Tag: X-Men

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: A Week of Unannounced Sales and the Marvel Mystery Pricing

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC has a Juneteenth sale and anything else new is unannounced… including the mystery of what’s going on with Marvel’s digital prices and whether they still have sales?

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):

Buckle up for an unusual round-up. Amazon only posted one new sale and we had to do some serious scrounging… but it seems the deal page is not the end-all, be-all of listings this week.

The Sole *Announced* New Sale of the Week

Far Sector  Black Lightning  Hardware

The DC Juneteenth Sale runs through Monday, 6/24.

If we were going to pick one book out of this sale, it’s Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell. A rookie Green Lantern is sent to a remote world on the far side of the universe where violence is unheard of… and encounters the first murder in anyone’s memory. You’ll be hard pressed to find better world building and Jemisin really nails her debut.

Also notable:

  • The Other History of the DC Universe – John Ridley / Giuseppe Camuncoli
  • The DC Universe by Dwayne McDuffie – If you don’t like McDuffie, there’s much we can’t help you with.
  • Black Lightning (’77-’78) – Initially, Tony Isabella / Trevor Von Eeden; $3.99 may be the lowest we’ve seen these priced. V.2 is the follow-on features in Detective and World’s Finest.
  • Hardware: The Man in the Machine – Dwayne McDuffie / Denys Cowan; The classic original Milestone arc, which is pretty darn accurate in it’s depiction of IP and non-competes. Tech workers, feel seen.
  • Icon – Dwayne McDuffie / Mark Bright; Milestone’s original analog to Superman
  • Static – Dwayne McDuffie / Robert L. Washington / John Paul Leon; Long before the Static Shock cartoon…

Possible Unannounced Marvel Sales
Avengers, Inc.  New X-Men Predator versus Wolverine

We aren’t 100% sure what to make of this. As you may have noticed, there have been no new Marvel sales on the Deals page for two weeks. We did find a smattering of collections that appear to be discounted. Not quite the sort of discounts you’re used to seeing from Marvel and and a fairly random set, so maybe it’s an unannounced sale and maybe it’s not. We’ll leave that for you to decide.

The first one, we’re pretty sure it’s an unannounced sale and you might want to jump fast if you haven’t read it: New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection: E Is For Extinction – As in 365 pages of Grant Morrison’s X-Men run with a pre-order price of $6.99? (Art by Frank Quitely / Leinil Francis Yu)  We aren’t sure how long that price is sticking around!

Past that… we see a few prices that are lower than we might normally expect and some just plain weird price points.

  • Avengers, Inc. – Al Ewing / Leonard Kirk; The Wasp solves crimes out of uniform. Her sidekick? Someone has possessed the body of Whirlwind and she’s not quite sure who he really is. One of our favorite Marvel releases in recent months. We’re seeing the very odd price of $8.79 as we type this.
  • Daredevil: Black Armor– D.G. Chichester / Netho Diaz; Revisiting the time where horn head had that alternate costume. We’d put this as taking place shortly after Fall From Grace. We’re seeing $6.99 as we type this.
  • Ghost Rider V. 4: Rite of Passage – Ben Percy / Carlos Nieto; We’re seeing $6.99 as we type this.
  • Predator vs. Wolverine – Ben Percy / Ken Lashley / Andrea Di Vito; You’re groaning at the concept, but this was actually a very enjoyable miniseries. Yes, we were surprised, too, but there you are. We’re seeing the genuinely odd price point of $6.49 as we type this.
  • She-Hulk by Rainbow Rowell Vol. 4 – Rainbow Rowell / Jessica Gao; We’re seeing the oddest price yet, $7.19, as we’re typing this.
  • Star Wars: Dark Droids – Charles Soule / Leinil Francis Yu / Luke Ross We’re seeing $8.99 as we type this.
  •  Ultimate Invasion – Jonathan Hickman / Bryan Hitch; The setup for the new Ultimate Universe. We’re seeing $8.99 as we type this.
  • Uncanny Avengers: The Resistance  – Gerry Duggan / Javier Garron; We’re seeing $7.99 as we type this.
  • Wolverine Vol. 7 – Ben Percy / Juan Jose Ryp; We’re seeing $6.99 as we type this
  • Wolverine Vol. 8 – Ben Percy / Victor LaVelle / Geoff Shaw; We’re seeing $6.99 as we type this

We’re not completely sure what to make of the above. At minimum, there’s some noticeable variation in the Marvel digital pricing. Are they experimenting with an $8.99 / $6.99 new release price or are those sales? Unclear. Not everything starts at $8.99 and here’s the thing: you can change the digital list price just as easily as you can issue a digital sale price. We’ll have to see how all this develops. That X-Men Epic Collection, though? That’s a sale price, no matter how anybody wants to spin it.

Everything in the price box says “price set by the seller,” so we are forced to assume these odd price variations (and lack of deals page entries) are from Marvel and by design, as opposed to Amazon-initiated.

Unannounced Hellboy and Youneek Sales at Dark Horse

Hellboy and the BPRD  E.X.O.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. goes back to tell Hellboy’s early adventures with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, starting in the 1950s. (Remember, Hellboy first appeared on Earth in 1944.) Which is to say, more Hellboy adventures. These are available in

And then from Youneek Studios:

Unannounced Manga & Misc. Sales

Barnaby  Yozakura Quartet

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Silver Surfer; DC Pride; Marvel Knights; X-Men; DH Manga; Dragon Age

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel slashes prices on the Silver Surfer, Marvel Knights and X-Men “Crossovers.” DC has their annual Pride sale. Dark Horse discounts most of their manga, plus Dragon Age.

