By Zack Quaintance — I’ll just come out and say it…this week is essentially the best of modern Image Comics, featuring five books from the publisher that I absolutely love. They’re all available here in giant, long-read formats for great prices (generally about half off). Basically, if you’ve been wanting to catch up on the most-talked-about creator-owned books of the past decades, then this Best comiXology Sales: Weekend of July 24 is for you.

Enjoy!

Best comiXology Sales: Weekend of July 24

PICK OF THE WEEK
Paper Girls, Book One & Book Two
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Cliff Chiang
Publisher: Image ComicsSAGA writer BRIAN K. VAUGHAN launches a brand-new ONGOING SERIES with superstar Wonder Woman artist CLIFF CHIANG! In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time.
Why It’s Cool: One of the big announcements of San Diego Comic-Con at home has been the forthcoming Paper Girls television show, which is greenlit and being made for streaming on Amazon Prime. As such, our pick of the week is Paper Girls! You can get the bulk of the series now on sale and start to familiarize yourself with this intrictate, twisty time travel tale, all of which is depicted incredibly by Cliff Chiang, one of the most creative character designers in all of comics.
Price: $12.59 each, or $25.18 for both.
Buy It Here: Paper Girls Book One, and Paper Girls Book Two

Black Magick: The First Book of Shadows
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Nicola Scott
Publisher: Image Comics
The hammer falls this Halloween! From New York Times bestselling and Eisner Award winning writer GREG RUCKA (LAZARUS, Stumptown, Gotham Central) and superstar artist NICOLA SCOTT (Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Earth 2)! Detective Rowan Black works robbery/homicide for the Portsmouth PD, but her greatest mystery is the truth about herself...both who she has been, and who she will become. Yet there are others in Rowan's world with very long memories, and the power that one person holds, another will always covet. PLUS, each issue also features an all-new work of original fiction by GREG RUCKA! A new gothic-noir ongoing series about legacy, destiny, redemption...and the price of magic.
Why It’s Cool: This week marks the return of one of my personal favorite series in all of creator-owned comics right now — Black Magick by Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott. Like some of Rucka’s other best work, this book takes an inherently fantastical idea — a police detective who is a witch and uses actual magic — and boils it down to convey it in a way that feels very very real. There is a real restraint of narrative here, withholding anything that could bend the physics and rules of the world in a way that doesn’t feel real. Past that, the characters are so expertly developed, and it all adds up to a rich and engrossing read.
Price: $12.59
Buy It Here: Black Magick: The First Book of Shadows

Monstress Book One
Writer: Marjorie Liu
Artist: Sana Takeda
Publisher: Image Comics
A teenage girl struggles to overcome the trauma of war in an alternate, matriarchal 1900s Asia that’s brimming with arcane dangers. This task is made all the more difficult by her mysterious psychic link to an eldritch monster of tremendous power—a connection that will transform them both, and place them in the crosshairs of both human and otherworldly powers. Creator/writer MARJORIE LIU (who made history as the first woman to win an Eisner Award for Best Writer) and creator/artist SANA TAKEDA present a deluxe, oversized hardcover edition of their beloved breakout comic in MONSTRESS, BOOK ONE. This massive edition features a striking new cover and includes never-before-seen sketches, script pages, and more for over 500 pages of award-winning content. Collects MONSTRESS #1-18
Why It’s Cool: Look, I’ve been singing the praises of this series since it first launched in late 2015, talking up the mix of complex world building, fantastic character development, and some of the most impressive linework in all of monthly comics. In fact, I’m not sure I ever stop talking about how much this book is…and so that’s why today it’s on our Best comiXology Sales list…now, you can finally check out what all the fuss is about, if you haven’t already. You can get the first three major arcs of this book right now in one volume that spans more than 500 pages of phenomenal comics.
Price: $22.49
Buy It Here: Monstress Book One

Phonogram, The Complete Series
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Jamie McKelvie
Publisher: Image Comics
Phonomancer David Kohl goes hunting for new flames at a feminist festival, only to get burnt by a very old one. A Goddess scorned returns to collect her pound of flesh and demand reparations. Phonogram: a world where music is magic, where a song can save your life... or end it.
Why It’s Cool: Before there was The Wicked + The Divine, there was Phonogram, another collaboration between writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie that has music (as well as the culture that comes along with it) at its core. Whereas Wic + Div takes a longer approach to a wide and varied cast of characters (all of whom are keeping what feels like dozens of secrets), Phanogram is a more streamlined book. With this volume, you can lock the entire thing down and get lost in it over the course of a weekend.
Price: $17.99
Buy It Here: The Complete Phonogram

Saga: Compendium One
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Fiona Staples
Publisher: Image Comics
Y: THE LAST MAN writer BRIAN K. VAUGHAN returns to comics with red-hot artist FIONA STAPLES for an all-new ONGOING SERIES! Star Wars-style action collides with Game of Thrones-esque drama in this original sci-fi/fantasy epic for mature readers, as new parents Marko and Alana risk everything to raise their child amidst a never-ending galactic war.
Why It’s Cool: If there is an official comic of this website, it is without question Saga, which dominated our first two Best of the Year lists and also gave rise to an entire Saga re-read project. Put simply, I absolutely love this comic, which is the one I am most likely to give people who don’t read comics in order to best represent the medium. I think more than any book out there today, this comic shows in equal parts the singular mix of complexity and accessibility that comics offers audiences. This volume has every issue to date, which you can get now for about $22.
Price: $21.59
Buy It Here: Saga - Compendium One

You can find our picks for the best books on comiXology Unlimited!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.