Free and Cheap Comics

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Thad
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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:02 pm

Time for the annual Top Shelf Sale.

Oddly, the digital comics aren't on sale. Unless you also buy a print copy.

Still, as usual this is great shit at low prices. ComicsAlliance has some recommendations.

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Kayma
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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Kayma » Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:22 pm

Man, I have copies of Blankets and Essex County sitting here t hat I need to get around to reading. I am simply awful at media consumption.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Kayma » Sat Sep 13, 2014 11:14 am

Oh, it looks like Comixology is having a 50% off Fantagraphics sale with coupon code COMIX. That's fun. Makes me feel somewhat less bed about missing SPX.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Sat Sep 13, 2014 3:24 pm

Holy fuck.

Doesn't look like they're DRM-free, which is a shame, but if that's not a deal-breaker I recommend Heartbreak Soup as quite possibly the best comic I have ever read. (Like, DEFINITELY in the top three. The other two are Maus and Amazing Spider-Man #31-#33.)

Congress of the Animals is a wonderful surreal wordless comic, 'Tain't the Meat has some all-time classic Jack Davis EC horror comics, and if you want to check out the other major Love and Rockets arc, Locas, you might want to skip Maggie the Mechanic and start with The Girl from HOPPERS (I love Maggie the Mechanic but it's got a lot of early SF-tinted stuff that falls by the wayside in pretty short order, and Girl from HOPPERS includes The Death of Speedy -- not a spoiler, that's the title given at the beginning of the story -- which is widely regarded as the highlight of the series).

Damn, I would be all over this shit if it were DRM-free.

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Kayma
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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Kayma » Sat Sep 13, 2014 6:49 pm

I bought Maggie and the Mechanic a few years back since a friend of mine espouses Love and Rockets as the best thing to have ever happened (and I believe him!), but I had trouble getting into it. I should try to come at it from a different collection...

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Thad
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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Wed Sep 17, 2014 2:21 pm

Humble Valiant Bundle.

So far I've read all of Quantum and Woody, as well as the first issue each of Archer and Armstrong and X-O Manowar. (If you want a preview, all the #1's are still free over at Drive-Thru Comics.)

My takeaway: Q&W is a reboot of one of my legitimate all-time favorite comics. It's not as good as the original, but it's still enjoyable.

Archer and Armstrong is good; shows real promise. And there's a lot of buddy-comedy overlap (hence the current Delinquents book teaming up Q&W&A&A).

X-O...well, I'm gonna be honest, I don't think it makes a great #1; there's too much setup, it's set hundreds of years in the past, and it doesn't really give me any indication of what the fuck is going on or where the series is going.

I haven't read the rest yet, but I'm happy enough with Archer & Armstrong that I think I'll pick the whole bundle up for that.

I don't expect to have the quality issues with this bundle that I did with the IDW and Boom bundles, as I've already downloaded some Valiant books from Drive-Thru Comics and they look good.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 18, 2014 3:23 pm

Adding: Nope, these have the same problem as the IDW set, with hi-res PDF's available but the CBZ format being noticeably lo-res. Disappointing.

I did a side-by-side comparison between the CBZ I got from the bundle and the PDF I got from Drive-Thru when I downloaded it, and I didn't notice any difference on my PC. Don't have the Drive-Thru version on my tablet for a side-by-side comparison at the moment.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Mon Sep 22, 2014 9:59 pm

They appear to have fixed them and replaced the low-quality files with much higher-quality ones.

That's the good news. The bad news is I still don't see a decent bulk downloader.

EDIT: The other bad news is that the "Valiant Masters" collections, which are the reprints of the original '90's Valiant comics, have not been fixed and still have low-quality CBZ's. And those are the ones you get for $15. So, perversely, the most expensive books are the lowest-quality ones. Hopefully those get fixed too later, because someone did not think this through.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 25, 2014 1:04 am

They've added a bunch of stuff to the "pay more than the average" tier of the Humble Valiant Bundle. Mostly vol 3's of the books they already had vol's 1 and 2 of.

The $15 tier (1) is still '90's reprints that are (2) low-quality CBZ files and (3) does not contain any '90's Quantum and Woody (presumably because the giant Q&W:TOS omnibus isn't out for another month). As such, I cannot recommend that anyone pay $15 just to get the comics in the $15 tier. HOWEVER, I think all the rest of the shit in the bundle is worth considerably more than $15, so I CAN recommend paying $15 just because that's still a screaming deal.

As for the books themselves: I've finished the first volume of Archer and Armstrong and really enjoyed it; I might make it one of my regular books after this. I've also read the first issue each of Harbinger and Eternal Champion and found them both promising; they didn't blow me away but they're good starts.

