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Batman by Grant Morrison, Episode 02 – Tales of the Demon | Crushing Comics Book Club

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Welcome back to Crushing Comics Book Club for Batman by Grant Morrison! This is the second of three episodes of pre-reading to catch up on some of the themes, characters, and influences on Morrison’s run.

In this episode, we read the first 2/3rds of the Tales of the Demon TPB, which includes the debut of Talia al Ghul and R’as al Ghul. We didn’t know what to expect from these Bronze Age stories, but we wound up falling in love!

Harry is our expert – he loves Batman and Morrison, and he has read this run multiple times. Fariha is our intermediate – she has read plenty of Morrison and DC. And, Peter is now the novice – he’s read some of this run before, but otherwise this is his FIRST TIME reading pre-New-52 Batman!

The stories are:

  • Detective Comics #411 – “Into the Den of the Death-Dealers” (May 1971)
  • Batman #232 – “Daughter of the Demon” (June 1971)
  • Batman #235 – “Swamp Sinister” (Sep 1971)
  • Batman #240 – “Vengeance for a Dead Man” (March 1972)
  • Batman #242 – “Bruce Wayne – Rest in Peace!” (June 1972)
  • Batman #243 – “The Lazarus Pit” (Aug 1972)
  • Batman #244 – “The Demon Lives Again!” (Sep 1972)

Tune in next week as we wrap up our pre-reading by finishing the final four issues in Tales of the Demon, as well as the Demon Trilogy of Son of the Demon, Bride of the Demon, and Birth of the Demon.

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Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis (Bronze Age)

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This is available to everyone, but it was made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis:

The Revised & Expanded X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis

Now that I’ve re-read all of the X-Men Classic back-up stories and Marvel Team-Up issues as part of our Epic X-Men (re)Read, I had some adjustments to make to this guide. I also rebuilt my reading order database, which allowed me to catch some stray appearances mentioned in the comments of the page.

I think the most-significant change to this reading order is that I’ve promoted a handful of Iron Fist and Marvel Team-Up issues to be required reading from being optional, since they were written by Claremont and fill in actions and relationships referred to later in the main Uncanny run.

X-Men, The Age of Krakoa (2019 – 2024) – The Definitive Collecting Guide

Updated Feb 17, 2025. The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men Age of Krakoa, including X-Men flagship titles by Jonathan Hickman, Gerry Duggan, Kieron Gillen, & Al Ewing, in comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2025 with titles scheduled for release through September 2025.

Comics mega-star Jonathan Hickman took over the X-Men franchise as both a writer and “Head of X” in July 2019, and since then nothing has been the same.

That’s not the only reason 2019 was a historic year for the X-Men. As a film media property, the rights to X-Men returned to the Marvel fold when Disney acquired FOX in March of 2019.

Certainly, this change to the licensing of Marvel’s Merry Mutants had an effect on the potential for massive comic plots to return to the somewhat languishing X-line. By many accounts, Hickman and his massive pitch for a massive shift in status quo for the X-Men had been around for some time in the X-Office during All-New All Different Marvel and RessurXion.

Even knowing a major change was coming to the X-line couldn’t prepare readers for what Jonathan Hickman had in store. He launched his era with a pair of intertwined mini-series – House of X and Powers of X, widely abbreviated as HOX and POX or HOXPOX – both filled with major bombshells of plot. Hickman revised the history of several characters in a major way that will forever color re-reads of classic material, and he used that change to set up an utterly shocking set of present day circumstances for the mutant race.

From the conclusion of HOXPOX, Marvel launched an initial line of six ongoing comics – a flagship X-Men title from Hickman, and five supporting books.

Marauders by Gerry Duggan was the most integrated with elements introduced by HOXPOX. Excalibur by Tini Howard used a newly-available character to spin new continuity about mutant magic. New Mutants by both Hickman and Ed Brisson examined the younger generation of mutants as evangelists to stray members of the mutant race. X-Force by Benjamin Percy looked at the security of the new world of mutants, both internally and externally. Fallen Angels by Bryan Edward Hill was the one fizzled launch book – it tried to integrate Kwannon into the new status quo, but stumbled along the way.

After the initial wave of books, early 2020 brought a new wave of ongoings and mini-series – as well as a replacement for the canceled Fallen Angels with Hellions by Zeb Wells following Kwannon’s continuing adventures. Notable, X-Factor by Leah Williams addressed one of the core concepts of Hickman’s new status quo for mutants.