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):

Surfin’ Bird

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

The  Marvel Silver Surfer Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

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. It does not appear to be on sale this time, but we’ll list it for the sake of completeness.

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.

Who Exactly Did the Knighting Ceremony?

Daredevil Marvel Knights   Punisher  Spider-Man

The Marvel Knights Sale runs through Monday 6/10.

It’s probably best to put this in historical context. Prior to becoming Marvel EIC, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were co-running an imprint at Marvel called “Marvel Knights.” This started when Marvel was not exactly at a high point and Quesada & Palmiotti reinvigorated several titles. Eventually, Quesada got promoted.

The flagship title for Marvel Knights was probably Daredevil. It started out with Kevin Smith and Quesada as the creators, which was a hit. Then Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev had a storied run on it.

Garth Ennis wrote The Punisher for Marvel Knights, both the comedic series and the later series crime version that eventually moved over the MAX imprint.

Very little of it is in the sale, but the Christopher Priest version of Black Panther is still hugely influential.

Grant Morrison did a Fantastic Four mini-series with Jae Lee and Marvel Boy with J.G Jones.

Mark Millar and Terry & Rachel Dodson did a Spider-Man run.

There was also the infamous “we’re just going to pretend that never happened” Punisher miniseries where Frank returns from the grave as an angel of vengeance. No, really.

There’s a bit more there, but those are the highlights (and the famous misfire). It was a pretty influential imprint.

X Marks the Event

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga  X of Swords  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel X-Men Crossovers sale runs through Monday, 6/17.

This is really a sale on the various Events in the X-family of books. Some of them mostly internal to the X-line, some of them crossing over outside.

The bulk of the sale is the X-Men Milestones line which collects Events from Dark Phoenix through  Age of X.

For something like Onslaught, you can simply get the Milestone edition or you can go whole hog:

Ditto for the slightly earlier Age of Apocalypse:

And then a couple more recent events are too new for the Milestones:

What’s good? We’d go back to that original “Milestone” – The Dark Phoenix Saga. There’s a reason it’s a classic and sent the X-Men into a legendary surge of popularity. Hard to go wrong with Claremont & Byrne. We also think extremely highly of the two most recent events: X of Swords & Sins of Sinister.

Pride

Batwoman  The Invisibles  Wonder Woman by George Perez

The  DC Pride Sale runs through Monday, 6/10.

This is a 288 book set of books related to Pride Month. (Some of them more closely related than others.) A few things we saw that were interesting, including some off the more beaten path:

  • Batwoman by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III – Rucka /Williams; The excellent solo series from Detective
  • Batwoman (’11) – W. Haden Blackman / J.H. Williams III / Amy Reeder; Blackman & Williams mount a good follow-up to the above Detective run, but an editorial decision to nix the wedding hampers the ending
  • Doom Patrol – Grant Morrison / Richard Case; The classic… although it’s a shame there’s no Rachel Pollack Doom Patrol in this sale. It would be appropriate.
  • The Invisibles – Grant Morrison / Steve Yeowell / Jill Thompson / Chris Weston; An underground society battles a conspiracy to keep humanity in it’s place.
  • Seven Soldiers of Victory – Grant Morrison’s series of interlocking mini-series isn’t always mentioned, when Morrison’s name is brought up, but we thought it was the execution was on the money.
  • Shade: The Changing Man – Peter Milligan / Chris Bachalo; Early Vertigo as Milligan & Bachalo retool the Ditko hero. The original marketing description of “mind-bending” is apt.
  • Wonder Woman (’87) – There’s a lot to like about this run – George Perez. Phil Jimenez. The first Greg Rucka run. Even a Walt Simonson / Jerry Ordway collaboration. Be aware you need to toggle between the Omnibus page and Volumes page to see all the material

Unlisted Manga + Dragons

Astro Boy  Blade of the Immortal Lone Wolf and Cub

Dark Horse is having an extensive manga sale. By the numbers:

Also on sale, Dark Horse’s comics adaptations of BioWare’s Dragon Age line of video games:

Dragon Age

Even More Unannounced Stephen King Comics
Stephen King's Dark Tower

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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?

(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):

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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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men: The Krakoan Age; Power Man and Iron Fist; Civil War; Stephen King’s The Dark Tower; Critical Role

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel waves goodbye to the Krakoa Age of X-Men with a sale… and some discounts on Power Man & Iron Fist and Civil War, too. Plus, an unannounced Critical Role sale 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):

X-Going-Away-Party

House of X / Powers of X  Dawn of X  Sins of Sinister

The Marvel X-Men: The Krakoan Age Sale runs through Monday, 4/29.

Marvel seems to has settled on “The Kakoan Age” for what we’ve been calling the Hickman Era or the HoX/PoX Era.

As things are winding down, ahead of editor Tom Brevoort leading a line wide reset, theoretically helmed by Gail Simone and/or Jed MacKay, the “Krakoan Age” is on sale. And honestly, it was very good for quite a while and some of it stayed good, too.