I'm beginning to see why Valiant has such a vocal fanbase -- on the one hand, yeah, that's really surprising coming from a company that's only been publishing books for a couple of years now and which is built around a bunch of cult hits from the 1990's.

HOWEVER, it's clear just how fucking enthusiastic the people working on these books are. These guys are real fans; the company was founded by a couple of college guys who loved the old Valiant enough that they spent years getting investors and untangling the various IP's (which were sold off following Acclaim's bankruptcy). The new Valiant is built by people who really love these characters and recruited a bunch of talented people to bring them back in new and accessible books, and it really shows.

And the loose connections between the books are exciting too. It's -- very loosely -- reminiscent of 1960's Marvel in the sense that it's a handful of standalone books that all take place in a shared universe, and it's small enough and early enough that it's still exciting when they connect to each other instead of tedious.

Course, I haven't gotten to Unity or Harbinger Wars yet; could be that it's worn out its welcome by that point. But as far as the early books? Nah, I'm enjoying those.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Sep 25, 2014 3:26 pm

26 free comics at Comixology; today only; use coupon code "COMICS".

Includes a bunch of Valiant #1's that are also in the Humble Bundle I've been talking about (and at least two that aren't, Delinquents #1 and Shadowman: End Times #1), the excellent Lumberjanes, Walt Simonson's return to (public domain) Thor in Ragnarok, and some books I've heard good things about but haven't read yet, like Stumptown and Terminal Hero.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Wed Oct 01, 2014 3:57 pm

Newest Humble Bundle: Oni. For $15 you get the first two volumes of Scott Pilgrim, among other stuff.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:57 pm

Comixology's got a Walking Dead sale to tie in with the upcoming season premier. A buck an issue or $40 for 50.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:25 pm

Humble Horror Bundle has some comics in it, including the Buffy Omnibus, Pinocchio the Vampire Slayer, and two whole issues of Afterlife with Archie.

Comixology is running a 50% off EC sale, including Davis, Kurtzman, Feldstein, Wood -- really, really great stuff.

Not sure why they opted for black-and-white with these reprints; given that it's Fantagraphics I assume it's a stylistic choice and not a budget one.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Nov 06, 2014 2:56 pm

The first 100 pages of The New York Four by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly are available as a free PDF download.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Wed Nov 19, 2014 2:08 am

Comixology has a big Wonder Woman sale on.

DC's still doing the DRM thing so I won't be buying any, but if DRM's not a deal-breaker for you, you can get the entirety of New Frontier for six bucks.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Wed Nov 19, 2014 12:04 pm

Colleen Doran wrote:Posting a few chapters of A DISTANT SOIL here for free. All are from the digitally restored editions.

I’m also running the PREQUEL at the official website, and have reformatted the site to allow each chapter to be divided into easy searches, so you can start where you like. I’m also going to be adding fan art and development sketches to the site. I have over 100 pages of unpublished art that I’ll be loading in the coming months.

Please consider dropping a hat tip to my website or picking up one of my books. We still have five figures of payments to make on the digital restoration of the series. I also have eight issues of the 50 issue run to complete!

Thanks for your support!

Also I have some art for sale on ebay. Check it out!


It's not especially well-formatted -- it's a comic posted one page at a time on a blog -- but it's friggin' A Distant Soil for free.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Fri Nov 28, 2014 12:42 am

Dave Sim has released Judenhass into the public domain. I haven't read it yet but I've seen some very good reviews from lots of folks.


(And yes, that CBZ file is a CBZ inside another zip file. Cut them some slack; Dave Sim still communicates with people by fax.)

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Mon Dec 01, 2014 11:51 am

100 indie comics are 50% off at Comixology; use code "indie" on the cart page.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Dec 01, 2014 3:40 pm

A month of Marvel Unlimited for $0.75. Essentially this is a paid trial, but I can't blame them for that considering the kind of content they're serving.

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Re: Free and Cheap Comics

Postby Thad » Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:31 am

Humble Dynamite Mega Holidays Bundle

There's a lot of stuff in there. Bob's Burgers #1-#3 are probably worth a few bucks; I've heard good things about the new Shaft series. Red Sonja is good but they're only providing part of the arc, which is kinda weird. I'm not a fan of The Boys but a lot of people are, and if you pay $15 you get the first 14 issues.

I haven't read most of the rest. Kirby Genesis is kind of a mixed bag; I read the first issue or two of Kevin Smith's Green Hornet and Zorro and neither of those really blew me away.

Also, if you buy the bundle you get 3 extra gift copies of Bob's Burgers #1 you can share with people. And if you share, you get the first issue of the Django/Zorro crossover.

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