Crushing Krisis

New for Patrons: Guide to Infinity Inc.

September 5, 2022 by krisis

I’m back with a third and final foray (for now) into my initial exploration of the JSA after my Guide to Doctor Fate and Guide to Justice Society of America launches over the past week for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK. For this third guide, I realized that a title I was trying to mash into the JSA guide deserved its own space – just as its cast broke away from the JSA in 1984 to form their own superhero that withstood the transition from Earth Two to Earth One. Of course, I’m referring to JSA’s original next generation, now covered in my Guide to Infinity Inc!

This guide will remain exclusive to Patrons even after the public debut of the JSA Guide in October.

Infinity Inc. occupies a unique and often-forgotten corner of the DC Universe as a book that had as many Pre-Crisis issues set on Earth Two as it had Post-Crisis issues set in DC’s main continuity.

If you’re not familiar with any Crisis other than me, allow me to explain that to you!

In 1984, the Teen Titans were a wildly popular title for DC – effectively, their X-Men and New Mutants rolled into one! If the Teen Titans were the next generation of the Justice League, then it made sense to introduce Infinity Inc. as the next generation of the Justice Society of America (JSA) of Earth Two. The JSA were DC’s Golden Age heroes who kept on living and aging on a parallel Earth to the main Silver Age and Bronze Age Earth where they introduced the Justice League.

At the time, the JSA didn’t even have a present-day title of their own, so the launch arc for their junior team had to be a time travel story set in 1942 in the pages of the JSA’s retcon title, All-Star Squadron! The original team a number of JSA legacy heroes like Alan Scott’s children Jade and Obsidian, The Atom’s godson Nuklon, Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s son Silver Scarab, Wonder Woman & Steve Trevor’s daughter Fury, Batman and Catwoman’s daughter Huntress, Superman’s relative Powergirl, and more.

Infinity Inc. became the home to Earth Two adventures in DC’s Universe in 1984 and 1985, where the team battled the evil Helix – including a character modern readers would come to know as the D.E.O.’s Director Bones! Then, Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. This was DC’s way of simplifying their complex, multi-Earth history – including merging Earth Two into Earth One! [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Infinity Inc.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2, Episode 6 – Hometown Hunnies: Review & Power Ranking

September 4, 2022 by krisis

Kia ora and welcome to my review and power rankings for the sixth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 – Hometown Hunnies, where queens were challenged to create a spoof tourism ad for their hometowns.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another episode of Drag Race where RuPaul seemed so incredibly over it, both in the workroom and on the runway.

Maybe that comes down to how the queens took the direction to create their spoof ads. All of them understood the challenge in an incredibly literal way and were initially planning straight-forward homages to their hometowns with little bits of humor. Ru sets them straight one-by-one in the workroom, telling each one of them to go back to the drawing board with limited time before their shoot begins.

We all know Ru loves to keep the queens second-guessing themselves, but the fact that she needed to correct everyone in the cast tells me there was some form of missed communication from production to the queens. Maybe that was intentional, or maybe Ru and the production team simply assumed the “spoof” aspect of the ads was implied right up until Ru’s walk-around.

I think there’s a little bit of a cultural aspect mixed in with that. I feel like if the US franchise asked a queen to talk about her home town, she would be more likely to assume it was mean to be a silly version and script it as such.

For Australia and New Zealand, I feel like there’s a lot more pride in wanting to make your town look good – especially on an international stage. Even though almost all of them do take an initially negative view of their hometowns (Beverly, especially), at first they all seemed mor- focused on explaining their places rather than telling a story about themselves.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this many awkward moments in a Drag Race judges’ critique that didn’t end in RuPaul screaming about H&M. It feels like the editors could barely piece together enough comments from the three judges to fill the time. Maybe that’s down to Ru’s openly hostile reception to most of the ads (again, stemming from poor direction). Or, it could’ve been the super-basic “Swimsuit Edition” runway prompt, which feels like it was originally intended for a mini-challenge or third ball look. To their credit, all of the queens took things in a conceptual direction with their swimsuits, but the prompt definitely failed to produce a gag-worthy moment – and, it gave the judges very little to discuss.

That leaves us with a fairly obvious Final Four, as predicted in last week’s “Bosom Buddies” Power Rankings (and the week before that in Snatch Game, and the week before that in Drag Brunch). The real question is who will graduate to the Top 3 in the finale after next week’s episode. Two of the choices seem very obvious, while the other one is still hotly contested.

If you want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 outside of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines… and may the best Down Under drag queen win!

New for Patrons: Guide to Justice Society of America

September 3, 2022 by krisis

After working on the Guide to Doctor Fate launch earlier this week for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK, I realized it was time for me to finally dive into one of the few corners of DC Universe continuity that I still find intimidating. That’s because this team has been repeatedly in and out of continuity, they’ve been residents of multiple Earths (and at the center of several crises), and their membership spans multiple generations of heroes. I am talking about the original comic super-team that first debuted back in 1940, now completely explained in my Guide to Justice Society of America!

This guide will debut to the public the week that the Black Adam movie releases to theatres!

