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!

Conan Comics – Defintive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Jan 17, 2025! The Conan comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated January 2025 with titles scheduled for release through August 2025.

Conan the Barbarian (2023) #1 [Cover B - Roberto de la Torre]Robert E. Howard’s Conan has lived many lives in comics, from a young barbarian to a grizzled old king. Those lives are split into four distinct publishing eras of Conan comics.

His first life in comics was at Marvel from 1970 through 2000, largely under the pen of veteran Roy Thomas in his long-running series Conan the Barbarian as well as the long-running Savage Sword of Conan.

Then, in 2003, Conan comics made the jump to Dark Horse Comics – initially under the pen of Kurt Busiek. Dark Horse launched his book with reverence, assuring fans that they would present adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s original work and its implied connective tissue. The comics were widely-beloved by fans of the character.

Then, in a major twist, Marvel won the license back starting in January of 2019! That not only meant Marvel could release new Conan titles, but that they could also incorporate him into the modern Marvel Universe, as well as reprint their original Conan comics plus reprint the entirety of Dark Horse’s 15 years of Conan in paperback Epic Collection!

Most-recently, at the end of 2023 Marvel relinquished their license back to intellectual property holder Heroic Signatures, who began publishing their own comics directly through Titan Comics in 2023.

Each of those publishing eras is covered in full in the guide below! In each case, titles are listed in the guide chronologically by release date. However, in the table of contents, Marvel’s original run from 1970 to 2000 are listed as an alphabetical index by title, since Marvel published many series outside of the spine of the major ongoing titles.

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This week in comic book collected editions – March 1, 2017

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Whether you’re a comics obsessee or a floppy books neophyte, parsing the new collected editions out each week is a chore.

Sure, a faithful fan can visit the Previews catalog to see what’s out, but it doesn’t always explain what each series should collect and why you ought to care.

And, why would (or: should) a new or dabbling fan have to know what a Previews catalog even is!

I want to help both the masters and the newbies find the books that interest them the most. Thus, this post.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

I think DC has the market cornered this week with two of their three scant releases – Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy and Zatanna by Paul Dini.

More on the Zatanna below. As for Lumberjanes: EV has been addicted to Lumberjanes ever since she turned three, to the point that she always has an invisible camper holding her hand when we cross a street. I’m not sure if Gotham Academy is similarly addictive, but this is probably a good buy for your early-grades comic fan – the most objectionable thing about Lumberjanes is generally how much time they spend hollering.

If you want to get started with Lumberjanes, Volume 1 is just okay, but the story begins to get interesting in Volume 2. For more on Gotham Academy collections, see Guide to Gotham or DC New 52.

And now, on to the books!

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Batman by Grant Morrison – The Complete Guide & Trade Reading Order

Updated April 12, 2026! This page tells you everything you need to know and buy to read Grant Morrison’s Batman epic saga from 2006 to 2013. It includes every issue in comprehensive order, listing all of the formats in which each issue has been published. Last updated April 2026 with titles scheduled for release through December 2026.

Batman has had several epic single-author runs in his modern history, from the likes of Denny O’Neil, Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Scott Snyder, and more!

What makes Grant Morrison’s run any different or more notable?

It’s a question of history and of scope. Grant Morrison’s run is predicated on a knowledge and reference to past Batman stories, including some Pre-Crisis stories that had been in continuity limbo for several years. Also, no single author had previously had a Batman run of this scope – running across three titles and seven years and intersecting with one of DC’s biggest events along the way.

Plus, there’s the x-factor of Morrison himself. They is a psychedelic comic author as likely to mine continuity for details that deserve fresh exploitation as they are to take characters on inexplicable journeys with some of the steps missing or out of order.

Like him or not, Grant Morrison’s arrival on a superhero title almost always makes for appointment comics. Pairing him with the most-popular comic book hero in the world was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for DC.

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DC’s Gotham Titles – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Gotham City comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics and The Definitive Guide to Collecting Batman Comics. Last updated February 2017 with titles scheduled for release through July 2017.

Gotham City: More Than Just Batman

To start, this guide focuses on literal “Gotham” comics – books with the word “Gothman” in their titles. As the DC Guide expands, it will act as an index for other Gothman-based titles covered on other pages. [Read more…] about DC’s Gotham Titles – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

This week in comic book collected editions – February 22, 2017

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The comic collected editions scheduled for release by major comic publishers on any given week are a surprisingly unknowable and subjective list, which is exactly why I’ve done my best to summarize them here in a single post for you.

Why is the release schedule of trade paperbacks, deluxe hardcovers, and omnibuses so unknowable when other new media releases like novels, films and DVDs, and music are so predictable?

Preview Magazine tells us what comic publishers have scheduled to release to the direct market as of three to six months out from publication dates. Yet, that the schedule frequently changes and is not updated in a uniform fashion (although Previews does continue to update it right through the last moment before releases are shipped).

Meanwhile, Mass market booksellers receive comic collections on a delay from the direct market, but the delay differs from publisher to publisher depending on their distribution arrangements. Marvel is consistently delayed two weeks, while Image can range anywhere from one week to over a month.

Yikes.

So what is the book list below? It’s based on a combination of the Previews catalog, Amazon listings adjusted for the common mass market delay, and a poll of the top comic selling websites. There’s no other place you can find a similarly curated list.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

There are a lot of good collections out this week, but just one is must-buy – and that’s not even due to my personal affinity for the character! Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Lies is the first Wonder Woman collection of the present-day story from her Rebirth comic, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Liam Sharp. Fans already loved Rucka from a mid-2000s WW run, and they’ve been raving about this one.

And now, on to the books! [Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions – February 22, 2017