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!

New For Patrons: Guide to Loki

by

Today I have the final guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis to support my Guide to Thor, The Odinson as part of my month-long countdown to Thor: Love & Thunder. Because, if we have a guide to Thor (and Mighty Thor), we also need a…

Guide to Loki

 

This Guide to Loki represents the first time I have ever tackled building a guide to a fully-fledged villain. That means I was dealing with a character who was never an ongoing star of a run nor a member of a team for over forty years of his existence and many hundreds of appearances… of which I planned to read every single one.

What I realized very early in my reading is that Loki is no Magneto or Doctor Doom.

What I mean by that is that Loki never truly developed as a character from the Silver to the Bronze Age the way Marvel’s other two massively popular villains did. Magneto’s villainy was repetitive in the Silver Age, but once Chris Claremont took him over in the late 70s he began an extended arc of character development that stretched across decades. And, while many of Doctor Doom’s plots are similar, over the years he grew from a recurring antagonist to the mastermind behind some of Marvel’s most signature stories – including a pair of Secret Wars!

Loki was never that. At least, not from his debut in Journey Into Mystery (1952) #85 in 1962 to the fall of Asgard in Thor (1998) #84-85 in 2004. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: Guide to Loki

Guide to Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie – now available to the public!

by

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to Jane Foster – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie is now available to all CK readers to help them get ready for Thor: Love & Thunder thanks to the ongoing support of the Mighty Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to Jane Foster – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

Check out my original guide announcement for CK Patrons for an entire essay on what I learned from researching my Guide to Jane Foster!

This guide isn’t just a walkthrough of Jane’s time as The Mighty Thor from 2014 to 2019. It’s a reading order for every Jane Foster issue, ever. That includes a full issue-by-issue recap of all of her more than 180 appearances before becoming a hero, a full collecting guide to her time as The Mighty Thor, plus coverage of her current heroic mantle of Valkyrie.

Jane makes 198 primary appearances in her own titles or in Thor titles, plus her time as a team member in Avengers, and many guest appearances from the 1960s through the present day. If you’re just interested in the core of Jane Foster, I’ve got that covered in a “Greatest Hits” section that distills 40 years of continuity down to just 18 key appearances as a civilian prior to her time as The Mighty Thor in 2014.

Finally, if you’re after only Jane’s time as a superhero, Marvel has that covered in a pair of newly-released paperbacks:

Jane Foster: The Saga of the Mighty Thor (2022 paperback, IBSN 978-1302934873 / digital)
Collects Thor (2014) #1-8 & Annual 1 (2nd story); Mighty Thor (2015) #1-5, 8-11, 13-14, and Generations: Unworthy Thor and Mighty Thor (2017) #1. This collects all of the introduction and build-up of Jane’s story, but the climax and transformation is in the next volume.

Jane Foster: The Saga of Valkyrie (2022 paperback, ISBN 978-1302934828 / digital)
Collects Mighty Thor (2015) #702-706, material from Mighty Thor: At the Gates of Valhalla (2018) #1 and War of the Realms: Omega (2019) #1, and Valkyrie: Jane Foster (2019) #1-10. This won’t read as well as a standalone as it does with the build-up from the “Saga of the Mighty Thor” volume, but it is fantastic material!

New For Patrons: Guide to Thunderstrike, Eric Masterson

by

Today I have a guide to yet another hammer-wielder guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis to support my Guide to Thor, The Odinson as part of my countdown to Thor: Love & Thunder. Long before Jane Foster was the Mighty Thor, another civilian on Midgard was able to lift Mjölnir to don the mantle of Thor, though it started him on an ultimately tragic path…

Guide to Thunderstrike – Eric Masterson & Kevin Masterson

Reading every Eric Masterson comic for this Thunderstrike Guide reminded me of why I love the Marvel Universe.

(Below I will vaguely spoil a 25-year-old comic I almost certain you have not read. You’ve been warned.)

Eric began in Thor (1966) #391 as the most minor of supporting characters – an architect at a job site where Thor maintained a human cover identity. Over the course of five years, Eric went from supporting character, to ally to Thor, to intrinsically linked to Thor, to becoming Thor himself! All the while, creators Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz developed a rich personal life for Eric – including a loving relationship with his son Kevin, complex friendships with a handful of colleagues, and an unlikely roommate in Hercules. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: Guide to Thunderstrike, Eric Masterson