Tag: Superman

Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Miles Morales – Spider-Man; DC’s Top 100; House of M; Groo; The Crow; Nova

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC drops a Top 100 sale. Marvel offers discounts on Miles Morales, Nova and House of M. Dark Horse cuts prices on Groo, along with several unannounced offerings.

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):

So Much For Top 10

Kingdom Come  Superman  Watchmen

The  DC Top 100 Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

Top 100 what? We have no idea what the criterion would be, here. It’s a mix of recent and evergreen titles. Not a bad mix, either. A few things standing out:

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

  Miles Morales: Spider-Man  Miles Morales

The Marvel Miles Morales: Spider-Man Sale runs through Monday, 9/16.

Miles, of course, was the second Ultimate Spider-Man, but that world no longer exists and now there’s a new Ultimate Spider-Man and… we wouldn’t want to explain that to somebody walking in off the street.

For the first Brian Bendis/David Marquez/Sara Pichelli run, you’re probably best off with the Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection set.

Then jump to the  Spider-Man for the ’16 Bendis/Pichelli/Nico Leaon run. (Yes, constant relaunching and it’s confusing to follow.)

Before we’re done with Bendis, there’s the very good Spider-Men series of mini-series where the “traditional” Peter Parker crosses paths with Miles. Get them both in one volume with Spider-Men: Worlds Collide by Bendis & Pichelli.

And after that wraps, it’s time for Miles Morales by Saladin Ahmed and Javier Garron.

And then, Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Cody Ziglar and Federico Vicentini. 

No More Mutants

House of M  X-Men: Reload  X-Men: The Day After

Marvel’s House of M and Decimation Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

This would be the Event Miniseries where Wanda snaps and rewrites reality… forming the basis for the WandaVision TV series.  Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel are your creators. This is the sort of Event where we recommend getting the main series and then dipping your toe into the supporting collections in the sale at your own discretion.  A good chunk of the Marvel line shifted their storylines to participate in the Event, buy how relevant they were to the main storyline varied widely and a lot of it would firmly be considered side stories. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not always presented as such.

The “Decimation” part of the sale refers to the aftermath in the X-Men line after Wanda proclaims “no more mutants” and decimates the population. X-Men: Reload By Chris Claremont Vol. 2: House Of M by Claremont/ Chris Bachalo / Billy Tan covers House of M and Decimation in Uncanny X-Men. X-Men: Decimation – The Day After by Peter Milligan / Salvador Larocca / Roger Cruz covers Decimation in X-Men.

Corpsman
Nova Classic  Nova by Abnett & Lanning

The Marvel Nova Sale runs through Monday, 9/9.

Let’s run down the contents here:

  • Nova (1976-78) – The original Marv Wolfman/John Buscema/Sal Buscema/Carmine Infantino run
  • Nova (2007-10) – The Dan Abnett/Andy Lanning/Paul Pelletier/Kev Walker/Andrea di Vito era – the Complete Collection is the better deal.
  • Nova (2013-15) – Gerry Duggan / Paco Medina was probably the longest tenured creative team of this volume.
  • Nova: Resurrection (2015) – Jeff Loveness / Ramon Perez
  • Nova: The Human Rocket (2015-16) – Sean Ryan / Cory Smith / John Timms

What’s good here?  We’d go with the original run or the DnA run (complete with a space station carved out of a Celestial’s head – yes, the concept predates Avengers Mountain).

Theft

Criminal  Gideon Falls  Stray Bullets

The Image Summer Crime Sale runs through Sunday, 9/15.

Crime? Maybe crime, horror and science fiction? The sale’s title might be a bit reductive.

What we’d put at the top of it:

  • Criminal – Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips; While this was their second series (after the lesser known Sleeper), their mid-00s revival of crime comics locked in Brubaker & Phillips as a long term team… and Image would soon lure them away from Marvel
  • Fell – Warren Ellis / Ben Templesmith; A creepy, surrealist detective feature and we seem to recall the plots often resembling actual “News of the Weird” newspaper columns.
  • Gideon Falls – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; A wild SF/horror/time travel tale of a mysterious barn that appears and disappears, always leaving a trail of bodies
  • Stray Bullets – David Lapham; This was Criminal, long before Criminal came to be. Along with AKA Goldfish and Jinx by Bendis, this was the main crime comic of the late ’90s.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

X-Men Ultimate Spider-Man

The trend continues. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

Robbin’

Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood  Robyn Hood

The Zenescope Character Spotlight Sale – Robyn Hood Sale  runs through Sunday, 9/22.

This sale is in three flavors with three links:

Looks like the Omnibus is cheaper than the collected editions and the collected editions are cheaper than the single issues, but you can double check that on individual collections. 99-cent single issues make that easy.

And yes, those really are Chuck Dixon and Howard Mackie on runs towards the bottom of the listings.

Possible Oni Sales

OK… you might remember this drill from the distant past. Oni’s had two sales listed for a couple of days. They don’t look like sale prices to us. Maybe that gets fixed at some point, but that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.

Unannounced Sales

The Crow  Groo  Barbaric

Over at Dark Horse, everyone’s favorite stupid barbarian is on sale. Yes, that’s right… it’s Groo by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier!

And taking a wider view:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Image Comics Returns; X-Men; Moon Knight; Green Arrow; Minor Threats

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Image Comics returns to the discount listing for the first time in a year. DC offers sale prices on some more recent titles like Green Arrow. Marvel cuts prices on Moon Knight, X-Men, and Avengers vs. X-Men. Plus, Minor Threats.

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):

Holy Crap! Image Is Back?!?

Black Magick  Chew  Nailbiter

The Hooked on Image Comics Sale runs through Thursday, 8/29.

We get a lot of questions about why Image hasn’t had any sales lately. Interestingly, this is right about when Image resurfaced for a few weeks of sales in mid-August 2023. Um, ’tis the season?

This is a rather small and… almost alphabetical slice of Image?

Things we’ve read and can happily recommend:

  • Black Magick – Greg Rucka / Nicola Scott; a police detective who happens to be a witch has her worlds collide. What were Rucka and Scott doing before the Wonder Woman relaunch? This.
  • Cassanova – Matt Fraction / Gabriel Ba; Extra trippy adventures with a dimension-hopping thief caught up in a conspiracy with a very Jerry Cornelius vibe to it.
  • Chew – John Layman / Rob Guillory; Absurdist adventures in a world where eating chicken is outlawed with a federal agent who experiences the sense of what he eats. So if he ate your thumb, he’d know where it had been. Black humor abounds, as to vampires and a death-dealing rooster. It’s a favorite. Layman’s now working on Spawn and Titans. This is the book that really launched Layman.
  • Nailbiter – Josh Williamson / Mike Henderson; Why does a small town in Oregon produce so many serial killers? A federal agent descends upon the town with one of those prodigal serial killers in tow, looking to find out. One of the things Williamson was doing before Superman and GI Joe took over his hours.

And By Recent, We Mean Within 5 Years

Danger Street  Green Arrow  The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country

The DC Recent Hits Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

It does have some new releases in it, though. More importantly, there are plenty of $2.99 collected editions. Let’s work through some highlights.

X-Men: The Glory Years

X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live   X-Men: The Fate of the Phoenix  

The Marvel X-Men Masterworks/Epic Collections Sale runs through Monday, 8/26.

