In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, we look at the best of the Marvel Masterworks sale plus holiday sales from Image and Dynamite.

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):

• The new releases page is here. 
• The “Comics Deals” page is here.

We’re in the home stretch for the holiday sale season and this time out, we’ll be looking at a couple sales that dropped a little later than the rest. (OK, technically the Image sale had been up… but the discounts took several days to show up on the listing.) But first, let’s have a look at the cream of the crop for our favorite sale of the year.

The Best of the Marvel Masterworks Sale

As you may recall, The Marvel Masterworks Sale runs through Monday, 1/2. $0.99 for V.1’s and $1.99 for V.2+.

There are bargains and there are bargains. Let’s have a look at what the best volumes are, both for stories contained and page count – because a few of these books are as big as the Epic Collections.

I Like Big Page Counts

Masterworks with 400+ pages!

• Amazing Spider-Man Masterworks Vol. 22 – 410 pages – Roger Stern / John Romita, Jr. era, including THAT Juggernaut story
• Amazing Spider-Man Masterworks Vol. 23 – 468 pages – Roger Stern / John Romita, Jr. era… and the Hobgoblin debuts in this volume
• Champions Masterworks Vol. 1 – 460 pages – The whole ’70s series + crossovers – Bill Mantlo/Tony Isabella/George Tuska/John Byrne and others.
• Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 10 – 394 pages (close enough) – Roger Stern/Paul Smith (and the Doctor Strange vs. Dracula sequence)
• Killraven Masterworks Vol. 1 – 471 pages – Don McGregor / P. Craig Russell – the entire Amazing Adventures run plus the OGN follow up… for a lousy $0.99
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 9 – 471 pages – OK, get this line-up: Chris Claremont writing all of… Uncanny X-Men w/ Paul Smith; the God Loves, Man Kills OGN w/ Brent Anderson and the original Wolverine mini-series w/ Frank Miller.
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 10 – 458 pages – the beginning of the Claremont/John Romita, Jr. era with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Morlocks, plus the Magik mini-series w/ John Buscema
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 11 – 457 pages – Claremont writing: X-Men with John Romita, Jr. (including the Kulan Gath issues), X-Men/Alpha Flight with Paul Smith and Kitty Pride & Wolverine with Al Milgrim
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 12 – 466 pages – Claremont writes X-Men w/ John Romita, Jr. (culminating in the trial of Magneto and the end of a big arc); the “Asgardian Wars” crossover with New Mutants w/Art Adams; and then Dave Cockrum’s Nightcrawler mini.
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 13 – 449 pages – Claremont & John Romita, Jr. on X-Men, plus and Ann Nocenti and Art Adams on Longshot.
• Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 14 – 485 pages – Enter the Mutant Massacre, plus Psylocke joins the X-verse in New Mutants and Fantastic Four Vs. X-Men.

Best of the $0.99 V.1’s

• Black Panther Masterworks Vol. 1 – The original, classic Jungle Action run with Don McGregor / Rich Buckler / Billy Graham / Gil Kane
• Deathlok Masterworks Vol. 1 – (Mostly) Rich Buckler / Doug Moench / Bill Mantlo – The original Astonishing Tales run through the Captain America wrap-up years later, so pretty much the whole first cycle.
• Doctor Strange Masterworks Vol. 1 – Stan Lee / Steve Ditko – Doctor Strange hit the ground running in Strange Tales. A lot of Marvel features took some time to find their way… but not this one.
• Howard The Duck Masterworks Vol. 1 – Steve Gerber / Frank Brunner / Gene Colan
• Silver Surfer Vol. 1 – The delight of Stan Lee and John Buscema

Other notable runs (that aren’t Lee/Kirby, since those go without saying).

We’ll link to the first volume in the set on these.

