Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 8 – Masquerade Ball, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review and power rankings of the eighth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – the Masquerade Ball, a classic Drag Race ball episode requiring three runway looks, including one constructed in the workroom.

I often comment that Canada’s Drag Race feels like old-school RuPaul’s Drag Race from the era of it airing on Logo TV. You could ask, “Is that a read?” about it feeling low budget compared to the current flagship franchise. For me, it’s more about the show having a certain scrappy, DIY energy.

Also, sometimes it’s unforgivingly difficult.

When I think about Drag Race at its hardest, I always flash back to RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 as the most-difficult season of all time, where the queens looked like they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Ru announced the “Money Ball” hot on the heels of the “Hair Ball.”

I imagine that’s what the five remaining queens of Canada’s Drag Race must have felt when they heard the final hurdle before the finale was the Masquerade Ball – a third design challenge in just eight competitive episodes. That’s not only difficult, but also surprising, since it means this season left out not one but two staple challenges of Canada that would be welcomed by several of these queens: an acting challenge and their phenomenally heartfelt makeover challenge, which have been the highlights of the past two seasons.

Sending the queens back to their sewing machines and glue guns for a third time yielded interesting results. Our two seamstresses backslid while two of the remaining trio of Glue Gun Girls stepped up their games in a major way.

Maybe the seamstresses had design fatigue at this point. Or, maybe Masquerade Ball is just a difficult category to design – as were both of the ball categories paired with it! We wound up with a shakey set of constructed looks, a surprising winner, a shocking entrant in the bottom two, and one of the biggest lip sync bops of the season.

Next week is the finale of Canada’s Drag Race! Did any queen manage to jostle her way into a new spot compared to last week’s rankings? And, who do I think is most-likely to take the crown? Read on to find out!

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 8 – Masquerade Ball, Review & Power Ranking

Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

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Mabuhay! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race Philippines Season 1 – “OPM Divas: The Rusical.” This is a lip sync Rusical where each queen needs to impersonate an iconic Philippines pop star by lip syncing to nursery rhymes performed in their signature style.

OPM refers to “Original Pilipino Music” – a particular style of Filipino post-1970s pop songs heavy on soulful balladry. This is one of those times where no amount of YouTube research can adequately prepare me to fairly judge the results of a Drag Race challenge from an international edition of the show.

I tried my best to find comparable looks and performances from all of the OPM Divas to better appreciate the impersonations, but some of these Divas have been around for decades – long enough that we could have a whole Rusical dedicated solo to them the way we have had for Cher and Madonna on the US franchise.

Even this mini-challenge was completely new to me! It was a game of “Ten-Twenty Talon Becky,” a reverse-limbo street game of hopping, leaping, and eventually cartwheeling over a Chinese garter. (A “Chinese garter,” is simply a rubberized elastic band you can use for stretching and/or jumping rope.) I couldn’t imagine how the queens were going to make it over the belt once it got up to eyeball-level – and that’s where the cartwheels came in! If you get even a toe over the rubbery line, your momentum and its elasticity takes care of the rest.

The mini-challenges this season have showed off how good-natured and downright silly this cast can be, which is easily obscured by how seriously they all take their runway assignments. I cannot think of another season of any franchise where an entire cast of queens have been so gamely foolish for physical challenge like the pole-climbing and the Chinese garter.

The willingness to be awkward on camera feels unique to the Philippines cast, but it also helps that the mini-challenges are rooted in their culture and their sense of childhood play. Compare that to the typical US mini-challenges, which tend to be either games that Ru (a man in her 60s) finds personally entertaining or full of sexual innuendo (if not both).

This episode also showed that the Philippines franchise is not above outright riggory to create drama in critiques.

As I understand it, every queen had advance knowledge of two Divas they might impersonate, but they didn’t have a say in the final choice or in the style of song and how it would be choreographed. Many Filipino Divas are known for being Celine-Dion-adjacent balladeers, which gave some queens less to work with than others.

