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comic books
Crushing Comics includes definitive comic book guides, essays about characters and titles, collecting strategies, comic reviews, and more!
Shadowhawk by Jim Valentino – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
New for Patrons: Guide to Gamora
Even with plenty of drag and indie comics to focus on this month, I still found the time to squeeze in another new Marvel guide for all Patrons of CK. This guide follows a character who started off both dangerous and incredibly complex when she was introduced by Jim Starlin in 1975, and that’s never changed – although she has changed considerably in her nearly 50 years of comics. It’s time for a Guide to Gamora!
If I was totally off-base about my ideas of about Star-Lord when I got to work on his guide, working on a Guide to Gamora confirmed my assumptions and just made me love the character even more.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that out of all of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora is both the one who is closest to her comic version in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s despite the fact that she is missing a critical element of her first 30 years of comics in the MCU.
New for Patrons: Guide to Shadowhawk by Jim Valentino
I’m back with more of my Indie Comics Month with another new guide for all Patrons of CK! This guide is for perhaps the least popular of the Image flagship titles, but the one with perhaps the most straight-forward, self-contained, and satisfying runs of them all. It’s all explained in my Guide to ShadowHawk by Jim Valentino!
Guide to ShadowHawk by Jim Valentino
ShadowHawk was the only one of the Image launch books that I did not dabble in back in the early 90s, which means the character has always been a mystery to me – as were his serially-numbered 90s mini-series and what seemed like repeated returns from the dead.
I’m not sure I can explain why, other than that Jim Valentino was the least explosive of the Image Comics founders and launch artists at the time. I knew Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, & Rob Liefeld from X-Men, and had at least seen Todd McFarlane on Spider-Man and Erik Larsen on Spidey and Hulk. However, Valentino mostly kept to his Guardians of the Galaxy (1990), which was set millennia into the future of Marvel Comics. With no crossovers into my beloved X-line, I hardly knew who Jim Valentino was.
Also, Valentino’s ShadowHawk simply wasn’t my style of hero. He looked like a shiny, armored Batman or a direct Darkkawk knockoff, roaming the dark alleyways of NYC. Even with a set of shiny Wolverine claws, he never seemed that interesting to me.
(Little did I know he was actually an indie version of totally different character I’d eventually come to love: Moon Knight!)
What I did know about ShadowHawk, likely thanks to regularly reading Wizard Magazine, is that he was HIV-positive. I was keenly aware of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the early 90s. A debate over whether AIDS was a “plague” sent by god to punish sinners is what caused my permanent fracture with my Christian faith, and by the time of the reveal in ShadowHawk I was being certified as a peer sex educator.
I never knew anything more about ShadowHawk. Was he gay? Was he a future star of the musical RENT? Having that knowledge divorced from any other details of the character made his seemingly repeated death and return seem like it was in mildy-bad taste to me. I never knew the full story of ShadowHawk being HIV-positive, the numbering of his series, and his many incarnations until I researched this guide!
First, here’s the story, in Valentino’s own words from the back matter of Return of ShadowHawk (2004) #1: [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Shadowhawk by Jim Valentino
Shazam Guide, The Captain Marvel of DC Comics – now available to the public!
To celebrate this week’s release of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, I’m happy to present my Shazam Guide – The Captain Marvel of DC Comics – now available to all readers of CK!
Guide to Shazam, DC’s Captain Marvel
Read my original Shazam Guide launch post for an essay on Billy Batson’s origins and how DC has gradually lost the magic that once made Shazam and his family the most-loved (and highest-selling) heroes in all of comics.
If you’r thinking about reading Shazam for the first time you may find yourself daunted by the fact that he has been around for over 80 years. However, his Golden Age comics from 1940-1953 are almost wholly uncollected, and they are completely disconnected from his present day continuity.
DC revived Shazam in 2012 starting with a new origin and a large adopted family that match closely with the film continuity. However, I don’t think it’s worth starting there. There’s simply not that much material to read, and none of the stories are particularly satisfying. They often have a cruel, violent edge that is a total mismatch for the wide-eyed wonder of the character.
For a terrific, hefty Shazam read, try starting back in 1994 with Jerry Ordway’s The Power of Shazam. The first half of the nearly 50-issue series are collected as The Power of SHAZAM! Book 1: In the Beginning (2020 paperback, ISBN 978-1401299415 / digital) and The Power of Shazam! Book 2: The Worm Turns (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1779521743), plus the entire series is available on DC Universe Infinite.
The title is set in pre-Crisis continuity, which isn’t presently relevant for Shazam, but it’s a complete and well-thought-out series that sees him as a part of the larger DC Universe alongside heroes likes Superman and Wonder Woman. I read much of the series while putting together this guide, and it’s enjoyable from start to finish.
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it! My Shazam Guide covers every appearance the character has made from 1940 through last month, with links to collected editions and digital reading options for every major starring issue. Start at the launch of one of his many series, or just jump in randomly to an issue with a cool cover.
This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the astonishing Patrons of Crushing Krisis. They’ve had early access to the guide for the past month! Join for as little as $1 a month or $10.20 a year to get early access to dozens of existing guides and every new guide as it makes its first appearance on CK.