Let’s talk about the overall arcs and “… of X” editions first. These are the collected editions that approximate reading the Hickman era as single issues. Roughly speaking they cycle through X-Men, Wolverine, X-Force, Marauders, etc. etc.

While this effect dissipates after time, we think this is the better way to read the Hickman X-Men titles. Story elements originally floated between books and their sum was greater than their parts. The order does something like this:

Inferno is the last arc for Hickman before leaving and it fits in roughly after The Trial of Magneto ends, so you can read it somewhere between Trials of X V.3-6.

We’re not as adamant about reading this in issue-to-issue format after Hickman leaves… although X-Force and Wolverine are certainly intertwined at times. Through Inferno, though? Yes.

The next “act” of the Krakoa age was “Destiny of X,” but that’s apparently only available in this format in French?

Our recommendations for your optimal Destiny of X reading is clustered around two tracts:

Track One: the Axis of Gillen/Spurrier/Ewing – the writers of the three “big concept” X-titles that eventually converge in the truly X-cellent Sins of Sinster Event that we might even put ahead of the also X-cellent X-of Swords.

These books are:

  • Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen / Lucas Werneck; we’d personally consider this the flagship title for the Destiny of X sequence
  • Legion of X by Si Spurrier / Jan Bazaldua / Rafael Pimentel; The explorations of Legion and Nightcrawler’s crews
  • X-Men: Red – Al Ewing / Stefano Caselli / Juann Cabal; Storm’s adventures leading Arakko (Mars) as Ewing keeps a finger in the cosmic side of Marvel

Track two: Ben Percy continues to keep X-Force and Wolverine intertwined in interesting ways, particularly as the long-running saga of Hank McCoy comes to a head.

Pick up X-Force starting with Vol. 5.

Pick up Wolverine starting with Vol. 4.

A mini-series worth mentioning in the “Destiny” period: X-Terminators by Leah Williams / Carlos Gomez manages to be lighthearted with really dark and occasionally off-color humor as Dazzler, Boom Boom, Laura Kinney and Jubilee get mixed up with vampires in the most humiliating ways.

Now, there’s more to the sale and you can always pull them by individual title… but we really think the “of X” format is additive for the world building while Hickman is running the show.

Sweet Christmas!

Iron Fist  Power Man and Iron Fist  Immortal Iron Fist

The Marvel Luke Cage and Iron Fist Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

Once upon a time there were two series: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire / Power Man and Iron Fist.

You can get the first 23 issues of Hero for Hire/Power Man in an Epic Collection.  There were several creators involved, including Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Tony Isabella, George Tuska and Billy Graham. There’s a certain amount of camp to it, but the early tale of Doctor Doom trying to skip out on his bill is what we’d call a heart-warming favorite.

Iron Fist had a shorter run and you can get the entire solo series (Marvel Premiere and Iron Fist) in an Epic Collection. The run is most associated with the team it finished with: an early pairing of Chris Claremont and John Byrne. You may have heard of them.

The two books then merged into the longer-running Power Man & Iron Fist. Now here’s something we don’t always say: this one’s in Epic Collections, but not Masterworks format. Claremont & Byrne left shortly thereafter, paving the way for Jo Duffy, who might be most associated with it. Among the creators working on it were Duffy, Denny O’Neil, (a very young) Kurt Busiek, Christopher Priest, Kerry Gammil, Denys Cowan, Greg Larocque and Mark Bright. A stronger lineup than you might have guessed and a comic that remembered to be goofy at times.

It was revived as Heroes for Hire by John Ostrander and Pasqual Ferry in ’97. We also have a soft spot for the David Walker / Sanford Greene Power Man & Iron Fist in ’16.

But the best of the bunch? The Immortal Iron Fist. People are most familiar with the first half of the series, with the celebrated team of Ed Brubaker/Matt Fraction/David Aja. We’re here to tell you that the back half by Duane Swierczynski/Travel Foreman is also pretty darn good. Plus, more Fat Cobra! Don’t sleep on the back half. Good value with those collected editions, too!

A Polite Disagreement Among Capes

Civil War  Civil War: Front Line V. 1  Civil War: Wolverine

The Marvel Civil War Sale runs through Monday, 4/8.

One of these days, Marvel is going to quit leaving money on the table and give Civil War the treatment it gives something like Hickman’s Avengers saga or Aaron’s Thor saga: an edition (or series of additions) that integrate the main parts in reading order. After all these years, it’s still piecemeal.

So here’s our take on it:

Civil War the main mini-series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven – is the action movie version of the story.

Civil War: Front Line – written by Paul Jenkins with art by Ramon Bachs, Steve Lieber and Lee Weeks – is about WHY the Civil War is happening as Ben Urich tries to get to the bottom of things. This title is much more of the Event’s actual plot and motivations than the more famous flagship series and Marvel really need to have a collection that integrates the two.

There are obviously a lot of tie-in books here. You can dip in where you feel like, but Civil War: Wolverine by Marc Guggenheim and Humberto Ramos is a little more relevant than most and has Logan (hellbent on vengeance) tracking down the people responsible for the Stamford incident.

Yes, there is a lot more to the story than the main Millar/McNiven book, it’s just not really emphasized.

Always Specify .22 or .38
Deadworld   The Realm    Jazz Age Chronicles

The Caliber Comics Library Spring Sale runs through Tuesday, 4/30.

There are a few titles here that were notable in the ’80s indie boom.

And plenty of Don Lomax war comics.