To paraphrase The Blues Brothers, “We’ve got both kinds, Epics and Masterworks.”

Which is to say this is all contained in the original X-Men series link.

Pick your preferred format. In general, the Epics have a more pages and end up being more bang for your buck… although the more recent Masterworks have been pretty thick volumes.

From a pragmatic standpoint, the Masterworks volumes have everything in order through issue #243 (Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 16 – which covers Inferno).

The Epic Collections exist in order through #198… and then they start jumping ahead to Jim Lee / Whilce Portacio era. If you’re looking for 90s X-Men, you want the Epics.

If you’ve never tried the original X-Men, we’d say go with The Sentinels Live Epic Collection. It’s at the very tail end of the original run that the original X-Men run is at its best: a bit of Jim Steranko and then a Roy Thomas / Neal Adams sequence that ended all too quickly.

For the “new” X-Men, we’re cool with the theory that Giant-Sized X-Men #1 / Uncanny X-Men #94 through #200 is one big arc. That’s where we’d start if we were new. The Epic Collections stop at #198 before jumping ahead and that’s super annoying. #200 is a landmark issue.

The Light of the Silvery Moon

Moon Knight  Moon Knight Epic Collection   Moon Knight

The Marvel Moon Knight Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

The original Moon Knight run is mostly in Epic Collections, but it’s in two separate links because… well, we shouldn’t be surprised by this, should we?  The first link has two volumes that are not closely related. Bad Moon Rising is the Werewolf by Night appearances through the backups in Hulk Magazine and the first issues of 1980 solo series. The other volume in that link… we’re not as big on. That was later volumes.

You can go here for the rest of the 1980 Moon Knight series, which was the most famous version for quite some time. If you came into the character through the TV series, know that the original Moon Knight was a lot closer to Batman and The Shadow. Oh, sure the werewolf showed up, but most of the mystical things around Konshu were kept in the background and a lot more mysterious. The multiple identities were originally more like the cover identities adopted by the Shadow (and the original series editor, Denny O’Neil, adapted The Shadow for DC.) This is where Moon Knight got popular.

If you came in through the TV show, there really isn’t a comic that quite matches that version of the character, but the series did draw on the Jeff Lemire / Greg Smallwood Moon Knight series in which Moon Knight has a run-in with the Egyptian gods and his personalities run amok. It’s also a good run.

We also have been enjoying the current Jed MacKay/Alessandro Cappuccio Moon Knight series. This one takes up the unenviable task of rationalizing the various incarnations over the years (and there have been a lot of different takes on the character). Mr. Knight is in therapy for his multiple personality issues. He’s running the Midnight Mission and conduct himself as Konshu’s ambassador… after a fashion, although he’s not really happy with Konshu. And there are vampires. Lots of vampires.

Highlights of the rest:

  • Moon Knight ’89-’94 – Most of this is only collected in omnibus form  for the longest running volume. This is largely the Terry Kavanaugh years with Gary Kwapisz and James Fry on art. Possibly more interesting, it also includes a Bruce Jones/Denys Cowan special and a Doug Moench/Art Nichols team-up with Shang Chi. (A second volume with earlier issues drops in October.)
  • Moon Knight ’10-12 – Brian Bendis / Alex Maleev; Controversial to say the least, this one really leans into Moon Knight’s multiple personality disorder and breaks the character if you prefer the original concept. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly witty and funny. One of the oddest takes on the character.
  • Moon Knight  ’14-’15- Most notable for the style-forward Warren Ellis/Declan Shalvey reworking (introducing the business suit)

The novelist corner, because Marvel has put a couple name novelists on the property:

Friday Night Fights

Avengers Vs. X-Men A.X.E. Judgement Day

The Marvel AvX & A.X.E. Sale runs through Monday, 8/19.

And by “AvX,” they mean Avengers vs. X-Men. “Go along to get along” doesn’t necessarily apply here.

The “primary” Avengers Vs. X-Men was an Event back in ’12 with all sorts of creators contributing to it. Were there tie-in books? It’s Marvel, so there were plenty. Avengers vs. X-Men: VS was essentially the “all-fights” series.

Also included is the more recent A.X.E.: Judgment Day, the Kieron Gillen/Valerio Schiti – driven Event that crossed over Avengers, X-Men and The Eternals.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Beware the Planet of the Apes  Resurrection of Magneto  Cable: United We Fall

The trend returns after a short break. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Dropping This Week

Pre-Order for Next Week

Unannounced Sales

Minor Threats  Daisy

That Patton Oswalt guy has recently been seen in comic shops promoting his “Minor Threats” franchise. Guess what’s on sale?

Also from Dark Horse:

  • Daisy – Colin Lorimer
  • UXB – Colin Lorimer

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool; Wolverine; Umbrella Academy; Batman; Manhunter

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops the “real” Deadpool and Wolverine sales. DC discounts some more Batman, Superman and friends. Dark Horse celebrates the comics of Gerard Way and Umbrella Academy.

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):

The Cheapest at What He Does

Wolverine  Wolverine: Enemy of the State  

The Marvel Wolverine Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

You ever see Wolverine pay for expensive beer? Our boy is CHEAP!

This is the sale on the “main” Wolverine titles we said would be coming. Let’s start out by listing the various titles involved. (Relaunches? At Marvel? <faints>)

  • Wolverine (’82) – Chris Claremont / Frank Miller / Paul Smith; The miniseries that kicked off the solo stories and an X-Men 2-parter that’s a sort of follow-up
  • Wolverine (’88-’03) – The original ongoing solo title. Yes, it took six years after the mini… it was a different time
  • Wolverine (’03-’09) – Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson; Mark Millar / John Romita, Jr.; Jason Aaron/Ron Garney… among others
  • Wolverine: Origin (’06-’10) – Daniel Way / Steve Dillon
  • Wolverine: Weapon X (’09) – Jason Aaron / Ron Garney
  • Wolverine (’10-’12) – Jason Aaron / Renato Guedes / Ron Garney; “Wolverine Goes to Hell” was not a metaphor
  • Wolverine (’13-’14) – Paul Cornell / Alan Davis
  • Wolverine: Savage Land (’14) – Frank Cho
  • Death of Wolverine (’14) – All the mini’s in one volume
  • Old Man Logan (’16-’18) – Jeff Lemire / Andrea Sorrentino; While Logan is “dead,” his future dystopian self journeys to the present day. (And it’s actually pretty good, despite the premise.)
  • Return of Wolverine (’18-’19) – Charles Soule / Steve McNiven; “They always come back”
  • Wolverine (’20-’24) – Ben Percy / Adam Kubert

So, what’s actually good?

The  original miniseries is generally regarded as a classic.

With the original series, you’re pretty good from the beginning through the end of the Larry Hama run (a bit after #100), though towards the end of that, the X-Events get annoying. We’re particularly fond of the Archie Goodwin / John Byrne arc from #17-23. Since there are multiple formats for these issues, you can pick your format.

The Greg Rucka / Darick Robertson / Leandro Fernandez run is an enjoyable, lower key run.

Mark Millar did two great runs shortly after Rucka:

  • Enemy of the State w/ John Romita, JR introduces Gorgan and has Wolverine up against an unholy alliance of the Hand and Hydra
  • Old Man Logan w/ Steve McNiven has an aging Logan trying to keep to himself in a dystopian future when trouble comes looking. Yes, this should sound an awful lot like one of the films!

