Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Crushing Comics S01E079 – childhood scares, Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu, Heartbreak Quadrant, & more!

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Get ready – this is my longest and most content-packed video to date!

I begin by recalling what used to scare me as a kid as I unwrap one of the first books I packed back in the states – Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Volume 2. I unwrap the book from its cellophane and page through live on camera.

This leads me on a lengthy tangent about professional printing processes, including how press sheets word and why expensive books still have printing errors.

Finally, perhaps not realizing how long the episode had already become, I decide to open a random packet of extra books – Image Comics: The Road To Independence, Barrett Stanley’s Heartbreak Quadrant, and the only hard copy version of my novel that exists!

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

Episode 79 features Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 2 (covered in my Guide to Shang-Chi), Image – The Road to Independence, Heartbreak Quadrant, and Krisis.

Black Panther Book Club, Week 4 of 4: Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates issues #1-12

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It’s our final week of Black Panther Book Club, where FanGirl and I read and discuss some of the stories that were the biggest influences on Marvel’s Black Panther film.

Our final week examines the 2016 run of National Book Award winner and first-time comics author Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is a slow, pensive run full of philosophy, where the action seems more like an interruption than a welcome break in the book’s thoughtful pace.

Want to catch up with the reading assignments all this month? Here’s our full schedule for the month – visit the Guide to Black Panther to learn how to collect these issues.

Please join us next month as we tackle DC Comics’ Batwoman across her first decade in comics by reading all of her best stories! To learn how to collect these comics, visit my Guide to Batwoman – which might be my favorite comic guide out of over a hundred I’ve put together in the past six years! I cannot wait to read these comics with FanGirl (and with you).

 

Crushing Comics S01E078 – Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force (+ music through the ages)

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In today’s episode I finally open one of my all-time favorite modern X-Men runs – but, first, I talk about my intended musical experiment on my own offspring and how it was derailed by our mutual love of Michael Jackson.

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

Episode 78 features the Uncanny X-Force omnibus, covered in my Guide to X-Force.

The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

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Doctor Strange: Damnation #1, art by Rod Reis

I know it seems impossible, but The Pull List has grown even bigger this week for the third week in a row! That’s because I finished catching up to present on a number of DC and Marvel books, plus I picked up five smaller press books.

  • DC Comics
    • Batman #41
    • Batman & the Signal #2
    • The Brave and The Bold #1
    • Damage #2
    • Deathbed #1 (Vertigo)
    • Justice League #39
    • Milk Wars – DC Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye / Swamp Thing Special
    • Super Sons #13
    • Superman #41
    • Trinity #18
  • Image Comics
    • The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson #2
    • Ice Cream Man #2
    • Maestros #5
    • Redlands #6
    • Twisted Romance #3
  • Marvel Comics
    • Astonishing X-Men #8
    • Avengers #681
    • Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #5
    • Doctor Strange – Damnation #1
    • Generation X #87
    • Infinity Countdown Prime
    • Mighty Thor #704
    • Tales of Suspense #102
    • The Incredible Hulk #713
    • Venom #162
    • X-Men Gold #22
  • Smaller Publishers: Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Vault Comics, Zenescope
    • Belle Beast Hunter #2, Zenescope
    • Heathen #6, Vault Comics
    • James Bond: The Body #1, Dynamite Comics
    • Mata Hari #1, Dark Horse / Berger Books
    • Musketeers #1, Zenescope
    • Punks Not Dead #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

Pick of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week:
Mighty Thor (2016) #704

A bloody, thrilling, heart-rending comic. Aaron has somehow amped up the drama in each of the last three issues as we hasten towards a potential Ragnarok at the hands of the Mangog and Jane Foster’s death at her own hands if she takes up the mantle of Thor just one more time.

Yet, beyond those looming disasters there is still Makelith’s war on the Ten Realms. Mangog is just one facet of that. Even in the dimness and tragedy, Aaron finds shining moments – Jane with her friend in the cancer ward, a father and son joined in battle, and a mother casting aside a snake that has wounded her before.

All the while, Dauterman and Wilson are turning in a quality of artwork never seen before at Marvel comics – truly, one of the pinnacles of art at Marvel in over 75 years of publishing.

This story has officially become the best Thor story in my eyes, and it just might be Marvel’s best longform story of all time. I’d place it alongside Mark Gruenwald Captain America and Chris Claremont X-Men at this point.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week:
Punks Not Dead (2018) #1, IDW Publishing / Black Crown

An utterly madcap introduction to Punks Not Dead (and, for me, to Black Crown comics, which are edited by Shelly Bond distributed by IDW). This book is part Injection, part Sid and Nancy, and a little dash of the more lighthearted issues of Sandman.

It follows a teenage boy and his scam artist mom as the kid picks up some kind of supernatural echo of the deceased Sid Vicious in a dingy airport bathroom. Meanwhile, the beleaguered Department for Extra-Usual Affairs is busy putting minor demons out of the closet at 10 Downing Street with a staff of one.

This book is funny, unique, and looks freaking brilliant. Artist Martin Simmonds is simply incredible, drawing a real-seeming Britain with amped up color and clever use of cut-and-pasted patterns to ground it in real, textured reality. I am in love with this book, and will not only be keeping up with it, but also checking out other titles from Black Crown. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Batman, Brave and The Bold, Damnation, Maestros, Mighty Thor, Punks Not Dead, and more!

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3 Power Rankings Episode 05 – Pop Art Ball

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This week’s “Pop Art Ball” episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3 draws its inspiration from Studio 54, and puts the queens through their paces with a dual costume design and graphic design challenge.

The queens have some difficulty with both tasks, leading to a lumpy episode and a curious top two and eliminated queen.

It doesn’t help that Ru wore what might have been her worst wig of all time (not pictured, out of sympathy for Ru and my readers).

Andy Warhol’s famous 1962 soup can painting doesn’t give our queens too much to work with when it comes to designing their own signature soup cans. Warhol’s original run of soup can paintings were a super-literal recreation of the full line of Campbell’s line of soups at the time, with none of the colorful pop art flair for which he is remembered.

Yet, even in that same year he was also producing paintings of deconstructed cans with their labels shredded to reveal the silver beneath. In later revisitations he replaced the red and white with other colors.

As a result, I was expecting the queens to adhere to the spirit of Warhol, if not the letter – to create something on-brand but subversive and pop-art inspired. I was disappointed to see almost all of them miss the mark, with nary a shredded label amongst them.

Meanwhile, Studio 54 is late-stage, decadent disco, but none of the queens nailed the level of care free avant garde of its key players.

That left us with some major shake-ups compared to last week’s rankings! Are you ready to boogie?

[Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3 Power Rankings Episode 05 – Pop Art Ball