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A Bendis Avengers Reading Order

August 31, 2016 by krisis

I’m excited to unveil my first non-X-Men comprehensive reading order: Avengers Reading Order – The Bendis Years (2004 – 2012)

The guide includes the story-by-story or “trade reading order” of all the Avengers team titles from Brian Bendis taking over Avengers with issue #500 in 2004 to the end of his run on the 2010 volumes of Avengers and New Avengers in the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012. That’s over 350 individual issues from more than a dozen titles. In most cases, I explain the placement of each story and offer special notes for reading.

Head to the guide right now, or read on for more background on the period and how I assembled this Avengers resource.

B NAvgV01 - 0001 rian Bendis completed the modernization of the Avengers begun by Kurt Busiek in 1998, taking them from a quaint card-carrying club of do-gooders to the Marvel’s Justice League. If Busiek helped to centralize and modernize a team that had lost its core in the mid-90s, Bendis made them Marvel’s ubiquitous, movie-ready flagship.

After his introduction of new members like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, and Dr. Strange, it became completely normal for any Marvel hero to be drafted into the team if it served a story. The period also expanded the team franchise from its previous all-time high of two books in the late 80s to a minimum of four.

It also tangled with a crazy line-up of line-wide events, rivaling 90s X-Men for the amount of interruptions of its plot – to the point that the interruptions became the plot, and standalone arcs were mere breaks in the action.

I am historically not a major Avengers reader. In my backlog of 90s floppies I have a decent run of 300s-era Avengers, but it’s mostly owing to Steve Epting’s amazing covers rather than being particularly allegiant to the series.

My early collected edition bookshelf reflected that, with just a few Avengers books marking major Scarlet Witch stories. (Just like Marvel and Fox, I consider her to be as much an X-Men character as an Avengers one.)

That changed in 2012. We were surging towards Avengers vs. X-Men, which came with rumors of Brian Bendis taking over the X-Men books. I foolishly thought knowing something about The Avengers’ recent history would help me be less depressed about the shoe-horning of Avengers into a rightfully X-Men story or Bendis likely derailing all of their awesome plotlines.

I browsed through New Avengers collected editions trying to decide what to sample, and I realized I could not make heads or tails of them. There were two different New Avengers runs with similar numbering and a set books with similar titles and covers that had wildly different contents! [Read more…] about A Bendis Avengers Reading Order

Fandom, sources, subjective truth, and the Lee/Kirby X-Men Omnibus variant cover

August 28, 2016 by krisis

I won’t bury the lede: the variant edition of the Stan Lee / Jack Kirby classic X-Men Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the Kirby cover.

X-Men Omnibus Vol. 1 by Lee Kirby variant kirby classic cover

This is the variant cover. Don’t trust me – read the third section of this post for proof.

By the way, that was the answer to life, the universe, and everything. It’s turns out it’s not 42 – it’s that the X-Men Omnibus, Vol. 1 direct market variant is the Kirby cover.

How and why I’m making a blog post to answer that question is more interesting than the question or the answer.

When it comes to fandom on the internet, it’s assumed that everyone is working from the same primary source – the material they’re all fanning over.

Since everyone is consuming the same thing, deliberate misinformation would be obvious. Thus, information doesn’t tend to be questioned as it spreads across hundreds of blogs, wikis, lyric sites, comic databases, etc – and, none of those sites ever state their sources, because the source is assumed to be the actual material.

There is a problem with that assumption. Sometimes the source is the material, but sometimes it’s just the whisper down the lane from other secondary sources. Sometimes the source is the material, but it’s being interpreted incorrectly.

There is a lot of room for error without any malicious intent to spread disinformation, and without even the tacit citations of Wikipedia you’ll ever know the providence of the information you’re consuming. Due to ouroboros-like nature of the internet, one slight discrepancy introduced into the system will make the rounds, continuing a feedback loop until a little piece of misinformation swells to prohibitive truth – determining the outcome of arguments and dictating the sale price for rare memorabilia.

Fans like to pretend they’re experts, but a lot of times they’re just another parroting back the feedback. I’ve encountered three examples in the past week, and even with my pseudo-scholarly approach to being a fan I managed to be the parrot one time.

What happens when one of these pieces of information actually matters and the echo chamber is the only possible source? You don’t have to look far to find out – it happens every day. News networks pick up parody articles as truth! People cite statistics that aren’t real! The AP makes up tons of stuff and people take it at face value because, you know, AP. And those are journalists.

It makes me worry that as we put more of our consciousnesses and knowledge into the vast matrix of the internet, the concept of “truth” is becoming increasingly subjective.

