THE UNBOXING - JULY 2020

After a couple months off, The Unboxing returns with two books and a few digital items. First, from Marvel, it's the SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS. I own this run in four formats now -- original comic books, two trade paperbacks, digital versions of those trades, and now this Omnibus. I can't help it; I love Byrne's She-Hulk! Heck, if IDW was ever to offer an Artist's Edition of pages from this run, I'd buy that, too!

Which turns out to be a nice segue to our next book, from IDW: DAVE COCKRUM'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION. Prior to buying this, I owned exactly one Artist/Artifact Edition, which hit The Unboxing just about two years ago, and that was the JOHN BYRNE'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION... so you can see where my tastes lie. Further, since I don't buy these things very often, I went ahead and splurged on the signed and numbered limited edition, which has a "virgin" wraparound cover, as well as a Chris Claremont autograph. I did the same thing with the Byrne book a couple years ago -- it was a Comic-Con exclusive, signed and numbered by Byrne.

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2020

I may be under state-mandated quarantine due to COVID-19, but The Unboxing recognizes no authority! Here's what we have this month:

From DC, it's TALES OF THE BATMAN: MARV WOLFMAN (inexplicably labeled as "Volume 1" even though I'm pretty sure this contains every Batman story Wolfman ever wrote). As we saw when I looked a ton of Batman in the Seventies comics last year, Wolfman's run on BATMAN continued directly from Len Wein's, wrapping up several loose ends, so the main reason I grabbed this volume was to site beside TALES OF THE BATMAN: LEN WEIN on my shelf for just that reason. It also contains a number of other Wolfman-penned Batman stories, though, which I'm sure I'll check out someday.

And from Marvel, we have the CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: BLOOD AND GLORY, another installment in Marvel's collection of Mark Gruenwald's dedace-long run on Cap. When I started buying a lot of digital collections a couple years ago, I gradually tapered off my purchases of most trade paperbacks, figuring that Marvel seems to publish everything in hardcover sooner or later, and the digital versions would be my reading copies of most paperbacks (and of things I never really needed to own physically in the first place) until the inevitable Omnibus, oversized hardcover, etc. came around. But these Gruenwald Cap collections are pretty much the only paperbacks I "grandfathered in", since I had several already.

For those keeping count, this book follows from the previously released Epic Collections SOCIETY OF SERPENTS, JUSTICE IS SERVED, THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, STREETS OF POISON, and THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM -- plus the out-of-print Epic-in-all-but-name THE CAPTAIN -- and all of them together collect CAPTAIN AMERICA # 307 - 410. Gruenwald's CAP run ended with issue 443, so that's only thirty-three issues to go, which will comprise a total of three more Epic Collections (which we know since BLOOD AND GLORY is volume 18, while MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, the book beginning the Mark Waid/Ron Garney run that immediately followed Gruenwald, is vol. 22.

I grabbed a few digital items this month as well. Amazon/Comixology had a BOGO sale when the Coronvirus situation really started heating up, so I picked up the following:

• AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES
  (The only Silver Age Avengers Epic I was unable to get in Marvel's big year-end sale because it wasn't discounted at the time.)
• AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR
• AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN
  (You'll be seeing more about this book, plus the subsequent pair listed below, very, very soon right here!)
• AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 1
• AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES vol. 2
• X-MEN MILESTONES ONSLAUGHT
  (I'm weirdly excited for this one because it contains only the core, "essential" parts of the "Onslaught" saga, without all the extraneous crossover junk. Looking forward to cracking it open when Gentlemen of Leisure's "X-aminations" reaches this point in the not-too-distant future!)
• X-MEN MILESTONES: PHALANX COVENANT
  (Since for some reason, the old PHALANX COVENANT hardcover has never seen a digital release, this will be my digital copy -- even though it's missing a few issues from the hardcover edition.)

Not too shabby, considering I haven't been allowed to leave the house for nearly a month! But now, with distribution on hold from some publishers due to the ongoing quarantine situation, we can only wonder what May will bring...!

THE UNBOXING - DECEMBER 2019

No physical books this month, but thanks to Marvel, it was a very merry digital Christmas! Amazon/Comixology ran one of the best sales they've ever done on Epic Collections, reducing all of them, across the board (except for the STAR WARS ones) to a flat $4.99 or $5.99 apiece. Considering that Epics are usually discounted to $6.99 or $7.99, this is a pretty big deal!

Thanks to the big Epic Collection sale, I plugged some gaps on the shopping list, and picked up: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: GHOSTS OF THE PAST, AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: THE GATHERERS STRIKE!, FANTASTIC FOUR EPIC COLLECTION: THE COMING OF GALACTUS, FANTASTIC FOUR EPIC COLLECTION: THE MYSTERY OF THE BLACK PANTHER, and NEW MUTANTS EPIC COLLECTION: THE DEMON BEAR SAGA.

