Strange Academy Archives

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, nearly the entire run of Iron Man gets a discount. So does Strange Academy. DC may or may not be having unlisted sales. Plus, Umbrella Academy, Dark Crystal and Dark Horse manga.

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: The Mystery of the Missing Masterworks

You will recall it’s been hit and miss whether Marvel Masterworks are included in Marvel sales for… perhaps a bit over a year? We might have a clue.

The Near Mint Condition live stream claims to have some inside information that the (print) Masterworks line is on indefinite hiatus and is asking people who want more to write David Gabriel at Marvel and ask for it.

See for yourself:

Has a phasing out been planned for quite some time and that’s why the digital versions aren’t always in sales? We can’t say for certain, but we’re awfully suspicious. Moreover, the Epic Collections haven’t quite duplicated the depth of the Masterworks. We understand how Marvel likes to reissue new editions in print, but it usually just makes things more confusing in the digital world.

Does Whatever An Iron Can…

The Marvel Iron Man Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/23

This would be one of those sales where most of the hero’s run is on sale, so we’re going to follow our usual protocol and start out by breaking out the primary titles and volumes. Iron Man isn’t as goofy to follow as, say, Spider-Gwen… but there are “quirks.” As is frequently the case (as discussed above), no Masterworks this time out.

Tales of Suspense – Iron Man debuted here in what was a split book with Captain America for most of the run.
Iron Man ’68-’96 – The original solo run in the era before constant relaunch gimmicks

OK, sit tight. The ’98 -’04 run is collected in VERY odd ways and poorly cataloged for browsing. The truly excellent Kurt Busiek/Sean Chen/Patrick Zircher run lasts from 1-25. We can’t find 15-25 collected? (That entire run should be!) You can catch 1-14 in cheap omnibus form here. (No idea why the Mike Grell omnibus isn’t on sale.) You can catch Joe Quesada’s scripting run (26-32) and the Avengers: Disassembled tie-in late in this run in single volumes here. (But get the omnibus version for Busiek.)

Iron Man ’04-07 – Best known for launching with the “Extremis” storyline
Invincible Iron Man ’08-’12 – The excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larroca run. Save some money with the omnibus collecting the first 3 volumes.
Iron Man ’12-’14 – The Kieron Gillen run with Greg Land as initial artist
Superior Iron Man ’14-’15 by Tom Taylor / Yildiray Cinar / Laura Braga
Invincible Iron Man ’15-’16 – Brian Bendis and David Marquez/Mike Deodato, Jr. start out with Tony Stark in the armor
International Iron Man ’16 – Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev (And yes, we’re in the thick of the relaunches now)
Infamous Iron Man ’16-’17 – Brian Bendis / Alex Maleev; Victor Von Doom steps in as Iron Man… hey, dude is familiar with wearing armor
Invincible Iron Man ’16-’18 – Brian Bendis and Stefano Caselli with Riri Williams/Ironheart filling Tony Stark’s shoes (yes, parallel substitute Iron Man runs)
Tony Stark: Iron Man ’18-’19 – The Dan Slott era with Valerio Schiti as the principle artist in the rotation.
Iron Man ’20-’22 – The Christopher Cantwell / Cafu run.
Invincible Iron Man ’22-’24 – Gerry Duggan / Juan Frigeri

So what’s good? We haven’t read ALL the Iron Man out there, but we’ve read a lot of them.

In our opinion Iron Man starts hitting it’s stride when Archie Goodwin arrives toward the end of the Tales of Suspense run and then is pure gold through issue 28 of the ’68 Iron Man series. Artists for this run include Gene Colan and George Tuska. (That’s collected in both Masterworks and Epic formats, but only the Epic is discounted right now..)

The next “all-star” run is #116-157 of the original Iron Man, that’s the David Michelinie / John Romita, Jr. / Bob Layton run that’s most famous for the “Demon in a Bottle” alcoholism arc, but there’s more to the run than just that arc. The Denny O’Neil / Luke McDonnell run that follows is solid (make sure you get a collection that includes #200!!!), but Michelinie & Layton return for #215-250 with a few artists, including Mark Bright and Jackson Guice… with Layton even switching to penciller, instead of his usual inking post, for parts of it. This second run is most famous for “Armor Wars” (originally known as Stark Wars).

