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

She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The She-Hulk 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 November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.

It was 1980 and Stan Lee was in a pinch.

The Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk TV series was wildly popular at the time, and based on the recent precedent of The Bionic Woman being launched from The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee and Marvel Comics were concerned that CBS could spin off a female Hulk character who would not be copyrighted by Marvel.

In Lee’s last act of Marvel Comics creation until the 1990s, he dashed off the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk. It’s a classic Lee contrivance. Bruce Banner’s mild-mannered lawyer cousin Jennifer Walters is nearly killed by a gang seeking revenge, and Banner is the only one that can provide a blood transfusion in time to save her life. With the blood comes the green alter ego – and a second Hulk in the Marvel Universe!

She-Hulk’s path has been distinctly different than Bruce Banner’s. Not long after her introduction she began to retain her every day personality while in Hulk form. This lead to her eventually eschewing her human body and living almost permanently as She-Hulk.

Due to this key difference, She-Hulk is a social butterfly compared to her cousin. She is a long-running member of Avengers and only the second replacement member of The Fantastic Four (she subs for The Thing after the original Secret Wars). Also, after her first series, her titles are typically humorous – thanks to John Byrne’s 4th-wall breaking take on The Sensational She-Hulk.

Despite a few periods of scarcity, She-Hulk has remained a regularly appearing hero in the Marvel Universe ever since her debut. Marvel also added a Red She-Hulk to their roster in 2009. [Read more…] about She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Doctor Strange – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Mar 22, 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading-order on collecting Doctor Strange & Strange Academy comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, trade paperback graphic novels, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through November 2025.

Collecting Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange has had several ongoing titles over the years collected in a variety of formats – plus, his own magic school with Strange Academy.

At this point, every Doctor Strange issue has been collected! However, there are a few specific formats of books that cover large portions of this title, and I’ll cover those first – Omnibuses, Masterworks, Epics, and Essentials.

Do you need a quick introduction with a few suggested reads? Head to my blog post announcing this guide.
[Read more…] about Doctor Strange – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Review: Black Magick, Vol. 1 by Rucka & Scott

June 25, 2016 by krisis

I am a contrary person and at times in my life I have totally given up on certain things that other, normal people find it totally okay to engage in with moderation. For example, I went through a period where I felt slow-dances were “boring, rotating hugs,” and used such time to rehydrate for the next uptempo set of songs.

There was a period in my life where I had completely given up on movies. They were necessarily assembled by committee and that meant they couldn’t be perfect. Who would want a story spoon fed to them visually for two hours when they could read the same material four times as fast?

Our movie collection makes obvious that I overcame my discrimination, though if you example that large library you’ll see that the films they largely fall into one of two camps. One is special-effects or period films like Star Wars or Braveheart, which present a reality I could not otherwise witness. The other are the finely coordinated works of auteurs like Wes Anderson. Some are both, like Primer and Donnie Darko, or most of Christopher Nolan’s films.

I still don’t see the point of watching a two hour comedy or drama that it took hundreds of people to produce unless I am watching it for some spectacle, whether that’s visual or in caliber of performance.

Yet, the sheer scope of film cannot be denied. That widescreen window on the world and its beautifully pushed colors – that is a thing to covet and convert to other mediums. It is why television shows and advertisements and comic books yearn for that stamp of cinematicism.

That wasn’t always the case for comics. I’m not sure when it started – perhaps with David Finch’s widescreen take on The Ultimates, which ultimately informed Marvel’s The Avengers film. Now it has infected the entire medium. No more caption boxes or thought bubbles, because movies so rarely have narrators and voice-overs. Massive establishing shots with no text, despite the fact that each panel tells the geography of a scene in miniature. Glossy colors that cram in reflections and lens flares, because only movie magic can help you suspend your disbelief.

Every comic book wants to be its own film, but very few of them actually feel like one.

Black Magick, Vol. 1

Collects issues #1-5 by Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott, with color assistance from Chiara Arena.

Tweet-sized Review: Black Magick v1: spellbinding cop procedural w/dose of magical ritual, but only half of Act 1…I want the whole play!

CK Says: Buy it.

Black Magick is an entrancing, deliberately-paced dose of witchy mystery, like Homicide: Life On the Streets crossed with The Craft, by a pair creators at a newfound apex of their powers.

Not a word more can be said for this book without talking about artist Nicola Scott’s grayscale, ink-washed artwork. It is a sight to behold. Black and white major label comics are few and far between, but this isn’t true black and white – her flood of gray inks have tone and depth. They give her figures a sense of texture and weight that would be hard to replicate with typical digital coloring. Chiara Arena contributes only occasional splashes of color – a bloodshot eyeball, a burst of flames, or a green mist of spellwork.

Scott’s world is filled with so much detail and organic motion that panels seem to sweep from one to another like a strip of film passing across the bulb of a projector. At points, I honestly forgot I was reading a comic book with static pictures and tangible pages. Scott’s art transported me. [Read more…] about Review: Black Magick, Vol. 1 by Rucka & Scott

Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

June 23, 2016 by krisis

Lately, I trust journalists less than ever before. Or, maybe I trust them, but I don’t trust the stories they’re telling.

Last week during the gun control filibuster on the Senate floor I compiled the names and demographic information from all the participating Senators, and my friend Lauren created an interactive infographic with the information. I did not read a single media story that named all of the participants after the fact.

I know this is a theme in conservative American politics right now – the bias of the mass media. I’m not talking about bias. I’m talking about facts.

The past few weeks have been full of big new stories nationally (Orlando and gun control) and locally (sugary drink tax and the DNC), and the biggest of those stories have been missing so many facts. They’re all headlines and quick hits. Hot takes with no depth. No quoting from primary sources. Lots of people coming away with incomplete ideas and parroting them as reality.

Those same weeks have also been full of truth. I become deeply invested in last week’s filibuster from the floor of the Senate and did not consume a single pundit’s take on it. I watched it live and was my own pundit. Yesterday’s sit-in in the House circumvented pundits even further – it couldn’t even be broadcast by networks because the House was out of session and cameras were off, so representatives broadcast it directly to the public via Periscope, cutting all all possible middlemen.

Of course, the next day journalism swept in – but, as a first-hand witness to the events in question, I found the subsequent coverage lacking. Where were the names of the participants, the lengths of time they spoke, the information they shared? I put more information together about the filibuster with data visualization from my friend Lauren than I saw from any news site!

I don’t trust journalists or I don’t trust the stories they tell, but I can hardly blame them. After all, I have a journalism degree and I never set foot into that field. I went CorpComm because I wanted job security and a standard of living, and that was before online outlets were effectively subsidizing their print editions and running on pay-per-click ad units. But I still believe journalism should represent unfiltered truth with a neutral point of view, unless it professes itself as opinion. I had a lot to say about the filibuster, but none of it made its way into the data.

What if journalists didn’t have to worry about the funding and the hits, and could focus on terrific journalism? There are some outlets today that fit the bill, and I don’t think it’s coincidence they produce some of the most thorough reporting. I know it’s hard to picture state-run journalism, because so often it’s journalists who expose the flaws in the state, but that’s one version of what I’m talking about. Instead of asking journalists to make personal sacrifices to do what they love and write for maximum eyeballs, imagine a minimum number of reporters guaranteed on each beat, with job security, fair pay, and a retirement plan.

Do you think the journalism would get better or worse? Does it take sacrifice to want to dig as deep as journalists dig? Or, would the skill and commitment increase?

The Private Eye

The Private Eye collects the 10 chapters of a complete web comic story by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente.

Tweet-sized Review: The Private Eye finds Vaughan & Martin a bit too clever for their own good; I liked the world better than the story

CK Says: Consider it.

The Private Eye is a much more interesting world than it is an interesting story – and, it’s a pretty decent story.

Private Eye is an Eisner and Harvey Award Winning comic story conceptualized by Brian K. Vaughan and created in collaboration with Marcos Martin and his wife, colorist Muntsa Vicente. It was initially released beginning in March 2013 as a web-only comic via Panel Syndicate, with its 10 chapters released across 24 months. Each chapter was available as a DRM-free as a pay-what-you-will download.

You can still purchase it that way, or you can opt for a gorgeous $50 hardcover version released in December that includes the complete Vaughan/Martin email chain conceptualizing the story and their method of release (complete with fretting over what to call the website and how to make a profit from it).

The story of Private Eye depicts an America where the press has taken over peacekeeping for the police thanks to a landmark omni-leak of every possible piece of data. The event, called “The Cloudburst,” exposed everyone’s online information to everyone else. It wasn’t the leaked account balances or private nudes that did everyone in, but the search histories. It turns out that was as close as you could come to knowing what was going on inside someone else’s head – their deepest fears and desires. A lot of those heads were pretty dark places. [Read more…] about Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

50 More Marvel Runs That Deserve An Omnibus

June 21, 2016 by krisis

Marvel_logo Welcome to the epilogue to my epic two-week series of dissecting Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses.

Really, in comic terms, it’s more of an Aftermath – the messy ensuing action after a lengthy tale.

After weeks of going through a list of books that are largely old and generally already-collected, I found myself wondering if they really were the 59 runs most deserving of oversize treatment from Marvel.

Dazzler - 0001 Let’s face it – a lot of comic collecting is focused on recapturing the magic of our youth (or, finally owning the things we couldn’t afford back then – which I suppose is the same thing). The Marvel’s Most-Wanted Secret Ballot is pretty reflective of this. If we were to exclude all of Marvel’s original Big 9 Silver Age 1960s titles (Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Daredevil, & Spider-Man) and do a recount we’d be down to 37 books; if we excluded everything mostly composed of pre-1991 material, it would be a scant 21 volumes.

What about everything else? What about littler known pre-1991 runs and modern stuff that’s deserving of massive tomes?

That’s the list I bring to you today: For your consideration, 50 major Marvel runs that obviously fit well into an Omnibus edition without relying on the classic runs of those original nine titles and with flipping the ratio of pre-1991 books. Maybe not all of these runs fit into the “most-wanted adjective,” but none of them are duds.

In all seriousness, I’d probably buy every one. To help temper that enthusiasm, I’ve also argued the con side of each potential book – why should this content not be omnibused?

Think of this as your extended ballot for the 2017 survey, or your nearly inexhaustible rainy-day reading list (especially if you have Marvel Unlimited, where many of these runs are available in their entirety). [Read more…] about 50 More Marvel Runs That Deserve An Omnibus