consume

Marvel Collected Editions Solicits – March, 2017

July 4, 2016 by krisis

Here’s a holiday surprise for you – another month of Marvel solicitations just arrived on Amazon! These books take us though the Amazon release date of March 28, which means these books will hit the direct market on March 14. I covered the January and February solicits last month.

I’ve broken out the books below. They don’t yet list their contents, so I’ve made a few educated guesses until we can fill in the final contents. If you pre-order with Amazon, please keep in mind that Amazon releases dates are two weeks later that Direct Market release dates.

Please note: This post will not be updated with corrected dates, titles, or issue ranges for these titles. For the most up-to-date information, visit the accompanying collection guide pages.

Marvel Masterworks

There’s only one of these books released each month, so this big reveal is a guaranteed feature of each new month of solicits. [Read more…] about Marvel Collected Editions Solicits – March, 2017

Review: Unfollow, Vol. 1 by Williams & Dowling

July 3, 2016 by krisis

No one can ever own or end a concept.

I think about that a lot in my constant state of creator’s decision paralysis, stemming all the way back to when I first starting writing my novel as an eighth-grader and then that summer a comic with almost the exact same concept came out.

I was young then, and I thought, “Oh no! Now they own that concept! They’ve done it so well that no one can do it again. They ended it.”

I’ve thought that many times about a lot of my creative endeavors. People have owned being a boy/girl duet band, blogging about Philly, the theme of my novel again, and many other things. Heck, it’s no so different in the start-up world, where at RJMetrics we saw dozens of other companies with similar concepts get funded and join the fray.

Here’s the thing – concepts are very rarely a zero sum game. There’s room in a single theme for many different variations.

The case and point for me is an actual zero sum game – the “many people enter, one person leaves” theme in fiction. Highlander might be the best example of this for us children of the 80s. There can be only one! Many film fans thought Battle Royale was such an innovative, transgressive take on it that no one else ought to bother. Then, of course, came Hunger Games. Some people called it a Battle Royale rip-off, while others thought it was such an innovative, transgressive take on it that one one else should bother. I loved a comic called Avengers Arena, which many people called a Battle Royale and Hunger Games rip-off, and by that point I knew better than to think it should prevent anyone else from trying the same thing.

People keep bothering. There is something elemental about concept of a zero sum game where the sum is both power and life. No one owns zero sum games, or superheroes, or zombie apocalypses, and no single work on any of those is so prohibitive a mic drop that no one else ought to make an attempt.

All that matters is that your story is good – that your creation is compelling.

Unfollow, Vol. 1 – 140 Characters

Collects Unfollow #1-6 written by Rob Williams and drawn by Mike Dowling with Pahek and R.M. Guerra, with lettering by Clem Robins and color art by Quinton Weaver and Giula Brusco

Tweet-sized Review: Unfollow: a comic for tweeters who’d love a real-world Hunger Games about wealth’s abundance rather than its lack

CK Says: Buy it.

Unfollow, Vol. 1 contains the first six issues of a maddeningly intriguing comic that breathes fresh life into the concept of a zero sum game where there can be only one winner, which we’ve seen used to such great success in Highlander, Battle Royale, and Hunger Games.

Part of its delightful conceit is that there really can be more than one. Larry Ferrell, a Zuckerbergian figure, is facing imminent death and has decided to dispense his $17 billion fortune between 140 people. Their selection isn’t entirely random nor is it perfectly deliberate, and it is extremely public. Some of them are potential future CEOs and world-altering documentarians, while others are bored rich kids and god-fearing one-man militias.

There’s a catch: for every one of them who dies, the remainder of the 140 get to split that person’s inheritance of $120 million. That’s less than an extra million each, so there’s not a lot of incentive for assassination – unless, of course, you plan to slim down the ranks considerably. [Read more…] about Review: Unfollow, Vol. 1 by Williams & Dowling

Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading-order on collecting Cloak & Dagger comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2024 with titles scheduled for release through June 2025.

Cloak and Dagger are a very 80s odd couple: a pair of teenage runaways from opposite sides of the tracks and get mixed up in drugs with a superhero twist.

As you’d expect for the, it’s blonde-haired, naive Tandy Bowen who comes from the moneyed upbringing and book-smart and street-smart Tyrone Johnson grew up poor. They bond while on the streets, but after being kidnapped and injected with synthetic heroine, they come away with newfound superpowers! Bowen gainst he power of psionic light, while Johnson gains access to the Darkforce Dimension

The pair were conceived and written by Bill Mantlo in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man in 1983, and he wrote them almost exclusively for their first four years across three series. Mantlo kept their focus mostly on battling drug dealers and other reality-based street-level menaces, rather than super villains.

When Mantlo left them in 1987, their focus shifted – the book was even relaunched as “The Mutant Misadventures of” to try to tie the duo into the white-hot X-Men. It didn’t work, and in 1991 they were cancelled just as Claremont and Lee’s run on X-Men reached its peak of sales. Despite the fleeting “mutant” label, Cloak and Dagger were never a part of the X-books and would be later re-retconned as non-mutants.

Since 1991, Cloak and Dagger have been relegated to permanent guest-star status. Cloak tends to feature more-prominently, since he’s one of relatively few teleporters in Marvel’s arsenal and a suitably stoic foil to other lead characters, like Wolverine. The pair saw a brief revival as part of the Marvel Knights team in 200o, and later from 2009 to 2011 with participation in Dark Reign and Spider-Island stories. Afterwards, it was back to occasional guest star status – although that might not last for long, given they were greenlit for a television pilot in 2015.

