comic books

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

Crushing Comics S01E073 – X-Men: Endangered Species, Messiah Complex, & Age of X

February 14, 2018 by krisis

I’m back with the second half of my “big brick of X-Men” cliffhanger from Monday’s episode – and this half has one of my all-time favorite X-Men stories! Hear why Messiah Complex both resolves threads of House of M and makes the best jumping-on point for reading about Cyclops as a revolutionary.

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

Episode 73 features X-Men: Endangered Species and X-Men: Messiah Complex (covered in the Guide to Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen) and X-Men: Age of X (covered in the Guide to X-Men Legacy).

Black Panther Book Club, Week 2 of 4: Black Panther by Christopher Priest issues #13-24

February 13, 2018 by krisis

It’s our second of four sessions of Black Panther Book Club to read some of the stories that seem to be the biggest influences on Marvel’s Black Panther film, out next week.

In this installment, we follow the Black Panther through some rote Avengers adventures and then watch as he code-shifts to hang out with his fellow 1970s black Marvel heroes (and Iron Fist). Then we meet Erik Killmonger, back from the dead again and ready to usurp T’Challa’s reign.

Want to keep 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.

Tuesday, February 6: Fantastic Four (1961) issues #52-53 and Black Panther (1998) issues #1-12
Tuesday, February 13: Black Panther (1998) issues #13-24
Tuesday, February 20: Black Panther (1998) issues #25-35
Tuesday, February 27: Black Panther (2016) issues #1-12

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Spider-Man, Miles Morales

February 12, 2018 by krisis

Today I brought Patrons of Crushing Krisis a guide that is one of the final pieces to providing full coverage of the Marvel Legacy era of titles. It also greatly simplifies my most-complicated (and most-visited!) single guide by breaking an important character out into his own page…

Mile Morales, Spider-Man – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

While my Marvel Ultimate Universe Definitive Collecting Guide covers all of Miles’ appearances in the Ultimate Universe, there he’s one in a crowd of several characters being tracked from series to series.

This new guide covers every Miles Morales appearance, from his debut in Ultimate Fallout #4 through his transition to the main 616 Marvel Universe in the wake of Secret Wars in 2015.

Want access to this guide today? It’s available, along over a dozen other exclusive guides, in exchange for covering $1.99 a month of CK’s hosting expenses.

Crushing Comics S01E072 – X-Men: Supernovas and Uncanny X-Men: The Rise & Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

February 12, 2018 by krisis

Today I start out by talking about “the perfect weather.” If you’re the kind of person who loves it super hot on the beach or frigid on the slopes, would you really want to experience that every day? My favorite kind of day is breezy and springlike, maybe 68 to 72 degrees – and I see no problems with waking up to that every day of my life.

After that, I open a massive block of oversize modern X-Men – so big I had to break it up into a pair of episodes. In this one, I start out with a pair of weirdly orphaned oversized volumes.

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

Episode 72 features X-Men: Supernovas and Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire, which are covered by my X-Men, Vol. 2 & New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen guides, respectively.

Back Issue Review: Barbarella, Black Sable, Giants, Grass Kings, Shade The Changing Girl, and Slots

February 11, 2018 by krisis

This week in Back Issue Review I catch up with five indie series that have new issues out this week, plus one DC series that feels pretty indie. Between feminist explorers, giant monsters, recursive mean girls, backstabbing space pirates, and lucky retired boxers, I bet you’ll never guess what my favorites were!