We’ll Put $20 on Uncle Ben
Deadpool Classics  Cable & Deadpool  Deadpool by Posehn and Duggan

The The Marvel Deadpool Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool is… oddly collected. There have been a lot of titles and lot of relaunches. Most of these are absorbed into the Deadpool Classics line of collected editions.  Some, but not all, of the series, have omnibus editions and those are the cheaper way to collect those runs… which means, if you’re a completist and you’re cheap, you’re going to want to be wanting to fill in the Classics volumes around the omnibuses.  And Deadpool Classics V. 1 collects the various miniseries that kicked things off.  In a sense, the easiest way (but perhaps not cheapest – and certainly not the most current) to keep things chronological is to follow the Classics line

Hey, when was getting Marvel collected editions in the proper order ever easy?

So let’s run down the main titles:

  • Deadpool Classics (’93 – as far as they’ve gotten)
  • Deadpool (’97-’02) – Known as the Joe Kelly era (at least what’s collected here)
  • Cable & Deadpool (’04-’08) – Fabian Nicieza / Patrick Zircher / Mark Brooks (among others)
  • Deadpool (’08-’12) – The Daniel Way Era
  • Deadpool Team-Up (’09 – ’11) – all sorts of creators for this Deadpool variant on Marvel Two-In-One
  • Deadpool Max (’10 – ’11) – David Lapham / Kyle Baker in a Max (“adult”) series
  • Deadpool Max 2 (’11 – ’12) Lapham / Baker, back for more
  • Deadpool (’12-15) – The Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan Era
  • Deadpool (’15-’17) – Gerry Duggan and many, many artists
  • Spider-Man / Deadpool (’16-’19) – Initially, Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness
  • Despicable Deadpool (’17-’18) – Duggan/Mike Hawthorne
  • Deadpool (’18-’19) – Skottie Young / Nic Klein
  • King Deadpool (’19-’21) – Kelly Thompson / Chris Bachalo

Pick your preferred creator and pay attention to the Epic Collections in the ’97 run.

Did Oberon Authorize This?

Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds  Manhunter  Superman: Man of Tomorrow

The DC Midsummer Sale runs through Monday, 7/22.

The sale page on this is possibly the most disorganized one we’ve seen in months. Not much order to it, if any. Let’s have a peek at some highlights, though.

  • The Authority – Warren Ellis / Brian Hitch, then Mark Millar/Frank Quitely; The hugely influential spin-off (OK, continuation) of Stormwatch
  • Batman: Reptilian – Garth Ennis / Liam Sharp; There’s something nasty in the Gotham sewers
  • Batman / Superman: The Archive of Worlds – Gene Yang / Ivan Reis; We’re big fans of this dimension hopping tale that distills a lot from the Silver Age tales.
  • Batman: The Detective – Tom Taylor / Andy Kubert; Batman scours Europe for the perp – and yes, Tom Taylor will be taking over Detective Comics soon
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; The first half of the classic series about refugee fairy tale beings hiding out in NYC while plotting to regain their lands in on sale for $5.99@ in the “Deluxe Format.”
  • Justice League: Last Ride – Chip Zdarsky / Miguel Mendonca
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin / Walt Simonson; One of the best adventure comics of all time
  • Strange Adventures – Tom King / Mitch Gerads / Doc Shaner; Possibly not for Adam Strange fans, this is a political thriller about war crimes and political identity
  • Superman: Man of Tomorrow – Robery Venditti / Paul Pelletier; It flew under the radar as a digital-first title, but this sequence is a witty delight

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

White Widow

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

  • No prices are making us raise an eyebrow next week? Is this a pricing experiment that’s winding down? It’s unclear.

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced Indie Sales

Umbrella Academy   The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys

Dark Horse has put the works of Gerard Way on sale. At Dark Horse, that means two series:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales – Flash, Iron Man, Suicide Squad, Thor, Groo, Dune

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel revisits “Heroes Return” with discounts. DC drops a 750 book “MAX” sale with Flash, Superman and the Suicide Squad. In unannounced sales, we find Groo, Stranger Things, Dune and… Quentin Tarantino?

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):

Is That a Streaming Pun?

The Flash  Superman Y the Last Man

The DC to the MAX Sale runs through Monday, 7/15.

This is a large (750 items) and fairly wide-ranging sale, so it’s perhaps worth a bit of browsing time, but here are some highlights we noticed:

  • DMZ – Brian Wood / Riccardo Burchielli; During a second Civil War, an embedded reporter becomes stranded in the DMZ that Manhattan has become and promptly gets embroiled in local political/warlord scene.
  • The Flash (’59-’85) – The Silver Age volumes highlight this section
  • The Flash (’87 – ’09) – The prices on the Geoff Johns run are good.
  • The Flash (’16-’23) – Initially, Josh Williamson / Carmine Di Gianmenico. Later, Jeremy Adams / Roger Cruz
  • Hawkworld – Tim Truman leans into the science fiction side of the character in this excellent Hawkman reboot
  • Jonah Hex (’06 – ’11) – Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray write a very fun Western with what turns into a jaw dropping parade of artists like Darwyn Cooke, Paul Gulacy, Jordi Bernet, Russ Heath, Phil Winslade, Eduardo Risso and so on…
  • Rorschach – Tom King /Jorge Fornés; A very well done follow up to the ideas of Watchmen
  • Suicide Squad (’87-’92) – John Ostrander / Luke McDonnell / Geoff Isherwood; There’s been some comments lately about how Amanda Waller was a much more nuanced character in the original incarnation… and we’d have to agree. This is a classic.
  • Suicide Squad: Blaze – Si Spurrier / Aaron Campbell; A darker than dark take on the Squad various DC mythos in this Black Label edition.
  • Superman  Vol. 1: Supercorp (2023-)- Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; The opening to the quite enjoyable current Superman run.
  • Superman/Batman (’03  – ’11) – Initially Jeph Loeb / Ed McGuinness; These double-volumes are a good value
  • Unstoppable Doom Patrol – Dennis Culver / Chris Burnham; First time discounted?
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra; The last man on Earth (and his monkey) navigates a dystopian landscape and tries to piece together what happened.

Come Again?

Iron Man: Heroes Reborn  Captain America Heroes Return

Marvel’s Heroes Reborn Sale runs through Monday, 7/15.

This is the 90s experiment when Marvel outsourced some of their titles to Image and then took them back. “Heroes Reborn” is the Image experiment and “Heroes Return” was when Marvel resumed production. Now, for our money, the gems here are from the “Heroes Return” period.

Heroes Reborn: The Return is the Peter David / Salvador Larroca tale that brings the heroes back to the “normal” Marvel Universe.

Iron Man: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection V. 1 has Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Sean Chen as the primary creative team, re-establishing shell head back in the Marvel Universe. You get some Mandarin, there’s a side trip with Captain America and MODOK. This collects the first portion of one of our favorite Iron Man periods.

And speaking of high points, this sale also has Captain America: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection,  which is the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run resuming. (It had just started, and was abruptly halted, for Heroes Reborn.) A little Hydra, a lost shield… that MODOK tale from Iron Man is also reprinted here (a shared Annual). It’s a solid run.