But if you want something a little more recent, Ageless might be of interest. It’s written by Torunn GrØnbekk, who’s been recently been writing Thor, with art by San Espina.

Ageless

Unannounced Sales
Critical Role Stephen King's the Dark Tower

Comixology has not announced that 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.

There’s an omnibus format that’s a little better value and a “regular”  collected edition sale.

Then, formerly from Marvel / currently from Gallery 13, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings by Robin Furth / Peter David / Jae Lee and overseen by King is on sale for $1.99 a pop. It’s the backstory/coming of age for a gunslinger name Roland.

Last Call on Batman

A reminder that the Batman anniversary sale ends on Monday. Some of the material likely won’t be at these prices again until the end of year holiday sales zone. Our notes for the sale are here.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: The New X-Men Writers; Batman; Patton Oswalt

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel discounts the work of the three new X-Men writers… plus, Ghost Rider. DC has an essential sale (read: Batman) and Patton Oswald experiences unannounced price slashing.

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):

X-Writers of the Future

With the initial X-Men relaunch announcements dropping at SXSW, it looks like Marvel is inviting you to get to know the new writers of the X-line with 3 sales (and perhaps more to come as announcements continue).

Jed MacKay

Moon Knight  The Death of Doctor Strange  Taskmaster

The Marvel Jed MacKay Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Of the three announced writers, MacKay’s written the most material for Marvel and most of it in the last ~6 years or so. If you want to see him on a team book, the first volume of his Avengers with C.F. Villa is on sale.

Our favorite work of his is the Doctor Strange sequence, which should absolutely be read in order:

  • The Death of Doctor Strange – w/ Lee Garbett… and yes, Stephen gets himself killed.
  • Strange – w/ Marcelo Ferreira & Garbett, where Clea becomes Sorcerer Supreme.
  • Doctor Strange – w/ Pasqual Ferry, where Stephen’s back (and there IS fallout)

The breakout title for him was probably Moon Knight w/Alessandro Cappuccio, which we’ve also enjoyed quite a bit. And let’s give some credit here: piecing together the various incarnations of Moon Knight of the last 10-15 years is not a small task! Yet, it was done well.

And for something a bit more off the radar… Taskmaster w/ Alessandro Vitti. Maria Hill has been murdered. Taskmaster has been framed. The Black Widow wants blood for said murder. Taskmaster finds himself on the trail of a doomsday weapon as he tries to extricate himself from a situation not of his making. And it’s a very witty farce.

Gail Simone

Domino  Deadpool Classic

The  Marvel Gail Simone Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Gail’s big break was Deadpool, but she’s written less Marvel over the years that you might realize. She’s not the main scribe for most of the volumes listed in the sale.

The closest you’re going to get to an X-Men preview is probably the Domino series she did with David Baldeon. (Note, there was a follow-up to this: Domino: Hotshots that is not part of the sale.)

Her Deadpool / Agent X run with art by Udon Studios & Alvin Lee is collected across Deadpool Classic V. 9 and Deadpool Classic V.10.

The final “solo” collection in this sale is The Variants, a Jessica Jones mystery with art by Phil Noto.

Eve Ewing

Black Panther  Ironheart  Champions

The Marvel Eve Ewing Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

Eve Ewing has the smallest backlist of the three newly announced X-scribes.

Her current run on Black Panther w/ Chris Allen is probably her highest profile project.

Ironheart with Luciano Vecchio is probably the title Ewing is most strongly associated with.

If you’d like to see an example of Ewing on a team book, there’s Champions w/ Kim Jacinto.

Shouldn’t He Be In the Sky?

Ghost Rider  Ghost Rider  Ghost Rider / Wolverine

The Marvel Ghost Rider Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

This one is similar to a legacy sale, with the recent caveat that most of the original series in only in Masterworks editions and those aren’t included in the sale, just the single Epic Collection.

Let’s run this one down by series… and yes, there have been a TON of relaunches and mini’s.

As a bonus, the absurdity of Cosmic Ghost Rider:

Essential Equals… Batman?

Batman: The Court of Owls  Detective Comics by Tynion  Watchmen

The DC Essentials Sale runs through Monday, 3/25.

What’s essential? Flipping through this sale, one gets the impression that New 52 (and forward) Batman titles are what DC considers it’s most essential product and there are a ton of them here.

Lets do a quick look at some notable items:

  • Batman ’11-’16 – The Scott Snyder / Greg Capullo era (You may have heard of them.)
  • Batman ’16 – present – Starts with the Tom King run, then James Tynion IV, currently Chip Zdarsky
  • DCeased – Tom Taylor / Trevor Hairsine; Kicking off the series of miniseries about the Anti-Life Equation getting loose, turning most of the population (including the metahuman community) into a sort of zombie and the survivors trying to stay alive.
  • Detective Comics ’11-’16 – Starts with Tony Daniel, then John Layman / Jason Fabok, then Francis Manapul/Brian Buccellato
  • Detective Comics ’16 – present – Starts with James Tynion IV’s run, then Peter Tomasi, then Mariko Tamaki (Ram V’s run isn’t yet on sale, it appears). And way too many artists to list.
  • Mister Miracle – Tom King / Mitch Gerads – The Eisner winner
  • Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age – Len Wein/Bernie Wrightson; A legit classic and trendsetter… even before Alan Moore showed up
  • Watchmen – Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons; this one needs no introduction
  • Wonder Woman: Dead Earth – Daniel Warren Johnson; Wonder Woman awakens in a post-apocalyptical hellscape and has some monsters to slay. “Heavy Metal” may be the best description. A great ride.

