Superman Archives - Page 4 of 4

This week’s Comixology sales include a bunch of Marvel with Spidey, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shang-Chi and SHIELD getting discounts. DC has a “Top 100” Sale and Matt Kindt’s Dark Horse work gets slashed.

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

Why Not “Fabulous Spider-Man?”

The Marvel Spectacular Spider-Man Sale runs through Thursday, 9/2.

This sale is so small and organized, we don’t have to link to the individual series, you can just look at the sale page, no sweat.

We’re looking at 4 things here. In order of presentation:

The more recent Spectacular Spider-Man, mostly by Chip “I have a Substack now” Zdarsky and Adam Kubert. You should already know if that sounds good.
Masterworks editions of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man. Masterwork editions tend to be good value and we’d point out that V.2 has Frank Miller’s first Daredevil work and the Carrion storyline would turn out to be an important one, if controversial.
The ’03-’05 Spectacular Spider-Man. We’ve always found Paul Jenkin’s Spidey to be under-appreciated. He writes the first 4 volumes with Humberto Ramos as the primary artist… with some early Paolo Rivera in V. 3. Feel free to skip the Sins Remembered tie-in in V. 5 and then Jenkins is back for V.6
And the last thing listed is a collection of the 1968 magazine version of Spectacular Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr.

If you like Spidey, it’s a decent menu.

Who Guards the Guardians?

The Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

The Guardians have been around quite a while and were originally based in the future. We always recommend going back to the original Steve Gerber/Roger Stern/Al Milgrom run. Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow’s Avengers covers that. Vol. 1 is the first appearance through the primary solo run in Marvel Presents. Vol. 2 covers the rest of their guest appearances, notably including the Korvac Saga in Avengers.

The Guardians popped up again in ’90 in a very popular (and very fun) series by Jim Valentino. Yes, we know everyone reading this is old school enough to associate Valentino more with Normalman, but GoG was the direct line leading him to co-found Image comics. This version of GoG spends quite a bit of time exploring the legacy of the Marvel universe… and some of the less mortal characters who are still floating around far in the future. Guardians of the Galaxy by Jim Valentino collects his run.

The current run start with Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing with Juan Cabal on art, which finds the Guardians at war with the gods… and, as you might expect with Ewing, setting up a longer game.

SHIELD’s Up

The Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D. sale runs through Sunday, 8/29.

Many would still sale the best SHIELD is Jim Steranko’s SHIELD, which is conveniently collected in… can you guess the name? Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D. by Steranko – the Complete Collection. There’s nothing wrong with the Lee/Kirby material, and if you go the Masterworks route, there’s some Archie Goodwin to be read, but Steranko is still the bar for many.

Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD by Bob Harras and Paul Neary was the late 80s reappraisal and still the “SHIELD has been infiltrated compromised” arc that everyone apes. (This led to the ’89-’92 series.)

The Deadly Hands of Reboot

The Marvel Shang-Chi Sale runs through Sunday, 9/12.

Gosh, you’d think there was a movie coming out or something?

Shang-Chi is kind of an odd character in the world of Marvel. He essentially has had three lives:

First was the Master of Kung Fu era. This was originally a licensed comic and the license was Fu Manchu. Shang, an original creation (thus, owned by Marvel) was Fu Manchu’s virtuous, rebellious son who worked with MI-5 against his father. It was blend of espionage, pulp and Hong Kong cinema. Doug Moench was the writer for the bulk of the period. Paul Gulacy is the artist most associated with the feature, but Jim Craig, Mike Zeck and Gene Day had their runs. This was considered one of Marvel’s finest comics of the 70s, but… let’s put it mildly and say Fu Manchu is a little out of favor.

The second life was when Marvel tried to revive the character, mostly intact, and just not mention who his father is. Or assign a different father. This never went very far.

Right now, we’ve entered the third life where Shang-Chi is now more of a fantasy comic with a more mystical evil father, weapons/caste-based secret societies and the undead. Oh, there’s still some MI-5 around the edges, but it’s a very different comic than where it started. Gene Yang, Dike Ruan and Philip Tan. You can feel the influence from Jimmie Robinson’s Five Weapons, too!

We Thought The 100 Were Villains?

The DC Top 100 eBooks Sale runs through Monday, 8/30

DC’s back at the sub-50% discount game again. You have been warned. Items of interest include:

Kingdom Come is the 90s classic by Mark Waid and Alex Ross that defined the dystopian future sub-genre for a spell (and we still think it’s the true inspiration for the Injustice video game).

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson and Killian Plunkett is the tale of infant Kal-El’s spacecraft landing in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. It’s on the short list for Millar’s best work.

We’ve mentioned before how pleasantly surprised we were with DCeased, Tom Taylor’s and Trevor Hairsine’s Anti-Life Equation zombie(ish) epic. We’re not recanting.

Sale MGMT

The Dark Horse Matt Kindt Sale runs through Monday, 8/30.

Matt Kindt has done a fair amount of work for Dark Horse, but his opus there will likely always be the psychic espionage series, Mind MGMT.

Still On Sale

The Small Press Graphic Novel Mega Sale runs through Thursday, 9/9
The Dynamite Omnibus Sale runs through Monday, 9/13
The IDW GI Joe Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16
The IDW Transformers Sale runs through Thursday, 9/16

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

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

Foundational X-Men Spin-Offs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Across the Multiverse

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

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

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

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

Everything’s Coming Up Kirkman

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

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