Fantastic Four: Heroes Return – The Complete Collection Vol. 1  takes a longer view of the Heroes Return timeframe than the other do. This was starts out with a Chris Claremont/Alan Davis run and ends up with an underrated Carlos Pacheco run. Essentially, Heroes Return is deemed to stop right before the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run.

Why the Kurt Busiek / George Perez Avengers run isn’t included here… that’s a good question. In some ways it was the flagship of the returning titles.

Marvel revisited it in ’21 with the minor Event Heroes Reborn, headlined by a Jason Aaron / Ed McGuinness miniseries.

The Image-produced Heroes Reborn titles were:

And, to be complete, it’s not in the sale for inexplicable reasons, but Heroes Reborn: Fantastic Four by Jim Lee & Brandon Choi.

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

Thor Modern Epic Collection White Widow

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced Indie Sales

Groo Meets Tarzan  Dune  Quentin Tarantino

Over at Dark Horse, everyone’s favorite stupid barbarian is on sale. Yes, that’s right… it’s Groo by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier! Yes, this includes Groo Meets Tarzan with Thomas Yeates.

Also from Dark Horse, the Stranger Things line of graphic novels.

Plus, further removed from the Direct Market:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Deadpool, Wolverine, Teen Titans, Ultimate X-Men, Resident Alien, Neil Gaiman and some Unannounced Sales

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel drops sales with Deadpool, Wolverine and Ultimate X-Men / The Ultimates, plus some more of these oddly discounted new releases. DC discounts Teen Titans, plus mysterious price reductions on Superman and Wonder Woman.  And then, Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales from Dark Horse.

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):

Oh, look… the Marvel sales came back.

Ghosts of Ultimates Past

Ultimate X-Men  Ultimates Ultimate Comics X-Men

The Marvel Ultimate X-Men and Ultimates Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

This is effectively two sales in one: the highly influential original Ultimate Universe rebootings of X-Men and Avengers.

Over on the mutant side of the street, the spread looks like this:

The original Ultimate X-Men run has a very interesting writer rotation. Mark Millar begins and ends it. In between are runs by Brian K. Vaughan (Saga / Y – The Last Man) and Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead). The artist rotation includes Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo, David Finch, Brandon Peterson, Stuart Immonen, Tom Raney and Salvador Larocca… among others.

Ultimate Comics X-Men was written first by Nick Spencer and later Brian Wood. Artists included Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Mahmud Asrar and Alvaro Martinez.

The Ultimates is a little harder to explain because of how it was rolled out. They treated it as miniseries “seasons.” Suffice it to say, you saw a lot of it’s influence on the Avengers films.

The core material here is the Mike Millar-penned Ultimates material.  His run is:

Ultimates 3 is in the sale, but here at the Tower of Cheap, we like to pretend Jeph Loeb never got involved in the Ultimate universe.

But when the Ultimate Comics relaunch started, Jonathan Hickman turned up to work on The Ultimates and isn’t he a bigger name these days?

SNIKT

Wolverine and the X-Men  All-New Wolverine  

The Marvel Wolverine and the X-Men Sale runs through Monday, 7/8.

This is a fairly unusual mix of various characters using the “Wolverine” code name and some X-Men titles, too. There’s a bit more to the sale, but here’s rundown of the highlights.

  • All-New Wolverine – Tom Taylor / David Lopez / Juan Cabal; A top notch series feature X-23/Lauren Kinney taking on the costume while Logan is “dead.” The best thing to come out of The Death of Wolverine by a wide margin.
  • Marvel Comics Presents – Ever notice they rarely show anything from MCP aside from the Wolverine serials? The first one from Chris Claremont / John Buscema is a lead-in to the original ongoing solo series.
  • Uncanny X-Men – scroll down a bit and you’ll find 16 volumes at $5.99@. From the birth of the new team roughly through Inferno.
  • Wolverine & The X-Men – Jason Aaron / Chris Bachalo / Nick Bradshaw; Logan takes his turn as headmaster
  • Wolverine Legends – Collections of some mini’s and story arcs. V.2 is the excellent “Meltdown” series from Walt Simonson/Louise Simonson/Jon J. Muth/Kent Williams

AARP Titans

New Teen Titans  Silver Age Teen Titans  Teen Titans

The DC Teen Titans 60th Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 7/1.

Hmmm… perhaps 60 is the new 16?  What’s here? Quite a variety of things, really. Let’s hit some highlights.

“Original” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans (’66-’78) – Bob Haney / Nick Cardy

“New” Teen Titans

  • New Teen Titans (’80-’88) – Marv Wolfman / George Perez / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Eduardo Baretto
  • New Titans (’84-’96) – Wolfman / Tom Grummett

“Post-Wolfman” Teen Titans

  • Teen Titans  (’03-’11) – Geoff Johns / Mike McKone
  • Teen Titans (’11-’14) – Scott Lobell / Brett Booth / Eddy Barrows
  • Teen Titans (’14-’16) – Will Pfeifer / Kenneth Rocafort
  • Teen Titans (’16-’21) – Ben Percy / Adam Glass / Jonboy Meyers / Bernard Chang
  • Titans (’16-’19) – Dan Abnett / Brett Booth
  • Teen Titans: Earth One – Jeff Lemire / Terry & Rachel Dodson

“Kids” Teen Titans

What’s good? The Wolfman / Perez run is still the gold standard (and it’s hard to understate its importance to DC at the time). With the original series, the question is whether you like Bob Haney’s brand of quirk, although Nick Cardy is consistently great.  For something later in the feature, maybe give a look to the Geoff Johns / Mike McKone run. This is one of the things Johns was working on just before he really blew up with Green Lantern.

$20 on Hugh Jackman’s Dignity

Deadpool & Cable  Spider-Man / Deadpool  Deadpool Corps

The Marvel Deadpool Vs. the Marvel Universe Sale runs through Monday, 8/5.

Deadpool has always had a lot of fairly short run titles swapping around at any given time, this is a large and wide collection of those secondary titles. You’ll want to browse yourself, but here are some of the more prominent titles being featured.

The longest running of the set is Deadpool & Cable, Fabian Nicieza and Patrick Zircher being the team most associated with it. Amusingly, the monthly comic was called Cable & Deadpool, but the character popularity has flipped since then.

Spider-Man / Deadpool also ran 50 issues. Joe Kelly / Ed McGuinness was the early creative team with Robbie Thompson / Chris Bachalo tagging in later.

Deadpool Corps maybe of heightened interest with Rob Liefeld joining writing Victor Gischler for it and for… reasons rumored to be in the new film, we suppose…

The Marvel “Maybe” Sales

New X-Men  Hawkeye  Captain Marvel

The trend we noticed last week is still moving forward. New releases at lower than expected price points and discounted pre-orders. Is this the new normal? We’re not sure, but let’s run them down.

Released this week

  • New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection: E Is For Extinction – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely / Leinil Francis Yu; $6.99 is definitely a sale price for Epic Collections and we’re astonished the price is still active on it’s debut week.
  • Captain Marvel by Margaret Stohl – Stohl / Ramon Rosanas; Listed 484 pages, this is essentially an Epic Collection. $44.99 list price for print. $24.99 digital list price. As we type this, the “Kindle price” is $10.99.  Not quite as low one of the Deal Page sales, but plenty cheap for the page count on the debut week.

