comic books

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

Deadpool – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Mar 25, 2025! The Deadpool 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 December 2025.

Looking for Cable? He used to live on this page, too! See The Definitive Cable Collecting Guide and Reading Order.

Deadpool is now a multi-media star – perhaps one of Marvel’s most-visible characters – but he had humble beginnings.

He was introduced in 1991 in one of the final issues of New Mutants, created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza as mercenary who was an oddball cross between Spider-Man and DC Comics’ Deathstroke.

Deadpool was just one of a slew of newly-introduced extreme characters that leaned into the bloodlust of early 90s fans. Yet, he stood out in the crowd in his remarkably sparse early appearances. That was largely because Nicieza gifted him with a unique, sardonic, self-deprecating voice, which other writers gladly picked up.

After six years of guest appearances, Deadpool landing his own ongoing in 1997 penned by newcomer Joe Kelly only tiny handful of issues into his career. The series stuck – it was one of the few to survive Marvel’s early 2000’s cull, and Deadpool would never again go without at least one ongoing series to his name.

Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Updated September 29, 2025! The Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men 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 September 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2026.

Astonishing X-Men launched under the unprecedented auspices of being an X-Men with the hottest possible creators that you could follow without a tangle of other comics to buy.

Though that concept would be slightly watered-down over the years, the theme of a standalone, fan-pleasing X-Men book focused on relationships as much as heroics has always been the mission statement of Astonishing X-Men, and it was echoed in 2014’s Amazing X-Men.

Note: Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) and Amazing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) were both four-issue limited series that were part of the Age of Apocalypse alternate timeline. Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2 was a three-issue limited series that was a precursor to a major Apocalypse storyline.

When Astonishing launched in 2004, Grant Morrison’s massively popular run on New X-Men had just come to a somewhat abrupt halt, at least in part due to disputes behind the scenes. That lead to a line-wide re-alignment of X-Men titles, including cancelling Chris Claremont’s sideline title X-Treme X-Men and moving him back to the flagship Uncanny X-Men.

Marvel had unleashed something entirely new with Morrison’s run that no existing Marvel writer could replicate – not even Claremont: Morrison was an outside voice to the X-line who brought a much-needed injection of fresh ideas and a legion of new fans.

Enter Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly (though they’d all see cancellation by the time Astonishing kicked off). He was geek royalty with a massive fanbase, and despite having only written a handful of Buffy comics to that point, he had grown up with the X-Men. In fact, Buffy was based on Claremont’s archetype of Kitty Pryde (and Dark Willow on Phoenix)!

Marvel contracted Whedon to pen 12 issues, paired with rising superstar artist John Cassaday (who was in-progress on Planetary and just off of a run on Captain America). Rather than hand Whedon and Cassaday an existing title as they had with Morrison, Marvel created an entirely new one for the pair.

It was a prescient move on Marvel’s part, as when Whedon and artist John Cassaday hit delays within the first year of the book, it allowed the rest of the X-Men universe to keep moving while the pair toiled over each new issue. Marvel took the unusual step of treating Astonishing as “continuity-free” – though it acknowledges events like M-Day, it is free of crossovers and was released at a different rate than other X-books. In fact, it took four years for these 25 issues to be released – effectively putting them on a bi-monthly schedule.

Whedon took over the concept of a more academically-minded team from Morrison, with a staff of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, and substituting Shadowcat for the recently departed Jean Grey. Dozens of Xavier Institute students are featured in the background of the early issues.

With Whedon & Cassady’s run on the book over, Marvel continued the trend of using Astonishing‘s crossover-free setting to lure high-profile creators – this time landing Warren Ellis. Creator of the critically acclaimed Planetary, Ellis actually got his start on Excalibur in the mid-90s. Ellis swaps Kitty Pryde and Colossus for Storm and Armor and gives the book a speculative fiction and sci-fi theme. Afterwards the book was handed to Daniel Way and Christos Gage, Greg Pak, and finally novelist Marjorie Liu – who played up the team-as-family theme.