• Avengers V. 10 – 18; V. 10 is the Kree/Skrull War. V.11 starts the Englehart run through V.15. V. 16 & V.17 are the Jim Shooter run w/ George Perez & John Byrne; V. 18 is David Michelinie/John Byrne -a prime chunk of Avengers
• Captain America V. 7 – 11; V.7-9 is the classic Steve Englehart/ (mostly) Sal Buscema run with the Secret Empire, the Red Skull and a snake of an ad man. V.10-11 is Jack Kirby’s return and V.10’s Madbomb is more relevant today than it should be.
• Captain Marvel V.3 -4; V. 3 is Jim Starlin’s run, which is the first Thanos arc. Utter classic. V.4 is the half-forgotten, yet quite entertaining Steve Englehart/Al Milgrom run.
• Daredevil V. 15-16; Frank Miller’s first run. (V. 14 ends with the first issue he drew, but it’s not particularly connected to the rest of the run.)
• Defenders V. 3-5; The inspired strangeness of Steve Gerber’s run. Headmen! Elf With a Gun!
• Doctor Strange V.5-10; Once Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner show up the 70s and 80s were a strong time for Doctor Strange. Consistently A-list writers and artists. Almost amazingly so for a bi-monthly title.
• Fantastic Four V. 21-23; The John Byrne era in thick slices
• Iron Man V.5-7; The meat of Archie Goodwin’s Iron Man run with Gene Colan and George Tuska
• Iron Man V. 13-14 – V. 13 has David Michelinie, Bob Layton and John Romita, Jr. arrive. The start with “Demon in a Bottle,” the famous arc, but Iron Man is very good for a long time, starting here.
• Marvel Two-In-One V. 5-6; In V.5 Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio arrive for a fun run that’s not always remembered. George Perez and Ron Wilson handle most of the art. “Project Pegasus” and “The Serpent Crown Affair” are two of the major arcs.
• Sub-Mariner V. 7 – Something different? Namor’s creator, Bill Everett returns to his creation as writer/artist.
• Warlock V. 2 – Jim Starlin’s first run on Adam Warlock, complete in one volume. A continuation of his Captain Marvel run, Thanos is back and this one really lays the groundwork for the eventual Infinity Gauntlet.

There’s a ton more to the sale, including the more usual suspects… but we think the above will keep you out of trouble on a budget.

Image Stuffs the Stocking

The Image Holiday Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

This looks to us like a line-wide (or nearly line-wide… is Sea of Red not in digital?) 50% off sale, so we’re going to go slightly off the beaten path with our recommendations. If you’re looking for something specific, click through and it’s probably there. It’s a very deep sale.

The obligatory “front list” recommendation is the Saga Compendium. You should be familiar with Saga by now. Space fantasy about a refugee family who have both sides of a war looking for them? Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples? Yes, that Saga. Anyway, 54 issues for $23.99 is under $0.50 an issue and is as good a deal as you typically see from Image and it’s a wonderful series.

The Monolith is something we enjoyed when it came out from DC Comics back in the day. Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and the underappreciated Phil Winslade tell the tale of a troubled young woman who inherits a house and finds a golem walled up in the basement. Once freed, the golem goes back about its mission of vengeance and punishment, as golems are wont to do. The Monolith explores the consequences of this a bit.

Shock Rockets by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen was actually part of the far too short-lived Gorilla imprint at Image, back in the day. A very fun spin on the old anime theme of young pilots protecting the Earth from invading aliens.

Revival was a long running serial by Tim Seely and Mike Norton. It came out as zombie stories were getting hot, but it’s not really a zombie story. A town in Wisconsin has a strange day that sees the dead come back to life. Some of them seem perfectly normal. Some don’t. Naturally, the government declares a quarantine and the evangelists attempt to descend. This leaves the local sheriff’s department trying to figure out who or what caused the dead to rise and what’s happening to the dead afterwards. A bit of a slow burn as things continue to get stranger and bad things happen.

Criminal was Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips in their original crime series (or should we say crime series with no capes lurking in the background). Sometimes connected, sometimes not, we’d probably put V.6, “The Last of The Innocent” which is a whole lot like reimagining the Archie gang in a pulp noir. This is what Ed and Sean were doing just before they really blew up at Image and now Image has the publishing rights to it.

Casanova by Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon is a trippy as all get-out tale of a dimension hopping thief at odds with his other dimensional family of super-spies. Lots of backstabbing, identity theft and general skullduggery in a series that’s been compared to Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius. (Yes, that level of trippy.)

Dynamite Stuffs the Stocking

The Dynamite Holiday Sale runs through Monday, 1/2.

This is also a line-wide or near line-wide 50% off sale, so we’ll once more go a little deeper into the pile for our picks.

Flash Gordon Omnibus by Jeff Parker and Evan “Doc” Shaner. What makes this Flash Gordon better than some of the other versions? When Parker and Shaner are doing it, it’s just more fun!

Borderline by Carlos Trillo and Eduardo Risso is something Risso drew prior to 100 Bullets. It’s a dark tale of a reluctant government enforcer in a bleak dystopian world with mutants in wasteland and the rich sequestered away in luxury.

The Shadow: The Last Illusion by Cullen Bunn, Colton Worley and Giovanni Timpano finds The Shadow drawn into a conflict with a secret society of illusionists seeking “The Last Illusion.” And The Last Illusion is Harry Houdini’s escape from the land of the dead. This is one of the best Dynamite Shadow tales and really fits in next to the original pulps.

Still On Sale

• The DC Holiday Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The Marvel Masterworks Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The Marvel Secret Wars Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The Marvel X-Men/Spider-Man: Crossovers and Events Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The IDW Holidays Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The Archie Holiday Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 1/2
  
• The BOOM! Holidays Graphic Novel Sale runs through Monday, 1/2