Pre-Order for Next Week

We’re not quite sure what’s going on with these prices, but we’ll give you a heads up if it looks like it’s cheaper than it would normally be.

Unannounced DC Sales?

Wonder Woman New 52   Wonder Woman by Gail Simone  Wonder Woman

We’re a little puzzled by this one. It might be next week’s sale loaded early. It might be remnants of an old sale. We’re not sure, but we’ll give you some links to browse through if you’re curious.

We also saw some Batman prices that looked like what you get when the sale prices are broken, so MAYBE they’re starting to load the sale prices in for a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman “Trinity” sale next week? Or it could be something else.

Unannounced Resident Alien and Neil Gaiman sales.

Resident Alien Norse Mythology  Neil Gaiman Library

Over at Dark Horse, we found two sales.

Resident Alien is a comic by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse about a stranded alien posing as a doctor and solving murders. It got a little more famous when a TV adaptation hit and a lot more famous when the TV show moved over to Netflix. (And will now be moving over to the USA cable network.) We read the first omnibus a few months back and if your point of reference is the TV show, the comic is a little more mystery-oriented. It’s available in

Note: the 7th series is only available as a collected edition at this time.

Over on the Gaiman side of things, there are a couple flavors – New comics material by Gaiman and adaptions of his prose work. P. Craig Russell is involved with much of the adapted work and check to see if a series is in the Neil Gaiman Library collections, because several are.

For original material,

  • Signal to Noise – Gaiman / Dave McKean
  • Mister X: The Archives – An explanation is order. This is a very good SF/noir series by Dean Motter / Los Bros. Hernandez / Ty Templeton (among others), but there’s also a Gaiman / Dave McKean story in it

Adaptions of prose work…

First not in the Gaiman Library editions

Then the Library and the individual titles collected within

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: World’s Finest; DC Elseworlds; Dark Horse Horror; Alison Bechdel

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC looks at more recent titles with their Summer Reading sale and towards the past with an Elseworlds sale. Dark Horse discounts a wide range of horror books and… is that Alison Bechdel?

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):

Summer Loving Reading

World's Finest Lobo  Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes

The DC Summer Reading Sale runs through Monday, 6/24.

Another eclectic title mix from DC, but plenty of $2.99/$3.99 titles and a few things are new (or at least recent) to having a discount. Let’s run down some notables by the bullets:

  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton; The extremely well done return to the continuity of the 90s animated series by two of the show runners (and Ty Templeton’s been on this version a loooooooong time).
  • Batman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the original 30s/40s stories for $3.99/volume.
  • Batman/Superman: World’s Finest – Mark Waid/Dan Mora; Probably our favorite DC ongoing title at the moment. Popular with .cheap readers, too. Third volume recently entered discount territory.
  • The Dead Boy Detectives (’05) – Jill Thompson’s manga style adventure of what’s now a Netflix series.
  • Gotham Central – Ed Brubaker / Greg Rucka / Michael Lark / Stefano Gaudiano / Jason Shawn Alexander / Kano; The excellent series where the Gotham PD tries to cope with Gotham Crime without Batman. Double volumes for $2.99. Very worth taking a flier on if you’re unfamiliar.
  • Green Arrow (’23)-Josh Williamson / Sean Izaakse; First time discounted?
  • The Huntress: Origins – Paul Levitz / Joe Staton; All the Bronze Age solo appearances in once place.
  • JLA (’97) –    The 90s run that started with Grant Morrison / Howard Porter, mostly $3.99 for double volumes. A good era for the Justice League.
  • Justice Society of America (’23) – Geoff Johns / Mikel Janin; We can’t tell you when the next few issues will ship, but the collection of the first 7 issues is discounted.
  • Lobo (’90) – Keith Giffen / Alan Grant / Simon Bisley; The original off-color, ultra-violent humor series starring The Main Man. An effective tool for the offending of the easily offendable, but very funny if you aren’t.
  • Mister Miracle (’17) – Tom King / Mitch Gerads; In this much-lauded series, Mister Miracle attempts to escape death itself.
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV / Alvaro Martinez Bueno; $2.99/volume ahead of the next series. High school friends are gathered at a remote house as the world ends… and the rest is spoilers. Very well done and a surprisingly big seller for a Vertigo book without the Vertigo imprint behind it.
  • The Omega Men: The End is Here – Tom King / Barnaby Bagenda; Under-appreciated early Tom King meditation on modern terrorism with the Omega Men reimagined as political terrorists who’ve kidnapped Kyle Rayner. Also one of the best Kyle Rayner stories you’ll find.
  • Peacemaker Tries Hard! – Kyle Starks / Steve Pugh; A recent addition to the ranks of the discounted at $3.99.
  • Rorschach (’20) – Tom King  / Jorge Fornés; The rare Watchmen sequel(ish) that we’ll endorse! It’s a political thriller in the Watchmen universe.
  • Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes – Paul Levitz / James Sherman / Mike Grell / Joe Staton / Jim Starlin – better than usual prices for big chunks of the first Paul Levitz run.
  • Superman (’23) – Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell; Best “traditional” take on Superman in a few years. V.2 came out (at regular price) recently.
  • Superman: Birthright – Mark Waid / Leinil Francis Yu; 12 issue mini about Superman’s early years for $2.99
  • Superman: The Golden Age – Big chunks of the 30s/40s Superman tales for $2.99/$3.99.
  • The Wild Storm – Warren Ellis / John Davis-Hunt; A reimagining/updating of WildCATS and the Jim Lee Wildstorm characters. Davis-Hunt is vastly under-appreciated.
  • Wonder Woman: The Golden Age – It’s hard to describe how deeply strange the early 1940s Wonder Woman comics are… and not just the submission and bondage elements. Blow your mind for $3.99
  • World’s Finest: The Silver Age – Big chunks of the original series (starting with the ’54 material) for $3.99 a pop.

Elsewhere
The Nail  Bizarro Comics  Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

The DC Elseworlds Sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

Elseworlds were originally DC’s answer to Marvel’s What If series, frequently re-imagining heroes in different settings and time periods. And you know what? Some of the were legitimately great comics. This sale has a few things that haven’t traditionally been referred to as “Elseworlds” (and we have no idea why some of the high end Batman collections are at the end, so we’ll leave it you to browse those) and there are several  things we are happy to recommend without reservation:

  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Frank Miller; the classic tale of Batman coming out of retirement
  • Batman: Gotham By Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola; a Victorian/Steampunk/Jules Verne reimaging of Batman who comes in conflict with Jack the Ripper and a version of Verne’s Robur the Conqueror
  • Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader – Neil Gaiman / Andy Kubert; A Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow – style send-off to Batman that starts at his funeral.
  • Batman: Year 100 & Other Tales – Paul Pope; Pope spins a future tale of a new Batman appearing, as Commissioner Gordon’s grandson pursues him. You don’t want to pay the hardcover price for this one.
  • Bizarro Comics: The Deluxe Edition – Genuinely odd anthology where alternative cartoonists like Peter Bagge, Ivan Brunetti, Tony Millionaire and Carol Lay do shorts with the various DC characters. Yes, that’s a Matt Groening cover.
  • Justice League of America: The Nail – Alan Davis; Ma and Pa Kent get a flat tire and never find Kal-El’s rocket, so the Justice League forms without Superman and things do not go smoothly.
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid and Alex Ross; You don’t get Injustice: Gods Among Us without this dystopian tale of a new generation of heroes running amok. It’s really a critique of the 90s grim ‘n’ gritty comics movement.
  • Superman: Red Son – Mark Millar / Dave Johnson / Killian Plunkett; What if baby Kal-el’s rocket crashed in the Soviet Union and he was raised to be Stalin’s secret weapon? Also, Dave Johnson doing interiors!
  • Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? – Alan Moore / Curt Swan; After Crisis on Infinite Earths wrapped, but before Superman relaunched under John Byrne, Moore and Swan did a two-part story to tie a ribbon on the saga of the original Superman. (Theoretically the Silver/Bronze Age Superman, but this is pretty all encompassing.)