Do you need a longer introduction? Head to my blog post announcing this guide. [Read more…] about Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Mockingbird, Bobbi Morse – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Mockingbird comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated October 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

When most comics fans think of the most fearsome, non-powered Avenger, they’ll typically name Hawkeye – or, perhaps Black Widow (though whether she has any enhancements is debatable).

The best answer is actually Bobbi Morse AKA Mockingbird, but part of her allure is that you would have never thought of her.

Mockingbird has the athleticism of Hawkeye (she’s a trained gymnast and combatant), the secret agent training of Black Widow (she’s a member of SHIELD, where she graduated top of her class), plus she holds a PhD in biology. Her origins find her roughing it in the Savage Land as Ka-Zar’s original blonde love interest before turning out to be a SHIELD agent under deep cover. Her first solo story finds her going under even deeper cover by dropping out of SHIELD for her assignment before returning to SHIELD to root out their double agents.

Yes, she’s pretty awesome. So, why is she so often forgotten by Avengers fans?

First, because until the 2010s she has always been cast as a love interest – first to flirt with Ka-Zar and then after just a two-issue breather on her own she’s married to Hawkeye! She joins the Avengers seemingly through marriage, as if she’s being added to a health insurance plan. Though she later is a founding member of Avengers West Coat, she plays second fiddler to her headline star husband.

Second, there’s the matter of how she exits Avengers West Coast. I won’t spoil it here in the intro (although I do, slightly, below), but it left us without Mockingbird appearances for over 15 years! That’s a long time to forget about a hero.

Third, because it’s just her style. As a double- and sometimes triple-agent, Mockingbird has never been a character who sticks out as the big star – even after her return in Secret Invasion (as championed by writer/editor Jim McCann), she remained a supporting player.

That all changed thanks to her popularity as a Hawkeye-free character on Agents of SHIELD, and after a rapturous response to her first solo one-shot in 2015 (due in large part to writing by Chelsea Cain) she graduated to her own series in 2016 as she returned to widespread use in All-new, All-Different Marvel. [Read more…] about Mockingbird, Bobbi Morse – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Review: Savage Hulk, Vol. 1: The Man Within by Davis, Farmer, & Hollingsworth

July 1, 2016 by krisis

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about audiences and about screaming into the void.

One of my earliest ongoing creative endeavors was writing fan fiction inside the Final Fantasy II (Japan IV) universe. I was writing it just to write it, but then I discovered a few other like-minded folks on the internet and we had a small, shared universe of fiction. Honestly, I have no idea how 14-year-old me put it all together – the details are a blur. It was mostly just that same handful of people who were reading it. No one was writing for attention or exposure. We were all writing for the joy of writing.

The same is true for my songwriting. I spent years writing songs for no one to hear before I started pushing to play them for more people. Even after being in a gigging band for years, to this day the vast majority of my catalog has never been heard outside of our house or this website because I write so darn many songs. I’d have to put out an album a year to keep up and tour constantly.

I have the luxury of doing those things for fun. My fanfic was niche and so is my music, but it doesn’t really matter. I am happy to cast that art out into the void knowing no response would echo back at me.

The problem with doing art for the love of it comes once you’ve actually earned some attention. What happens when more than a handful of people like your writing or your music? Now you have an audience. If you were making art for the love of it, their eyeballs and ears shouldn’t make any difference to you. Yet, it’s hard to avoid their influence, even if you aren’t performing craven acts of fan service to keep them all pleased. Once you’ve seen an indicator that your art is actually being consumed it’s hard to ignore it completely.

Let’s advance that to it’s end state: a popular artist who has followed their own path and pleased fans along the way now wants to do something inherently less popular – or simply something different. I’m not thinking about the dangers inherent in each new release. Instead, consider an independent artist experimenting with a new genre or a big money director wanting to make a decidedly non-mainstream film. J.K. Rowling is a terrific example; after Harry Potter, she didn’t want to write another young readers opus, but that’s what everyone wanted!

It’s a risk. Do they trust fans enough to compartmentalize this work of otherness away from their main oeuvre? You might not be able to afford the detour if it turns too many people off. In Rowling’s case, she released one novel under her own name (The Casual Vacancy) and then another under a pseudonym (The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith). Neither detracted from the fervor for Potter, but the latter earned higher marks from fans and critics, called “a brilliant debut.”

Was it the quality of the Galbraith book that made it more successful, or that it was free of baggage? How would you enjoy the new album from your favorite artist if you didn’t know it was by them?

These questions occur to me with every subsequent piece of art I purchase or consume from a known artist.

Savage Hulk, Vol. 1 – The Man Within

Collects Savage Hulk issues #1-4 written and penciled by Alan Davis, with inks by Mark Farmer and colors by Matt Hollingsworth. Also includes X-Men (1963) #66 written by Stan Lee with pencils by Sal Buscema.

Tweet-sized Review: Alan Davis writes/draws a lovely, clever sequel to X-Men #66, a face-off w/Hulk, in this ode to early-70s Marvel.

CK Says: Consider it.

This Alan Davis Hulk and X-Men story is a love letter to early-70s comic books and it’s possible you simply won’t care. His tale in The Savage Hulk, Vol. 1 – The Man Within branches off from a bash-em-up encounter between the heroes in X-Men #66, the last comic before the hiatus ended by their Giant-Size comeback in 1974.

In a follow-up to that orphaned story, a recovered Professor Charles Xavier feels compelled to design a device that could help Bruce Banner control the Hulk as repayment for Banner’s cure for his mental exhaustion. However, the Hulk is being hunted by the military after causing serious damage in Las Vegas, while Xavier has unwittingly attracted the attention of Hulk’s foe The Leader. [Read more…] about Review: Savage Hulk, Vol. 1: The Man Within by Davis, Farmer, & Hollingsworth