Tag: Storm

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Alpha Flight, Calvin and Hobbes, Opus

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops six sales (one of which you might have trouble seeing in the US), plus… Opus.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

Housekeeping: Your eyes do not deceive you. There are plenty of $2.99 single volumes scattered amongst the Marvel offerings this month. Most of Jed MacKay’s Doctor Strange, for example. Enjoy.

Surfin’ Bird

Silver Surfer by Lee/Kirby  Silver Surfer - Englehart  Silver Surfer

The  Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

So… we’re seeing last month’s X-Force sale for this link in the US (minus most of the discounts). Perhaps the link will be fixed by the time you click on it, but since we know what’s REALLY on sale, we’re going to drop the highlights below and save you the headache. And perhaps we’ll follow up if the link gets fixed.

For the most part, the solo adventures of the Silver Surfer fall into three periods:

First, the classic original series by Stan Lee and (mostly) John Buscema. This ran from ’68-’70 and is a minor legend for a reason. 

There wasn’t much solo Surfer for the better part of 17 years because the Surfer was considered to be Stan’s character in a similar way to how Sandman is Neil Gaiman’s. That changed in ’87 when Silver Surfer relaunched under the team of Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers. (Yes, the Batman pairing.) Predictably, it was excellent. The next team was Jim Starlin and Ron Lim, another great run. Starlin used this run to bring back Thanos (mostly unused since he finished his Warlock run) and set up the Infinity Gauntlet.  We think very highly of the first 50 or so issues of this run. The first four Epic Collections will take you through #50 (that would be through Thanos Quest).

Then next major addition to the cannon was the Dan Slott / Michael Allred Silver Surfer in 2014. It is confusing listed in two places. The first three volumes here and the final two volumes here.

For something that ends up being off the radar because of it’s short length, there’s always Parable, which is Stan Lee teaming up with Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) legend Moebius for an adventure.

And if you’re interested in cherry picking the Surfer’s original appearances in Fantastic Four, the very definition of classic, there’s an Epic Collection that does just that.

The Doctor Will See You Now

Doctor Strange in Strange Tales  Doctor Strange by Englehart  The Death of Doctor Strange

The  Marvel Doctor Strange Sale runs through Monday, 2/3.

And it’s most of the Doctor Strange material that’s been collected in book form. 

  • Strange Tales – A bit further down that cluttered page, you’ll find the original Lee/Ditko run in Masterworks and Epics
  • Doctor Strange ’68-’69 – This is there the Epics and Masterworks start containing different titles, so pay attention if you’re mixing formats. (Some next level Gene Colan art in this run, btw.)
  • Doctor Strange ’74-’87 – The Epics pick up with the tale end of the ’68 series, catch the Marvel Premiere issues (enter: Englehart & Brunner) and then into the regular series, then you’ll need “regular” collections for the Stern/Smith run.
  • Strange Tales ’87-’88 – The rest of the Peter B. Gillis run from Strange Tales with art by Chris Warner, Kevin Nowlan, Terry Shoemaker and Richard Case. Not in the sale, but included for completeness
  • Doctor Strange ’88-’96 – Probably best known for the Roy & Dann Thomas run with Butch Guice and Geoff Isherwood as notable artists.
  • Doctor Strange ’15-’18 – Initially Jason Aaron/Chris Bachalo with Donny Cates tagging in towards the end. (The omnibuses here are the better buy)
  • Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme ’16-’17 – Robbie Thompson / Javier Rodriguez
  • Doctor Strange ’18-’19 – The Mark Waid / Jesus Saiz / Barry Kitson era with Strange in space.
  • Doctor Strange, Surgeon Supreme (’19) – the very much under-rated and too short Mark Waid / Kev Walker run. Walker knocks it out of the park here.
  • Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise – Tradd Moore
  • Jed McKay’s saga, which needs to be read in order
    • The Death of Doctor Strange – Jed MacKay / Lee Garbett; No, really… he actually dies and it’s clever
    • Strange – Jed MacKay / Marcelo Ferreira; With Stephen dead, Clea assumes the mantle of Sorceress Supreme… and she’s feeling a little tetchy
    • Doctor Strange (’23-’24) – Jed MacKay / Pasqual Ferry; How can a dead man not be dead? The answer is complicated…

What’s good?  The original Lee/Ditko run is great and you can get that in the first Epic Collection. Things pick up again when Englehart and Brunner show up towards the end of the Marvel Premiere run and the whole ’74-’87 run is solid, though we have a particular soft spot for the Roger Stern / Marshall Rogers / Paul Smith material towards the end.  Yes, Doctor Strange had A list creators most of the time.  That’s your core.

