Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

consume

The Epic X-Men (Re-)Read: New Mutants (1983) #26-28 – The origin of Legion! (Ep002)

by

It’s the second episode of our entirely out-of-order dive into my 50-year collection of X-Men comics, and today we’re leaping to a character who has become a multi-media sensation in the past year: David Haller – Legion.

Legion’s debut in New Mutants (1983) #26-28 is a brief arc filled with thematic content that still resonates strongly in the modern day. See the Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men for collection information.

Is the David Haller of this story recognizable to viewers of FX’s Legion? Do these comics still hold up today? And, does Claremont leave the series doing right by his cast of indomitable-willed woman? Watch this mega-sized episode and find out!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10 Power Rankings, Episode 01 – 10s Across The Board

by

It’s the debut of the tenth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and these fourteen queens are seriously tens across the board!

There hasn’t been a debut that has felt so chock full of big personalities and relatively devoid of filler queens since Season 6.

Past the stellar cast, this debut episode tips RuPaul’s strategy of treating season ten like a “greatest hits” of the past nine seasons. That not only shows in the return of the popular “Drag On a Dime” construction challenge, but also in bringing back a slew of queens to act as a featured audience for the runway mini-challenge.

We’ve seen Ru bring back past queens on the show before, but to see so many of them (including lower-placing finishers) in the audience for this bombshell regular season debut on VH1 was really heart-warming. They’re all amazing artist, and they deserve the boost that comes with the show’s newfound higher profile after RuPaul’s pair of Emmy wins.

But, enough about RuPaul’s Best Friends Race – how was the battle to be America’s Next Drag Superstar? We saw a slew of shake-ups compared to last week’s Pre-Season Power Rankings – including one huge fall and three major rises!

All right, readers – start your engines. And may the best woman … win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10 Power Rankings, Episode 01 – 10s Across The Board

This Week In X: Cable #155 and X-Men Gold #24 (plus, this week’s collected editions)

by

It’s the twelfth week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X has a historically short list of X-Men comics to cover – just two new issues!

This week, I cover:

  • Cable #155, a stunning return-to-form for Cable that seems to fundamentally understand his character (and his relationship with Hope)
  • X-Men: Gold #24, the continuing story of the Gold team trapped in prison while Bobby leads the new main squad.

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and if I recommend picking them up – plus, get the details on the new X-Men Collected Editions out this week, including the queerly-titled X-Men Blue, Vol. 0.

Crushing Comics: The Unwrapping – End Credits

by

My five-month collected editions unwrapping odyssey (which is really part of a larger eight-month packing to move around the world odyssey) has finally come to a close!

To celebrate the end of this first Crushing Comics video series, I present to you my final bookshelf – or, at least, the process of getting there. Plus, I get to do something I’ve wanted to do my entire life – create a set of scrolling end credits (complete with a soundtrack thanks to Arcati Crisis) to thank everyone who supported me as I created this series!

Crushing Comics S01E085 – Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, & Laura Martin

by

In today’s episode I unwrap my final omnibus, which (as many of you have likely surmised through a process of elimination) is Astonishing X-Men. I use this famously self-contained, blockbuster run as an opportunity to muse on getting back into comics and the surprisingly limited scope of the comic book market.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 85 features the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus, covered in the Guide to Astonishing & Amazing X-Men.

(Yes, I skipped posting Episode 84 – it was just a episode prompting folks to guess the final omnibus.)