When Heroes Return hits, Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen are pop in for the excellent 1998 run, of which only 1-14 are currently collected.

The ’08 – ’12 run by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca is particularly good. You know how modern Marvel titles can get sidetracked by Events? Fraction and Larroca lean into it and produce a lengthy and self-contained arc with Tony Stark on the run and attempting to overwrite his brain to keep everyone’s secrets out of the hands of Norman Osborn. Yes, an honest to goodness great Event tie-in arc. It’s a rare thing.

We were quite happy with the Christopher Cantwell/Cafu run. Tony Stark chases Korvac into outer space and meditates on the nature of godhood, good intentions and addictions. Lots of character work and action.

Up the Academy

The Marvel Academy Sale runs through Monday, 6/16.

We’re not sure if this is Marvel making a play for the “Dark Academia” literary sub-genre, but we’ve got a few different flavors of young adults in various forms of learning institutions for those with super powers or magical powers. Strange Academy is probably the most “Dark Academia” of the bunch.

Avengers Academy – Christos Gage / Mike McKone / Sean Chen; Hank Pym runs an Avengers training program
Avengers Arena – Dennis Hopeless / Christos Gage / Kev Walker / Alessandro Vitti; Arcade sets up Murder World on an island and tries to recreate Lord of the Flies with the Runaways and Avengers Academy
New X-Men – Nunzio DeFilippis / Christina Weir / Randy Green / Staz Johnson / Michael Ryan; It’s easier to describe this as the ’04 rebranding of New Mutants
Strange Academy (’20-’23) – Skottie Young / Humberto Ramos; Doctor Strange establishes a magical academy (definitely not Hogwarts, should the lawyers be asking) with Doctor Voodoo, Damien Hellstrom and the Scarlet Witch amongst the instructors

The DC Sorta/Kinda Discount Shuffle

We have noticed a few DC titles popping up with “Best Price in 30 Days” tags on them. They aren’t necessarily on sale.

Example #1: Absolute Power by Mark Waid and Dan Mora. The last big Event. It’s now $9.99, marked as being down from a digital list price of $19.99. A digital list price based on it having been a hardcover release in print, we hasten to add.

Is that really a discount? Maybe not. Here’s the thing: when they stopped having the weekly sales, a lot of the slightly older digital collections dropped to $9.99. (Is the calculus to slightly lower the line-wide price and see if they make more money with that and no sales? We have questions…)

Example #2: Batman: Urban Legends V.6 is also listed at $9.99 with that “Best Price in 30 Days” tag. It does not list what the previous price was. HOWEVER, should one look at the Batman: Urban Legends series page, one would find everything is $9.99. Everything except V.2, which is $6.99. Strangely, V.2 is not showing the “Best Price in 30 Days” tag, so while it looks like it might be the one sporting a discount, but it apparently isn’t.

Real discounts:

Justice League Dark: The Great Wickedness – Ram V / Dan Watters / Sumit Kumar / Xermanico / Christopher Mitten; $3.99
Starfire Vol. 1: Welcome Home – Jimmy Palmiotii / Amanda Connor / Emanuela Lupacchino; $3.99
Superman: Brainiac – Geoff Johns / Gary Frank; $3.99

And DC may have some of their signature broken prices floating around. Batman by Doug Moench & Kelley Jones Vol. 2 is listed at $19.24 as we type this. To paraphrase Ghostbusters, that price point is as unnatural as dogs and cats living together and it’s not the only book priced like that.

We have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to DC’s current pricing philosophy (and their ability to fill out Amazon pricing forms). Now you know what we know.

Unannounced Sales

As always, we have no idea how long these will last:

Speaking of academies, Dark Horse wants a piece of that action and is discounting Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way & Gabriel Ba.

It also appears Dark Horse is having a manga sale. Some titles we noticed:

Also on sale:

Demonic – Christopher Sebela / Niko Walter
Kill Six Billion Demons: Book Three – Tom Parkinson-Morgan
Nowhere Men Vol. 1: Fates Worse Than Death – Eric Stephenson / Nate Bellegarde
Radiant Black V. 1 – Kyle Higgins / Marcelo Costa
Unlikely – Jeffrey Brown

Additionally, it looks like most of the Hulk and Doctor Strange 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.