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 Rocket Raccoon

April 20, 2023 by krisis

After a brief respite from churning out new reading orders for Patrons of CK, I’m back with a fourth guide to solo members of the Guardians of the Galaxy as their third film approaches! As with the other Guardians, this guide is for a character invented in the 70s, used briefly in the 80s, and then forgotten until the the 00s. He has the least pre-Guardians material of the core team (except for Groot), but the most solo series of them all since the release of their first movie in 2014! Of course, I’m talking about everyone favorite not-actually-a-raccoon, now completely covered in my Guide to Rocket Raccoon!

Guide to Rocket Raccoon

Creating a guide for Rocket was different than making guides for Star-Lord, Gamora, and Drax because I’ve literally read all but six comics he has ever appeared in. It was more like creating a guide to one of my beloved X-Men!

The six issues I had never read before were Rocket’s introduction from Bill Mantlo, first in black-and-white serialized space epic “The Sword In The Star!” and later in Incredible Hulk and Rocket’s own mini-series. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Rocket Raccoon

Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings

April 17, 2023 by krisis

This morning I had the absolute pleasure of announcing the results of the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot with Near Mint Condition!

The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot is an annual poll conducted by a mysterious comic book forum user named Tigereyes. The rules are simple: anyone can email Tigereyes up to 10 picks for their most-wanted, never-before-printed omnibuses of material originally printed by Marvel, even if they may no longer own the licensing rights.

Each first vote gets 10 points, each second vote gets 9 points, all the way down to your tenth vote getting just 1 point. After the voting period, Tigereyes goes through the gargantuan effort of tallying up all the votes – which also involves figuring out what everyone meant by their sometimes inconsistently-named or cryptically-described votes.

For me, the reveal of the results of the Tigereyes Secret Ballot is an international comics-loving holiday. I used to be the primary person on the internet creating statistics from the results every year! However, when I attempted to cover the entire poll entry-by-entry in 2017 I stalled out at the halfway point as the results straddled our move to New Zealand.

That’s why it was worth waking up at 4am NZ time to be ready to share this year’s results with my good friends Omar and Jess on the Near Mint Condition channel, thanks to some last-minute planning with Omar over the weekend.

Our show was nearly three hours long as we dug into the potential contents of every book on the list and whether we’d read them or not. As always, I had just as much fun appearing on-camera as I did chatting with all of the wonderful Minties in the live chat!

Don’t have time for the full 3-hour tour? We actually run down the full 60-book list in just 15 minutes, starting just before the 12-minute mark. I’m sharing the full list below, but it’s more than just a list – every omnibus includes a full suggested omnibus mapping along with a link to the relevant collecting guide on Crushing Comics.

That’s right, y’all – this is a post with SIXTY omnibus mappings in it, mapping well over 2,000 issues of comics. (Actually, it’s even more than that – there’s one tie, and in several entries I get into mapping second volumes if they would complete a run). That makes that one of the longest blog posts in 23 years of CrushingKrisis history.

Are you ready to be rocked by the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus vote? Strap in, true believers, and prepare to be mapped like you’ve never been mapped before.

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 19, 2023

April 16, 2023 by krisis

It’s time to take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 19 2023 releases.

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 Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 19 2023 Collected Editions

Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302949907 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This is effectively a “Complete Collection,” though Marvel is starting to phase that brand out in favor of “Modern Epics.” This not only includes Ewing’s complete Guardians run (but none of the Last Annihilation tie-ins), but also his run on Rocket (2017) #1-6.

The Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 24: The Lone and Level Sands
See Guide to Hulk – Bruce Banner. This is ostensibly the last Hulk Epic Collection, as it complete the run of the Incredible Hulk (1968) series.

Iron Man Epic Collection: Doom (2018 paperback, ISBN 978-1302910136 / 2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950446 / digital)
See Guide to Iron Man, Tony Stark. This is a reprint of an existing 2018 Epic.

Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 17 (2023 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949259 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. This collection brings us to the end of the original Frank Miller run on Daredevil! Now we have it completely remastered to Masterworks quality. I’d expect it to finally hit Epic Collection in the next year or two.

Marvel-Verse: Rocket & Groot (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950729 / digital)
See Guide to Rocket Raccoon. Collects a smattering of Rocket & Groot adventures from Incredible Hulk (1963) #271, Free Comic Book Day 2014 (Rocket), Rocket Raccoon (2014) #5, Rocket Raccoon and Groot (2016) #4, Groot (2015) #6 and material from A Year of Marvels: The Unbeatable

Planet of the Apes Adventures: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus (2023 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302950736 / digital)
This incredibly slim omnibus collects Adventures on the Planet of the Apes (1975) #1-11.

