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.

Doctor Who: Fifteenth Doctor Guide – now available to the public!

May 1, 2024 by krisis

There are just 10 more days until the debut of the first Doctor Who Series starring Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor – and, what better way to prepare than with a Doctor Who – Fifteenth Doctor Guide.

The Guide to Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor is now available to all readers thanks to the support of Patrons of CK. This guide was curated by my personal Doctor Who expert, AdjectiveNoun. It contains literally every possible piece of media related to the Fifteenth Doctor to make it easy for you to jump in whether you are a new Whovian or a long-time viewer. It includes links to episodes, novels, comics, and more!

Plus, if you want to see the regeneration (or, should we say, bi-generation) of The Fifteenth Doctor, you need you watch the finale of the trio of 6oth Anniversary Episodes starring The Fourteenth Doctor – the return of David Tennant! Our Guide to The Fourteenth Doctor is also now available to all readers.

Guide to The Fifteenth Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa

Guide to The Fourteenth Doctor Who, David Tennant (again!)

These guides not only cover comic books, but episodes, novels, short stories, audio dramas, and magazines! How? Why?! Because I recruited my Down Under friend AdjectiveNoun, a major Whovian who got me hooked on the new 60th Anniversary episodes that debuted this past December.

We combined AdjectiveNoun’s Who knowledge and my established Guide infrastructure & style to create a set of Doctor Who Guides that are organized differently than any other guides we could find online.

Guides to the remaining 12 Doctors will launch over the course of the next 12 months, including a new guide next week! Become a Patron of CK to gain immediate access to that guide once it arrives, plus our exclusive Guide to Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston.

Free Comic Book Day: Marvel Comics FCBD 2024, May 4 2024 – Every Issue Explained!

April 30, 2024 by krisis

This Saturday, May 4, is Free Comic Book Day 2024! That means you get an extra and extra-special new releases post for Marvel Comics. This post covers Marvel Comics FCBD 2024 releases – explaining the contents and background of every issue. Missed this week’s regular releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics May 1 2024 new releases – which will all be available in shops on FCBD 2024!

This year from Marvel Comics FCBD 2024: the first drips of Blood Hunt from Jed MacKay, a preview of Gail Simone’s X-Men, all-new Spider-Man India by Nikesh Shukla, Star Wars & Darth Vader by Soule & Pak, the return of Ultimate Marvel Ultimates by Deniz Camp, and a hint of the final phase of Zeb Wells’s run on Amazing Spider-Man!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. I recap and review every new single issue. Plus, for every new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

Marvel Comics FCBD 2024 Titles

Saturday May 4 2024 is Free Comic Book Day 2024! Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is a special promotional event for local comic shops that falls on the first Saturday of May. Publishers big and small release promotional comics at low or no cost to stores, which they can give away for free. That draws in a huge crowd of both established fans and curious newbies. It gives stores the chance to throw special events, sell tons of stock, and establish new customers.

Marvel Comics FCBD issues tend to include 2-3 stories each. That usually includes least one unique story that will be excerpted in a collection within the next year. Sometimes books are a pair of unique stories, but they can also include recent reprints or teases of upcoming comics.

Here’s the line-up of Marvel Comics FCBD 2024 issues:

Free Comic Book Day 2024: Blood Hunt / X-Men #1
Free Comic Book Day 2024: Marvel Voices #1 [featuring Spider-Man India]
Free Comic Book Day 2024: Spidey and His Amazing Friends #1
Free Comic Book Day 2024: Star Wars/Darth Vader #1
Free Comic Book Day 2024: Ultimate Universe / Spider-Man #1

If there’s a big surprise here for me, it’s the lack of a Deadpool / Wolverine issue! With Deadpool & Wolverine as the only major MCU entry coming in 2024 it seems wild not to capitalize on that excitement. At least for X-Men ’97 there’s a Jubilee story in the Blood Hunt / X-Men issue.

Want to know more about all five of these issues, their stories, and their creators? Keep reading! [Read more…] about Free Comic Book Day: Marvel Comics FCBD 2024, May 4 2024 – Every Issue Explained!

Guide to Superman, 1987 – Present (New for Patrons!)

April 29, 2024 by krisis

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s one of my biggest single-character guide pages of all time exclusively for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK. That’s right, folks, it’s my second super week in a row, because today I bring to you my Guide to Superman (Post-Crisis, 1987 – Present), including a full issue-by-issue reading order for the Triangle Era!

