By Zack Quaintance — The big headline for me with the comiXology sales this weekend is the massive DC Comics sale, which sees what seems to be every digital collection the publisher has to offer on sale for half off (part 1 and part 2). There’s a ton of great deals in there for the intrepid reader, or for someone who’s gone lax and wants to catch up on all things Batman, Superman, etc. But that’s not all that’s on sale this weekend!

I’ve also combed through the rest of the sales to find the five best comiXology sales for the weekend of May 8, 2020. Enjoy!

Best comiXology Sales

Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Alan Davis
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Believing the X-Men to be dead, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat vow to keep the dream alive alongside Captain Britain and the metamorphic Meggan -- but the Warwolves have Phoenix on the run and she leads them to London, right into the formation of the X-Men's first foreign franchise! The Warwolves are on our heroes like a cheap suit (or is it the other way around?) and Chris Claremont doesn't waste any time in setting up the labyrinthine plots his fans know him best for! Aliens, intrigue and Arcade! The mystery of the Hellfire Club's Courtney Ross begins here! Guest-starring the Juggernaut!
Why It’s Cool: It’s 173 pages of Claremont X-Men-era goodness for less than the price of a brand-new comic. It also features an original incarnation of one of the more interesting X-Teams — the England-based and aptly named Excalibur — the artwork of all-timer Alan Davis, and great classic X-Villains such as Arcade and Juggernaut. What else could you want?
Price: $3.39
Link: Click here!

Mr. Higgins Comes Home & Our Encounters With Evil
Writer: Mike Mignola
Artist: Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Preparations begin at Castle Golga for the annual festival of the undead, as a pair of fearless vampire killers question a man hidden away in a monastery on the Baltic Sea. The mysterious Mr. Higgins wants nothing more than to avoid the scene of his wife's death, and the truth about what happened to him in that castle. However, these heroic men sworn to rid the world of the vampire scourge, inspire Higgins to venture out and to end the only suffering he really cares about--his own.
Why It’s Cool: These books are basically a send-up of all the classic and relatively played-out vampire stories, as seen through the lens of Hellboy-creator Mike Mignola. Mignola, who teams here with artist and writer Warwick Johnson-Caldwell, brings the same keen knowledge of horror-laden mythology to this series as he did and still does his banner creation, Hellboy. This sale creates a great opportunity for fans of the Mignola-verse stories to dive into something that at once feels both familiar and wholly new.
Price: $4.49 for Mr. Higgins Comes Home, $5.49 for Our Encounters With Evil, or $9.98 for both.
Link: Click here for Mr. Higgins Comes Home; and click here for Our Encounters With Evil!

The Paybacks Collection
Writers: Donny Cates & Eliot Rahal
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
From the team that delivered the smash-hit God Country and critically acclaimed Buzzkill, comes a repo squad composed of bankrupt former heroes here to foreclose on everybody's secret lairs! This superhero parody explores the idea that heroism doesn't come cheap, so when superheroes borrow money to finance their genetic enhancements or crime-fighting supercomputers, their debts make student loans look like I.O.U.'s!
Why It’s Cool: This entire creative team has gone on to bigger and better things, be it writer Donny Cates and artist Geoff Shaw regularly collaborating these days for Marvel Comics, or Eliot Rahal making a name for himself as a rising indie comics creator. In this book, you can see all of their early sensibilities played out through an engaging and hilarious superhero parody, in which the titular Paybacks are a repo squad tasked with foreclosing on past-due superhero lairs.
Price: $7.49
Link: Click here!

Peter Canon: Thunderbolt Vol. 1
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Caspar Wijngaard
Publisher: Dynamite
His level of genius is matched only by his heroics, and in humanity's darkest hour, he's the hero they need the most-alas, poor humanity. Peter Cannon-the man known as Thunderbolt-is only too happy to leave civilization to face its end. Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + the Divine) teams up with powerhouse artist Caspar Wijngaard (Doctor Aphra) as he returns to the superhero genre with a dark, humorous and relentless love song to the genre. Well, "Love Song" in a Leonard Cohen Love Song kind of way. Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt: saving a world he hates.
Why It’s Cool: This is a thoughtful take on one of the characters that inspired Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, done in a way that makes it a bit of a sequel to Watchmen as well. It’s also crafted by writer Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard, with the former being famously appreciative and insightful about the classic Watchmen work. This story is great, and it’s even better when consumed with this YouTube video of Gillen discussing what is essentially the source material.
Price: $4.49
Link: Click here!

Supergirl: Being Super
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Joelle Jones
Publisher: DC Comics
She’s super-strong. She can fly. She crash-landed on Earth in a rocket ship. But for Kara Danvers, winning the next track meet, celebrating her 16th birthday and surviving her latest mega-zit are her top concerns. And with the help of her best friends and her kinda-infuriating-but-totally-loving adoptive parents, she just might be able to put her troubling dreams-shattered glimpses of another world-behind her. Until an earthquake shatters her small town of Midvale…and uncovers secrets about her past she thought would always stay buried. Now Kara’s incredible powers are kicking into high gear, and people she trusted are revealing creepy ulterior motives. The time has come for her to choose between the world where she was born and the only world she’s ever known. Will she find a way to save her town and be super, or will she crash and burn?
Why It’s Cool: Mariko Tamaki (Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me) is one of the most powerful and nuanced storytellers in all of comics right now, and this book gave her a chance to collaborate with one of the top-tier artists at DC Comics, Joelle Jones. The result is an excellent, self-contained Supergirl story that you can pick up and hand to any reader, be they a long-time appreciator of DC Comics or a total neophyte to both superhero characters and the superhero genre. This is a story that is as accessible as it is complex, and although it precedes Black Label, it’s a great blueprint for what that imprint can and should be doing at its best.
Price: $5.94
Link: Click here!

Also, checkout the Best Comics 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.