Unannounced Sales – The Horror, The Horror…

Not listed on the Deals page, it seems Dark Horse is having a horror sale.  Indeed, Dark Horse has done a LOT of horror over the years. You might even say it’s a specialty for them. Here are some things we found:

What’s good here? The Mignola-verse is the standard bearer, and a many threaded thing it is. Before you get to the last B.P.R.D. Omnibus (in many ways, the real backbone of that universe), it helps to have read all of Hellboy, plus some Abe Sapien (which gets into his true origins) and Witchfinder. And that’s the _major_ highlights.

Horror’s a pretty strong genre for Dark Horse.

Even More Unannounced Sales
Heathen  Wrassle Castle  Fun Home

From Vault / Wonderbound

The Alison Bechdel Section

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Guardians of the Galaxy; DC’s Greatest Hits; Scarlet Witch; Rogue & Gambit; Mass Effect

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Scarlet Witch and Rogue & Gambit. DC drops a “Greatest Hits” sale and Mass Effect gets a discount at Dark Horse.

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):

DC’s Besties

All-Star Superman  Far Sector  Sandman

The DC Greatest Hits Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Something of a “best of” or “classics” sale… and some of the prices are good, particularly on older volumes. This is more of a “what haven’t I gotten around to reading” sale and it’s worth a browse.

A few things that caught our eye and/or are at a particularly good price:

  • All-Star Superman – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely – a love letter to the Silver Age tales and recommended by James Gunn
  • Batman: The Adventures Continue – Alan Burnett / Paul Dini / Ty Templeton – return to the world of “Batman: The Animated Series” and it doesn’t miss a step
  • Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – Brian Augustyn / Mike Mignola – a Victorian/Steampunk Elseworlds with a new sequel coming out
  • Batman: The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale – since a final installment has been announced, here’s the original
  • DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke – Cooke’s stone cold classic about the dawn of the Silver Age heroes. A+
  • Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles – Mark Russell / Mike Feehan – Snaggletooth recast as Tennessee Williams facing down the House Unamerican Activities Committee
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham – $2.99/volume for the long-running Epic of fairy tale heroes and villains in exile
  • Far Sector – N.K. Jemison / Jamal Campbell – A new Green Lantern at the edge of the galaxy investigates the first murder in 500 years. Good luck finding better world building.
  • The Human Target – Tom King / Greg Smallwood – It’s a serious noir that also has all the goofiness of the bwa ha ha era Justice League International. Great book.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us – Tom Taylor / Mike S. Miller / Bruno Redondo – You wouldn’t think this was a video game adaption + enter the team of Taylor & Redondo
  • Kingdom Come – Mark Waid / Alex Ross – the original dystopian DC epic
  • Saga of the Swamp Thing – Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / Stan Woch / John Totleben – Moore’s hugely influential run for $2.99/volume
  • Sandman – Neil Gaiman / a rotating cast of artists – Gaiman’s fantasy classic at $2.99/volume
  • Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons – you already know what this is.
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson – Diana wakes up in a dystopian hellscape and tries to piece together what destroyed civilization. “Metal” is a good way to describe it.
  • World’s Finest – Mark Waid/ Dan Mora; contender for DC’s best current title and V. 3 is now discounted.
  • Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan / Pia Guerra – All the men have died, save Yorrick and his monkey. $2.99 per DOUBLE volume. As cheap as it gets!

Groot? Groot Groot.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers   Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing   Guardians of the Galaxy Omnibus

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

Let’s break this into incarnations.

Original Guardians of the Galaxy

New GoG (The DnA cast or movie version if you must)

What’s good here?  Well, we’ve always liked the original. Particularly the Steve Gerber bits. We also loved the recent Al Ewing / Juan Cabal run. And if you like the current incarnation, you should probably go back to the source with the DnA run. We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point out that Kev Walker did an amazing job on the art with the most recent run.

Which Witch?

Vision and the Scarlet Witch   Avengers West Coast   House of M

The Marvel Scarlet Witch Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The value buy here is Vision & The Scarlet Witch: The Saga of Wanda and Vision. It’s a sort of faux-Epic Edition, clocking in at 467 pages and including the wedding of Wanda and Vision from Giant-Size Avengers #4, the ’82 Bill Mantlo/Rick Leonardi mini-series and the ’85 Steve Englehart/Richard Howell 12-parter.

There’s a lot of West Coast Avengers in this sale, largely for Wanda’s heel-turn in the John Byrne Vision Quest/Darker than Scarlet era — the Epic Collections are the better buys here.

House of M by Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel might be a little over-hyped at this point, but it’s the tent-pole “Wanda rewrites reality” story that’s central to the TV adaptation.

We might reserve our largest praise for Wanda’s once and future husband, though. Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta is an excellent tale. The Vision has a synthezoid family in the suburbs and things slowly go horribly wrong.

‘Til Death Do Us Discount

Mr. and Mrs. X   Gambit Classic   Gambit: The Complete Collection

The Marvel Rogue and Gambit Sale runs through Monday, 6/3.

The series the best lives up to the sale’s theme is Mr. & Mrs. X by Kelly Thompson, Oscar Bazaldua and David Lopez. That would be Rogue and Gambit, if you missed the wedding.

While Gambit is the newer character, he’s had more exposure in solo titles. Gambit Classic collects the original Uncanny X-Men arc and the early mini’s, including the 1995 Rogue mini-series in V.2.

Gambit: The Complete Collection is the slightly better known 1999 series primarily by Fabian Nicieza / Steve Skroce / Yanick Paquette

Plenty of assorted X-Men volumes to go with all this, too.

Unlisted Sales

Mass Effect  Killer Queens

Over at Dark Horse, we find a Mass Effect sale, as in the video game from Bioware. It’s available in:

Also with a discount: Killer Queens by David M. Booher & Claudia Balboni, which sports the tagline, “putting the SASS in assassin.”

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Superman; Captain Britain and Excalibur; New Mutants; Thunderbolts; The Witcher

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has wide discounts for Superman’s Anniversary. Marvel drops prices on Captain Britain and Excalibur, New Mutants and Thunderbolts. Dark Horse holds a sale on The Witcher.

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-Sale

Superman  All-Star Superman  Superman: Phantom Zone

The DC Superman Anniversary Sale runs through Monday, 4/22.

An All-Superman, all-the-time sale. Now, DC’s digital depth doesn’t really go as deep as Marvel, so everything before the John Byrne/Man of Steel era is a little spotty… but you know what? Byrne’s run ushered in a pretty entertaining period.

