In this week’s Comixology (at Amazon) sales, it’s the dueling pianos of Vertigo vs. Creepy and Eerie.

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):

A Non-Cliffhanger View of Vertigo

Doom Patrol  Jonah Hex: Shadows West  Sandman Mystery Theater

The  DC Vertigo Sale runs through Tuesday, 2/24.

Now that everyone’s over Wednesday shock of DC actually having a sale, let’s look at the sale’s intent and some countermeasures.

Sales where the first volumes *only* are on sale should be viewed as samplers designed to get the customer to buy the rest of the series (often at full price). There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s pretty common in the greater publishing community, but this is NOT what people are used to from the DC and the grumbling is acute.

So, let’s go through the sale and pick out some good volumes that work as stand-alone books. There really are a chunk of these.

Jonah Hex: Shadows West is something of a value buy. It’s listed at 387 pages, though it’s really 13 issues collecting the complete series of mini-series by master horror novelist Joe R. Lansdale and Tim (Grimjack/Scout) Truman. Hex confronts demons and monsters in a Weird Western / action-horror collection.

Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Crawling From the Wreckage by Grant Morrison & Richard Case is essentially the first arc of Morrison’s run and an issue that pauses before the second arc. Oh, Mister Nobody is up to something, but we wouldn’t call it a cliffhanger, per se.

Sandman Mystery Theater – Matt Wagner / Steven T. Seagle / Guy Davis; We’re not in love with the $9.99 price point, but we do love this series. There are actually two volumes at that price, for which you get 12 issues and roughly 300 pages of comics, so it’s not horrible by that measure. These are the pulpy adventures of Wesley Dodds, the golden age Sandman.

Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One – Alan Moore / Stephen Bissette / John Totleben; The American Gothic saga hasn’t begun yet, so these are short tales beginning with the legendary “Anatomy Lesson” and ending with an encounter with Etrigan. As classic as it gets.

Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age Vol. 1 – Len Wein / Bernie Wrightson / Nestor Redondo; While not on the Deals page, this one’s price dropped to that $9.99 price point. Sure enough, ~13 issues plus the original short story gives you about 300 pages of comics for $9.99 and the pattern emerges. This is classic, original Swamp Thing run by Wein and Wrightson. It’s very good stuff. While Wrightson stuck with horror, Wein did more superhero work after starting out with Swamp Thing and Phantom Stranger, so not everyone remembers how good he was with the dark and magical tales.

Top 10 – Alan Moore / Gene Ha / Zander Cannon – This is Alan Moore’s delightful excursion into the Hill Street Blues style of police procedural… but with superheroes as the law. Good stuff. America’s Best/Wildstorm is now Vertigo… or maybe Alan Moore is just Vertigo, full stop. At any rate this is another $9.99 / 12 issues offering and it’s good stuff.

Trillium – Probably our favorite Jeff Lemire work. Two people on a journey across time and space to find each other before the universe can end, notable for a particularly effective parallel narrative structure. The single issues were released as flipbooks to heighten that parallel structure.

  • Black Orchid – Early Neil Gaiman although Dave McKean might be stealing the show in this tale of botanical rebirth
  • Cinderella: Fables are Forever – Chris Roberson & Shawn McManus in this Fables-universe tale of Cinderella as a spy (Why is the actual first Cinderella series, From Fabletown With Love, not on sale? You’d need to ask whoever at DC makes this lists.)
  • Daytripper – Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba
  • Flex Mentallo – Grant Morrison / Frank Quitely; A delightfully odd/surreal tale that starts out as parody of the old Charles Atlas ads. And an early Morrison/Quitely pairing. They work well together.
  • Get Jiro – Anthony Bourdain / Joel Rose / Langdon Foss; Yes, that Anthony Bourdain spinning a tale of a sort of gangland war between chefs
  • Global Frequency – Warren Ellis applies a science fiction layer to the Mission: Impossible format (or perhaps ’83 TV show Masquerade, if you want a deep cut) with rotating artists
  • Joe the Barbarian – Grant Morrison / Sean Murphy; This one always reminded us of the film, Jacob’s Ladder. We’re not sure $9.99 for 8 issues is such a great deal, though…
  • Kill Your Boyfriend/Vimanarama Deluxe – Grant Morrison / Philip Bond / Matt Brooker; Collecting a pair shorter Morrison one-offs
  • Orbiter – Warren Ellis / Colleen Doran; An OGN about shenanigans revolving around a missing space shuttle
  • Strange Adventures – The Tom King / Mitch Gerads / Doc Shaner Black label deconstruction of Adam Strange (darker than you’d ever think they’d go), although we’re not wild about the $9.99 price tag
  • Sweet Tooth – Jeff Lemire; As seen on Netflix.
  • The Wake – Scott Snyder / Sean Murphy; Very Bad Things are happening at a secret underwater oil rig… and then things get considerably worse. We would like to point out this is $4.99 for 10 issues in marked contrast to some of the other pricing

Unannounced Sales

Creepy   Eerie

As usual, we’re not sure when these sales are ending, but here’s what we’re seeing:

Dark Horse is thematically matching DC this week with a Creepy / Eerie sale. Oh, wait… they’re discounting more than just volumes ones, too.

Creepy was the first one and is available in both archive  format and “Creepy Presents” volumes spotlighting individual artists (Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, Richard Corben, Steve Ditko).

Eerie was the companion series. By halfway through it’s run, it had evolved into something a little different with multi-part stories and characters who returned, the breakout character being The Rook (a time traveler with some western elements baked in). It’s also available in archive format and “Eerie Presents” for collecting individual features (El Cid and Hunter).

Also on sale:

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

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy

Still on Sale