But that's not all! Marvel also ran a "Celebrate 2019" sale, which while not as deeply discounted as the Epic sale, still presented some great deals -- including on stuff that was just released, which is a rarity for these sorts of sales. So in addition to the digital volumes listed above, I also picked up: FANTASTIC FOUR MASTERWORKS vol. 21, NOT BRAND ECHH: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, PETER PORKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-HAM: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN: LO, THIS MONSTER, TIGRA: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, X-MEN CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, and X-MEN: SHATTERSHOT.

And guess what, True Believers? The sales are still on! They both run until January 2nd, so grab those Amazon gift cards you just unwrapped a couple days ago and hop over there to grab some books. I know I will (again).

EDIT: Turns out I had already written a post for the December Unboxing before I composed the above, and I just now discovered it in mid-January in my "Drafts" folder. I actually grabbed more than I realized in late November/December! So here's the rest of the haul (also all digital):

Then, from DC, it's AQUAMAN: THE SEARCH FOR MERA, TALES OF THE BATMAN: GERRY CONWAY vol. 3, and WONDER WOMAN by JOHN BYRNE vol. 3. Both of those last two books conclude their respective runs, which is nice to see. Hopefully there's a TALES OF THE BATMAN: DOUG MOENCH series in the wings, to pick up where Conway's run ended and finish off the pre-CRISIS Batman era -- but time will tell.

From IDW, I grabbed STAR TREK VS. TRANSFORMERS, and from Dynamite I picked up BARBARELLA/DEJAH THORIS.

Lastly, I got some European comics from two publishers that translate them to English: from Cinebook we have five volumes of a series called LADY S: Vol. 1: HERE'S TO SUZIE, Vol. 2: LATITUDE 59 DEGREES NORTH, Vol. 3: GAME OF FOOLS, Vol. 4: A MOLE IN DC, and Vol. 5: PORTUGUESE MEDLEY. And from Soleil it's the eighth volume of a series called EKHÖ, which I've been picking up here and there over the past couple years, but haven't yet read at all.

And with that, we close the curtain on December's Unboxing and the full year's worth of 2019 Unboxings. Owing to my decision last year to scale back on physical books in favor of digital, this year featured the fewest Unboxings since I began the blog: only seven throughout the year. But the flipside of that fact is that I think I'm actually buying more books than ever before since digital, when on sale, is drastically less expensive than physical!

THE UNBOXING - SEPTEMBER 2019

We're gonna keep things short and sweet this month, with an all-Digital, all-Marvel Unboxing. I have to admit that I think I actually bought a few of these during some sale or another last month, but for the most part, these are all September purchases as part of Marvel's 80th anniversary BOGO sale at Comixology/Amazon. Thus, the latest additions to my digital lineup are:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: ASSASSIN NATION
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: GREAT POWER
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EPIC COLLECTION: THE GOBLIN LIVES
AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION: FEAR THE REAPER
AVENGERS MASTERWORKS vol. 19
CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE SUPERIA STRATAGEM
FANTASTIC FOUR: HEROES REBORN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1
FANTASTIC FOUR: THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMICS MAGAZINE!
IRON MAN: HEROES REBORN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1
LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 3
MASTER OF KUNG FU EPIC COLLECTION: FIGHT WITHOUT PITY
SAVAGE SHE-HULK MASTERWORKS vol. 2
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 2
THING: THE SERPENT CROWN AFFAIR
X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT
X-MEN EPIC COLLECTION: DISSOLUTION AND REBIRTH
X-MEN: GAMBIT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2
X-MEN> ONSLAUGHT AFTERMATH

And that's it for September, True Believers! Catch you back here next month (or not, if I don't wind up getting anything new)!

THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2019

Squeaking in just under the wire, and thanks primarily to a Comixology Spider-Man sale coupled with a Comixology BOGO ("Buy One, Get One") coupon code, we have The Unboxing for June -- an all-digital, all-Spidey affair.

I took advantage of the afore-mentioned sale and coupon to fill in some holes in my digital Spider-Man library. Some of these I own already, but I'm always up for getting digital "backup copies" of books I own when they can be had dirt cheap -- plus, if we're honest, I do more of my comic reading on my iPad anyway these days. It's more like the physical copies are the backups at this point.

Anyway, to start, I grabbed some late eighties/early nineties Epic Collections, which I love since they're collecting the long David Michelinie run that I grew up on in elementary and middle school: KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, VENOM, COSMIC ADVENTURES, RETURN OF THE SINISTER SIX, and ROUND ROBIN.

