consume

Crushing Comics, S01E02: Thor by JMS & Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction

November 2, 2017 by krisis

Here’s the first full-length episode of my new show, Crushing Comics! (Episode 1 was just a brief teaser.)

The main theme of Season 1 will be unwrapping dozens of anonymous bricks of books from my collection, which each contain an oversize surprise. It’s liking unboxing my past seven years of hauls all over again!

Episode 2 features Thor by JMS Omnibus (Amazon / eBay), as covered by the Guide to Thor and Iron Man by Matt Fraction (Amazon Vol. 1 / Amazon Vol. 2 / eBay) as covered by the Guide to Iron Man.

All three books get a thumbs-up from me, but you’ll have to watch to here all about Thor’s big Ragnarok, plus learn how I cannot pronounce the names of either of the major creators on that run.

Watchmen – The Definitive Collecting Guide

The Watchmen comic books definitive collecting guide absolute, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics Guide to Collecting DC. Last updated June 2024 with titles scheduled for release through August 2024.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen is widely recognized as one of the most classic single comic stories in the history of the medium.

The 12-issue series tells a story embroiled in all the worst fears of the mid-80s while drawing on a rich history of comic archetypes to create a world of characters who feel analogous to the casts of every major comics universe. It uses those archetypes, as well as the very format of the comic medium, to deconstruct the idea of superheroes – with graffiti in the background of panels rhetorically asking readers “Who watches the Watchmen?”

The same traits that make Watchmen a prohibitive classic can also make it a challenging for modern readers. That’s not just because they might lack the historical context or comics knowledge for this series. Instead, it’s because since Watchmen (and also The Dark Knight Returns, released in the same year) American superhero comics have evolved a sense of self-awareness that echoes the narrative tone of this series.

Watchmen existed for over 20 years as a completely self-contained series with some minor background material included in its collected editions. That all began to change with the 20th Anniversary of the title, which brought a modern restoration to its colors, continued through 2009 with the release of Watchmen’s film adaptation, and seemed to reach its peak in 2012 with a series of Before Watchmen comic books that expanded the universe of the original series for the first time.

However, DC Comics saved the biggest expansion of Watchmen for its 30th Anniversary, revealing that the actions of Moore and Gibbons’s characters had somehow created the “Rebirth” of their entire comic line. After a year-and-a-half of teasing, that story began to be told in Doomsday Clock, another 12-issue series that picks up from just after the final scenes of the original Watchmen to integrate its characters into DC’s current continuity. [Read more…] about Watchmen – The Definitive Collecting Guide

Updated: The Definitive Guide to Luke Cage, Power Man

October 31, 2017 by krisis

Today I have another freshly spruced-up comic character guide for you: The Definitive Guide to Luke Cage.

Need the short story on what Luke Cage has been up to in 2017 both in comics and in collected editions? Keep reading for a recap, plus a quick reintroduction to the character and a final tally of how many of his starring comics have been collected in color.

Song of the Day: “Look What You Made Me Do” – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox featuring Kenton Chen

October 30, 2017 by krisis

The problem with perfection is the same one as the one with success: both are an expression of infinity.

If you are driven, you can be successful but still feel you aren’t successful enough. If you are a perfectionist, you can control every little detail but still feel you could have done more.

In each case, you’ve halved the distance between you and the infinite – there is still an infinite distance left to travel.

I think about this concept a lot, but never more than when I am considering a well-made album. Isn’t that the perfect intersection of success and perfection, plus some other nearly-infinite-to-measure quality of talent? As an artist, how do you go back into the studio when your last album is a critical and financial success, and just perfectly executed? It’s a tightrope act from which a lot of acts tumble.

Case and point: Taylor Swift’s 1989. It’s as perfect of a pop record as I’ve heard in my life. Every single song could survive on the radio as a single. And, unusually for a golden pop LP, it actually took home the Album of the Year trophy at the Grammies – a rarity.

I don’t think there is any way to top 1989, so Taylor just … didn’t. At least, not with her lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” of off Reputation, out next week.

Swift has a habit of releasing somewhat bare, unusual lead singles, but this one is less than that. The entire songs lacks for melody before it dissolves into an embarrassing faux-hip hop retread of “I’m Too Sexy.” The overwrought lyrics, usually a Swiftian specialty, but here coming off as protesting too much. And the cinema-quality video, which mashes up a lot of disconnected elements. (Why is she a zombie at the beginning? What is with the Beyoncé rip-off dance break).

Yes, I know it currently has over 600 million streams on YouTube. That’s the kind of half-infinite success you can maintain after a long streak of near-perfection.

If there’s one good bit of the song (and the video, as it happens), it’s the string-tinged bridge with little tinkles of carousel music. It’s everything the rest of the song isn’t but wants to be – catchy, lush, and foreboding.

It’s from that point that retro arrangement wunderkind Scott Bradlee developed his band’s cover of the song. Described as a cover in the style of a James Bond theme song, it picks up the strings theme from the bridge and stretches it luxuriously across each verse to turn the previously bare vocal into a poisonous vamp.

New For Patrons: Definitive Guide to Scarlet Witch

October 29, 2017 by krisis

Today I launched a long-awaited guide especially for Patrons of Crushing Krisis – The Definitive Scarlet Witch Collecting Guide and Reading Order! This guide was their top pick in a Patrons’ Choice poll for April.

This guide covers Wanda Maximoff’s entire chronological Marvel history, including every single appearance from her debut as a villain in X-Men #4 to joining The Avengers in Avengers #16 to her later romance with Vision, breakdown in “Avengers Disassembled,” return in Children’s Crusade, and – finally – a 15-issue Scarlet Witch solo series in 2016-17.

Even with her mid-2000s hiatus from comics, Scarlet Witch’s Avengers membership accounts for nearly 45 years out of the Avengers’ 54 years as a franchise – making her one of the longest-running, most-permanent heroes on the team’s roster. It’s only in the course of the past decade that it isn’t a truism that Wanda would be appearing somewhere in the Avengers line-up, and recently it seems she can be expected to co-anchor Uncanny Avengers along with Rogue.

Want access to this guide? Patrons’ Choice guides get picked from a pool of pages I’m not planning to work on for many months, so this one isn’t scheduled for released to the public anytime soon! But, you can be reading it tomorrow in exchange for covering $1.99 a month of CK’s hosting expenses.