Fair warning: the first section of below uses a sometimes derogatory word for vagina twice in the context of quotes about the lyrics to a song. We should not be afraid of words, only what people mean by them. Say it sometime. [Read more…] about Fandom, sources, subjective truth, and the Lee/Kirby X-Men Omnibus variant cover

Cable – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Mar 18, 2025! The Cable comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through September 2025.

No single character defines so much of what is right and what is wrong about the venerable X-Men franchise as Nathan Christopher Dayspring Summers AKA Cable.

Cable was the creation of Rob Liefeld in 1990 when he took over pencilling New Mutants and was charged with creating a leader for the team that contrasted with Professor X’s non-violent philosophy. The character he came up with couldn’t be more of a 90s extreme – a Terminator-esque mysterious time-traveler with a glowing eye, a metal arm, a massive gun, countless pouches, and a set of shoulder pads that tripled the width of his body.

(Alex Ross would later say, “I felt like it looked like they just threw up everything on the character.”)

Cable (and Liefeld) lead the New Mutant team out of passivity and lower sales to become one of Marvel’s biggest sales phenomenons, shedding all but three cast members in the process and relaunching as mega-seller X-Force just one year later in 1991. The first issue was the top-selling comic of all time for exactly one month, until X-Men (1991) #1 outpaced it the next month.

However, something even more interesting was going on with Cable thanks to the plot of another X-book: X-Factor. In the wake of X-Tinction Agenda, X-Factor saw Cyclops’s son with Madelyne Pryor (Mr. Sinister’s clone of Jean Grey) being kidnapped to the moon. There, baby Nathan was infected with a techno-organic virus by former Sinister mentor Apocalypse before being whisked off to the future by Sister Askani in an effort to save his life.

Was it intention or coincidence that a telekinetic baby who was the heir apparent to the X-Men franchise was infected with a metallic virus and sent to the future just months after a telekinetic time-traveler with a missing eye and a metallic arm landed in the present? It didn’t matter, because fan obsession with the idea that Cable could be Cyclops’s son quickly took over and made Liefeld’s extreme new character more in-demand than he was before!

That sort of long-term, interconnected, soap opera plotting is a major part of what makes X-Men comics great. However, Cable’s subsequent adventures offer the insufferable underbelly of X-Men: constantly revised powers, convoluted time travel, unendingly retconned secret agendas, and multiple apparent deaths. Even as a Cable fan it can be hard to say what his current mission is or how many more intermittent jumps to the future he’s conducted since his last appearance.

Despite that, Cable has been central to some biggest comic blockbusters in the past few decades – including co-headling a series with Deadpool, driving both Messiah Complex and Second Coming, anchoring the Avengers “Unity Squad” of Uncanny Avengers along with Rogue, and ushering in the final stages of the pre-Hickman era in 2019.

Cable’s ongoing frenemy relationship with Deadpool is a big part of his lasting appeal. While he’s a militant curmudgeon on his own, as the Merc With a Mouth’s eternal straight man it’s a little easier to see the heart of gold that makes him so central to the X-Men franchise over 30 years after his debut.

Note that this guide refers to Cable and “Nathan” interchangeably throughout when referring to the character and not the title.

Inhumans – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Inhumans comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance of all of the Inhumans Royal Family – like Black Bolt and Medusa – plus newer characters like Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2023 with titles scheduled for release through January 2024.

The Inhumans were a creation of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run on Fantastic Four, yet another uncanny spin on a common sci-fi tropes. They’ve stuck around for over 50 years due to the power of love, a well-timed re-launch, and an unparalleled space epic all paving the way for them to become one of Marvel’s marquee franchises.

In their initial arc of Fantastic Four #45-48, the Inhuman Royal Family were presented as deposed rulers of a secret nation, currently resided in New York. That explained why their queen, Medusa, was a collaborator in The Frightful Four!

Inhumans_Vol_2_1_Textless The family’s true home was hidden in the depths of the Andes Mountains, where they had perfected the art of genetic engineering to grant superpowers to every member of their society. In contrast to this evolved race, their despotic current king Maximus employed a fleet of Alpha Primitives – a sort of devolved neanderthal – against the Royal Family.

That could have been the end of the Inhumans’ story – especially because the end of their arc happened to be the debut of Silver Surfer, a prohibitive Silver Age classic that could easily eclipse other solid stories.

Yet, the Inhumans hung on, largely due to their female cast members. Crystal became a love interest of Human Torch and a replacement member of the FF when Sue Storm was pregnant with Franklin. Medusa also continued to appear, as both friend and foe.

The Inhumans were a particular passion of Jack Kirby’s; he would return to both write and illustrate them in the anthology series Amazing Adventures in 1970. They even merited their own series in 1975, written by Doug Moench (of Moon Knight fame).