Then, from my beloved post-Clone Saga era, I grabbed SPIDER-MAN BY TODD DEZAGO & MIKE WIERINGO vol. 1, SPIDER-HUNT, and IDENTITY CRISIS. Marvel has been spotty in collecting this Spider-Man era, which is kind of frustrating. They did the entire Clone Saga in a proper reading order, and they've done the John Byrne/Howard Mackie relaunch from 1999 more or less in its entirety. But the two years in between have received only the above collections, plus a HOBGOBLIN LIVES collection that included a few issues of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN from the era as well. To my recollection, that's about it, but I hold out hope that someday, the entire post-Clone Saga/pre-Byrne period will make it into reprints (i.e., all four core books, plus SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, annuals, one-shots, mini-series, and so forth in a proper reading order).

Speaking of John Byrne, the final bunch of items from this month's digital Unboxing is a little grab bag, including Byrne's oft-maligned SPIDER-MAN: CHAPTER ONE. I actually recall enjoying certain aspects of this when I read it way back in college. Mainly I appreciated Byrne running through the first year's worth of Spider-Man stories as if they had all been planned out in advance. That said, there were some questionable decisions in the book as well, and I was annoyed that Marvel briefly had it overwrite Spider-Man's original continuity. Nonetheless, it is something I want to revisit someday, and it's perfect as a "digital only" purchase, since I have no real desire to own a physical copy.

Closing things out are the other random bits: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 20, and SPIDER-MAN: THE NEWSPAPER STRIPS vol. 1 and vol. 2. You'll recall how much I loved the Stan Lee/John Romita run on the Spidey strips when I read them here a couple years back. Those editions were published by IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, but have never been released digitally. However, these editions, which were released by Marvel a few years prior to IDW's release, are just fine with me for digital purposes.

FYI, the BOGO coupon has expired, but the Spider-Man sale runs into mid-July, so all the books mentioned above should still be available at a discount for a couple more weeks, for those who are interested!

THE UNBOXING - OCTOBER 2018

I'm quite pleased with this month's sole physical book. It's something I passed on when it was first released years ago, and I've kicked myself a bit ever since. But Marvel has gone back to press just in time for Halloween, and I now own the TOMB OF DRACULA OMNIBUS vol. 1. Presumably the remaining two books in this series will return to print soon as well, and this time around I intend to pick them all up!

Meanwhile, the Digital Unboxing returns this month for a certain Amazon princess we've been looking at a lot recently. Thanks to a couple of recent Amazon/Comixology sales, I now own WONDER WOMAN BY GEORGE PEREZ vol. 3 and WONDER WOMAN BY JOHN BYRNE vol. 2 in digital format.

Also new to the digital collection via a recent Comixology coupon are some adventures of a character I'd never heard of, but who sounded pretty cool when I read about her. Thus modern-retro pulp heroine Athena Voltaire has arrived, in the ATHENA VOLTAIRE COMPENDIUM vol. 1, ATHENA VOLTAIRE AND THE SORCERER POPE, and ATHENA VOLTAIRE AND THE VOLCANO GODDESS. It looks like there might be some additional material starring this character out there, but I don't think it's available digitally. However I'm not sure how the COMPENDIUM volume relates to previously released stories, so I might be wrong. Unfortunately, best as I can tell, it's hard to find a definitive listing of all Athena's stories and how they've been reprinted. Still, if nothing else, this looks to be the majority of her adventures.

Last year we had no Unboxings in August, September, October, or November! This year we've had one every month to date, and I already know there'll be one next month, too. If we manage one in December as well, this will mark the first year since 2014 that I've done an Unboxing twelve times. Part of this is, of course, due to the fact that I've added "Digital Unboxings" and "Junior Unboxings" to the proceedings, because I'm still not getting as many physical volumes as I used to -- but regardless of the reason why, filling in every month for 2018 is (hopefully) going to be a nice feeling!

THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2018

No new books this month; just a brief Digital Unboxing. Last month, Comixology ran a big sale on "Young Readers" material from Dark Horse, and around the same time there was a Dark Horse 50% off coupon as well -- so, at the recommendation of several posts on the Marvel Masterworks Message Board, I doubled the sales up and purchased eight volumes of the USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA -- which is every volume in that series printed to date, covering more than 150 issues, plus some specials and the like. I've had mild interest in Stan Sakai's samurai rabbit epic for several years, and now I finally own a massive chunk of it -- though when I'll actually settle down to read this stuff is anybody's guess.

(Also, I've learned that there was an earlier USAGI YOJIMBO series which lasted thirty-eight issues and whose reprint rights currently lie with Fantagraphics rather than Dark Horse -- so whenever I finally get to USAGI, it will certainly not be until after there's a Fantagraphics sale allowing me to pick up the eight volumes covering that series as well.)

