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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

New for Patrons: Guide to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IDW Continuity

March 22, 2023 by krisis

My Indie Comics Month of March marches onward with another new guide for Pledgeonaut Patron supporters of CK! On Monday I debuted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to Mirage Studios Continuity, which ended with the sale of the TMNT intellectual property to Viacom. However, that wasn’t the end of TMNT – really, it was more like the beginning! That’s because Viacom licensed the Turtles to IDW, who has maintained one of the best shared universes of continuity in all of comics. Read it all in my new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to IDW Continuity!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to IDW Continuity

Before I get into any background on this guide, one VERY IMPORTANT note: you can read the entire first decade of IDW continuity for free if you subscribe to Amazon’s Comixology Unlimited. Every digital purchase link in this guide leads to a Comixology page on Amazon where, if you subscribe, you can “borrow” the book for free with one click on desktop, mobile, or your Kindle.

I highly recommend subscribing for a month and binging a ton of Turtles, because that’s just how I fell in love with IDW’s absolutely incredible TMNT continuity.

I had never read a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics before 2019. I mostly knew the Turtles from their classic cartoons, videogames, and toys. As a comics fan, I was dimly aware of them having a lengthy history as a black-and-white indie comic in the 1980s (as covered in my Mirage Studios guide), but I had never read a single panel of their comic.

That changed in November 2019, when I stayed home from a weekend camping trip and spent a fully day dedicated to checking out comics I had never read before. At 10:04 AM I opened my first issue of IDW’s TMNT continuity and immediately fell in love.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – IDW Continuity (2011 – Present Day) – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

New for Patrons: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to Mirage Studios Continuity

March 20, 2023 by krisis

I’m back to kick off a new week of my Indie Comics Month with a massive new guide for Pledgeonaut Patron supporters of CK. I couldn’t possibly focus on modern independent comics for an entire month without focusing on the comic that started as a humble black-and-white zine and turned into a massive licensing juggernaut whose name is known to nearly every child in America from the 1990s to the present day. Welcome to the first of my guides to those green heroes in a half-shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to Mirage Studios Continuity!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to Mirage Studios Continuity

I’ve tackled a few massive guides so far in 2023, but none of them have been a full-on research project full of careful citations like my first Turtles guide!

That is because TMNT’s pre-2010 continuity is a tricky thing. The characters spawned many, many, many comics in their first 26 years of life. However, of those many stories, there is a single spine of storytelling that was consistent throughout their entire life.

We can call that spine of stories “Mirage Studios Continuity” because it begins with Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird’s first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1984) #1 and continues through Laird’s final issues for Mirage on his TMNT: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2001) series after he sold the intellectual property rights to his creations to Viacom in 2009 (having bought out Eastman’s share of the rights over the course of the prior decade).

Laird laid out a singular view of what Turtles stories he considered to be in-continuity in his view as the Turtle’s storyteller in chief. That included his own issues of the 1984 series (as well as four solo one-shots and a “Tales” seven-issue limited series) and a brief 1993 relaunch. He later extended his definition to include a 2004 Tales of the TMNT volume filling in stories in his continuity.

(He’d retract his extension in 2014, but that was hindsight talking – the 2004 series was always meant to be fully in continuity, even if Laird decided later he didn’t like all of it.)

For their part, current license-holder IDW has stuck closely to Laird’s definition when collecting the classic material that spawned the TMNT empire. Laird-penned material from the 1984 series (and those supporting 11 issues) has been collected into a pair of deluxe reprints – one in color, the other in black and white. Non-Laird issues from the series have been less collected, in less-prestigious formats, with a handful of gaps.

The Mirage Studios Continuity includes one major wrinkle: Erik Larsen. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Guide to Mirage Studios Continuity