The slightly better buy for the early portion of that Byrne-initiated period is the smaller Man of Steel collections (this flip-flops from sale to sale with the larger volumes). This is the post-Crisis relaunch spearheaded by John Byrne, but also with Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern and Dan Jurgen showing up early on. Solid runs and we’re particularly fond of Ordway’s work.

After Byrne left, but still firmly in what we’d consider this period of Superman, there’s a good run by George Perez with Roger Stern and Kerry Gammill collected in The Adventures of Superman by George Perez.

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.

For more recent items, the Mark Waid / Dan Mora World’s Finest (with a certain caped crusader in tow) is aces.

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.

“I’m Not a Bad Sword, King Arthur Just Drew Me That Way”
Excalibur Excalibur Exaclibur

Marvel’s Captain Britain and Excalibur Sale runs through Monday, 4/22.

The original run of Excalibur is here. We’re big fans of anything Alan Davis touched on this book and especially his second run as writer/artist. The Epic Collections are the better deal here, so you’re looking at The Sword is Drawn and The Cross-Time Caper as the two Epic Collections with Chris Claremont writing. We’d probably skip ahead to Curiouser and Curiouser, which begins the Davis solo run. HOWEVER, the last segment of the Davis run is only in Excalibur Visionaries: Alan Davis, Vol. 3 further down the page.

What else is here? Captain Britain: Legacy of a Legend is an odd, incomplete selection of tales across the various UK titles the character appeared in (plus, Marvel Team-Up). It’ll give a flavor for it, and has some of the Alan Moore/Alan Davis run, but there’s a reason we jump up and down when the omnibus goes on sale. That’s the complete version.

Claremont returned to Excalibur for a 2004 series with Aaron Lopresti. He also worked on New Excalibur with Christopher Yost and several rotating artists in 2006.

Captain Britain and MI:13 by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk has Captain Britain and the UK super-espionage community butting heads with Skrulls and vampries.

Fresh Mutations

New Mutants: The Demon Bear Saga  New Mutants

The Marvel New Mutants Sale runs through Monday, 4/22

Let’s break this one down by the series highlights first:

  • New Mutants (’83 – ’91) – The original run
  • New Mutants (’09 – ’11) – Zeb Wells / Diogenes Neves; DnA / Leandro Fernandez & David Lopez
  • New Mutants (’03 – ’04) – Nunzio DeFilippis / Christina Weir / Keron Grant / Khary Randolph
  • New Mutants Forever (’10) – Chris Claremont / Al Rio
  • New Mutants: Dead Souls (’18) – Matthew Rosenberg / Adam Gorham
  • New Mutants (’19-’22) – The HoX/PoX (Hickman) era with rotating creators

What’s the best run of New Mutants? That’s a question that runs to personal preference more than most series. We’d say, #18-31 is the core with Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz that stands above the rest. Demon Bear. The introduction of Warlock. A good Legion arc. And it’s conveniently packaged in an Epic Collection. It’s still an interesting run after Sienkiewicz moves on, but he’s so good at setting mood and tone.

Another thing we’d throw out as particularly interesting is specifically the Jonathan Hickman installments of the most recent series. These are also conveniently collected in a single volume… and his issues didn’t always run sequentially.

Past that, this is one where you browse and see if something strikes your fancy.

Thunder. Thunder. Thunderca… Whoops, Wrong Series!

Thunderbolts

The Marvel Thunderbolts Sale runs through Monday, 8/14.

The Thunderbolts have been through several iterations since they began in ’97, originally having been the Masters of Evil laying the groundwork for nefarious deeds. And yes, there’s a film in the works.

The original series was written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. Eventually Fabian Nicieza tagged in as writer and Patrick Zircher became the lead artist a bit after that. Alas, these volumes are only going to take you through issue #50. The  omnibus editions are more complete, but aren’t on sale right now.

New Thunderbolts was the ’04-’06 relaunch, and yes, it’s included in the third omnibus of the original. Fabian Nicieza/Tom Grummett is the creative team, here.

This then turns back into (no adjective) Thunderbolts for ’06-’12, starting Nicieza/Grummett and then including runs by Warren Ellis / Mike Deodato and Jeff Parker/Kev Walker/Declan Shalvey

Thunderbolts relaunched for ’12-’14 with Daniel Way and then Charles Soule writing it. The artist rotation included Steve Dillon and Phil Noto.

Jim Zub and Jon Malin were behind the ’16-’17 Thunderbolts run.

’20 saw King in Black: Thunderbolts by Matthew Rosenberg/Gerry Duggan/Juan E. Ferreyra/Luke Ross.

The most recent volume in the sale is ’22’s Thunderbolts: Back on Target by Jim Zub and Sean Izaakse.

With Thunderbolts, we feel pretty strongly you need to read the first sequence or two and get a flavor for the concept before jumping into the later evolutions.

Unannounced Sales

Witcher Omnibus

Dark Horse has put their adaptations of The Witcher on sale. They’re available in:

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Grant Morrison’s X-Men; Superman; Squirrel Girl; Fear Itself; Richard Corben

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel cuts prices on Grant Morrison’s X-Men run, Squirrel Girl and Fear Itself. DC discounts the most recent Superman volume, amongst its “spring break” specials. Plus, an unannounced Richard Corben sale.

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):

Everything New is Old Again

New X-Men

The Marvel New X-Men by Gran Morrison Sale runs through Monday, 4/15.

Marvel does use “New” in their titles a lot, don’t they? Tells you the emphasis on this month’s single issues vs. collected editions.

What’s this one about? Grant Morrison did a highly celebrated run on the rebranded New X-Men from ’01-’04 with Frank Quitely, Igor Kordey, Chris Bachalo and Marc Silvestri, among others on art duty.  Highly celebrated enough to get its own sale. (Hey, we enjoyed it!)

Conveniently available in three volumes.

Fear… the Deer?
Fear Itself Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself

The Marvel Fear Itself Sale runs through Monday, 4/15.

Fear Itself was a Marvel crossover Event we always thought should have just been a Thor/Iron Man crossover.

Fear Itself is the main series and on the Thor-centric side as the Asgardian god of fear escapes and marches Midgard towards an apocalypse. Matt Fraction and Stuart Immonen are your creators.

The tie-in we liked for this was Invincible Iron Man: Fear Itself from the excellent Matt Fraction / Salvador Larocca Iron Man run. Tony Stark doesn’t think he’s surviving this one, so he joins the dwarves in boozing while making weapons. One of the better “drinking with dwarves” sequences in literature.

Go for the Nuts
Squirrel Girl

The Marvel Squirrel Girl Sale is running through Monday, 4/15.

In the inimitable Marvel Way, this is one is a little goofy because of how many different editions of the same comics there are.

  • Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series “2015A” and “2015B” by Ryan North and Erica Henderson. This is where everything starts and the original Squirrel Girl appearances are in the first volume.  These are omnibus editions and take you up to #31 of the “2015B” series.
  • To get the rest of the series, switch over to the single volumes and V.9 – 12 will take you from issue #32 to the end. Coincidentally, this is where Derek Charm pops in as artist.

That’s the easy way. Now, if you want the absolute cheapest way, you want to sub in these two alternate packaging volumes for V.2 and V.3 of those omnibuses above (i.e. #1-21 of “2015B”).

Don’t worry, they’ll inevitably add another layer of repackaging to further confuse the situation.