Amazing X-Men began as Jason Aaron’s take on an X-Men away team as his run on Wolverine & The X-Men wound down, but it wound up as a single-shot story of Nightcrawler’s resurrection when he was whisked away to helm Original Sin and then launch Star Wars. Popular X-Men Academy and X-Force writer Christpher Yost wrote the majority of the remaining issues, which maintained a more light-hearted 80s feel to both the team and the stories.

Marvel relaunched Astonishing X-Men as part of their 2017 ResurrXion era, first penned by Charles Soul – who fit the A-lister billing – and then by Matthew Rosenberg, who would transition directly to writing the flagship Uncanny X-Men in early 2019.

The great thing about this pair of titles is that any time the writer changes is a great place to start! There is never any ongoing continuity – every run by a different writer is completely self-contained.

Crushing Comics – Guide to Reading & Collecting Marvel Comics

Updated November 11, 2025! You shouldn’t have to be a comic book expert to enjoy reading Marvel Comics! Find every Marvel issue from all of their major titles and characters in the right reading order in this Marvel Comics Guide, including how they’ve been collected in physical and digital format – plus, suggestions for the best places to start.

My dozens of guides to major titles – including every X-Men and Avengers team – will always be freely available for all visitors. New guides debut exclusively to Patrons of Crushing Krisis & Crushing Comics before being released to the general public. Join for less than the cost of one comic per month to help support the costs of maintaining this site!

I’ve teased some of my upcoming guides with the MARVEL logo over a grayed-out image, but I’m always happy to hear what you’re excited to see in the future!

Patreons make this page possible! Every month, Patrons of Crushing Krisis help to fund its hosting, helper applications, video production, and more! Every dollar contributed by Patrons goes directly to helping sustain and grow this site.

Exiles – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Exiles 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 September 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

The launch of Exiles in 2001 by writer Judd Winick with penciler Mike McKone was Marvel’s first long-running ongoing with a continuously-told story combining reality-hopping and alternate versions of heroes.

Prior to the launch of Ultimate Comics in 200o, Marvel Comics had a slim list of ongoing titles that lived permanently in alternate continuities. Exiles was nothing like Ultimate Comics.

Ultimate had the goal of the alternate universe as verisimilitude – the same main Marvel Universe only more modern, and the fascination was watching it splinter.

The pitch for Exiles followed the debut of Ultimate Comics and swiped the title of a 1990s Malibu series, but it had much more to do with Marvel’s classic series What If. What If never told a consistent story – in fact, there were hardly ever two issues which focused on the same tale! Each one-shot issue hopped to a new reality to imagine the most twisted possibilities.

Exiles combined that reality-hopping approach with a somewhat consistent team, much like Chris Claremont’s classic Excalibur story “The Cross-Time Caper.” Instead of starting with a team of known 616-reality heroes, Winick & McKone drew inspiration from Age of Apocalypse.

Age of Apocalypse had presented four months of an alternate reality full of X-Men reimagined to take advantage of their best and worst qualities. Exiles would do the same, only with a palette of infinite realities from which to choose.

Lead by the short-lived but hugely-popular X-Men character Blink (from Age of Apocalypse – not the main universe version!), the adventures of these alternate-reality X-characters had no impact on the main X-continuity (though Nocturne, a founding member, would briefly cross over to main 616 continuity).

Despite that, the book is regarded highly by fans – at least, it was when it was helmed by creator Judd Winick. By contrast, any issues penned by Uncanny scribes Chris Claremont and Chuck Austen aren’t as popular. [Read more…] about Exiles – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Paper on Twitter @ #140conf: Day 2, pt. 5

April 21, 2010 by krisis

Two great panels – one from journalists, and another from the comic book industry – talking about how their two newsprint industries can move seamlessly into the social web.

This is the quote of the entire conference, because at least half of it has been about this:

“The role of journalists and editors now is to form [news] into a piece of narrative and inform. Real time web becomes right time web,” getting the information people want to them in a digestible format at the right time.

Also, my paraphrase from the comic panel:

It’s not a surprise that creators are celebrities – they are the artist and the auteur. It’s different than film or television stars.