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

New for Patrons: Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne

January 24, 2023 by krisis

My newest guide for all Patreon supporters of Crushing Krisis is for one of Marvel’s newest characters to hold down her own solo title – two of them, in fact! In my humble opinion, hers are the finest all-ages comics Marvel has produced in their main 616 continuity in the past decade and I absolutely treasure the memories of reading them for the first time with my daughter. She’s not quite the same as her MCU sibling, nor is she quite the hero you might expect her to be. It’s my brand new Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne!

Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne
This guide is now available to the public thanks to the unstoppable support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

Nadia van Dyne was one of many Legacy characters introduced to take up classic heroic mantles in All-New All-Different Marvel in 2016.

At the time, it was obvious that Marvel’s editors wanted to replace the entire Avengers starting line-up with newer versions, even if they weren’t currently Avengers- Sam Wilson as Cap, Jane Foster as Thor, Riri Williams as Ironheart, Scott Lang as Ant-Man, and Amadeus Cho as Hulk (plus Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales as Spider-Man, and Sam Alexander as Nova, for good measure).

There’s only one founding Avenger missing from that line-up – The Wasp!

The tricky thing about that plan is that Marvel had brought back the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne, in the pages of Uncanny Avengers just as they had finished sweeping aside Steve Rogers, Odinson, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner to make way for their new cast of Legacy Heroes.

Oh, and one more complication: Marvel had just introduced a Wasp in the MCU, but she was Hank Pym’s & Janet van Dyne’s grown-up daughter. They couldn’t replicate that in the comics… could they?

Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

January 23, 2023 by krisis

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to The Champions is now available to all CK readers! This guide covers both the 1975 Champions of Los Angeles as well as the 2016 revival of the team as a squad of Marvel’s young characters in the wake of Civil War II This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the outstanding Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to The Champions

When I first covered how to collect the 1975 edition of The Champions they didn’t merit their own guide page. They had 17 issues of their own and then faded into Marvel history while their members scattered to the winds. I relegated them to my Guide to X-Men Ongoings due to the team including Angel and Iceman.

In reality, the problem with reassembling The Champions wasn’t just that Iceman and Beast had been incorporated into The Defenders (visit the Guide to Defenders), and later into X-Factor (visit the newly-updated Guide to X-Factor)

It was also that Marvel lost the ability to publish comics with the “Champions” title! [Read more…] about Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

Werewolf by Night – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated: Guide to Cable

January 15, 2023 by krisis

It’s time for another update to a long-standing X-Guide! It’s another guide where I re-wrote every word and rebuilt every link from scratch to make it clearer than every before how to follow the story of one of the most-complicated X-Characters. Welcome to my all-new, all-different Guide to Cable!

Guide to Cable

This Guide to Cable didn’t exist when I first launched Crushing Comics back in 2010.

At the time, Cable’s 1993 series wasn’t particularly well-collected and his 2008 series was just wrapping up, so the bulk of his collected editions were actually from the run of Cable & Deadpool from 2004 to 2008. At the time Deadpool hadn’t been associated with the X-Men for well over a decade (this was just before Uncanny X-Force was announced!), but he had several well-collected series to his name.

Faced with a decision between an under-collected X-Character and well-collected non-X-Character, it made sense to package the pair of them together thanks to their shared series and intertwined origins. Thus, the Guide to Cable & Deadpool was born. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Cable

Updated: Guide to X-Factor

January 12, 2023 by krisis

Now that I’m digging back into my comic guides, it’s time to start attacking my backlog of 150+ guides that haven’t had a significant revision in half a decade! Time flies when you’re reading comics. This week, I’ve reached back to update one of CK’s earliest guides. Actually, I re-wrote every word and rebuilt every link from scratch to make it easier than ever to find the physical and digital collections you want. Welcome to my all-new, all-different Guide to X-Factor.

Guide to X-Factor

My last update of the Guide to X-Factor was in the middle of the Reign of X, which means it wasn’t missing too many collections – just the newest Epics and the relatively fresh second and third volumes of the Peter David Omnibus line.

However, that doesn’t meant the page was easy to use! The guide had grown to be a labyrinth of collections with 20 years worth of competing oversized hardcovers, Epics, and paperbacks. That approach to guide organization predates Marvel’s more-organized approach to the contents of Omnibuses and Epic collections. Now that collection formats are getting tidier, the guide should follow! Now, major collection formats have their own sections that you can easily open or skip.

As a result, I rebuilt every collection link on the page. That’s not the only big change to this guide. I’ve added all of the features of the newest guides on the site, including a “Where to Start” section, digital purchase links, reformatted images, and links to read on Marvel Unlimited!

This was one of my milder rebuilds, since it didn’t require adding many new collections or researching character appearances. It still took a whopping five hours altogether, which is almost as long as it takes to create a small new guide from scratch! I’ve got my work cut out for me keeping everything updated, but the more often I do it the easier and quicker it becomes.

Enjoy this renewed Guide to X-Factor – and, let me know in the comments which of my 200+ guides you’d love to see me update next!