Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

New for Patrons: Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne

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My newest guide for all Patreon supporters of Crushing Krisis is for one of Marvel’s newest characters to hold down her own solo title – two of them, in fact! In my humble opinion, hers are the finest all-ages comics Marvel has produced in their main 616 continuity in the past decade and I absolutely treasure the memories of reading them for the first time with my daughter. She’s not quite the same as her MCU sibling, nor is she quite the hero you might expect her to be. It’s my brand new Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne!

Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne
This guide is now available to the public thanks to the unstoppable support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

The Guide to Unstoppable Wasp

Nadia van Dyne was one of many Legacy characters introduced to take up classic heroic mantles in All-New All-Different Marvel in 2016.

At the time, it was obvious that Marvel’s editors wanted to replace the entire Avengers starting line-up with newer versions, even if they weren’t currently Avengers- Sam Wilson as Cap, Jane Foster as Thor, Riri Williams as Ironheart, Scott Lang as Ant-Man, and Amadeus Cho as Hulk (plus Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales as Spider-Man, and Sam Alexander as Nova, for good measure).

There’s only one founding Avenger missing from that line-up – The Wasp!

The tricky thing about that plan is that Marvel had brought back the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne, in the pages of Uncanny Avengers just as they had finished sweeping aside Steve Rogers, Odinson, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner to make way for their new cast of Legacy Heroes.

Oh, and one more complication: Marvel had just introduced a Wasp in the MCU, but she was Hank Pym’s & Janet van Dyne’s grown-up daughter. They couldn’t replicate that in the comics… could they?

[Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne

Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

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I’m happy to announce that my Guide to The Champions is now available to all CK readers! This guide covers both the 1975 Champions of Los Angeles as well as the 2016 revival of the team as a squad of Marvel’s young characters in the wake of Civil War II This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the outstanding Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to The Champions

When I first covered how to collect the 1975 edition of The Champions they didn’t merit their own guide page. They had 17 issues of their own and then faded into Marvel history while their members scattered to the winds. I relegated them to my Guide to X-Men Ongoings due to the team including Angel and Iceman.

In reality, the problem with reassembling The Champions wasn’t just that Iceman and Beast had been incorporated into The Defenders (visit the Guide to Defenders), and later into X-Factor (visit the newly-updated Guide to X-Factor)

It was also that Marvel lost the ability to publish comics with the “Champions” title! [Read more…] about Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

Dolly told me I’m doing okay

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Last night, Dolly Parton reminded me that things come to me easily when I work the hardest. Just like Paul McCartney.

Also, our unconscious brain is the original A.I. engine.

Image by Chen from Pixabay

Except, I guess it’s a paradox to call the human brain artificial intelligence? Also, come to think of it, that first sentence was kind of paradoxical too.

Maybe I should back up a step. Maybe several steps.

I am mystified by people who run. Especially those who enjoy running or who can run quickly. I’ve always hated running and it seems to hate me right back. The process of my body lurching forward into a sprint has never once satisfied me. Every second I am running is a second I’d rather not be running.

Over the past year I’ve done a fair amount of running. More than 150 kilometers, at least – which certainly more-than-doubles my lifetime mileage.

Do you know what happens when you run a lot, even when you hate every single second of doing it? Eventually, it gets easier. I stopped getting as out of breath as I did at the start of the year. I stopped getting side stitches after a few months. After a while, I started getting marginally faster on every 5k route through my neighborhood.

Let me tell you: there is no kind of reward for running that is better than the running being over more quickly.

I look a break from running over the long, soggy New Zealand winter and spring. When I started running again in the past month, I feared I was right back to where I started. I was going to hate being slow and breathless and full of cramps. That was true the first few weeks. Then, something surprising happened. Without really trying, one day I checked my stopwatch at the end of my route and realized I had shattered my personal record by 30 seconds. Nothing about the run had seemed remarkable. I hadn’t even hated it any more than I hate any other run.

Things come to you easily when you work the hardest.

That’s also true for mental exertion. [Read more…] about Dolly told me I’m doing okay

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – a supersized version of Snatch Game, the Drag Race game show challenge of impersonation, comedy, and quick wit.

I think we had more than one potential Hall of Fame performance in this Snatch Game, which is always exciting to see! The first round of the game was more all-around entertaining, but the second round had had a trio of standouts.

Maybe this solidifies the argument for front-loading the season with Snatch Game as well as a Ball challenge within the first few episodes. We really ought to see a queen make it through these Drag Race fundamentals before she sashays away.

Surprisingly, this episode may have also made an argument in favor of the tight 40-minute edit of this season’s episodes. We never saw Ru’s walkaround where he attempts to undermine the queens’ characters choices, insisting that everyone would be funnier if they did Cher. It doesn’t add anything to the show. I much prefer to watch Snatch Game unfurl without a preview of how Ru might be biased for or against any of their choices.

Of course, Snatch Game is the one Drag Race challenge that has such a straightforward format where you can easily cut minutes out of the process of explaining it and it still turns out the same. Next week we’re due for a design challenge, and I fear that we’ll see very little of each queen as they design and construct their garments.

Did the crowd of strong Season 15 Snatch Game performances shake up my power rankings from last week? We had a major fall and a major lift, but not too much jostling between them.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

Marvel United: Multiverse makes more mutants, plus Inhumans enter the fray with War of Kings!

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We interrupt this post I had just started writing about the Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign to bring you breaking news from the Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign! Today, CMON announced their first new expansion box of the campaign, and it’s a massive one: War of Kings, including the entire primary cast of Inhumans and two X-character Shi’ar foes!

Let’s talk about this newly-announced box for a moment, and then I’ll get back to what I was already in the process of writing about – which is the many mutant characters who have been popping up as stretch goals over the past couple of days.

I have a 800+ character wishlist for Marvel United. I’ve ever grouped them into potential boxed sets whenever I could theme a group of them together. I know some of them are far beneath CMON’s threshold for notice. Maybe we could get Wiz-Kid, but we’ll probably never have my beloved Siena Blaze.

The Inhumans are one of those potential boxed sets, but I wasn’t sure if they were popular enough to merit their own expansion. They haven’t had their own ongoing for several years, and they were unceremoniously excised from the Marvel Universe. Casual comic fans likely only know half the royal family at best. CMON has snuck in many niche characters like Cloak & Dagger and the Starjammers via a steady drip of Stretch Goals, and I thought if we were lucky we could score half the royal family that way.

I was far to pessimistic about our chances! We’re getting the full royal family that I selected in my spreadsheet – Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Gorgon, Karnak, & Triton. Plus, a full sculpt and set of cards for Lockjaw! Plus, Gladiator – leader of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard – as a dual-playing Anti-Hero that can be a hero or a villain. And, one fully-evil Vulcan, the lost Summers brother.

ALL IN ONE BOX. For $35, that’s less than $4 per character. The only way this box could be any better is if they made Vulcan a hero (after all, all mutants fight for Krakoa!) – but I can take care of that on my own.

Cue me screaming my head off in Marvel geek delight. Also, all of their figure sculpts look amazing, and their power dynamics sound unique. Crystal can use her earth control to block villains from moving into a location, and Triton gets special advantage in locations marked with water tokens.

Meanwhile, the post I was already working on is this: CMON has really stepped up on filling in mutants they didn’t get to in their X-Men campaign. We’re only on Day 3 and they’ve already completed the entire Starjammers, gotten two characters into Generation X, and added everyone’s favorite good boy – Doug Ramsey!

Let’s take a quick look at which X-Characters have been announced and who remains MIA. [Read more…] about Marvel United: Multiverse makes more mutants, plus Inhumans enter the fray with War of Kings!