Also, if you’re looking for Squirrel Girl’s earliest appearances, there’s Squirrel Girl & the Great Lakes Avengers.

Spring Break Bodysnatchers From Dayton – The Sequel

Superman  The Human Target  One-Star Squadron

The DC Spring Break Sale runs through Monday, 4/15.

It’s another DC sale with an eclectic selection of books, so we’ll go through some highlights (and assume you’re mostly all Batman’d out after the last couple weeks… that’s OK, the Superman selections are interesting).

  • DC Meets Looney Tunes – You’re getting this for the absolutely astonishing Batman / Elmer Fudd by Tom King and Lee Weeks (who cannot be praised enough for how he makes this work). Yes, a noir interpretation of Elmer Fudd heads to Gotham and the less you know past that, the better.
  • The Human Target – Tom King and Greg Smallwood send Christopher Chance investigating who poisoned him and it looks like the bwa ha ha era Justice League was involved… yet it’s a still pure noir. Great book.
  • The Joker – James Tynion IV / Guillem March
  • Justice League: Last Ride – You knew Chip Zdarsky did a Justice League story, right?  Zdarksy / Miguel Mendonca
  • The Nice House on the Lake – James Tynion IV & Alvaro Martinez Bueno with the most successful horror series in recent memory. (Wither Vertigo, DC?)
  • One-Star Squadron – Mark Russell & Steve Lieber (such an obvious pairing, it’s odd they haven’t done more together) present a dark satire of the gig economy as Red Tornado attempts to run a hero-on-demand app. Good stuff!
  • Rogues – Josh Williamson and Leomacs present a Black Label take on the Flash’s Rouges Gallery.
  • Superman V.1: Supercorp – This is the first volume of the current Josh Williamson / Jamal Campbell Superman series. This was definitely a buzz book that we’ll vouch for.
  • Superman: Son of Kal-El – The Jon Kent series by Tom Taylor / John Timms / Cian Tormey
  • Superman: For All Seasons – The Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale take on Superman

Lucky 13
Doctor Who

The Titan The Thirteenth Doctor Sale runs through Monday, 5/20.

That’s the 13th Doctor as in Jodie Whittaker’s run on Doctor Who.

Mostly done by Jody Houser / Rachael Stott / Roberta Ingranata, you get your choice of formats:

Also available The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor is available in single issues or a collected  edition.

Unannounced
Den Edgar Allan Poe's Spirits of the Dead

It appears Dark Horse has a Richard Corben sale with a wider set of items than you might expect:

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Still on Sale

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Super Sons, Gerry Duggan’s Marvel Catalog; Black Lightning; Spider-Woman; Dark Horse Manga

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts Spider-Woman and Gerry Duggan. DC celebrates “Power” and the Super Sons. Plus, unlisted 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):

Child Welfare Has Questions

Batman & Robin  Superman  Super Sons

The  DC Super Sons Sale runs through Monday, 2/19.

The Super Sons were originally the adventures of Clark Kent, Jr. and Bruce Wayne, Jr. that appeared every so often in World’s Finest from ’73 to ’80 in takes by Bob Haney and Dick Dillon.  When did Superman and Batman have kids? That’s addressed in the final tale. It’s collected in The Saga of the Super Sons.

For post-Crisis (and onward) DC this translates to…

On the Batman side:

  • Batman & Robin ’09-’11 – The Grant Morrison / (initially) Frank Quitely run that ends with the beginning of Peter J. Tomasi / Patrick Gleason
  •  Batman & Robin ’11-’15 – Tomasi & Gleason do another 40 issues.

On the Superman side:

  • Superman ’16-’18 – Tomasi & Gleason swap over to do what’s essentially “Superman & Son”
  • Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent – Tom Taylor / Clayton Henry – Superman’s son grew up (in Space, but now he’s back on Earth)

The current/recent Super Sons:

If you wanted to call this a Tomasi sale, we probably wouldn’t argue with you.

The Evasive Title Sale

The DC Power Sale runs through Monday, 2/19.

Looking at the titles listed, we think this is a Black History Month sale. Is the “Power” in the title supposed to be “Black Power?” Maybe?

So the original headlining black hero in the DC universe is Black Lighting.

The original Black Lightning run is by Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eden. And volume two in that sequence is a collection of the back-up features from Detective and World’s Finest, plus a Justice League of America interlude.

A good Black Lighting value? The 1995 revival by Isabella and Eddy Newell is 347 pages for $3.99.  Plus, we always thought Eddy Newell didn’t get enough love.

Speaking of not getting enough love, Dwayne McDuffie didn’t get nearly the love on the publishing side as he did on the animation side. Especially from editorial. (We’ve heard a few stories…) McDuffie selections:

Also, The DC Universe by Dwayne McDuffie collects several short runs and one-offs… although the price is higher than ideal.

Naomi by Brian Bendis / David Walker / Jamal Campbell is a nominally YA super heroine series about a teen trying to figure out where she comes from. It got a pretty quick (and short lived) TV adaption. We were pleasantly surprised by this one. Hype was real.

With Priest, they’re not putting the full (and excellent) Deathstroke run on sale and it’s not clear the second half of Black Adam will be collected, so we’d point you to his Justice League run with Pete Wood

There’s more here, but that’s the top of our list.  And we wonder if a Milestone sale is set for next week?

Eensy Weensy

Spider-Woman  Spider-Girl  Araña

The Marvel Spider-Woman Sale runs through Monday, 2/19

Except… it’s not just Spider-Woman. It’s Spider-Woman, Spider-Girl and Araña.

We know what you’re asking: where’s Silk? And we have no answer for that.

What do we like out of this? We’re not really current on Spider-Woman, but we can tell you that the original Spider-Woman comic is a deeply weird book. Lots of magic early on. Morgan Le Fey, Werewolf By Night, The Brothers Grim. If you like the more bizarre corners of ’70s/’80s  Marvel for its strangeness, it’s worth a look.

DeFalco & Frenz had around a 12-year run on the various Spider-Girl titles and you don’t see that kind of longevity very often.

  • Araña – Fiona Avery / Mark Brooks

Dig Dugg

Savage Avengers  Maruaders  X-Men by Gerry Duggan

The Marvel Gerry Duggan Sale runs through Monday, 2/19.

It would seem that Gerry Duggan has ignored the usual corporate career advice and let his bosses notice him. In fact, he has been writing a fair amount of comics lately, particularly in the world of X.

Here are the highlights:

What’s good? This may come as a bit of a shock if you haven’t sampled it, but Savage Avengers has a Defenders vibe to it… except it’s Conan’s non-team, not Doctor Strange’s or Nighthawk’s. It’s odd, rambling and fun. The absolute high point? Conan questioning Doctor Doom’s manhood in a thorough dressing down.

The Marauders was one of the more dependable titles in the HoX/PoX era of X-title. This would be Captain Pryde and her pirates.

With Uncanny X-Men, pay special attention to the Pepe Larraz issues. He was hitting a new level.

Manga on the DL

It appears there’s now an unnannounced sale on Dark Horse manga.  Of these, our favorite is the old school classic Lone Wolf and Cub.

Other highlights:

Random Comic Strip Discounts

More random comic strip collections are on the cheap. Not every volume, but scroll through the list and you’ll see a few.

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