If you make a regular Wednesday pilgrimage to your friendly neighborhood comic shop, or plan your amazon orders around Viz and Tokyopop’s big monthly release dates, you don’t need to be reminded just how expensive the sequential art habit can be. This month, however, the gods of commerce seem to be smiling on all us addicts with a host of attractive promotions. Here’s a quick cheat sheet for saving 15-40% off your next big purchase:

Jon would kill me if I didn’t mention the big Midtown Comics sale on graphic novels and manga. All titles are 25% off (website only); purchase $75 or more worth of merchandise and the shipping is free. A heads-up to manga lovers in more remote areas of the country: Midtown’s inventory includes titles not yet available through amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstore chains as well as some out-of-print series and hard-to-find volumes. Through April 30th.

Top Shelf is running a promotion now through April 18th, offering generous discounts on everything from the NC-17 Lost Girls to the all-ages Owly, with some titles starting as low as $1. (Word to the wise: Lost Girls is NOT among the $1 specials.) To take advantage of the sale prices, you’ll need to purchase at least $30 of books.

Borders and Waldenbooks are offering a 4-for-3 promotion on all Tokyopop books from now until May 14th. (A caveat: I’m not certain if the discount applies to POP Fiction and BLU Manga titles. You might want to double-check before sauntering to the counter with the entire run of Gorgeous Carat.)

Amazon is also currently running a 4-for-3 promotion that includes a number of ADV, CMX, Dark Horse, DMP, Tokyopop (including its BLU Manga and POP Fiction imprints), Vertical, and Viz titles, as well as a more limited selection of TPBs and comic strip anthologies. Among the items eligible for the discount: Batman: Under the Hood, Buddha, Death Note, Loveless, Path of the Assasin, Runaways, Vampire Hunter D, and several Doonesbury collections.

For more thoughts on cost-saving measures, go comparison shopping with David Welsh at Comic World News or John Jakala at Sporadic Sequential as they explore the pros and cons of websites from amazon to Deep Discount.