Unannounced…

Minor Threats

Minor Threats by Patton Oswalt / Jordan Blum / Scott Hepburn is an exercise in subverting tropes (subversion from that group… surely not…) as some low level supervillains go after the A-list villain who’s been bringing the heat down on them.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: X-Men and Daredevil (nearly) Full Runs; Batman; Infinity Gauntlet; Usagi Yojimbo

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, Marvel puts nearly all the Daredevil and Uncanny X-Men collections on sale. And an Infinity (Gauntlet / War / Crusade) sale on top of that. DC does another installment of their “Epic” sale and Dark Horse slips in Usagi Yojimbo.

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):

X Marks the Price Tag

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

The Marvel Uncanny X-Men Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

It’s a legacy sale, so it’s the Uncanny X-Men core… although this may shorter list than some of the legacy sales. For instance,  X-Men wasn’t part of Heroes Reborn, so no relaunch there.

As is our custom, let’s run through the key series included, first:

  • Uncanny X-Men ’63-’11 – The original X-Men, the “new” X-Men, Morrison… it’s a long run.
  • Uncanny X-Men  ’11-’12 – The original Kieron Gillen era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’13-’15 – The Brian Bendis / Chris Bachalo era (Battle of the Atom fits in with this run as a crossover)
  • Uncanny X-Men ’16-’17 – The Cullen Bunn / Greg Land / Ken  Lashley era
  • Uncanny X-Men ’18-’19 – The Mathew Rosenberg era

And you might be asking yourself, “aren’t there usually more than one X-Men title and don’t they cross over a lot?” Yes, that would be a potential issue… pun intended. Not so much with the Epic Collections and the Masterworks as with the later series, and there are some Event collections in the sale, too.

You should know our general advice right now. There’s a slight preference for the value of Epic Collections over Masterworks collections, but it depends on the exact price point and the Epic Collections sometimes have gaps.  That still applies here.  The wild card with X-Men is that it can get impenetrable with continuity and all the characters floating around. You can’t always just jump in.

So, recommendations with that in mind.

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 that are discounted only take you to #153, at which point you need to start cutting in the Masterworks editions with V. 7 through 12. (The next Epic with a discount only takes you to #198, which is short of the finish line!)

For an alternate jumping on point, perhaps the Ed Brubaker era, which is collected in three volumes starting with Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire.

We thought the Bendis era was better than it’s reputation, but aware that it runs parallel with All-New X-Men, which isn’t in this sale.

If you were wondering, Grant Morrison is filed under New X-Men and not part of this sale.

Also be aware that X-Men: Reload is effectively the omnibus version of Uncanny X-Men: The New Age, where Chris Claremont returned to the book with Alan Davis.

Hornhead

Daredevil  Daredevil Epic Collection  Daredevil by Zdarsky

The Marvel Daredevil Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

Let’s break this down by series. Like X-Men, Daredevil has had fewer relaunches than some titles.

  • Daredevil ’64-’98 – The original run. Oddly, as we type this up, the Epics are on sale and the Masterworks mostly aren’t?
  • Daredevil ’98-11 – The Marvel Knights relaunch. Kevin Smith / Brian Bendis / Ed Brubaker
    • For the Bendis and Brubaker runs, you want the Omnibus section and scroll down for their respective “Ultimate Collections”
  • Daredevil ’11-15 – This was really two volumes with an arbitrary relaunch in the middle, but the excellent run by Mark Waid / Chris Samnee / Paolo Rivera / Javier Javier Rodriguez is a better buy in this 5 volume set that collects both volumes and treats it like the single run it was.
  • Daredevil ’15-’18 – The Charles Soule era with Ron Garney as the main artist.
  • Daredevil ’19-’21 – Chip Zdarsky’s breakout title as a writer. Marco Checcetto is the primary artist.
  • Daredevil: Woman Without Fear ’22 – Zdarsky / Rafael de Latorre; Sort of a bridge title during the Devil’s Reign event, but part of the ongoing plot. Note: this is included in the final DD omnibus for the ’19-’21 run.
  • Daredevil ’22-’23 – Also known as Daredevil & Elektra. The final act to the Zdarsky/Checcetto era

What’s good here? Honestly, with the exception of the “Shadowlands” Event at the end of the Marvel Knights run, DD has been consistently good to great since Frank Miller showed up. You don’t hear us saying that about every title! We will say that Gene Colan’s return to DD (with Joe Kelly writing) seems to be under the radar these days.  But starting with Miller, just pick a run (Miller / O’Neil / Nocenti / Chichester / Kessel / Kelly / Smith / Bendis / Brubaker / Waid / Soule / Zdarsky) and dig in.

Infinite Jest

The  Marvel Infinity Sale runs through Monday, 3/11.

On the one hand, this sale would seem to be a continuation of last week’s Cosmic sale, which naturally segues into The Infinity Guantlet. On the other hand, they’re throwing in anything else with “Infinity” in the title, so we’re going to have to separate this out a little more than we normally would.

Starlin’s Infinity Saga

As you may recall from last week, Jim Starlin returned to Marvel and re-introduced Thanos in Silver Surfer, which lead up to Thanos getting his hands on the Infinity Gems and kicking off a series of Event mini-series.

Alongside those titles, Warlock & the Infinity Watch (Starlin / Angel Medina / Tom Grindberg and others) ran parallel and filled some gaps between Events.

And then some more Thanos/Infinity mini’s and graphic novels:

Avengers

Not part of the Starlin Infinity world, but thrown in for… reasons (?)

Avengers Infinity by Roger Stern / Sean Chen is a cosmic/Avengers in space tale.

Infinity is roughly the middle act of Jonathan Hickman’s massive Avengers run. That volume pulls in all the various parts and is how you want it, although we’ve said in before and we’ll say it again – Hickman’s Avengers is one long epic and if you’re going to sample, read the whole thing. The sheer scope of it adds to the experience when you start at the beginning.

Sounds Like a Marvel Brand – Week Two

Batman: Venom   Manhunter  Jimmy Olsen

The  DC Epic eBooks Part 2 Sale runs through Monday, 03/11.

This time out it’s a seriously eclectic set of volumes. Occasionally just one or two from the middle of a run.  Some things that jumped out at us?

  • Batman: Venom – Denny O’Neil / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez / Russ Braun;  Long before Knightfall, or even Vengeance of Bane, O’Neil and company did a Legends of the Dark Knight arc to introduce “Venom,” the drug that originally fueled Bane’s strength.
  • DCeased – which they really ought to file together, but don’t. It’s still entertaining stuff (and, of course, the opening volume isn’t included):
  • Fables – Bill Willingham / Mark Buckingham; the first half of the series is on sale (in double-volume format) for the classic tales of fairy tale creatures hiding out in Manhattan after their worlds are overrun by invaders.
  • Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation – Robert Venditti / Eddy Barrows – in a world where the Nazis discovered the payload of a certain rocket from Krypton and over-ran the world, the Freedom Fighter form up as the resistance. A vastly overlooked take on the original concept.
  • Manhunter – Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson tell a superb tale of spies, ninjas, clone and a certain caped crusader. One of the best adventure comics of all-time.
  • The Road to Perdition – Max Allen Collins / Richard Piers Rayner – A mob enforcer and his son go into hiding after a betrayal. You may have seen the film version.
  • Superman: The Phantom Zone – Steve Gerber / Gene Colan / Rick Veitch – Leave it to Gerber to come up with a creepy, horror-tinged take on Superman. There are much stranger things in the Phantom Zone that you realized. (Big thumbs up.)
  • Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? – Matt Fraction / Steve Lieber – Jimmy wakes up hungover and married in Gorilla City… and that’s not even the silliest part. One of the funniest comics of the last few years. A+

Rabbit Rabbit

Usagi Yojimbo

We have an unannounced Dark Horse sale on Usagi Yojimbo.

This is Stan Sakai’s revered and long running series about a samurai/ronin rabbit. “Beloved” is a good word for it.

The real bargain is the $6.99 “Saga” omnibus editions.

Filed separately, is the  Saga “Legends” volume, which includes things like Space Usagi.

If you’re in the market for single volumes, those are $4.99… but only for Vol. 8 and higher. (Hey, don’t look at us! We think that’s peculiar, too… but the Saga volumes are a better buy.)

Also Unannounced…

BAKEMONOGATARI

Vertical’s manga series BAKEMONOGATARI is on sale for $3.99/volume (although we can’t tell you where V. 1 went to…)

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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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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: Fantastic Four (all of it); Moon Knight; 90’s X-Men; Devil’s Reign; Cyberpunk 2077

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, practically the entire Fantastic Four catalog is on sale. Plus, Marvel offers discounts on Moon Knight, Devil’s Reign and the world of the 90s X-Men. And, in what seems to be another unannounced sale, Dark Horse presents Cyberpunk 2077.

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):

Four Play

Fantastic Four - The Coming of Galactus    Fantastic Four by Waid   Fantastic Four by Hickman

Marvel’s Fantastic Four Legacy Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

So, first let’s break down the various FF titles/volumes on sale

Yes, Fantastic Four has been relaunched less than other Marvel titles.  As to what’s good, the gold standard has always been the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. (And yes, we do think you can draw a straight line from Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC to Fantastic Four.) We’d say they start to hit their stride a few issues before Galactus shows up – V.3 of the Epic Collections (“The Coming of Galactus“) or V.4/5 of the Masterworks editions and you can ride a very fun train from there to the end of Lee/Kirby.

And at this point, we should talk about the “pick your poison” of Epic vs. Masterworks.  The Masterworks are built out straight into the Byrne era. We think the $6.99 Epic Collections are the best value here, though some of the newer ones are priced higher. The discounted Epics are now a little past the Lee/Kirby era, but stop with #146 and then pick up again after Byrne’s run. Pick the format that works for you and has the issues you’re looking for.

Speaking of Byrne’s run, that’s the next highpoint that everyone agrees on.  How to read Byrne? Well, there are 5 volumes of Masterworks on sale (V. 21-25; note: V. 25 is here and not linked in with the rest of the series) or you can hop on to Fantastic Four Visionaires: John Byrne. You’d need to cut over to the Visionaries run at V. 6 to pick up where the discounted Masterworks leave off.  These comics really ought to be in an Epic Collection, but Marvel doesn’t seem in any hurry to roll the Visionaires up into a more economical package. (Or should we say, economical when it’s on sale?)

