Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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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: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie

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Today I’m back with another new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that helps complete the coverage started with last week’s Guide to Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie…

Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie

One of the best aspects of the past decade of Marvel Comics is that it has made use of characters from every corner of the Marvel 616-Universe, moreso than any prior decade. That has included stalwart favorites, forgotten supporting characters, and a massive list of new stars who went from debut to title-anchoring characters in a span of years.

That is very, very impressive.

After creating over 100 comic guides, I know that some characters have a tendency to completely disappear after a major run tapers off due to low sales. Hey, if it happened to the X-Men it can happen to anyone! Just look at how many characters DC has completely erased in the same decade!

Jokes aside, many of Marvel’s Bronze Age mainstays didn’t survive the one-two punch of Jim Shooter’s linewide realignment in the mid-80s plus transition to a cooler, grittier, more extreme world of comics heading into the 90s.

This was especially true of the second-tier stars of the original 1972-1986 run of The Defenders. Hulk still had his ongoing title, Dr. Strange hopped from his 70s title to the brief Strange Tales to his lengthy 1988 ongoing, and Namor scored a new ongoing in 1990. The supporting cast – both of the original team and the “New Defenders” soft reboot – were not so lucky. Characters like Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, Devil-Slayer, Cloud, and Valkyrie went virtually unknown to most 90s readers.

This is the most surprising for Brunnhilde The Valkyrie, who occupied an existing role in the Marvel Universe as the head of Odin and Hela’s Valkyrior, those Norse warrior women on winged steeds who ferried souls of dead warriors to the afterlife. Yet, Valkyries in general appeared more in the late 80s than Valkyrie in specific thanks to Dani Moonstar’s ongoing connection to Asgard in New Mutants! [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie

Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Doctor Jane Foster comic books as herself, The Mighty Thor, and Valkyrie in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated October 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

Jane Foster spent 50 years as a minor supporting character before becoming a full-time superhero, but being minor didn’t make her unremarkable.

(Note: This summary and guide contains major spoilers for Jane Foster and for Thor, due to the way their plots relate! If you want a quick, non-spoiler reading list, skip down to the Greatest Hits section.)

Foster was introduced in Thor’s second issue, Journey Into Mystery (1956) #84, as the attending nurse at the private practice of Thor’s human alter-ego, Dr. Donald Blake.

For a woman in Marvel’s Silver Age, nurse Jane Foster is often particularly assertive – especially compared to Marvel contemporaries like Jean Grey and the Invisible Girl. While this established Foster as her own character and an opinionated medical professional, her assertiveness often came at the cost of belittling or patronizing Dr. Blake for being disabled

Jane Foster’s period as Thor’s romantic interest is much more short-lived than you might realize – she is written out of his ongoing comic in January 1967 after a negative first encounter with Odin, less than five years after her debut! In fact, many of her memories of her time with Thor are erased.

It would be almost a decade before her return, in which Jane Foster becomes inextricably tied to Thor’s ongoing Asgardian love interest, Sif. However, this run isn’t as long as it looks on paper – Jane spends the first few issues of it comatose, and she is hardly seen or referenced after Thor (1966) #250 in 1976!

When Foster finally does make an on-panel return in 1983, it’s to be swiftly married off and shuffled off the page save for occasional recaps of her relationship. She next turns up in 1994 towards the close of the first volume of Thor, separated from her husband, caring for her son, and embroiled in a caper involving the High Evolutionary’s AniMutants.

Starting in 1998, author Dan Jurgens casts Jane in a new role – Doctor Jane Foster. There’s no on-page explanation given for when, why, or how Foster completed medical school. The change allows her to drive an ongoing subplot with Thor’s new Earthly alter-ego, as well as make appearances in Iron Man and Avengers as “token medical expert.” There are passing mentions of her husband and son, but they don’t appear.

J. Michael Straczynski and Matt Fraction bring Dr. Foster back as a key player in Thor’s adventures from 2006 to 2011, again relying on her expertise as a doctor to insert her into their subplots.

However, it is Jason Aaron that would bring Jane Foster her most memorable plot and her superheroic turn. She begins as a supporting player in Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder, revealing to Thor that she has cancer with an uncertain prognosis. As one of several woman supporting characters in the run, she is a prime suspect as the secret identity behind the new female Mighty Thor that debuts in the final pages of God of Thunder and continues to her own Thor (2014) series.

Jason Aaron’s story for Jane and for the new Thor is complex and satisfying as it stretches across multiple series from 2014 to 2018, giving Jane Foster her first true arc as a character as drawn by industry super-star Russel Dauterman. It’s one of Marvel’s true evergreen masterworks of narrative of the 2010s. By the finale, it seems like Foster’s story is complete and completely resolved… but, Aaron and co-writer Al Ewing had more plans for her following Aaron’s Thor finale in War of the Realms, which spun Jane Foster into a new status quo as a Valkyrie!

Jane Foster makes nearly 200 appearances before she transforms into the Mighty Thor, but are any of them worth reading? I did all of the homework so you don’t have to! I read every single Jane Foster appearance, ever for this guide so I could summarize her pre-Mjolnir greatest hits for you as well as give you a summary of her action in every appearance.

Whether you want to read every appearance like I did or just get the summary so you can dive into her time as a superhero, this guide has you covered. [Read more…] about Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

New for Patrons: Jane Foster Guide – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

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I’m back with a new Marvel Guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that’s about to be very relevant in a few weeks with the release of Thor: Love & Thunder, for a run that I hold in very high regard…

Guide to Jane Foster – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie
Note: This guide is now available to ALL READERS!

Jane Foster is one of a particular group of Marvel’s Silver and Bronze Age supporting characters who had a few hundred appearances without ever having a specific story of their own until relatively recently.

That recent story is a huge one. Jane Foster’s turn as The Mighty Thor during Jason Aaron’s run on Thor might be Marvel’s most-definitive modern classic of the 2010s! It’s big, it’s gorgeous, and it’s an incredibly emotional read. It is by far my top recommended reading from both Marvel and DC from the past decade!

It would’ve been easy to simply pull together a Jane Foster Guide to her as Thor and her subsequent transformation to Valkyrie. I’ve read every single issue of Marvel since that transformation and I have extensive notes on them all!

Yes, it has been recollected across many formats – Omnibus, deluxe hardcover, Complete Collection, and a pair of new “greatest hits” style paperbacks – but her story covers a finite set of issues across a number of specifically ordered series.

Yet, I had questions about Jane’s past. When did she stop being Thor’s love interest to get married to another man? When did she go from Nurse Foster to Doctor Foster? Had she ever been super-powered in the past? And, did any of her past stories have an influence on Aaron’s modern direction for her character?

Thor of you who have been following me for a while will not be surprised to hear that these questions lead me down a rabbit hole of inquiry, as I realized that no other Jane Foster Guide or wiki on the internet answered them the way I wanted them to be answered.

The solution? Read every single panel of Jane Foster from 1962 to 2012 and summarize it in my guide.

What did I learn? [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Jane Foster Guide – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

Updated: Ms. Marvel Guide – a Kamala Khan Reading Order!

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I’m excited to announced the public release of my Ms. Marvel Guide – a complete collecting guide and reading order to Kamala Khan, now the star of her own Disney+ show!

Guide to Ms. Marvel – Kamala Khan

I originally launched my Ms. Marvel Guide to Patrons on 11 December, 2017 as part of several “Marvel Legacy” character spin-offs from existing guides.

At the time, we were only midway through G. Willow Wilson’s second volume of Ms. Marvel, launched in 2015 in the wake of Secret Wars. Since then, Kamala had another ongoing written by Saladin Ahmed, plus a mini-event centered entirely around her with Outlawed.

Now, the guide is now fully updated with all of Kamala Khan’s series, collections, and appearances announced through the present day – plus links to read digitally on Marvel Unlimited! That includes the new series of thick digest-sized paperbacks that collect the entire G. Willow Wilson run in five volumes.

Unlike many older Marvel heroes, Ms. Marvel’s series have existed entirely in what I refer to as “the trade era” – meaning that Marvel collected all of them into trade paperback collections after their release as individual issues.

Does that mean that every in-continuity Kamala Khan story is collected? Not quite. Last month, Kamala garnered her own Marvel Unlimited Infinite Comic. It was written by the author of her last mini-series, Samira Ahmed, so it has a certain ring of authenticity to it that many digital one-shots don’t. However, this new line of Infinite Comics launched in September 2021, and so far none of them have been collected physically. (You also cannot read them on a web browser; they are for app-users only.)

That still leaves you with over 88 issues of Kamala-starring titles to read, plus all of her appearances in All-New All-Different Avengers and Champions.

What are you waiting for? Dig into reading Kamala Khan’s adventures in the Marvel Universe today with my Ms. Marvel Guide.

Anatomy of a Comic Book Guide (and a comic book collection)

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Finally slaying the ancient dragon that was my Guide to Legion of Super-Heroes inspired me to keep track of all of the many steps and processes it takes to put together a new comic book guide.

I think more people making more great guides to consuming comics (and other media!) makes the internet better for all fans. I love Omar’s Near Mint Condition video Reading Orders, How To Love Comics’s guide to reading your first comic, ComicsXF Primers, and ComicReleases solicits roundsups. All of them overlap with what I’m doing a little bit, but they’re all helping people find the comics they might love, which is why I started doing this in the first place.

Below I’ve listed my process for putting together a comic guide, which is also how I build a personal reading list or new comic collection! When I get interested in a new character, author, or title for the first time, my approach is almost identical to guide-building, even if I don’t plan on making a guide.

Throughout the list, I used my well-established Excalibur Guide and my new Patrons-only Legion of Super-Heroes Guides as examples. I tried to share some interesting behind-the-scenes nuggets along the way for all of you process wonks.

Feel free to use this guidance to help you put together your own handy guides, whether that’s for personal use or on a website. I certainly have some “secret sauce” and proprietary tools that help me make my guides so definitive, but anyone could work through this checklist to figure out a comics property from top to bottom. It takes me anywhere from 4 to 30 hours, depending on the complexity of the character or title I’m researching.

Here’s the breakdown of my steps.

  1. Create a list of series or volumes
  2. Decide on scope
  3. Organize (but don’t over-sort)
  4. Research your series list (this will include narrowing and expanding)
  5. Compile a collected editions list
  6. Assemble the stuff
  7. Conduct a clean-up pass
  8. Consider the meta-data
  9. Enjoy! (No, really! Make a plan for enjoying this hard work.)
  10. Schedule your first check-up

Now, let’s dig in! [Read more…] about Anatomy of a Comic Book Guide (and a comic book collection)