The Jed MacKay sequence is very good and Marvel’s best death and rebirth sequence in quite some time, but you really need to start with The Death of Doctor Strange. We seldom give a big thumbs up to this kind of arc, but sometimes the needle gets threaded.

Another personal favorite is Doctor Strange: The Oath by a pre-Saga Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin. They’ve both moved on to bigger things, but a long run by those two would have been a real highlight.

Something under the radar?  The final Waid/Walker run is also a lot more under the radar than it should be.

That’s the solo pack. There’s also quite a bit of team material available:

We’d draw your attention to two under the radar things from this second list. Clandestine is Alan Davis doing his own thing, which is always a good time. The Al Ewing / Javier Rodriguez Defenders titles are the very definition of trippy, living at the intersection of Sorcery Marvel and Cosmic Marvel. We’re usually in the bag for a Ewing run, but if you discovered Javier Rodriguez on the excellent Absolute Martian Manhunter, this is him getting cosmic a few years earlier when fewer people were paying attention.

The Great White North

Alpha Flight  X-Men: Asgardian Wars

The Marvel Alpha Flight Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

We know what you’re thinking: “If Spider-Man could team up with the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, why couldn’t Alpha Flight team up with Bob and Doug McKenzie?” The way we heard it, this was proposed, but Guy Caballero nixed it.

The main item of note here is Alpha Flight Classic, 3 volumes that comprise the John Byrne run on the original series and a Bill Mantlo/Mike Mignola issue and Byrne essentially traded Alpha Flight for The Incredible Hulk. (We recall the Mantlo run being better than advertised, but there doesn’t currently seem to be interest in collecting it.)

Of possible related interest is X-Men: Asgardian Wars  by Chris Claremont / Paul Smith / Arthur Adams. X-Men / Alpha Flight is the first half of the book and it’s a fun romp. Plus, Smith and Adams on art? There are a lot worse things to drop $2.99 on.

And for something out of left field, there’s the more recent Gamma Flight, which is an Alpha Flight adjacent spin-off of Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Crystal Frazier and Len Medina.

A bit more tangentially related:

Stabbing Time

  Elektra

The Marvel Elektra Sale runs through Monday, 2/23.

Strangely, this sale excludes Elektra: Assassin.

What are we seeing? The original Miller Daredevil run is available in multiple formats.

  • Elektra (’96 – ’98) – Peter Milligan / Larry Hama / Mike Deodato, Jr.
  • Elektra (’01 – ’04) – Greg Rucka / Chuck Austen (drawing, not writing) / Joe Bennett / Carlo Pagulayan / Carlos Meglia / Greg Horn

Hurricane Ororo

  X-Men: Lifedeath  Uncanny X-Men  Uncanny X-Men

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday 2/23.

We noticed something strange when going through this sale. The original X-Men / Uncanny X-Men (’63-’11) series has come undone in Amazon listings. Only the Epic Collections are still attached to the series. The Masterworks volumes or things like Lifedeath are still in the system, but they’re not attached to the series, effectively just floating out there unmoored in the digital aether. It’s really odd and it applies to things in the Cyclops sale, too.

Here’s Mud in Your Eye

X-Men: Raid On Graymalkin  X-Factor  X-Men: Cyclops & Phoenix - Past & Future

The Marvel Cyclops sale runs through 2/23.

This sale is even less organized than the Storm sale, partially because of the X-men books becoming unstuck from their home series.