This is one of those times where I always hoped someone else on the internet would have explained things by now, but they didn’t so I had to take things into my own hands. Yes, I read Wikipedia and Fandom. Yes, I checked out some sites dedicated to the Justice Society. All of them explained the timeline of the JSA either with needless complexity or with the assumption of the reader being a DC Insider.

That’s not good enough for me. I want my guides to be able to explain things to someone who decided to read a comic for the very first time and just happened to pick the title covered by that guide. Many of my older guides are way too complex for that – I have a lot of work to do! But, my newer style of coverage strives for completeness but also clarity.

As it turns out, creating a Guide to Justice Society of America doesn’t have to be all that complicated. If you’ve ever wanted the cliff notes on the team, here’s the simplest way I can explain it: [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Justice Society of America

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 8 – Masquerade Ball, Review & Power Ranking

September 2, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the eighth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – the Masquerade Ball, a classic Drag Race ball episode requiring three runway looks, including one constructed in the workroom.

I often comment that Canada’s Drag Race feels like old-school RuPaul’s Drag Race from the era of it airing on Logo TV. You could ask, “Is that a read?” about it feeling low budget compared to the current flagship franchise. For me, it’s more about the show having a certain scrappy, DIY energy.

Also, sometimes it’s unforgivingly difficult.

When I think about Drag Race at its hardest, I always flash back to RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 as the most-difficult season of all time, where the queens looked like they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Ru announced the “Money Ball” hot on the heels of the “Hair Ball.”

I imagine that’s what the five remaining queens of Canada’s Drag Race must have felt when they heard the final hurdle before the finale was the Masquerade Ball – a third design challenge in just eight competitive episodes. That’s not only difficult, but also surprising, since it means this season left out not one but two staple challenges of Canada that would be welcomed by several of these queens: an acting challenge and their phenomenally heartfelt makeover challenge, which have been the highlights of the past two seasons.

Sending the queens back to their sewing machines and glue guns for a third time yielded interesting results. Our two seamstresses backslid while two of the remaining trio of Glue Gun Girls stepped up their games in a major way.

Maybe the seamstresses had design fatigue at this point. Or, maybe Masquerade Ball is just a difficult category to design – as were both of the ball categories paired with it! We wound up with a shakey set of constructed looks, a surprising winner, a shocking entrant in the bottom two, and one of the biggest lip sync bops of the season.

Next week is the finale of Canada’s Drag Race! Did any queen manage to jostle her way into a new spot compared to last week’s rankings? And, who do I think is most-likely to take the crown? Read on to find out!

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win!

Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

September 1, 2022 by krisis

Mabuhay! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race Philippines Season 1 – “OPM Divas: The Rusical.” This is a lip sync Rusical where each queen needs to impersonate an iconic Philippines pop star by lip syncing to nursery rhymes performed in their signature style.

OPM refers to “Original Pilipino Music” – a particular style of Filipino post-1970s pop songs heavy on soulful balladry. This is one of those times where no amount of YouTube research can adequately prepare me to fairly judge the results of a Drag Race challenge from an international edition of the show.

I tried my best to find comparable looks and performances from all of the OPM Divas to better appreciate the impersonations, but some of these Divas have been around for decades – long enough that we could have a whole Rusical dedicated solo to them the way we have had for Cher and Madonna on the US franchise.

Even this mini-challenge was completely new to me! It was a game of “Ten-Twenty Talon Becky,” a reverse-limbo street game of hopping, leaping, and eventually cartwheeling over a Chinese garter. (A “Chinese garter,” is simply a rubberized elastic band you can use for stretching and/or jumping rope.) I couldn’t imagine how the queens were going to make it over the belt once it got up to eyeball-level – and that’s where the cartwheels came in! If you get even a toe over the rubbery line, your momentum and its elasticity takes care of the rest.

The mini-challenges this season have showed off how good-natured and downright silly this cast can be, which is easily obscured by how seriously they all take their runway assignments. I cannot think of another season of any franchise where an entire cast of queens have been so gamely foolish for physical challenge like the pole-climbing and the Chinese garter.

The willingness to be awkward on camera feels unique to the Philippines cast, but it also helps that the mini-challenges are rooted in their culture and their sense of childhood play. Compare that to the typical US mini-challenges, which tend to be either games that Ru (a man in her 60s) finds personally entertaining or full of sexual innuendo (if not both).

This episode also showed that the Philippines franchise is not above outright riggory to create drama in critiques.

As I understand it, every queen had advance knowledge of two Divas they might impersonate, but they didn’t have a say in the final choice or in the style of song and how it would be choreographed. Many Filipino Divas are known for being Celine-Dion-adjacent balladeers, which gave some queens less to work with than others.

Minty Fresh, in particular, felt stuck with a performance that could only accentuate the “Wake Up, Pearl!” narrative that she’s been saddled with. Similarly, Lady Morgana landed the most world-famous of all the Divas, but that Diva is such a chameleon that Morgana couldn’t possibly capture her within 45 seconds of impersonation.

Finally, there were some queens who were protected from critiques to yield the elimination the show wanted tonight, which might not have been 100% warranted based on the episode but which made sense in the arc of the season.

Did all that riggory that wreak major havoc on my Power Rankings compared to Episode Three? Read on to find out!

If you want to watch Drag Race Philippines outside of the Philippines and Canada you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Filipino drag queen win! [Read more…] about Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking