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Marvel’s Valkyrie – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 7 – Legendary Legend Looks: recap & power ranking!
Welcome to my recap of the seventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Legendary Legend Looks, a design challenge of making a kissing cousin of an iconic RuPaul look that doesn’t have too close of a family resemblance.
What do you want from a reality competition TV show? Your answer may reveal if this no-eliminations All-Winners season is right up your alley or leaving you down in the doldrums.
Personally, I watch reality competitions for excellence. Whether that’s physical prowess on American Ninja Warrior, mesmerizing glass blowers on Netflix’s Blown Away, or the O.G. reality competition winner Kelly Clarkson on American Idol, I want to see someone plucked from relative obscurity and elevated to the height of their industry to show off skills that would otherwise go unseen. I also love
That’s not what everyone is looking for! Some people delight in the drama, the flubs, the flops, and the un-self-aware cringe of reality competitions, cheering when an ill-equipped underdog makes a deep run. This is a crowd who loves the gamesmanship of Big Brother and slow-moving train-wrecks like The Masked Singer.
I’m not saying this pair of preferences are completely mutually exclusive of each other. You can love a superstar talent and a crash-and-burn!
The thing is: this season of Drag Race is completely free of crash-and-burn. We’re watching a showcase of eight of the best-on-TV drag queens in the world whose camera skills have been battle-hardened by one or two passes through the Drag Race machine. Yes, there’s a competition happening, but without eliminations the show is much more about watching the process of drag excellence unfold than it is about the tops and flops of the week.
That’s everything I’ve always wanted from reality TV. No loveable underdogs. No shocking eliminations. Eleven episodes of excellence that hopefully ends with a deserving winner. Imaging getting to see Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood go head-to-head for an entire season of American Idol.
At the same time, I can understand how that is absolutely exhausting for someone who needs the spiciness of some cringe – or, at least some tough judges critiques – to liven up their reality TV.
Which side do you come down on? And, how did you feel about yet another challenge where no one was horrible.
Well, maybe one person was horrible, but we’ll get to that in a moment! Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 6 power rankings to show where the queens stand after another week of Legendary Legend badges. (Want to skip right to the power rankings? Go for it!)
Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen… win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 7 – Legendary Legend Looks: recap & power ranking!
New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Angela
Surprise! I’m back with a second new guide in a row for Patrons of Crushing Krisis, for yet another Asgardian leading lady… although, she started out somewhere very different (both within Marvel continuity and before she arrived at Marvel)…
One thing that DC Comics is very well known for that Marvel Comics is absolutely not known for is incorporating the characters from other publishers into their line.
Even before Crisis on Infinite Earths gave DC the infinite flexibility to subsume entire lines of characters like Wildstorm and Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics, the DC juggernaut had absorbed entire universes of characters. They incorporated many Charlton Comics characters like Blue Beetle and Captain Atom (who also doubled as inspiration for Watchmen), and before them Fawcett Comics’ Shazam! Not to mention their self-incorporation of the many properties that branched out into the Vertigo line back to DC continuity.
Plus, DC never hesitates to engage in cross-company crossovers, as long as it’s not with Marvel. Even relatively recently we’ve seen Batman cross paths with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Gotham Academy with Lumberjanes!
The only time Marvel really came close to a wholesale import of characters was through their acquisition of Malibu Comics’ Ultraverse, which they hastily shuttered.
We could speculate endlessly about why this is the case. Is it Marvel’s self-reliance that borders on stinginess? The sacrosanct nature of their 616-Universe? That DC’s characters are more iconic and stand up better to other media properties? That Marvel has less adventurous fans?
Regardless of the why, it is a very big deal when any kind of outside character makes their way into Marvel’s Universe. It’s an even bigger deal when that character was created by Neil Gaiman, was one of the original big draws during the launch of Image Comics, and has been involved in a somewhat nasty set of legal battles with her now-no-longer-officially-recognized co-creator Todd McFarlane.
I am, of course, talking about Neil Gaiman’s Angela. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Angela
New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie
Today I’m back with another new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that helps complete the coverage started with last week’s Guide to Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie…
One of the best aspects of the past decade of Marvel Comics is that it has made use of characters from every corner of the Marvel 616-Universe, moreso than any prior decade. That has included stalwart favorites, forgotten supporting characters, and a massive list of new stars who went from debut to title-anchoring characters in a span of years.
That is very, very impressive.
After creating over 100 comic guides, I know that some characters have a tendency to completely disappear after a major run tapers off due to low sales. Hey, if it happened to the X-Men it can happen to anyone! Just look at how many characters DC has completely erased in the same decade!
Jokes aside, many of Marvel’s Bronze Age mainstays didn’t survive the one-two punch of Jim Shooter’s linewide realignment in the mid-80s plus transition to a cooler, grittier, more extreme world of comics heading into the 90s.
This was especially true of the second-tier stars of the original 1972-1986 run of The Defenders. Hulk still had his ongoing title, Dr. Strange hopped from his 70s title to the brief Strange Tales to his lengthy 1988 ongoing, and Namor scored a new ongoing in 1990. The supporting cast – both of the original team and the “New Defenders” soft reboot – were not so lucky. Characters like Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, Devil-Slayer, Cloud, and Valkyrie went virtually unknown to most 90s readers.
This is the most surprising for Brunnhilde The Valkyrie, who occupied an existing role in the Marvel Universe as the head of Odin and Hela’s Valkyrior, those Norse warrior women on winged steeds who ferried souls of dead warriors to the afterlife. Yet, Valkyries in general appeared more in the late 80s than Valkyrie in specific thanks to Dani Moonstar’s ongoing connection to Asgard in New Mutants! [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie