Archives for 2017

Incredible Hercules by Pak & Van Lente Omnibus – The #52 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 13, 2017 by krisis

Incredible Hercules by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente Omnibus is the #52 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.

Visit the Guide to Hercules for the full details on how to collect this run, which spun out of World War Hulk.

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? Incredible Hercules (2008) took over its sequential numbering from Incredible Hulk, where both Hercules and Amadeus Cho had been supporting players during World War Hulk.

It was the first time Hercules had his own starring ongoing title. It took him on a heroes journey of owning his godhood and becoming a leader, then ultimately rejecting it to rely on his humanity to be a hero.

Incredible Hercules (2008) ran from February 2008 to April 2010 and was followed by a trio of connected mini-series and a second 11-issue ongoing, Herc (2011), which ran from June 2011 to January 2012.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.

Creators: Written by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente with an assortment of artists including Rafa Sandoval, Salva Espin, Clayton Henry, Rodney Buchemi, Reilly Brown, Ariel Olivetti, Khoi Pham, Neil Edwards, and more!

Probable Contents: Incredible Hulk (1999) #112, Incredible Hercules (2008) #113-141, Hulk vs. Hercules: When Titans Collide, Assault on New Olympus Prologue, Hercules: Fall of an Avenger (2010) #1-2, Heroic Age: Prince of Power (2010) #1-4, Chaos War (2010) #1-5, Chaos War: Chaos King (2011) #1, Chaos War: God Squad (2011) #1, Chaos War: Ares (2011) #1, Herc (2011) #1-10 & 6.1, and maybe Deadpool Team-Up Vol. 2 (2010) #899. See below for a full reading order. [Read more…] about Incredible Hercules by Pak & Van Lente Omnibus – The #52 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E08 – “RuPaul Roast” (of Michelle Visage)

May 13, 2017 by krisis

The Second Ru Paul Roast, featuring Michelle Visage, makes for a tumultuous week in the rankings for our queens.

One of the first elements of RuPaul’s Drag Race I ever saw were the “Meet The Queen” videos from Season 6. The girls talked about a lot of things I didn’t understand at all, but one theme kept popping up again and again: they were all afraid of someone named Michelle Visage.

Based on their comments, I expected Michelle to be a force of unmitigated evil and impossible to please. She’s anything but that! Michelle is critical, but she’s realistic. She has some pet peeves she’ll go after every time (e.g., the color green, in-between gown lengths, cinching, “knowing the real you”), but her input is a lot more useful than anyone else on the panel. And, I tend to agree with her.

In this week’s ranking, every queen in the top five got shuffled. That leaves us with one new queen in contention for the finale and another finding it slipping out of her grasp.

That’s a bit of a surprise, since last week was another on-script challenge about being funny. Of course, this week they scripted themselves and had to make it work live in front of an audience.

Our remaining queens are relatively well-matched – they all have at least one win a piece, and four of the seven have been to the bottom two once. (Trinity is the sole queen with a pair of solo wins. Shea has her own win plus a shared win with Sasha. That shared victory is Sasha’s only outright victory, but she just had two weeks of almost winning.)

Basically: it’s still anyone’s race, but some anyones are a little bit better positioned than others.

That makes next week’s challenge absolutely critical. Whoever wins could be solidifying their place in the finale, while if a queen with an existing bottom two placement survives the lip sync she could be dooming herself to fourth place. [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E08 – “RuPaul Roast” (of Michelle Visage)

Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 13, 2017 by krisis

Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron is the #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

Visit the Guide to Thor to learn how to collect this story – and every other Thor comic ever published!

What Is It? Thor: God of Thunder (2012) was Thor’s relaunched comic in Marvel Now, beginning a new run by Jason Aaron that is still going (in a third title) over four years later!

This beautifully illustrated volume is one of my most highly-recommended comic runs of the past half decade to readers both old and new. It found Thor facing off against the brutal God Butcher across three different timelines before his attention turned back to tending to the problems of Earth and Asgard.