Fast forward a bit to the Heroes Reborn era and there is a LOT to love about the Mark Waid / Mike Wieringo run. They brought back the “explorer” vibe from Lee/Kirby era that isn’t always there and upped the sense of wonder. You’d want the four Ultimate Collection volumes that start here. The “regular” collections don’t go all the way to the end.

And then, of course, there’s the the Hickman era. A long storyline that laid the groundwork for his Avengers run and you can certainly argue that his Secret Wars endcap to that is a Fantastic Four / Doctor Doom story. The omnibus editions we highlighted above include his FF spin-off comic that frequently crossed over with Fantastic Four, much like the Avengers titles flowed together. That packaging will be a better experience.

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 some reason 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.
  • 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)

Deviltry

Devil's Reign   Devil's Reign X-Men

The Marvel Devil’s Reign Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

Devil’s Reign is effectively a section of the excellent Chip Zdarsky/Marco Checchetto Daredevil run where The Kingpin, in his capacity as Mayor of NYC, declares war on superheroes and organizes his own version of the Thunderbolts to hunt them down. This main mini-series in the main thing you’re looking for, here.

That said, in term of tie-ins, Devil’s Rain: X-Men by Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto has a little more, by way of echoes moving forward, than you might expect. It establishes the ongoing relationship between Emma Frost and the Kingpin, which does crop up again further down the line in both the Daredevil and X-Men worlds. Plus, Phil Noto.

Hot Tub Mutant Machine

Wolverine   X-Factor Epic Collection   Generation X

The Marvel 90s X-Men Sale runs through Monday, 1/29.

We know what you’re thinking and, yes, this is about the time the X-world got a lot more complicated and Event-heavy.  And this is a pretty eclectic set. What do we recall as the winners from this period?

For X-Men (proper) we’d start with Mutant Genesis, which has the last bit of Chris Claremont’s original run as Jim Lee started to steer the boat a bit more.

For a lot of people, ’90s X-Men is about Onslaught. If you’re in that camp, there’s The Road to Onslaught  and the actual Onslaught Event.

Open things up a little wider and X-Factor pops to the top of the list. The selection of Epic Collections includes the Lousie & Walt Simonson run *and* the delightfully off-kilter first Peter David run (featuring Joe Quesada and Larry Stroman on art duties).

The Larry Hama Wolverine run is also on sale in Epic Collections. A fairly long run, too, and one of the most popular titles of the 90s. Marc Silvestri and Adam Kubert figure prominently on the artist lineup.

Now, a lot of people associate Scott Lobdell with 90s X-Men. If you want to read Lobdell’s best mutant work, that’s Generation X. It’s sort of a new New Mutants, since that title had morphed into X-Force, and we don’t think it’s even close. Chris Bachalo is the originating artist and sets the tone nicely.

There’s a bit more here for you to browse.

A Hugo Winner in an Unannounced Sale

Cyberpunk 2077   Cyberpunk 2077 Big City Dreams

Looks like there’s an unannounced sale on Dark Horse’s Cyberpunk 2077. A video game adaptation with an interesting award to its credit.

The first three collections can be found here.

After which, the property went to the album format Dark Horse sometimes uses for titles with a higher bookstore profile, which are listed with the single issues:

Big City Dreams was the 2023 Hugo Award winner for Best Graphic Story or Comic. And there you have it.

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Comixology (at Amazon) Sales: DC’s Superman / Batman / Wonder Woman Pre-Holiday Sale; X-Men; Runaways; Young Avengers; Elfquest

In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, DC starts the holiday sale season with a Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman “Trinity” sale, Marvel discounts all things “Hellfire” (as in X-Men) and “Young Heroes” (like Young Avengers), plus… Elfquest, but not on a shelf.

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):

First, a little housekeeping. If you normally use the Comixology app, you’ve probably heard that Amazon is shuttering it on 12/4. If you haven’t heard that, open the app and it’ll notify you. Comics reading is moving over to the Kindle app.

We have a couple tips/warnings for you about that.

  1. You can force a sync by pressing the “MORE” button at the lower right hand corner of the screen of the Kindle App and selecting “Sync.” Be warned, this is a SLOW process and you might need to press the button several time before a sync really starts. We had had 4 or 5 attempts break before one finally took. A little bit of system overload? That should not surprise anyone. It took us maybe 3 hours before the “real” sync concluded.
  2. In the Kindle App’s library display screen, there is a “FILTER” button in the upper left corner. This is where you can change your view to comics-only, book-only, unread items-only, etc., etc. This is mentioned in Amazon’s update announcement, but we didn’t think they made it quite clear enough. Play with the filter and it will make things a little easier, particularly if you read both books and comics on Kindle. You really want to be able to view those separately.

We have not yet done a two-screen audit to compare what’s in the Kindle with what’s in the Comixology app, but we’re looking to carve out some time for that before the 4th. At first glance it looks OK, but we’ve heard people saying not everything came over (make sure Read/Unread are both off in the filters) and others saying it took multiple syncs, so we’re looking to err on the side of caution.

If you’re already using the Kindle App, this is a non-issue. And, let’s face it, we all knew this would eventually happen from the moment that Amazon acquired Comixology. Honestly, we’re a little surprised they’re still calling the comics section “Comixology” and not something like Amazon Comics.

The Holidays Start Early?

The DC Trinity Sale runs through Monday, 6/20.

Trinity means Superman / Batman / Wonder Woman, over at DC. But that’s not what we noticed.

What we noticed was all the $2.99/$3.99 collected editions, so we’re treating this like the first shot fired on Holiday Sales. (A pre-Black Friday sale? Maybe.) Will there be cheaper prices from DC in the next couple months? Maybe, but they don’t get lower than $2.99 very often, so it would a (pleasant) surprise.

If you’re looking for a “Trinity” title… basically since New 52 dropped, it’s going to be cheap. This sale is worth taking some time to browse.

Here are some mostly less recent things we saw and liked the prices:

Superman

Batman

  • Batman (1940-’11) -We especially like $3.99 “Caped Crusader” (the ’80s run) and $2.99 Ed Brubaker volumes if you scroll down.
  • Detective Comics (1937-’11) – We especially like $3.99 “Dark Knight Detective” (the ’80s run) and “New Gotham” volumes.
  • Batman: Damned – Brian Azzarello / Lee Bermejo; It will go down as infamous for the “bat pole” and the behind the scenes political upheaval it caused.
  • Batman: Death and the Maidens – A Ra’s Al Ghul tale by Greg Rucka / Klaus Janson
  • Batman: Gates of Gotham – Scott Snyder / Kyle Higgins / Trevor McCarthy – early Snyder Batman
  • Batman Universe – Brian Bendis channeling pure fun? Believe it! This is the Bendis/Nick Derington tale that was hidden away in the Walmart comics and we want another volume!

Wonder Woman

  • Wonder Woman: The Golden Age – Early Wonder Woman is strange. Lots of bondage and domination themes. Seriously. ~400 pages for $3.99. Worth getting one cheap to see how off the wall these are.
  • Wonder Woman (1987 series) – Don’t ask us why, but you need to click here and here to get everything. We don’t know why the listings are split like that. Anyway, you can’t go wrong with the George Perez run or the first Greg Rucka run at the end of this series. And be away that V.6 of the Perez run and the War of the Gods collection that isn’t numbered contain the same comics.
  • Wonder Woman (2011 series) – The first six issues by Brian Azzarello / Cliff Chiang / Goran Sudzuka are a top notch story. A little sacrilegious to the character? Probably. Consider it an Elseworlds take, but it’s good.
  • Wonder Woman (2016 series) – You want the first two “Rebirth Deluxe Editions” as Greg Rucka / Nicola Scott / Liam Sharp reset Wonder Woman, post-Azzarello
  • Wonder Woman: True Amazon – Jill Thompson’s Eisner Award winner

Adventures of Superman   Batman Universe   Wonder Woman - True Amazon

Arthur Brown’s Favorite Event

The Marvel Hellfire Sale runs through Monday, 11/20.

Is this a Hellfire Gala sale or a Hellfire Club sale?  Perhaps it’s both?

You have a couple options for the first Hellfire Gala, depending on how many tie-ins you want. You’ve got the ’22 Hellfire Gala.

We definitely enjoyed the Krakoa-era Marauders by Gerry Duggan, Matteo Lolli & Stefano Caselli. That had Captain Kate Pryde and her merry band of mutants patrolling the seas on behalf of the “Hellfire Trading Company” and breaking up the plotting of the original Club’s Black King.

For something something under the radar, Cable: The Hellfire Hunt by a pre-Starman James Robinson and Jose Ladronn putting Cable up against a scheme involving the Hellfire Club and Apocalypse.

Hellfire Gala   Hellfire Gala - Immortal   Maruaders

Somebody Card These Heroes

The Marvel Young Heroes Sale runs through Monday, 11/20.

Technically the “young heroes” title trend at Marvel goes back to Young Allies in the 1940s, but that’s not on sale here.

What is in the sale?

Runaways by  Bryan K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona might be the best title. When six friends discover their parents are super villains, they make a run for it. Vaughan was already writing Y- The Last Man when this came out, but his fame hadn’t reached a critical mass yet and this one isn’t always remembered.

Young Avengers by Allen Heinberg and Jim Cheung is a close second. Notable for introducing Hulking and Wiccan, also with Kate Bishop and Cassie Lang, this is a fun one. Doesn’t hurt that you can get the whole thing in one volume, either.

Another one that’s available in a single volume is the Kieron Gillen / Jamie McKelvie Young Avengers from  ’13. Gillen & McKelvie? You already know if you’ll like it. (They add Kid Loki to the team,  incidentally.)

Runaways   Young Avengers   Young Avengers

Elves Off the Shelves

The Dark Horse 2023 Elfquest Digital Sale runs through Monday, 12/4.

This is elf season, right? These are a different sort of elves. This would be Wendy and Richard Pini’s long running epic fantasy series about a tribe of elves driven from their land by a fire and humans.

The Complete Elfquest is the omnibus series that will take you all the way from the beginning through The Final Quest. It’s a very good value. Don’t look elsewhere unless you’re only missing a couple issues of The Final Quest.

Elfquest: Stargazer’s Hunt came out after The Final Quest and isn’t in the Complete series of omnibuses. Your purchase options here require a little explanation.

The first half of the story is available as  single issues (#1-4) and they’re a little cheaper to purchase this way.  The second half is only available as a graphic novel (V.2 of the series).

Elfquest   Elfquest: Stargazer's Hunt

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