Past that, the Inhumans were relegated to guest star status – mostly with the Fantastic Four – through the 90s. Crystal became their breakout character, graduating from the FF and dating Human Torch to The Avengers and marrying Quicksilver.

The modern era of The Inhumans began in 1998 with a stellar 12-issue maxi-series from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. This series presaged the darker tone of early-2000s Marvel Knights titles, and focused on every aspect of the race’s embattled society. The series acted as a soft reboot of the Inhumans, who would star in a pair of additional mini-series through 2003. However, outside those series, their appearances were still scant.

That all changed in 2006 thanks to two developments.

First, Brian Bendis’s inclusion of Inhuman King Black Bolt in The Illuminati, would permanently raise the character’s profile and make him an essential tool for writer Jonathan Hickman in his run on Fantastic Four and Avengers from 2009-2015.

Second, the Inhumans’ Silent War during Civil War launched them onto a path that would intersect members of the X-Men and the Annihilation story that launched the modern Guardians of the Galaxy. The intersection, called War of Kings, is a seamlessly executed space epic that combines superheroes, palace intrigue, and massive space battles unlike anything else in Marvel’s history.

As a result of the combination of those eight years of developments, The Inhumans were perfectly poised as a new franchise for Marvel in the wake of their Infinity event. In 2014, they received their own mini-event, “Inhumanity,” as well as their first ongoing series, Inhuman, and their first standalone spinoff hero, the new Ms. Marvel – Kamala Khan. Plus, Inhumans were highlighted in TV’s Agents of SHIELD, culminating in a major arc in 2015.

In the wake of Hickman’s Secret Wars in 2015 their influence in the Marvel line expanded even further, with multiple books and a strong influence on major events in the Marvel Universe.

The tricky thing about the Inhumans is that from their introduction in 1965 through 1998 they only had their own ongoing title two times (both in the 70s) plus a handful of one-shots. Their mythology frequently moved forward during their various guest appearances, especially in Fantastic Four.

This guide tracks the appearances of the Inhuman Royal Family from their introduction in 1965 through the beginnings of War of Kings in 2007. From 2007 on, it continues to track all major limited and ongoing Inhumans titles.

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Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order via omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.

Who is Shang-Chi? To figure out the answer, we need to travel back in time over 40 years to 1974.

Similar to Marvel 70s horror titles Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night that emerged in 1972, Master of Kung Fu (MoKF) both featured a major non-Marvel character and was built to serve a public craze.

shang-chi-3596575-avengers_world_3_alessio_variant In this case, the craze was the titular Kung Fu. It was blowing up in the summer of 1973 thanks to a culmination of factors including the television show Kung Fu, a number of successful movies imported from China’s booming cinema, and one man: Bruce Lee.

Marvel wanted to license the popular Kung Fu to take advantage of the nationwide interest in martial arts (which also yielded Iron Fist), but they failed to obtain the rights. Instead, they turned to another pre-existing mythology: the story behind villain Fu Manchu, a fictional criminal mastermind who coined the mustache of the same name. He was created by author Sax Rohmer in 1912 in a serialized novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Fu Manchu was popular enough to merit an initial trilogy of serialized books in the 1910s and even more starting in the 1930s, plus a number of film adaptions ranging from 1929 to 1980. The character can be a controversial one – even in the 1930s he was seen as a racist caricature representing the “Yellow Peril” of an East-Asian threat to the wider, whiter world.

Enter Marvel Comics. They licensed the Fu Manchu universe from Rohmer’s estate, which was mostly focused on film adaptations in the 60s after Rohmer’s death and final book in 1959.

Instead of keeping it isolated in its own continuity, they created Shang-Chi as a part of the Marvel Universe and made him the son of Fu Manchu! What used to be Special Marvel Edition introduced Shang-Chi and then quickly made him the headliner of the book, swapping the title to Master of Kung Fu with issue #17.

Unlike Dracula, who has always been in the public domain in the US and who entered that status in the 1960s in Britain, Fu Manchu has remained the intellectual property of the Rohmer estate. While all Dracula stories are fair game to tell, print, and reprint, Fu Manchu requires a licensing agreement to use.

At some point after MoKF ended in 1983, Marvel let their rights to the Fu Manchu universe lapse. While they still retained Shang-Chi as a character, they could no longer name his villainous father in print. Further, Marvel could not reproduce or reprint those Fu Manchu stories in print and digital collections until reaching a new arrangement with the Rohmer estate in 2015.

Marvel moved forward with bringing Shang-Chi back to prominence before they re-secured his reprint rights. After appearing in the mid-00s Heroes for Hire, he became a member of the Secret Avengers in 2010 and Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers in 2013. Then, starting in 2017, he starred in a string of his own solo series, written by award-winning superstar Gene Luen Yang and Alyssa Wong.