THE UNBOXING - APRIL 2018

Mighty Marvel has two books for us this month, a matching pair titled X-MEN BLUE vol. 0: REUNION and X-MEN GOLD vol. 0: HOMECOMING. Why they chose to title these as if they were entries in the ongoing X-MEN BLUE and X-MEN GOLD series, which have nothing to do with this material, is anyone's guess -- though I would assume it's just some sort of cross-promotion; i.e. more casual fans might grab these if they seem like they're supposed to go with the other books in those series. To me, though it feels more like false advertising.

But in any case, these two collections, when combined with 2015's THE HUNT FOR PROFESSOR X volume*, encompass the full and complete Steve Seagle/Joe Kelly run on UNCANNY X-MEN and X-MEN from the mid-late-nineties. It was the era that fell between Scott Lobdell's and Alan Davis's runs, and is kind of notorious these days for some serious editorial interference -- but nonetheless, in my quest to own the complete 1990s X-Men, I'm happy to have all three of these volumes in my collection.

(Plug alert: for a pretty comprehensive list of various X-Men collected editions, check out my X-MEN COLLECTIONS page! Crazy as it sounds, by the end of this year, the entirety of nineties X-material will be available in hardcover and/or trade paperback, with the exception of just a handful of issues in the immediate aftermath of the "Onslaught" event. And with all these volumes coming up fast and furious, I may need to get back to my semi-regularly scheduled photo-reviews of X-Men books...)

In the realm of the Digital Unboxing, it's been a busy month for Marvel. Comixology/Amazon have been running some pretty big sales, offering newly released collections at a mere 99¢ a pop -- plus there have been, in recent weeks, two sales offering hundreds of Marvel collections at that same bargain price! So in the past month, I picked up the following in digital format: THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA, EXCALIBUR EPIC COLLECTION: THE CROSS-TIME CAPER, MARVEL HORROR: THE MAGAZINE COLLECTION, MARVEL SUPER HEROES: CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS, MARVEL TEAM-UP BY CHRIS CLAREMONT & JOHN BYRNE, MASTER OF KUNG FU EPIC COLLECTION: WEAPON OF THE SOUL, NAMOR VISIONARIES: JOHN BYRNE vol. 1 and vol. 2, NEW MUTANTS EPIC COLLECTION: CURSE OF THE VALKYRIES, SPIDER-MAN: THE GRAPHIC NOVELS, THANOS: THE INFINITY SIBLINGS, VAMPIRE TALES vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, WOLVERINE & NICK FURY: SCORPIO, X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN, X-MEN: LEGIONQUEST, X-MEN BLUE vol. 0: REUNION, and X-MEN GOLD vol. 0: HOMECOMING. (Those last two sound familiar for some reason...)

I would've grabbed more, but I already own many of the other 99¢ offerings I want from previous sales! Still, to drive home the point: that's twenty books for less than $20.00!

But sadly, it seems like this run may have ended. From what I've read, irate retailers bullied Marvel into contacting Amazon/Comixology about the sales, and a week or so after, the 99¢ offerings vanished from Comixology's site -- so it seems probable the same will happen on Amazon eventually. Mind you, I don't think anyone ever expected this to last; it was obviously some sort of experiment on Amazon's part, but it's still a shame the plug was pulled so quickly due to a retailer hissy fit. I was grabbing lots of stuff I wouldn't ordinarily have touched through these sales, as well as backup "digital copies" of many books I already own.

Oh, well... at the very least, we can hold out hope that the big, more-or-less quarterly price drops will continue on Amazon, where digital collections, while not discounted as drastically as to 99¢, go down to something like three or four dollars a pop.

---

It's been three years since THE HUNT FOR PROFESSOR X collection came out?! I checked to verify while typing up this post, seriously thinking it must have been just last year, or winter 2016 at the latest. You can't imagine how my jaw dropped when I saw the release date. How time flies!

A TEEN TITANS ANNOUCEMENT

As I understand it, in 1985, DC launched a second Teen Titans series. As we've seen, THE NEW TEEN TITANS was renamed to TALES OF TEEN TITANS around issue 45. Subsequently, DC created a second volume of THE NEW TEEN TITANS. The idea was that volume 2, available exclusively through comic shops and telling all-new stories with higher production values, would run alongside TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS, still for sale on the newsstand. These stories would then be reprinted a few months later for general consumption in TALES.

But first THE NEW TEEN TITANS would need to accumulate a backlog of material for the reprint series. So, for eight issues, TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS would feature ongoing original stories by Marv Wolfman and a handful of fill-in artists while the first six issues of THE NEW TEEN TITANS, by Wolfman and Pérez, would be distributed to comic shops concurrently, but take place subsequently to issue 58 of TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS.

I've seen varying opinions on these eight issues. Some seem to think they're inconsequential filler while others believe that some of them, at least, are pretty important (apparently there's a trial for Deathstroke taking up part of the run). But, at any rate, they were left out of the NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS volume 3, since George Pérez didn't work on them.