Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

comic books

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

This Week In X: All-New Wolverine, Legion, & X-Men Blue

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It’s the ninth week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X we have an unusually light week of X-Men. There are just three new titles and three collections to cover, although one of those collections is a really big deal to me!

  • All-New Wolverine (2016) #31 is a fun-filled one-off team-up of Honey Badger and Deadpool.
  • Legion (2018) #2 is a comic book that does not star Legion nor appeal to his fans from any medium.
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) #22 finds some character moments in this symbiote space saga, but skimps on details.

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up. Plus, learn what new X-collections are out this week, including Legion – Son of X, New Mutants, and Weapon X!

Indie Series Spotlight: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder (Ep01)

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This is the pilot for the fourth video series on my YouTube channel – Indie Series Spotlight!

After months of opening my massive collection of Marvel oversized hardcovers, I realized I was really missing talking about my love of comics not released by Marvel. Since returning to comic reading in 2012, I’ve become a massive fan of independent and creator-owned comics – they occupy a full third of my comic reading time, and they dominated my list of favorite comics in 2017.

In this new show, I’ll be sharing my indie comics love with you one series at a time. Each series will be something I strongly recommend to new readers – including folks who have never read a comic before in their lives! For each series, I’ll start by giving a general pitch of the title and then get into spoiler territory for readers who need even more convincing.

First up: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder. I picked this series up out of blind devotion to Mike Carey, who I love from his work on X-Men: Legacy and Unwritten, not realizing it would become one of my favorite indie comic runs of all time! It’s hard to discuss this series’ massive scope without spoiling it, but it spans genres from police procedural to massive action movie!

I hope you’ll enjoy this new show, because I’ve got over a year’s worth of indie series mapped out to discuss!

Indie Comics Spotlight Episode #1 features Suicide Risk Volumes 1-6, which are currently available as part of the Comixology Unlimited library!

Crushing Comics S01E079 – childhood scares, Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu, Heartbreak Quadrant, & more!

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Get ready – this is my longest and most content-packed video to date!

I begin by recalling what used to scare me as a kid as I unwrap one of the first books I packed back in the states – Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Volume 2. I unwrap the book from its cellophane and page through live on camera.

This leads me on a lengthy tangent about professional printing processes, including how press sheets word and why expensive books still have printing errors.

Finally, perhaps not realizing how long the episode had already become, I decide to open a random packet of extra books – Image Comics: The Road To Independence, Barrett Stanley’s Heartbreak Quadrant, and the only hard copy version of my novel that exists!

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

Episode 79 features Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 2 (covered in my Guide to Shang-Chi), Image – The Road to Independence, Heartbreak Quadrant, and Krisis.

Black Panther Book Club, Week 4 of 4: Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates issues #1-12

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It’s our final week of Black Panther Book Club, where FanGirl and I read and discuss some of the stories that were the biggest influences on Marvel’s Black Panther film.

Our final week examines the 2016 run of National Book Award winner and first-time comics author Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is a slow, pensive run full of philosophy, where the action seems more like an interruption than a welcome break in the book’s thoughtful pace.

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

Please join us next month as we tackle DC Comics’ Batwoman across her first decade in comics by reading all of her best stories! To learn how to collect these comics, visit my Guide to Batwoman – which might be my favorite comic guide out of over a hundred I’ve put together in the past six years! I cannot wait to read these comics with FanGirl (and with you).

 

Crushing Comics S01E078 – Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force (+ music through the ages)

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In today’s episode I finally open one of my all-time favorite modern X-Men runs – but, first, I talk about my intended musical experiment on my own offspring and how it was derailed by our mutual love of Michael Jackson.

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

Episode 78 features the Uncanny X-Force omnibus, covered in my Guide to X-Force.