Marvel Comics, along with most other publishers, paused their physical releases starting in late March of 2020 due to the global pandemic. This pushed back the first major event of the Hickman era to begin in September. X of Swords was a massive 22-part direct crossover through all of the ongoing books in the line pulled together plot threads from Hickman’s flagship as well as Howard’s Excalibur. It addressed virtually no plots outside of that, though it would certainly have an effect on all of the books coming out of the event.

After X of Swords, a third wave of new books launched in late 2020 and 2021, including one directly out of the event – Al Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D.. That wave of books largely concluded at the end of 2021 alongside the end of Hickman’s time on Krakoa with Inferno (2021).

Then, after a poorly-received band-aid event (X Lives/Deaths of Wolverine) to give the line time to reorient without Hickman, 2022 saw the launch of additional flagships in Kieron Gillen’s Immortal X-Men (focused on the Quiet Council) and Al Ewing’s X-Men Red (focused on Storm on Mars). Just a few months into both titles, they converged for the tightly-coordinated linewide Avengers / X-Men / Eternals: Judgment Day event, which was more than 50% written by Gillen on his own!

The line continued its three-flagship era into 2023, adding a number of five-issue limited series alongside the long-running Ben Percy titles of X-Force (2019) and Wolverine (2020). Then, halfway through 2023, the Hellfire Gala significantly altered the line and sent it into the “Fall of X” – again spawning a number of short-running limited series. After the first six months of Fall of X, the line moved on to its six month finale with the tightly-coordinated Fall of the House of X / Rise of the Powers of X.

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The Eternals – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s The Eternals – including members like Ikaris, Giglamesh, Makkari, Sersi, Sprite, & Thena – in comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

The Eternals are one of the defining creations of Jack Kirby’s mid-1970s return to Marvel Comics, though relatively few modern readers have had the chance to appreciate them prior to their film debut in 2021 compared to his other cosmic creations like The Inhumans and DC’s The New Gods.

The core cast of roughly a dozen named Eternals (though there are as many as 100) have tended to stay confined to their own handful of series during over 45 years of their publishing history, with just a handful of guest appearances or exceptions.Eternals (2008) 0001

The main exception is Sersi, who join the cast of the Avengers in the 1990s for over fifty issues, and is well-known to heroes like Captain America and Iron Man.

(A secondary exception is Gilgamesh, who was an Avenger for just a handful of issues before Sersi replaced him. A more remote connection are descendants of Titan, among them Thanos and Starfox, who are Eternals by relation but are not part of the primary cast of The Eternals comic.)

In Marvel continuity, the Eternals are a long-lived splinter-race of humanity created by visiting Celestials during Earth’s pre-history – alongside their sibling race, The Deviants. The Eternals function as both heralds-of and caretakers-for the Celestials on Earth. They often interact with or inspire humanity’s mythology – the Eternal Ikaris, in some tellings, is the father of the mythological Icarus. They also police themselves, abiding by the rule of the group and sharing knowledge by forming a collective “Uni-Mind.”

Jack Kirby had a massive, cosmic story to tell with his cast of Eternals starting in 1976, though many of the plots of his series were left dangling after its cancellation in 1978, to be resumed in 1979 in Thor’s “Celestial Saga.” Shortly afterward, Mark Gruenwald and Peter Gillis significantly expanded their origins via a series of in-continuity back-ups in What If – explaining their earliest Celestial origins and forging a connection between the Eternals and fellow Kirby creations The Inhumans.

Past that, the Eternals have appeared largely only when their series is revived, or when a character is explaining Celestial history. They return in 1985 for a 12-issue revival by Gillis and Walt Simonson, in 1991 for an OGN, in 2000 for a one-shot trying to give them some X-Men shine by connecting them to Apocalypse, and again in a heavyweight 2006 revival by Neil Gaiman (and continued in a 2008 series). Even Sersi returned to relative obscurity after her run on Avengers.

In 2018, Jason Aaron’s opening arc of Avengers (2018) saw the team facing off against a fleet of invading Celestials, and the entire earth- bound Eternal race was collateral damage – he killed them all, mostly off-panel! However, this would prove to be a set-up for Kieron Gillen to relaunch the title with a clean slate at the start of 2021 as part of the run-up to the Eternals film. [Read more…] about The Eternals – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order