On The Cheap: Image’s NYCC Sale Has So Many Good Comics Even We Can’t Narrow It Down

To kick off this weekend's New York Comic-Con, Comixology is currently hosting a pretty massive sale on Image books, and look. I realize that the entire point of the "On The Cheap" column is to help you narrow down your choices into the absolute best of the crop, but this time, I honestly don't know if I'm up to the task.

I mean, there's just too much good stuff in there --- and what's more, it's almost all stuff that we've talked about a whole heck of a lot here at CA. Sex Criminals, The Wicked + The Divine, Southern Bastards, Criminal, and a whole lot more besides. It is, at last, too much to choose from. But I'll do my best.

If you can only get one thing in the sale --- and assuming you haven't read it already --- then I'd say that your absolute best bet would be Greg Rucka and Michael Lark's Lazarus. If you're not familiar with it, it's a sci-fi action epic set in a future where the world has been divided up by families who rule as royalty, and who each settle their problems through a genetically modified immortal soldier called a Lazarus.

The main story follows Forever Carlyle --- whose name is usually shortened to Eve --- and the brilliant thing about it is that it balances the very personal elements of Eve's relationship with her Family, the intrigue and politics of the action story, and phenomenal world-building that seems almost effortless in how well it's done. Because the focus is on the Carlyle family and their territory --- the western half of what used to be America --- the story sets up an expectation of what the other Families are like, and when they're finally revealed in the second and third volumes, it's some of the most compelling stuff in comics

Right now, you can grab all three current volumes for less than $20, and it's well worth picking up.

If you can get two comics in the sale, my second pick would probably be Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Velvet,which might be the best take on James Bond-style spy action in the history of comics. If you can get three, well... everything else is too close to call. Dive in and check it out, there's great stuff in there.