Thor: God of Thunder (2012) ran for 25 issues from November 2012 to November 2014, though five issues of Original Sin act as an interlude between #24-25.

It continued to Thor (2014), which ran for 8 issues and an annual from December 2014 to July 2015, when it was interrupted by Secret Wars.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results. [Read more…] about Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Conan The Barbarian, Vol. 1 – The #54 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 12, 2017 by krisis

Conan The Barbarian Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #54 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? Marvel’s first ongoing Conan series launched in October 1970 and ran continuously through issue #275 in December 1993 alongside several other Conan ongoing comics and magazines.

Past Ranking: Tied for #38 in 2016, its first year on the survey.

Creators: Conan The Barbarian (1970) was written by Roy Thomas through issue #115 and again from #240-275. This early run featured pencils mostly by Barry Windsor-Smith with colors by BWS and Mimi Gold through #24, as well as Gil Kane, and John Buscema (with Neal Adams and Rich Buckler on the tail end).

Probable Contents: Conan The Barbarian (1970) #1 to 23-26, or even as far as #42, as well as material from Savage Tales (1971) #2-3 (and maybe also #1 and 4-5).

There’s the added wrinkle that Dark Horse would be releasing this collection rather than Marvel – more on that below.

Can you read it right now? Yes, via Dark Horse’s Chronicles of Conan, as well as the Barry Windsor Smith illustrated content in special Archives editions. See the Guide to Conan for the full details.

All of the possible content of this omnibus is available via Comixology Unlimited, and Amazon has all 34 volumes(!) of Chronicles of Conan available digitally in Kindle/Comixology versions.

The Details:

Marvel went through a craze of licensing properties and spawning horror comics in the 1970s. While many of these experimental expansions are now mostly-forgotten, one of the earliest spawned and entire group of comics and would only grow in popularity over the years – Conan!

Marvel’s Conan’s comics are neither a direct adaptation from novels originally by Robert E. Howard or entirely their own story. Instead, they are loose adaptions of key tales, inserting connective tissue between them. They are also mostly one-shot stories – even when they begin to continue more directly from the end of the previous story, each issue tends to be self-contained with a definitive end.

What is Conan really about? Conan is a Cimmerian, a people known for their barbarism, but he has thrown in against the Vanir in a regional conflict between different tribes of men. The comic follows his adventures, sometimes as a soldier, sometimes as a mercenary, and often simply as a wanderer encountering all of the brutality of the fiefdoms in his region.

These early Conan stories were written entirely by Roy Thomas, and they have a relatively set formula. Issues tend to open in the midst of conflict, or with Conan wading into a trap. There’s often a brief alliance with a gorgeous woman who is brutally killed. Conan is frequently too stubborn to retreat once gaining the upper hand, determined to continue until he slays the big bad or burns down an entire city, tower, or dungeon. [Read more…] about Conan The Barbarian, Vol. 1 – The #54 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Spring Thing: s’mores in the yard!

May 12, 2017 by krisis

Last night Lindsay and J gave me the night off from cooking my elaborate bi-weekly desserts and substituted making s’mores!

It was EV6’s first time roasting marshmallows over a fire, made all the more amusing by the fact that L&J’s fire pit is actually EV6’s Nana’s old, unused fire pit, given to her by E & I as a birthday present early in our relationship, which was later upcycled by L&J after Nana abandoned it in the process of downsizing to a smaller abode!

Did you follow all of that?

Personally, I’m not really a fan of anything sticky nor made of chocolate, so I was more on marshmallow roasting duty than anything else … which I completely failed by setting our marshmallow on fire.

I shook it furiously to try to put out the flames while Girl Scout Lindsay admonished from over my shoulder, “Never shake the marshmallow! Give that to me!”

It’s good that I have people like this in my life, because honestly without them it’s likely that calamity would befall me every time I set foot outside into nature.