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Crushing Comics includes definitive comic book guides, essays about characters and titles, collecting strategies, comic reviews, and more!

New for Patrons: Red She-Hulk AKA Harpy

August 22, 2022 by krisis

I’m back today with a highly-specific guide for “pledgeonaut” Patrons of CK. This one also spun out of last week’s update to my Guide to She-Hulk, because it’s also a Guide to She-Hulk! No, not that She-Hulk, the other She-Hulk – it’s a Guide to Red She-Hulk!

Be warned: Even though the guide itself is careful not to spoil details of Red She-Hulk’s secret identity while covering pre-reveal issues, I’m talking about it openly in this post.

Honestly, it was only a secret for nine months 12 years ago! But, I think it was a fun secret executed well, so I try not to ruin it for people who might be coming to the run for the first time.

Marvel was going through an interesting period from 2005-2012 where at first they were revitalizing lines and characters purely out of the business instinct to stay alive, but then they started adjusting them even more due to the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

To me, this began with the period of Bendis launching New Avengers through the death of Captain America at the end of Civil War, with House of M sandwiched between them. Despite Marvel using the “All-New, All-Different” tagline since the Bronze Age, this was the first time in a while that the main 616-Marvel Universe felt like a truly new and different place.

(A lot of that was down to the sales and popularity pressure from the Ultimate Universe, which at that point was threatening to subsume the main one.)

One result of that period was character lines that felt larger than they used to. Marvel’s major Silver Age characters feel encouraged to reinvent their casts and build their own huge events. That was certainly true for Hulk, which went from a Marvel also-ran to one of their hottest titles on the strength of Greg Pak’s “Planet Hulk” storyline, which spun into the line-wide “World War Hulk” event.

In the wake of that, Pak and Jeph Loeb had more leeway than ever to expand the scope of Hulk comics. Suddenly, there were a lot of Hulks and Gamma-powered characters. We had Bruce Banner as Hulk, Jennifer Walters as She-Hulk, Doc Samson, Rick Jones as A-Bomb, the newly-birthed Skaar, and even Lyra – Hulk’s daughter from a potential future!

(Spoilers begin here.) [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Red She-Hulk AKA Harpy

New for Patrons: Guide to Hellcat, Patsy Walker

August 18, 2022 by krisis

Working on last week’s Guide to Black Cat and this week’s update to my Guide to She-Hulk drew my attention to Marvel’s other major feline heroine, who has been a diva along with Felicia Hardy and a BFF to Jennifer Walters. That’s right – today’s new guide for “Pledgeonaut” Patrons of CK is an issue-by-issue Guide to Hellcat, Patsy Walker!

Hellcat is actually one of Marvel’s longest-running characters! Her civilian alter-ego Patsy Walker debuted in the Golden Age as one of the stars of Marvel’s burgeoning line of teen and romance comics. While most people assume those books petered out by the time the Silver Age began with Fantastic Four in 1961, Patsy’s titles kept on running – one of them as late as 1967!

Yet, in that time she was never a hero – just a regular teenage girl who liked to hang out with her best friend Hedy.

(And, actually, if we’re being specific, those comics are not actually Patsy’s earlier continuity, but a fictionalized version of it that existed as in-universe comic books in the Marvel 616 as written by Patsy’s mother!) [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Hellcat, Patsy Walker

Black Cat – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated: Guide to She-Hulk

August 16, 2022 by krisis

Are you read to go green? I’ve completely overhauled my Guide to She-Hulk to mark this week’s debut of the new Marvel Cinematic Universe series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, on Disney +.

She-Hulk stars the mega-talented Tatiana Maslany as Marvel’s Jennifer Walters, a mild-mannered attorney pulled into the heroic life of her Avenger cousin Bruce Banner … or, at least, that’s the story we know from the comics. And if you don’t know the story yet, don’t worry – I’ve got you covered with a guide that includes every She-Hulk series, every appearance, and links to find collected editions, buy digital versions, and read online with Marvel Unlimited.