Guide to Superman (Post-Crisis, 1987 – Present)

For the past seven years this Guide to Superman has existed somewhere between being my white whale and my albatross. I knew I had to tackle Superman at some point. But, he is the Justice League hero who I knew the least about. Plus, I could never make heads or tails of his publishing history – with how his titles traded names in 1987 only to swap back in 2006.

Oh, plus, there was the little matter of THE TRIANGLE ERA. From 1991 to 2001, every Superman comic was coordinated in perfect reading order by a brain trust of editors and authors, with their covers clearly labeled with their absolute placement within each year of continuity.

That meant I had to make a guide that was even better at explaining The Triangle Era than the hundreds of comic book covers from the actual Triangle Era.

New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: DC Comics – May 1 2024

April 26, 2024 by krisis

It’s the 18th new comic book day of the new year! This post covers DC Comics May 1 2024 releases, which actually hit comic stores on Tuesday April 30 2024. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering DC Comics April 24 2024 new releases.

(DC is still releasing their comics on Tuesday until the start of July, but I think most folks think of Wednesday as release day, so that’s how I’m labelling my posts until then – which means this is the DC Comics May 1 2024 New Releases post… for releases on April 30 ? )

Unlike Marvel, who likes to fill every week to the brim with new releases, in a month with five new comic book days, DC treats the fifth one as a free play to release one-shots an annuals. That’s because their books tend to have a fixed schedule of what week(s) of the month they arrive.

This week in DC Comics: an absolutely stunning Dini & Ross collection, Spurrier’s Flash family squad gets bigger, the secret history of Nightwing’s pirate queen, Harley cruises with Zatanna, a House of Brainiac special, and more!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from DC this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. I recap and review every new single issue. Plus, for every new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

DC Comics May 1 2024 Collected Editions

Absolute Justice League: The World’s Greatest Superheroes
(2024 slipcased oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1779526311)
This is a definitive oversize collection of the Paul Dini & Alex Ross collaborations on DC Comics original graphic novels from 1998 to 2003. Together, they wrote definitive stories for DC’s Trinity, Shazam, and the Justice League.

They are all collected here in order: Superman: Peace on Earth (1998) OGN, Batman: War On Crime (1999) OGN, Shazam!: Power of Hope (2000) OGN, Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth (2001) OGN, JLA: Secret Origins (2002) OGN, and JLA: Liberty And Justice (2003) OGN

Read on for a summary of all of the DC Comics May 1 2024 single issue and digital releases! [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: DC Comics – May 1 2024

New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: Marvel Comics – May 1 2024

April 25, 2024 by krisis

It’s the 18th new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics May 1 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics April 24 2024 new releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: Blood Hunt begins, Captain America de-iced, Daredevil Unmasked, the improbable X-Men 2099, Deadpool & Wolverine go to war, Iron Man & Magneto team up, and more!

Marvel Comics May 1 2024 Collected Editions

Captain America Omnibus Vol. 1
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302957995 / digital)
See Guide to Captain America. This omnibus collects the start of Cap’s Silver Age return – though, since it is based on the Masterworks mapping, it omits his actual return in Avengers (1963) #4.

We go straight from him despairing over a photo of Bucky in Tales of Suspense (1959) #59 to fighting Baron Zemo in Tales of Suspense (1959) #60. Even if Lee & Kirby lean on action-oriented plots, there are still those moments of Steve being a man out of time trying to absorb the modern day and its new challenges.

Carnage Vol. 1: Born Again
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302955014 / digital)
See Guide to Carnage. This is the very creepy kickoff of Torunn Grønbekk’s 2023 Carnage series, which finds the Carnage symbiote getting back to Earth after nearly attaining godhood and deciding to return to what it knows best – serial killing, one victim at a time.

Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – The Art of the Movie
(2024 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302956592)
See Guide to Ant-Man.

Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 3: Unmasked
(2024 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302954284 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. Marvel’s digest-sized Silver Age collection presses on to the third year of early Daredevil comics. I’m somewhat surprised Marvel extended the Mighty Masterworks line to Daredevil, as his early stories aren’t considered to be particularly significant.

She-Hulk by Rainbow Rowell Vol. 4: Jen-Sational
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302957117 / digital)
See Guide to She-Hulk. This is labeled “Volume 4” despite being the first collection of Sensation She-Hulk (2023) because it picks up directly from the end ofRowell & Company’s 2022 She-Hulk series. While you could pick this up and easily follow it with no preamble, the 15 issues of the prior series are absolutely delightful slice-of-life romance stuff with a just-right amount of punching. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: Marvel Comics – May 1 2024