On The Cheap: Dynamite's Pulp Sale

While this week's cheap comic news might be dominated by DC's big ol' New 52 sale, digging a little deeper on Comixology will provide even more: A short but thorough sale on Dynamite's pulp-themed comics, featuring the Shadow, Doc Savage, the Spider and more, dropped down to as little as a buck an issue.

There's a bunch there to get through --- and a lot of it is very, very good, with creators like Matt Wagner and Mark Waid working on The Green Hornet and Garth Ennis doing an incredibly brutal take on the Shadow. But as always, if you need a guide to some of the best stuff that's on offer before the sale ends tomorrow, I'm here to help.

The first thing I made sure to grab when I saw the sale was Garth Ennis and Aaron Campbell's The Shadow vol. 1: Fires of Creation, for what are probably pretty obvious reasons. I've always had a certain amount of affection for the Shadow as Batman's direct ancestor, and I'm about as big a fan of Garth Ennis as you're likely to find, so it was a natural fit. And folks, it is a very Garth Ennis comic.

In a way, that's something that actually makes it hard to recommend, because in some ways it feels less like a Shadow story than a Garth Ennis comic that just happens to feature the Shadow. There's a lot of familiar ground being trod here, and if you've read Ennis stories like Enemy Ace: War In Heaven, War Story or the more war-focused arcs of Punisher MAX, then you're going to know exactly what you're getting into here. It's got the same focus on using real-world horrors as the basis for its story, and when page one, panel one is an account of the atrocities of the Japanese invasion of China, it can be a pretty huge turnoff.

But, if you're a fan of Ennis's work, you'll likely enjoy this too. Just be warned that it is pretty grim, and deals with a lot of subject matter that goes pretty far, even for Ennis.

If that's not your thing, though, there's fortunately a great handful of alternatives: Both Matt Wagner and Aaron Campbell's Green Hornet: Year One and Mark Waid, Ronilson Frere and Daniel Indro's Green Hornet: The Bully Pulpit are more lighthearted (relatively speaking) stories with a classic feel to them that I can recommend without any reservations.

Finally, there's one more big one that grabbed: David F. Walker and Kewbar Baal's Doc Savage Special:

I'll admit that I was mostly drawn to this one by the amazing cover by Robert Hack. He did similar covers for the rest of Dynamite's pulp-themed specials --- Agents of the Shadow and The Avengers --- and I love the design on 'em so much. The tipping point, though, was seeing that it was written by David F. Walker, who has been doing an incredible job on Dynamite's Shaft over the past few months.

The Doc Savage Special isn't quite as good as Shaft --- the dialogue in particular doesn't land as effortlessly as the lines in Shaft seem to --- but it's still a pretty fun romp about Doc's cousin Pat and a secret plot to build evil robots.

All in all, some good stuff to check out, as long as you get there fast. The sale ends tomorrow, June 4.