Guide to She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters

My Guide to She-Hulk will always hold a special place in my heart and memory, because it is one of the first two guides I completed after leaving my tech start-up job in 2016 to be a stay-at-home parent.

At the time, the kid didn’t spend a single second of time looking at screens, so my only downtime from wake-up to goodnight were her mid-day naps. In overhauling this guide, I saw so many places in it where I remembered, “yep, that’s when she woke up,” or other such toddler-motivated interruptions from my guide-making.

As weird and as confusing as a time as that was in my life, it was also a time where I value every single second and every memory. I have so many photos and videos of our adventures, and my She-Hulk Guide is like the negative space of that – one of the few things I was doing in the time I had to myself.

While the guide has always been complete and completely definitive, there were many half-finished thoughts throughout, and I never had the time to refine the the structure and table-of-contents to my typical level of perfectionist completion.

That’s no longer the case. I’ve completely changed my approach to presenting Jennifer Walters’ many series and guest-starring turns, plus added a “Where To Start Reading” section and highlighted the quickest ways to build a She-Hulk shelf in oversize hardcover or paperback.

Some Marvel characters find a niche early on and stick to it. Others grow through a single, continuous arc.

She-Hulk’s progression has been more about evolving with the idea of what being a “powerful woman” means to the broader pop culture in any given publishing era. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to She-Hulk

Spider-Man, Peter Parker – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order (2018 – Present)

Updated Apr 16, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s Spider-Man, Peter Parker comic books from 2018 to present in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

Peter Parker is Spider-Man is Marvel’s flagship character.

Even if he’s occasionally replaced by a clone or the mind of a villain, he’s a consistent seller who will always have at least one flagship title at the center of Marvel’s publishing line. That title has always been called “Amazing Spider-Man” with only a single exception in the past 60 years.

From 2010 to 2018, that title was written exclusively by Dan Slott. Slott wrote Amazing Spider-Man through three volumes, plus the exception of Superior Spider-Man from 2011 to 2014. (In fact, Slott began writing Spidey even earlier than that, as part of a rotation of writers.)

That made the 2018 re-launch of a fifth volume of Amazing Spider-Man as part of the Marvel Fresh Start era a big deal! It was the end of Dan Slott’s reign over the book, and the first truly fresh jumping-on point for Spider-Man in close to a decade.

That title was helmed by writer Nick Spencer for a massive three-year run that shipped two, three, and sometimes four issues a month for a total of over 87 comic issues in three years! Then, in the same volume number, a rotation of writers took over for the “Beyond” story arc featuring Ben Reilly back in the Spider-Man mask.

After that, Amazing Spider-Man relaunched into a sixth volume by Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr. in 2022, which roared past A.X.E. Judgment Day to have its own X-Men crossover with “Dark Web” before heading into a major 2023 event – “Summer of Symbiotes.”

However, Peter Parker wouldn’t be Marvel’s flagship hero if he was restrained to just one book – even with that book sometimes shipping multiple issues a week.

We’ve seen additional ongoing titles, like Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, special events like Spider-Geddon and Clone Conspiracy, flashback series like Peter David’s Symbiote Spider-Man, mini-series like Joe Kelly’s Non-Stop Spider-Man, and out-of-continuity comics like Chip Zdarsky’s Spider-Man: Life Story.

Heck, in October 2022 Marvel added an adjectiveless Spider-Man ongoing by Dan Slott (again!) alongside the flagship book!

Every one of them are in this guide! Titles are grouped based on the current flagship title that was running when they were released, even if their reading order might place them slightly earlier or later.

This guide covers every Peter Parker series released from the relaunch of Amazing Spider-Man in 2018 to the present day, plus all of their supporting events. If you’re looking for Spider-Man’s titles from 1963 – 2018, see my main Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (1963 – 2018). For Spider-Man Miles Morales titles, see my Guide to Spider-Man, Miles Morales.