A few things to look at:

  • X-Men (current) – Jed MacKay / Ryan Stegman / Netho Diaz
  • X-Factor (’86-’98)
  • X-Men: Cyclops & Phoenix – Past & Future – Scott Lobdell / Peter Milligan / Tom DeFalco / Gene Ha / John Paul Leon / Kyle Hotz

 

Unannounced Sales

OPUS: 25 Years of His Sunday Best Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection

Also on sale:

 The Creepy / Eerie sale appears to be continuing, so let’s revisit that, too. Creepy was the first one and is available in both archive  format and “Creepy Presents” volumes spotlighting individual artists (Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, Steve Ditko). Eerie was the companion series. By halfway through it’s run, it had evolved into something a little different with multi-part stories and characters who returned, the breakout character being The Rook (a time traveler with some western elements baked in). It’s also available in archive format and “Eerie Presents” for collecting individual features (El Cid and Hunter).

And have a look at the $5 and under page.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Captain America; Storm; Superman; 007; Critical Role; EC

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel celebrates the holiday with Captain America. Storm also gets a discount. Superman returns. Plus Dark Tower, James Bond, Critical Role and the EC Archives.

Where did the New Releases and Sale pages go?

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

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

Super Soldier Sale

Captain America: Secret Empire  Captain America Heroes Return  Captain America

The Marvel Captain America Sale runs through Monday, 7/14.

Seems like an appropriate call for the holiday.

First, a couple unusual things you might notice while browsing the sale.

  1. There is a single Masterworks Edition on sale. Stranger, it’s a pre-order. Hey, gift horse rules apply to this: Captain America Vol. 17 Masterworks – J.M. DeMatteis / Mike Zeck; It includes a notable Deathlok adventure and also the Christopher Priest / Mark Bright Falcon limited series.
  2. Captain America Epic Collection: The Swine – Jack Kirby is also a discounted pre-order, though it should be available by the time you see this newsletter. This wraps up Kirby’s 70s run.

There’s a lot of material to cover here, so we’ll go with the usual format and start by breaking out the major series involved:

So… do you think Captain America gets relaunched enough? The current JMS relaunch isn’t even in the sale… and it takes things on more of an urban fantasy spin than you’re likely expecting, too.

Some recommendations? Absolutely.  And no Masterworks on sale this time. (Masterworks seem to be on sale less often in ’24 for whatever reason.)

For Silver/Bronze Age adventures,  “Captain America Lives Again“ catches the bulk of the early Lee/Kirby run. Jump ahead to “Hero or Hoax,” which you’re getting for the final arc, which begins the superlative Steve Englehart/Sal Buscema era. “The Secret Empire” is the bulk of the Englehart/Buscema run. “The Man Who Sold The United States” wraps up Englehart/Buscema and includes Madbomb, the beginning of Jack Kirby’s return run that is way more timely than it should be in the age of social media outrage.

Jump ahead to “By Dawn’s Early Light,” which you’re looking at for the all too brief Roger Stern / John Byrne run.  The highlight of the J.M. DeMatties / Mike Zeck run is their wrap up with the Red Skull in “Sturm und Drang.”

“The Captain“ is the sequence from the Mark Gruenwald run where Steve Rogers loses the shield and his Captain America identity for a time. That’s the famous one. You might consider backing up a volume for “Justice is Served,” which introduces the Super-Patriot and leads into the more famous sequence a bit.

Once you get past around the middle of the Gruenwald run, your best of the best is anything written by Mark Waid or Ed Brubaker, and know that Brubaker’s first run is basically one long and epic story – and be sure to get Reborn or you’re missing a piece.

Hurricane Ororo

Black Panther: The Bride  Uncanny X-Men  Uncanny X-Men

The Marvel Storm Sale runs through Monday 7/7.

This is _mostly_ flavors of X-Men with a bit of solo material, but let’s point out the unusual feature. After all these months of Masterworks disappearing, this sale has Uncanny X-Men Masterworks on sale through V. 12 (scroll down past the original series to find the new team and the sale prices.)

A Smattering of… Superman?