Predator by Ed Brisson, Vol. 1: Day of the Hunter (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302926199 / digital)
Collects Predator (2022) #1-6

Trials of X, Vol. 8 (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948429 / digital)
See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. These anthologies are still pretty far behind the present day – this is just cracking into Sabretooth’s series from the start of 2022!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 19 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics.

Updated: Guide to X-23, Laura Kinney – The All-New Wolverine

April 14, 2023 by krisis

This week’s X-Men Guide Update is my first major update to one of the last major X-Men pages I launched! At the time this character was early in a star-making, joyous run taking over a legacy name from her adopted (and maybe actual) father. Little did I know how much she would go through in the next half decade, including flip-flopping over her codename, being trapped in an alternate reality, being trapped in a time bubble, and… well, the next bit would be a spoiler! Of course, I’m talking about my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine!

Guide to X-23 – Wolverine

I’ve always been a major fan of X-23, ever since first encountering here in the murderous 2008 run of X-Force and then backtracking to read her entire chronological history exactly as it is presented in this guide.

That’s why I was so pleased when Logan’s death stuck for four whole years, during which time Laura Kinney enjoyed the spotlight as Wolverine. It was just as thrilling to see her and Logan reunited at the beginning of Jonathan Hickman’s run and for Logan to affirm that she still held the title, only for Hickman to snatch her out of our grasp later than issue as she became trapped inside the accelerated world of the Children of the Vault for nearly two years of publishing.

Yet, it turned out to be worth out – as Laura emerged to be the Wolverine of the main X-Men squad, while Logan continued to anchor his combined mutant CIA/FBI in X-Force.

As I caught up on more-recent Wolverine reading to update this guide, I discovered the recent totally shocking revelation from just a few months ago! I won’t spoil it here, but it definitely changes the game for Laura’s character – and, it makes this the perfect time to binge her entire reading order.

It was interesting to revisit this guide, which I first crafted in the early days of my Patreon campaign. That was the beginning of my era of tackling solo characters with splintered bibliographies by summarizing all of their appearances as I still do today. Yet, this had many hallmarks of my older guides, like a vague Table of Contents, collections listed without ISBNs and digital links, and crowded reading order sections that didn’t separate recollections like omnibuses and Complete Collections out into their own section.

After a full day of work, my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine is now much tidier, updated with every notable appearance, and annotated with Marvel Unlimited links to help you with your next binge read.

Guide to WildCATs – now available to the public!

April 13, 2023 by krisis

I’m back with another public release of one of my new Guides to Indie & Licensed Comics. While my Indie Comics Month full of new guides was meant to cover all of the first year of Image Comics launches, there was one guide that inspired me to want to cover Image Comics in the first place – all the way back in 2017. As it happens, this team is celebrating their 30th Anniversary with a brand new ongoing series at DC Comics – which means there are thousands of curious fans out there ready to put my WildCATs Guide to good use!

WildCATs Guide

This WildCATs Guide covers every issue of Jim Lee’s co-flagship for his WildStorm line of comics, which was one of the launch imprints of Image Comics in 1992. Later, in 1998, Lee sold the entire imprint to DC Comics. But, DC kept WildStorm’s titles mostly separate from their own books for over a decade, only introducing occasional crossover events to signal that WildStorm was part of the DC Multiverse.

That started to change in the New 52 in 2011, which launched with two of the traditional Wi ldCATs roster in books of their own – Grifter and Voodoo. However, the rest of the team never materialized along with them! Instead, the other WildStorm co-flagship – Stormwatch – was woven into DC’s prime universe continuity.

A decade later in their Infinite Frontier era, DC finally began to make moves to bring the WildCATs back to action. Writer Matthew Rosenberg used back-up stories in Batman: Urban Legends as a backdoor pilot to integrate Grifter into the present day of Gotham City. Zealot and the rest of the team weren’t far behind, and in 2022 Rosenberg relaunched them into their first shared-universe series since 2011!

One of the great things about WildStorm comics being a part of DC is that they’re now included on DC Universe Infinite! DC is slowly but surely converting classic WildStorm titles to digital for their all-you-can-read subscription program. My Guide to WildCATs includes links to read each series digitally.

Want to know more about Jim Lee’s WildCATs? In addition to my WildCATs Guide, check out my 2017 “Blog of Tomorrow” month for recaps of the first 20 issues, plus #0, Special, Trilogy #1-3, and WildStorm Rising! And, read my Guide to WildCATs Launch Essay for why I think they’re a lot weirder than the X-Men.