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Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
Crushing Comics includes definitive comic book guides, essays about characters and titles, collecting strategies, comic reviews, and more!
by krisis
Today I clear another shelf in my quest to unwrap my entire collection. This time I pull out the two pieces of bread in Marvel’s X-Men Inferno sandwich – Inferno Prologue and Inferno Crossovers – which gives me the chance to explain the X-Men’s status quo as they came out of the Fall of the Mutants era.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 40 features X-Men: Inferno Prologue and X-Men: Inferno Crossovers. For more information, see Marvel Universe Events.
by krisis
After some more musing on how getting physically fit can improve your life I open a very indie brick of books.
First, I unwrap Greg Rucka’s Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, and I spend a lot more time enthusing about Kickstarter (and feminism in comics writing) than I do explaining the book (perhaps some other time!).
Then, I pull out the three gorgeous volumes of Alex Alice’s Siegfried (plus P. Craig Russel’s The Ring of the Nibelung) – some of my favorite books out of my entire collection!
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 39 features Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett’s Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether Kickstarter Edition (which you can read for free online) and Alex Alice’s Siegfried Volumes 1, 2, and 3.
The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated January 2024 with titles scheduled for release through April 2024.
Moon Girl is an pint-sized pre-teen who is a potential Inhuman and who might be the smartest person in the world but who also sometimes shares a brain with a vicious red T-Rex.
And that’s not even the weirdest part of the history of Devil Dinosaur!
Devil Dinosaur was the final Big Two creation of comics legend Jack Kirby, who co-created most of Marvel’s pantheon of super-heroes (and all of its pantheon of Asgardian’s gods!) with Stan Lee before creating the entire Fourth World at DC, including Darkseid and Mister Miracle.
Kirby’s return to Marvel was a major coup, and while he was there he penned legendary runs on Captain America and Black Panther, and created The Eternals. His last work was much farther off the beaten path. Devil Dinosaur was a book completely devoid of gods and superheroes, but full of rough and tumble Mesozoic action for his giant red tyrannosaurus rex and his missing link ape-like friend Moon-Boy.
Devil Dinosaur was the sort of weird, one-off experiment that Marvel could have easily left alone, but other writers had an affinity for this Kirby creation and couldn’t help but include it in their own stories. The first to do so were Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe on the surprisingly strong licensed Godzilla series in 1979. Aside from keeping Devil Dinosaur’s story alive, Moench and Trimpe retconned him to be a part of Earth’s own history – though Marvel would continue to waffle on that for decades to come.
In those decades, Devil Dinosaur became a go-to “shocking splash page” reveal, but saw his first substantial use over a decade later in New Mutants spin-off Fallen Angels, which pulled him (along with Moon-Boy) into the present day Marvel Universe, where they would remain through Secret Wars in 2015.
In the wake of Secret Wars, Marvel used Devil Dinosaur for another major surprise – they were bringing him back in his own series alongside a brand new character in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
This new series seemed like it came from out of the blue, but it represented a combination of three prominent market factors for Marvel. First, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur created a new, young, black female superhero in Lunella Lafayette for Marvel to compile into graphic novels and sell outside of the Direct Market, an area where they had seen much success with Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Second, it helped them widen the scope of their Inhumans line and the overall arc of their story. Finally, it helped keep old intellectual property alive with the return of a certain red dinosaur!
by krisis
After I deliver a rousing monologue on the utter meaninglessness of canon in comics I unwrap a pair of books that helped the Avengers franchise branch out – the Avengers West Coast omnibuses (which brings me back to the flexibility of canon when it comes to Mockingbird)!
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 38 features Avengers West Coast Omnibus Volumes 1 and 2, covered in the Guide to Avengers West Coast.