Superman: The Golden Age  Superman: Up in the Sky  Superman Smashes The Klan

The DC Summer of Superman 2025 Sale runs through Tuesday 7/22.

Are DC sales back? Let’s wait three weeks and find out. This could just be the publishing unit getting told by the film unit to show some corporate synergy and we see some warning flags here. To whit, not everything listed in the sale is actual bargain.

We’ve documented DC’s pricing quirks before, but it’s probably time for a quick summary: $5.99 for a collected edition or $0.99 for a single issue is a sale price. $9.99 for a collected edition is not a sale price, that’s the price their collected editions drop to after a few months. $11.99 and up – often something that’s hardcover in print and DC is insisting on pretending that the stiffness of the cover is something that’s relevant in digital, but still basing the pre-discounted price on cover format.

Fortunately, we’re seeing a lot more $5.99 and under than anything else, but do pay attention to the prices. (We’re not listing the otherwise excellent All-Star Superman because of pricing shenanigans. It’s actually worth the money, but we try not to encourage what we consider questionable ethical practices for SUPERMAN of all things.)

Here are the base links:

And a bit of space for the supporting cast of the upcoming film:

What’s good?

One of the somewhat rare ’80s reprints that we’ve enjoyed is Superman: The Phantom Zone by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan. This is a very odd, horror-flavored Superman tale as he confronts something unnatural that’s been living in the Phantom Zone… but you weren’t expecting Gerber & Colan to give you the ’50s TV version, were you?

Emperor Joker is a 2000 storyline from Jeph Loeb / Ed McGuinness / Joe Kelly / Doug Mahnke that finds the Joker acquiring godlike powers and remaking the world in his image. Not an Elseworlds, but entertainingly over the top.

Superman Smashes the Klan has Gene Yang and Gurihiru revisiting and revising the original Superman radio show arc, “Clan of the Fiery Cross.” It’s on the YA side of Superman, but has picked up a LOT of good reviews.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow is an very witty collection of tales by Robert Venditti and Paul Pelletier that went under most radars because it was originally serialized digitally.

Superman, the current series by Josh Williamson and Jamal Campbell is also on sale and it’s a good one.

And for something under the radar, the Warworld saga from a couple years back is worth a look. Phillip Kennedy Johnson wrote Action Comics for a spell and there was very little discussion on it. We’ve since had it recommended a couple times and just finished reading it. Severely under-rated and we’d go so far as to call the first two volumes great. The set up is there’s a new Mongul running Warworld. Mongul has been subjugating a lost tribe from Krypton and uses them to lure Superman to Warworld (with The Authority in tow). A trap is sprung and Superman has to lead a rebellion.

Now, you might be saying “haven’t we seen this before on Apokolips?  And the answer is, not exactly. Kennedy Johnson takes a full arc to set this up with signs of portent and excels at creating an atmosphere of foreboding leading into the final act. The characterization is strong and there’s an interesting thread about the problem of leading a revolution when the underclass has never known freedom. (And a bit of political skullduggery in the background.) Several artists tag in and out, but the more prominent ones are Daniel Sampere, Riccardo Federici and Will Conrad.

This storyline is collected across three volumes:

The optional fourth volume to the arc, which takes place in the background during Warlord Rising, is Superman and The Authority by Grant Morrison and Mikel Janin. This is where Superman recruits The Authority for his mission to Warworld… and trust us, this series works better in the greater context of the Warworld arc than it does as a standalone.

Unannounced Sales

Tales From the Crypt  James Bond 007: Your Cold Cold Heart  Zombie Survival Guide

As always, we don’t know how long these sales will last.

Critical Role from Dark Horse is currently on sale. That would be the comics based on the campaigns from the popular web series about Dungeons & Dragons campaigns… and this will take a moment to explain.

There’s an omnibus format that’s a little better value and a “regular”  collected edition sale. There are some OGNs/albums filed under the single issue format. (Hey, don’t look at us.)

Dark Horse also has their EC Archives on sale. Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales and that whole family of famous titles. Some would say these are a perfect pairing with cable news.

Plus:

Additionally, it looks like most of the Iron Man and Ghost Rider 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.

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