’s among the 1,473 items offered.

If you want some special deals, though… that’s where the omnibuses come into play.  Specifically the Robert Kirkman “Compendium” editions. (A lot of Image omnibuses are more expensive than getting the individual volumes, but Kirkman does it right.)  The Invincible Compendium 3 volume set is ~1000 pages/9 TPB per volume. And it’s the same story with The Walking Dead Compendium set.  Gets it down to roughly ~$2.25 per digital TPB.  Best bang for your buck at Image.

Invincible   Walking Dead

Invisible at Dark Horse

For the Dark Horse Best of 2020 Sale, we’d draw your attention to Invisible Kingdom,  which won a couple Eisner Awards. This G. Willow Wilson/Christian Ward SF vehicle concerns a the crew of a space freighter and a religious acolyte on the run from her order after discovering that said religious order has some very commercial interests. Suffice to say, the commercial interests aren’t particularly happy about being discovered and the tendrils reach to high places.  This is also where we feign shock that Berger Books has a winner. (Some of us occasionally miss Vertigo.)  This sale runs through Monday, 1/4.

Invisible Kingdom

Sabrina’s Slasher

The Sabrina and the Women of Archie Sale runs through Thursday (1/7) and we absolutely thing that the Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa/Robert Hack Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and it’s 70s horror take on Ms. Spellman is worth your time. We’re not holding our breath for this version to return with the Netflix version wrapping up, but we’d sure welcome it.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Their whole line goes BOOM!

Boom’s linewide sale is broken into 3 parts, all of which run through Thursday, 1/7.  You’ve got the graphic novels, single issues I and single issues II.  You’ll want to pay attention that the $0.99 single issues aren’t less expensive than the collected edition, too.

For something that’s often overlooked, we really enjoyed the Planet of the Apes series by Daryl Gregory, Carlos Magno and Diego Barreto.  Yes, the same Carlos Magno Marvel has since snapped up. This series leads up to the events of the original film and also does a good job of reconciling the original Pierre Boulle novel with the film continuity. We’d elaborate, but… spoilers. The whole run in conveniently in a single omnibus.

So, we were talking about Carlos Magno? He was BOOM!’s secret weapon for awhile.  Deathmatch is a 12-parter written by Paul Jenkins and drawn by Magno.  You know the old trope about superheroes getting kidnapped and forced to fight to the death?  Well, this time Jenkins and Magno create their own cast of characters, so they can actually play out that concept. No backing off at the last minute.  It’s also nice to see Jenkins with the gloves off, not worried about tying into an Event.

Oh, you wanted something current?  Once & Future by Kierron Gillen and Dan Mora is a very fun series. Someone’s looking to resurrect King Arthur and… how to put this… Arthur never took kindly to foreigners.  Arthur might want to do a little ethnic housekeeping if it were.  A monster hunter must come out of retirement and coerce her grandson into the family business.  It’s actually a breezy page turner.

This sale ends on Thursday, 1/7.

Planet of the Apes   Deathmatch  Once & Future