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 Cyberforce by Marc Silvestri

March 27, 2023 by krisis

It’s the final week of my personal Indie Comics Month and I have so many new guides to share with Patrons of CK! Of course, I’ll still be posting guides to indie and licensed comics in the future, but I set a personal goal for guides to launch this month which should reveal itself in full by the end of the week. This new guide is a massive step towards completing that goal, because it means I have now made at least one guide for each of Image Comics six launch imprints! That’s right, it’s my first Top Cow Productions guide for their original flagship title: Guide to Cyberforce!

Guide to Cyberforce

Cyberforce was the original creation of Marc Silvestri for his Top Cow imprint at Image Comics. It holds the unique distinction of being the flagship title of an original Image imprint that is definitely not the most popular title from that imprint. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Cyberforce by Marc Silvestri

Updated: Guide to Doom Patrol

March 27, 2023 by krisis

Today I have an update to my guide to DC’s strangest team of all, my Guide to Doom Patrol – to celebrate this week’s release of the team’s new series with Unstoppable Doom Patrol #1 written by Dennis Culver with line art by Chris Burnham, color art by Brian Reber, and letters by Pat Brosseau.

Guide to Doom Patrol

This guide was originally launched with the support of Patrons of CK back in 2020. There has only been one major development in Doom Patron collected editions sine then, but it was a big one! Last year saw the release of a Doom Patrol by Rachel Pollack Omnibus (2022 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1779515346). This collects the beloved run that ended the 1987 Vertigo series for the first time – meaning the entire series is now collected in three omnibus editions!

In addition to adding the Pollack Omnibus, the Guide to Doom Patrol now includes digital links both to buy Doom Patrol single issues and collections and to read if you subscribe to DC Universe Infinite!

This is my first update to a DC guide since starting my lengthy mission to bring all of Crushing Comics completely up to date for 2023! While my regular weekly updates will continue to focus on X-Men for the next few weeks, you can look forward to more DC Guide updates in the next few months – including one key DC team guide being made available to all readers! Make sure you stay tuned to the CK homepage so you never miss a guide update or other comic news.

Updated: Guide to X-Men flagship titles, 2010 – 2019

March 24, 2023 by krisis

This week my X-Men guide update includes an unusual event: the birth of a new guide page! Now that we have hindsight on the storylines and collections of X-Men from 2010 to 2019, I’ve consolidated all of the main X-Men flagship titles into a single guide. Welcome to the all-new, all-different Guide to X-Men flagship titles (2010-2019)!

Guide to X-Men flagship titles (2010-2019)

This page consolidates the contents of a pair of older pages – a “Guide to Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 2-5” and “Guide to X-Men, Vol. 3 & 4,” though some of the former contents of those pages now lives in the recently revised Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men.

At the time I original created my X-Guides, the “Second Coming” storyline was still ongoing and the map of X-Men titles seemed so obvious. There had always been and would always be the 1963 volume of Uncanny X-Men, often accompanied by an adjectiveless X-Men title as well as many supporting teams and titles like New Mutants, X-Force, X-Factor, and Astonishing X-Men.

I thought I had it all figured out. But, when it comes to the X-Men, that feeling never lasts for long.

New for Patrons: Guide to Drax the Destroyer

March 23, 2023 by krisis

I’m back with the fourth in my impromptu mid-month run of guides to green heroes for all Patrons of CK. Did I have any inkling this grouping of four guides would all debut back-to-back, or that they would overlap with Saint Patrick’s day in the process? I wish I could say it was all intentional, but it certainly was not! This hero is the oldest of all the green heroes I’ve covered in the past week, he’s as deadly as Gamora, and he’s even had more transformations than those famous mutant turtles. It’s my new Guide to Drax the Destroyer!

Guide to Drax the Destroyer

Part of the fun of putting together my definitive guides and reading orders is that I get a new understanding of a character’s progression.

In the case of Drax, I’ve seen all of his appearances before, but I’ve never reviewed them all sequentially to understand the major plot cadences that have caused his character to change over the years – sometimes radically. Of all of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax is the team member who has had the most distinct eras in his comic history.

What’s so interesting about Drax and his eras is how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has mined each one for a minor detail of his character. While his film incarnation often feels the farthest from the comics out of all of the guardians, really he is equally close to each of his disparate eras from the 1970s through present day.

Drax the Destroyer – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Drax the Destroyer in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

Drax the Destroyer was a character made for vengeance and built to be tinkered with by each successive generation of writers.

He was originally created alongside Thanos in Iron Man (1968) #55 in February 1973. Thanos was an unstoppable force of destruction, and Drax was his personal destroyer. His desire to destroy Thanos was driven by the forces of vengeance of Thanos’s entire race and, as it turns out, his own extremely personal vendetta against the mad titan.

The original version of Drax the Destroyer was completely unlike his familiar Marvel Cinematic Universe incarnation. He was a gallant, green, caped psychic born from the soil of Thanos’s abandoned homeworld, who could fly through space and emit powerful energy blasts. He seemed to be a deliberate copy of DC’s Martian Manhunter visually and in his powerset.

Drax made a strong early foil for Thanos, but Jim Starlin used him only for a cameo once his own late-70s saga of Thanos and Warlock got underway. That saga lead to the apparent death of Thanos, which meant Drax had no meaning – both within the story and as a Marvel character. After harassing Captain Mar-Vell for taking away his chance to slay Thanos (not realizing or believing it had been Warlock), he was hastily written out of comics via a peculiar two-part Avengers story by Jim Shooter in 1982.

When Jim Starlin returned to Marvel to revive Thanos, Warlock, and Gamora, he also brought Drax back to life – reasoning that if there is a Thanos there must also be a Drax. However, playing off of the peculiar circumstances surrounding Drax’s origin, Starlin used the reincarnation to tweak his character to be a cartoonish oaf with a low intellect. The MCU version of the character shares many qualities with this comedic relief version of Drax that starred in Starlin’s Infinity trilogy and Infinity Watch. However, the screen incarnation is never portrayed as being unintelligent the way he was in the comics. Onscreen, he is simply literal.

After briefly regaining his intelligence and losing it again, Drax was reinvented again in 2005 by Kieth Giffen. This version visually matches up with the screen version – a terrifyingly swift hunk of muscle capable of canny strategy. After anchoring his own mini-series, he was pulled into the first of Marvel’s mid-00s cosmic events, Annihilation and Annihilation Conquest – along with a few other familiar faces: Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot – along with Nova, Warlock, Mantis, and Moondragon.

That group of character transformed into the original Guardians of the Galaxy, launched by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning in 2008. Drax appeared throughout their initial run. Despite being written off at the end (along with Star-Lord and Nova), he was back in the line-up in 2012 when Brian Bendis was brought aboard to navigate the comic franchise towards the impending MCU film.

The version of Drax in the comics since 2013 may be the Guardian who feels the farthest apart from his movie incarnation. He’s simply never been the comedic relief of the comics team quite as much as he has been in the films. He has also seldom been at the center of the team’s plots the way Star-Lord, Gamora, and Rocket often are – though he did have a major moment in 2018’s Infinity Wars by Gerry Duggan. [Read more…] about Drax the Destroyer – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order