By Zack Quaintance — Boy howdy (what?), we have a red hot set of comics sales selections for this week’s list of the best comiXology sales: weekend of July 16, 2021. At the top of the list is the X-Men, specifically Chris Claremont’s classic run on the characters, 12 volumes of which have now been collected in the Marvel masterworks format. And the list just goes on from there.

Check it out in full below!

Best comiXology Sales: Weekend of July 16, 2021

The Claremont X-Men Run - Uncanny X-Men Masterworks, Vol. 1 - Vol. 12
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artists: Various
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus; Endowed with unique abilities, these mutants were summoned by Professor X to rescue the original X-Men, an underground organization sworn to protect those that fear and hate them. Relive their original adventures - discover the human within the hero and the truth behind the legend!
Why It’s Cool: You know how you (yes, you!) have always been meaning to read the classic run of Uncanny X-Men comics written by Chris Claremont? Especially now that those mutants you like have come back in style? Well friend, you’re not going to get a better chance than this. All 12 volumes of those collected comics are on sale this week for $5.09 each. It’s not every X-Men comic Claremont wrote, but it’s fairly close — and you can just wait for the other volumes to go on sale as you make your way through these.
Price: $5.09 each, or $61.08 for all 12 volumes
Buy Them Here: Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 1; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 2; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 3; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 4; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 5; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 6; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 7; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 8; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 9; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 10; Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 11; and Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 12

The Kill Lock
Writer: Livio Ramondelli
Artist: Livio Ramondelli
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Banished for their crimes, four robots are bound to each other's fates in this sci-fi graphic novel. Each found guilty of an irredeemable crime, four robots find themselves banished from their home world and bound together by the Kill Lock–a programming link that means if one of them dies, they all will. Now a soldier, an addict, a murderer, and a child find themselves forced to protect each other while in search of a cure to survive. Their only clue is a bot known as The Axial, supposed to be the creator of the Lock and keeper of its secrets.
Why It’s Cool: This was such an interesting and tight miniseries when it ran a while back, and now you can get the entireity of it for less than a new comic, which is an absolute steal. The premise of this comic is that a group of robots have been essentially linked together and sent to a far flung world to be imprisoned/likely die, but reconciling their differences and working together might just go a long way to fixing that. The Kill Lock is on its surface all about robots, and yet (as cliched as this sounds), it’s a very human book.
Price: $3.00
Buy It Here: The Kill Lock

Moon Knight by Lemire and Smallwood.jpeg

Moon Knight by Lemire & Smallwood
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Greg Smallwood
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Marc Spector (A.K.A. Moon Knight/Jake Lockley/Steven Grant) has been fighting criminals and keeping New York City safe for years…or has he? When he wakes up in an insane asylum with no powers and a lifetime’s worth of medical records, it calls his whole identity — identities —into question. Something is wrong, but is that something Marc himself? Delve deep beneath the mask of Moon Knight to meet the many men inside his head! While Steven Grant prepares for a box-office smash, Jake Lockley is arrested for murder! And as the muddled mind of Moon Knight reaches its limit, the secrets of his past are revealed in a story of birth, death and rebirth unlike any other. Trapped outside of reality, Moon Knight’s survival depends on answers — but Marc Spector is plagued by nothing but questions!
Why It’s Cool: These comics were fantastic, a deeply psychological and brain-bending Moon Knight story that made fantastic use of artist Greg Smallwood’s ample talents. The beginning of this run — which is now collected in its entirety and on sale here — is especially excellent, and while I have nothing to base this on really, I suspect the forthcoming Moon Knight TV show may borrow heavily from it.
Price: $6.79
Buy It Here: Moon Knight by Lemire & Smallwood

Ping Pong, Vol. 1 - Vol. 2
Writer: Taiyo Matsumoto
Artist: Taiyo Matsumoto
Publisher: Viz
Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto and his friend Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino have been playing table tennis since they were kids, but as they enter high school, they find that the game has changed. Seeing potential in them that they themselves don't fully realize, the coach recruits them for the school team. Bringing out their best will mean challenging the top players from rival schools in the summer tournament, including an ace Chinese exchange student who almost made the Olympic team. With the pressure on, can Smile and Peco take the heat and make it into the finals?
Why It’s Cool: One of my favorite story structures is one-on-one competition; two rivals enter, one emerges victorious, see perhaps most famously The Iliad but perhaps best-known in The Karate Kid. It’s a great story structure, one that maximizes drama and really shows you what your characters are made of. This is certainly used to great effect in Ping Pong, a fantastic story about pressure, competition, achievement, and self. We do suggest a ton of manga on this site (mostly for lack of knowledge depth), but when we do, you can rest assured the book is a good one.
Price: $13.99 per volume or $27.98 total
Buy It Here: Ping Pong, Vol. 1; and Ping Pong, Vol. 2

Superman - Action Comics by Morrison and Morales
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Rags Morales
Publisher: DC Comics
With this renumbering comes a new creative team featuring comics legend Grant Morrison and fan-favorite artist Rag Morales. While Morrison is no stranger to writing the Superman character, having won three Eisner Award's for his work on All-Star Superman, Action Comics will be something new for both old and new readers and present humanity's first encounters with Superman, before he became one of the World's Greatest Super Heroes. Set a few years in the past, it's a bold new take on a classic hero.
Why It’s Cool: Grant Morrison continues to emerge as perhaps the strongest voice of superhero fiction of our generation, certainly so far as DC Comics is concerned. In fact, when the publisher did its New 52 relaunch in 2011 and it decided to renumber its longest-running series in Action Comics, it was Morrison who got the call to shape it, collaborating with writer Rags Morales. And while All-Star Superman (also on sale) is certainly likely to be remembered as Morrison’s crowning Superman achievement, these comics are very very good, sort of the great writers take on the character just played out through a monthly format and a perspective steeped in the title’s singular history.
Price: $5.09 - $6.79 each; or $16.79 for all three volumes
Buy Them Here: Action Comics, Vol. 1; Action Comics, Vol. 2; and Action Comics, Vol. 3

See our past top comics to buy here, and check out our reviews archive here.

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