Minty Fresh, in particular, felt stuck with a performance that could only accentuate the “Wake Up, Pearl!” narrative that she’s been saddled with. Similarly, Lady Morgana landed the most world-famous of all the Divas, but that Diva is such a chameleon that Morgana couldn’t possibly capture her within 45 seconds of impersonation.

Finally, there were some queens who were protected from critiques to yield the elimination the show wanted tonight, which might not have been 100% warranted based on the episode but which made sense in the arc of the season.

Did all that riggory that wreak major havoc on my Power Rankings compared to Episode Three? Read on to find out!

If you want to watch Drag Race Philippines outside of the Philippines and Canada you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Filipino drag queen win! [Read more…] about Drag Race Philippines Season 1 Episode 4 – OPM Divas: The Rusical, Review & Power Ranking

New for Patrons: Guide to Doctor Fate

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I took a deep dive into the mystical side of DC Comics to put together this new guide for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK, and I was surprised to learn that the hero whose guide I was constructing has actually been nearly a dozen different characters over the course of their 80 years of comics history! Prepare yourself to enter the often-deadly magical side of DC, which has killed many versions of this hero along the way, with my… Guide to Doctor Fate!

I’ve always worked from the assumption that Doctor Fate is a major DC hero.

Why? Because I had his Kenner “Super Powers” toy as a little kid, and surely every hero who merited a unique sculpt in that legendary toy line was a major force in the DC Universe.

As it turns out, the story is slightly more complex than that.

Doctor Fate is not a singular hero in the DC Universe, but a heroic mantle and set of mystical powers that are often (but not always) connected to Nabu and the Lords of Order. It’s like how Doctor Strange is the Sorcerer Supreme, only if Strange died a lot more frequently and other people took up the role.

Actually, maybe it’s more like Buffy The Vampire Slayer… [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Doctor Fate

Newly Announced: Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 5 (+ the problem with its mapping explained)

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This weekend, Marvel announced their most-anticipated omnibus via my friend and colleague Omar’s YouTube channel, Near Mint Condition: Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 5!

(That isn’t an exaggeration; the online omnibus community produces a yearly secret ballot to determine its most-wanted books and this one tops the list, as also reported by Omar.)

This is the last omnibus X-fans need to complete their oversized bookshelf of Uncanny X-Men (1963) #1-321. That means it’s time for the celebration to begin! Let the X-villagers rejoice!

Well… not quite.

The hesitation comes down to the initially-announced contents of the book, what fans assumed it would contain, what Marvel has recently reprinted, and how Marvel plans to continue collecting Uncanny X-Men in omnibus in the coming years.

(Note: Omar very kindly invited me to a discussion of this topic on his channel, but I couldn’t make it work across time zones. Plus, I’m trying to keep my X-Men X-Posure contained to CK, at the moment.)

Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 5 Contents

The contents of this volume, as announced by Omar on Near Mint Condition, are:

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #194-209 & Annual 9, New Mutant Special Edition (1985) #1, Nightcrawler (1985) #1-4, Longshot (1985) #1-6, and material from Marvel Fanfare (1982) #33.

I’ll explain why all of those issues are in the omnibus in just a moment. First, let’s talk about what’s missing. Or, should I say “missing” – since not everyone agrees.

What is Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 5 “missing”?

The initial solicited contents of Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 5 skips two runs that many buyers of all of the X-Men omnibus line anticipated it would include, for reasons I’ll cover below.

Here is what the contents do not currently include:

  • Uncanny X-Men (1963) Annual 10 and New Mutants (1983) Annual 2
  • Avengers (1963) #263; Fantastic Four (1961) #286; X-Factor (1986) #1-8 & Annual 1, and potentially some other related material

If you know your X-mapping well, you will immediately see the problem with these exclusions! By leaving Annual 10 out of this volume, Marvel has invented a difference between the mapping of the X-Men “Classic Omnibus” line that begins with Volume 1 and the X-Men “Event Omnibus” line that begins with Mutant Massacre. But, there’s no reason that difference has to exist!

If you’re not a X-Men mapping X-Pert yet, keep reading for a complete X-Plainer. [Read more…] about Newly Announced: Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 5 (+ the problem with its mapping explained)