Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10 Power Rankings – Meet The Queens

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Now that’s you’ve had one entire day to recover from the buffoonery, riggery and straight up tomfoolery of the RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3 finale, are you ready to cleanse your palette with a brightly-colored group of 14 new queens?

Well, ready or not, here they come: Drag Race Season 10 begins on Thursday March 22, and it’s bringing with it some majorly polished looks and massive personalities.

This is the first of a many-week marathon of Power Ranking the queens of Drag Race Season 10, so let me get you acquainted with what this is and what it is not.

First: My rankings are not meant to be a prediction of the queens’ final placement! Especially for this pre-season ranking, it’s more like a handicapping of who seems ready to burst out of the gate with strength. I’ve made some good picks in the past (Bob The Drag Queen) and some weaker ones (Tempest du Jour).

Second: This is not purely my list of favorite queens. It’s about who has the perceived heat and narrative momentum coming out of each week of the competition.

Finally: My rankings are not just about “track record.” I am sick of that phrase after the complaints about the past two winners of Drag Race. Sometimes a queen’s Wikipedia-accurate track record does not tell the story of her narrative arc on the show.

I think fans who focus on the wins and losses to a fault wind up unnecessarily surprised by the winner of this show, which has story editors whose job it is to leave us a narrative breadcrumb trail. The only big shocker of my five seasons of ranking this show has been Shangela getting eliminated by the jury of her queers this week before she could snatch the crown.

Will my outstanding track record (ha!) continue this season? You’ll have to check back every week to find out!

This first week of rankings is a non-binding, pre-season evaluation based on the cast’s “Meet The Queens” interviews and a smattering of their online media. One note to keep in mind is that the queens did not necessarily choose their own outfits or styling for their promo looks, so we cannot just go by their looks in judging their qualities!

All right, racers – let’s get started. And may the best woman … win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10 Power Rankings – Meet The Queens

This Week in X: All-New Wolverine #32, Astonishing X-Men #9, New Mutants – Dead Souls #1, Old Man Logan #36, Weapon X #15, & X-Men Blue #23

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It’s the eleventh week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X has six new titles to review – so many that I mistakenly omitted one the first time I edited this video. I’ve never had to count as high as six before!

This week, I cover:

  • All-New Wolverine #32, a pleasant (if pandering) one-shot epilogue to “Orphans of X”
  • Astonishing X-Men #9, a dull middle chapter that does a lot of telling rather than showing
  • New Mutants – Dead Souls #1, a solid hit for lovers of every era of New Mutants
  • Old Man Logan #36, which flirts with some heavy themes before turning into a MacGuffin hunt
  • Weapon X #15, a surprisingly satisfying (and unsurprisingly bloody) tussle
  • X-Men Blue #23, far and away the best issue of this series and a return to form for Cullen Bunn

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up.

Starting Next Week: An Epic X-Men (Re-) Read

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I started unwrapping my oversize hardcover collect on November 1st, and a week from today I will be posting my final unwrapping video. That’s 84 videos and over a hundred books in five months, not including haul videos and the launch of new series like “Book Club” and “This Week In X”!

The end of my unwrapping saga comes with a question: what’s next?

It’s no secret that many comics fans found my site via my X-Men guides and reading orders, and throughout my video series there has been a constant demand for more X-Men. Well, now it’s time to pull out your back issues, because I am introducing a seven week pilot X-Men Epic Re-Read challenge!

Don’t worry – we’re not just going to start in the Silver Age! Inspired by Marvel’s line of Epic Collections, we’ll be jumping around the first 50 years of the X-Men’s history to read brief runs. Some of them will be key issues, others will tie in to new comics or films, while others will be totally random!

For this pilot season, I’ve chosen some of the most widely-owned and repeatedly-collected X-Men stories in existence, along with a few modern tales – all of which are available to read on Marvel Unlimited. [Read more…] about Starting Next Week: An Epic X-Men (Re-) Read

Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

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I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

Batwoman Book Club, Week 2 of 4: Batwoman (2010) #0 & (2011) #1-11

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Welcome back to another week of Batwoman Book Club!

Today we discuss the first half of the J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman New 52 run on Batwoman, which I first reviewed here on CK way back in 2011! Hear how Williams and Blackman push Kate Kane into a much more mythological and horrific place in Gotham than Batman usually occupies. Plus, discussion of Maggie Sawyer vs. Cameron Chase, sex intercut with violence, and if Batwoman ought to kill.

This embed is the first of five parts of our Week 2 discussion – each video ends with a link to the next part.

 

Want to catch up with the reading assignments? Here’s our full schedule for the month – visit the Guide to Batwoman to learn how to collect these issues.

  • Tuesday, March 6: Detective Comics (1937) #854-863
  • Tuesday, March 13: Batwoman (2010) #0 & (2011) #1-11
  • Tuesday, March 20: Batwoman (2011) #12-24 & 0
  • Tuesday, March 27: Detective Comics (2016) #934-940 & 948-949 + Batwoman (2017) Rebirth & #1-6