It’s time for another look at which digital comics Comixology has on sale right now. What are the good reads and what are the good buys? We’ll be taking a look mostly at the sales that are ending by Thursday and what an eclectic set of digital comics it is.
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Right now there’s a huge Thor sale, DC’s discounting a variety of non-super powered titles, we look at some pulp comics and then something about a Celestial’s head.
Marvel has a very deep Thor Sale going on until Sunday (10/18). From the original Lee/Kirby material all the way through the Jason Aaron era. Your best value is going to be the Epic Collections, particularly the $7.99 ones, since the Epic Collections are roughly twice the page counts of the Masterworks volumes. For Lee/Kirby, Thor starts out a little slow, so I’d recommend starting with the Epic Collections The Wrath of Odin and (especially) To Wake the Mangog, which features the origin of Galactus. The best Thor run may still be the four volume Thor by Walter Simonson. Also of note, but less celebrated these days, is the three author run that preceded the recently completed Jason Aaron era. Stick with me here, because the age of relaunches begins in as this unfolds. The 2007-11 series starts out with 3 volumes of the J. Michael Straczynski run, has a Kieron Gillen interlude (the more expensive Gillen volume is an omnibus of his run) and ends with Matt Fraction. ’11-’12 saw The Mighty Thor, which is Fraction’s “formal” run. That’s an under-rated era. If you prefer another era, go ahead and have a browse. Most of it is on sale for 60%+ off.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, we see the DC Who Needs Super Powers Sale, which highlights super heroes who (mostly) don’t have super powers and non-superhero titles. This runs through Monday (10/19). There’s quite a bit of quality in there, so I encourage you to browse it at your leisure, but let’s throw out a few highlights. I’ll mostly be linking to the series, so scroll down to the collected editions, which are the only things on sale.
First up, possibly the finest title to come out of DC’s Rebirth is the Christopher Priest Deathstroke series. Whoever set up the sale was more than a little sloppy with this one, as the entire series isn’t discounted and the Teen Titan crossovers aren’t included, but it’s a fine time to sample what is on sale. It’s just that good.
If you like your westerns on the dark side, Jonah Hex might be right for you. A scarred anti-hero bounty hunter, this run was written by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray with an absolutely absurd sequence of guest artists. The great Jordi Bernet is the most usual suspect with Darwyn Cooke, Phil Noto, Paul Gulacy, Russ Heath, JH Williams III, Rafa Garres and Eduardo Risso are among the artists who turn up at various points. It’s a lot of run if you’re in a “Fistful of Dollars” kind of mood.
Scalped was Jason Aaron’s breakout book, and I truly think he’s best when he’s doing rural noir. R.M. Guéra is the artist on this neo-noir crime series about a Native American FBI agent sent back to infiltrate an organized crime ring on the reservation he grew up on and thought he’d escaped. Save some money and opt for the omnibus/deluxe editions.
Trillium is wonderfully odd science fiction title where Jeff Lemire does full cartoonist duties. It’s love story about two people separated by thousands of years who try to connect as the universe unravels. Its gimmick is how the narratives are structured in relation to the time flow. To say more would be to spoil. It’s digital, so you don’t need the deluxe edition.
100 Bullets has won a lot of awards over the years. It’s one part revenge series and one part conspiracy where the mysterious Agent Graves offers a series of people an unregistered gun and a case of 100 untraceable bullets to take out someone who’s wronged them. All the while, a greater agenda is in motion. A classic of a lost era of DC. (Axel Alonso was an editor on this, pre-Marvel.)
Moving in a similar vein, Dynamite has their Dynamite Super Hero Sale on until Thursday (10/22). But let’s look at a subset of this sale: the pulp titles Dynamite’s always done a good job with.
There’s a particularly good Green Hornet run by Mark Waid and Ronilson Freire, where the Hornet starts to believe his own hype and gets in a little deeper than he was planning. This particular Hornet run keeps Britt Reid in his original 40s setting and it’s an underappreciated winner. It’s slightly cheaper to get the single issue here and be advised that the omnibus editions on this page are for a different Green Hornet series.
While the Lone Ranger and Green Hornet characters are related, Lone Ranger – The Devil’s Rope by Mark Russell and Bob Q has a very different tone. The story is about the advent of barbed wire leading to range wars, but as you might expect from Mark Russell, the adventure is heavily tongue-in-cheek.
While Dynamite’s treatment of The Shadow has been good across the board, I’d draw your attention to one of the lesser known sequences, The Last Illusion by Cullen Bunn and Giovanni Timpano has The Shadow tracking down a sinister group of magicians in search of Houdini’s secrets for escaping death. A solid pulp thriller that exceeds expectations. You can save a minor amount getting this one in single issues.
A while back, The Spider was rebooted as a neo-noir tale by David Liss and Colton Worley with design work by Alex Ross. Liss has been under the radar with some really good comics like Mystery Men at Marvel. Terror of the Zombie Queen is just what it sounds like – a weird menace emerges and The Spider must intervene as the civilian body count rises, much like it would occur in the original pulps. The execution is everything in this sort of thing and The Spider worked.
Marvel also has their “Annihilation Sale” running through Thursday (10/15). While it’s focused on the cosmic crossover events that came to define that line of books, the Nova solo series written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning definitely had its moments. The Knowhere arc involves a city in the decapitated head of a Celestial, for instance.
And finally, the entirety of Marvel’s 2015-19 Star Wars series is still on sale until Thursday (10/5).
