comic books

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

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – February 21 2024

February 15, 2024 by krisis

It’s the 8th new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics February 21 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics February 14 2024 new releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: Fall of X collections, an Alien anthology, an unexpected Sentry, a major Spider-Woman cliffhanger, and more!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

Marvel Comics February 21 2024 Collected Editions

Black Panther by Christopher Priest Omnibus Vol. 2
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953683 / digital)
See Guide to Black Panther. This was one of the most-requested Marvel Omnibuses for a long while, so it’s amazing to see it finally completed with a second volume! This run has the distinction of establishing tons of familiar modern Black Panther lore (including Okoye and the the Dora Milaje) but also being batshit crazy, as all Christopher Priest comics are. If you’ve never read it before, Fariha and I covered the first half of this run (the entire first omnibus) in our Black Panther Reading Club six years ago this month back in 2018!

Blade Vol. 1: Mother of Evil
Vol. 1: Mother of Evil (2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952105 / digital)
See Guide to Blade. I just caught up on this Bryan E. Hill series this week. This first arc is about Blade coming up against an ancient evil much bigger than anything he is used to fighting. That sounds mega-fun, but it’s told through Bryan E. Hill’s authorial filter – which is all about expository two-person dialog. Y’all remember Fallen Angels (2019), right? While this book isn’t the catastrophe that one was, this arc is a lot more about talking about what might happen than it is about character moments or coherent action. I think that made this arc slightly unsatisfying, but the book does pick up afterward with some shorter, tighter stories.

Children of the Vault
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952464 / digital)
See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. First things first: This Fall of X book should be titled “Cable & Bishop.” While the Children of the Vault are the featured foe, if you go in expecting to spend quality time getting to understand them in a way that pays off what Carey and Hickman created you’ll be sorely disappointed. Instead, go in assuming you’re in for some guerrilla warfare from a pair of X-Men who traveled through centuries as sworn enemies. I think this sputters at the end, but Deniz Camp shows a flair for terse sci-fi that makes me excited to read more from him at Marvel.

Daredevil Epic Collection: A Woman Called Widow
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302957933 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. Despite the title, this reprint of an existing Epic actually collects the period just prior to Black Widow taking over as the titled co-star of Daredevil (1964). [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – February 21 2024

Announcing the 2024 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll – LIVE on Near Mint Condition

February 14, 2024 by krisis

Mark your calendars for tomorrow at 1pm ET US (7am NZT), when I’ll be joining Omar on Near Mint Condition for a very special show! It’s his first time broadcasting a live stream to kick off the start of the annual Near Mint Condition Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll!

Each year, Omar polls his viewers and the internet at large to choose the existing Marvel omnibuses that are most in-demand for a reprint. While this isn’t an official Marvel poll, last year 19 of the 20 books wound up being announced for reprint in the following 18 months! That’s a 95% success rate.

Tomorrow, Omar and I will be joined by Taylor Talks Comics to run down every Marvel omnibus that isn’t currently available at the distributor level to comic stores and book shops. Then, we’ll open the polling live for everyone to make their top picks.

Tune in to Near Mint Condition on YouTube live @ 1pm US ET tomorrow or watch our stream as a replay to hear all the announcements.

Near Mint Condition’ Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll

Want to see more of me on Near Mint Condition? I will also be Omar’s special guest the next two Thursdays to battle over evergreen choices and share new announcements.

Morbius – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – February 14 2024

February 8, 2024 by krisis

It’s the seventh new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics February 14 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics February 7 2024 new releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: a true Jessica Drew, lots more Gang War, the return of Night Thrasher, Pet Avengers for the win, and more!

Marvel Comics February 14 2024 Collected Editions

Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951214 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers. Ann Nocenti writes this bridging series between the concluded Kelly Thompson run and the impending Alyssa Wong run. I saw some internet fans come down hard on Carol being voiced badly, but I didn’t feel that way at all. This is a solid arc that makes good use of both Spider-Woman as a supporting player and various civilians to give Carol someone other than superheroes to bounce off of. I do think Nocenti tends to treat some groups of characters as a Greek Chorus rather than developing them individually, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not an all-time-best arc, but worth reading if you collect all of Captain marvel.

Edge of Spider-Verse: Across the Multiverse
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302957339 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man – Peter Parker (2018 – Present). This is an anthology of anthologies – collecting the three different “Edge of Spider-Verse” mini-series from 2014, 2022, and 2023. Each issue introduces new alternate-reality Spider-folks or revisits past one. The first series famously included the first appearance of Spider-Gwen. This isn’t a particularly satisfying read on its own, especially since most of the stories are written to subtly dovetail into the Spider-Verse events that followed. But, if you love Spider-Verse stuff in general and can’t get enough of alternate spiders, this one is for you!

Luke Cage Epic Collection Volume 2: The Fire This Time
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302955069 / digital)
See Guide to Luke Cage. This collects the second half of Luke’s original series from when it was titled “Power Man,” stopping prior to the first two issues he shares with Iron Fist before the indicia changes to “Power Man and Iron Fist” with issue #50. It’s really wild how we went from this series not being collected at all in color in 2014 to it being fully collected in Masterworks, Omnibus, and now Epic over the course of a decade. It’s one of the prime examples of how hard the Marvel Collected Editions department has worked to cover their 1970s series. (Of course, the Netflix shows helped!)

Marvel Unleashed
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302931124 / digital)
See Guide to… um… I’m not sure, honestly, because this delightful story primarily stars Redwing, Chewie, and Bats the Dog, among other Marvel super-pets. If that sounds like a dull kiddie book to you, boy have you got a surprise in store! I read this a few weeks ago and it is consistently hilarious, beautifully drawn, and made me cry at the end. If you want to read a great Avengers adventure without any human Avengers, this is the book for you.

X-Men Reading Order – LIVE on Omnidog’s Vault

February 6, 2024 by krisis

Today I am appearing live for a very special show with a very good friend on Omnidog’s Vault to re-organize his X-Men collected editions into reading order LIVE on camera!

Do you love my comics Reading Orders – like my famous X-Men Reading Order – but wish you could see how I create them LIVE and in REAL TIME? Here’s your chance.

Jess the Omnidog has been teasing the possibility of this show for years now. He has been buying X-Men trade paperbacks with reckless abandon since 2014, shortly before I met him. However, he hasn’t read any X-Books between Astonishing X-Men and the Age of Krakoa. Now he has accumulated more than four shelves worth of X-books and he’s read to dig in, but first he needs them shuffled into a coherent order!

Am I up to the task, or is my Cerebro brain too rusty at this point? Tune in live to find out! The only advanced knowledge I have of what Jess has in store for me is the thumbnail of the video below.

Crushing Krisis Organizes Omnidog’s X-Men Books LIVE!