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RuPaul’s Drag Race, S7E2 Recap: Glamazonian Airways

March 12, 2015 by krisis

RPDRS7 Gentlemen, start your engines! If you want to play along at home, grab a season pass!

Last time on RuPaul’s Drag Race: Violet rightfully won, Tempest was unjustly sent home.

After the elimination

Max is inexplicably still using her braces to walk around – can we ditch the disabled-face and just keep the old-face, darling? Katya is eating her own hair and being the one to freak out about “someone’s got to go home” in her interview segment. Kandy Ho says she wasn’t nervous about the lip sync against Tempest, but she should have been nervous about that face.

The girls congratulate Violet on her win and ask how how she feels, and she quickly fires back with “I hate Michele Visage … what she said rubbed me the wrong way. To be honest, she probably has a bigger man body than I do without her implants” Sasha Belle and Mrs. Whatshername are shocked, and non-coincidentally will probably be the next two queens to be sent home. Fame calls Violet’s win “valid” which is a terrific way to show she’s “not mad about it” (riiiiiight).

I am loving Violet’s non-villainous shade, let me tell you. It’s so boring when every mean girl has to be a villain, and I think Bianca disabused us of that idea by being the mean hero last year. Some of the other girls are over Violet’s healthy ego already (Ginger and, surprisingly, Max). Violet gives a bummed lip trill in her interview to show us how she really feels about it. [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race, S7E2 Recap: Glamazonian Airways

RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S7E01 – “Born Naked”

March 6, 2015 by krisis

Can you effectively read a queen after one episode? I’m not so sure, since the only season I got to watch without knowing the winner first was last season – but, eventual winners do have a way of standing out in their first appearances either in look or personality.

How do these ladies rank after a single engagement? Let’s take a look.

#1 Violet Chachki
This queen’s fashion ranged from simply pretty to avant garde, she’s fishy (i.e., like an actual girl), she dishes great commentary, and she won the first challenge. Welcome to a world with a target on your back, girl. Now we need to see that personality – she could be one who wilts under the lights of the theatrical challenges. If not? Major danger, and a suitable follow-up win for a younger queen after Adore didn’t quite make it.

#2 Kennedy Davenport
This is the experience of a Coco Montrese without the constant self-sabotage, and her fashion sense is impeccable so far. Plus, she’s apparently a dancer? She’s going to be a polished force to be reckoned with (although I have to wonder about her sewing after that circus tent resort wear). Also, clearly there’s a good story to be had in a more-experienced, black, southern, curvy winner. No way she misses the final three if she can stay consistent.

#3 Ms. Fame
So very fishy, but we’ll see if she has the performance chops for the more personality-driven challenges. While I suspect she’s a fierce competitor, I could see her pulling a Trinity Bonet and feeling she’s above one of the challenges or a Courtney Act where she just doesn’t realize she’s not the best. Without Tempest in the ix I get the sense she is going to be the remaining seamstress to reckon with. However, that ridiculous first outfit shows she’s capable of the occasional misstep and bad paint job, which could be her undoing.

(Here’s where I’d have Tempest. So sad.) [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S7E01 – “Born Naked”

RuPaul’s Drag Race, S7E01 Recap: Born Naked

March 5, 2015 by krisis

RPDRS7 One of my biggest life events in 2014 was becoming obsessed with RuPaul’s Drag Race.

I watched a random episode of its sixth season on a lazy Saturday and got sucked in by watching some of the world’s most-fabulous drag queens competing while also showing some of the behind-the-scenes of their craft. I’ve loved drag and gender-bending culture ever since I was a six year-old wearing a Jem costume for Halloween, so it wasn’t long before I had a season pass plus tickets to see the queens on tour (Ben De La Creme foreva!).

This week the newest season of Drag Race got started. One thing I experienced in my new fandom last year is that there aren’t a ton of sites doing recaps and commentary on the show – I was reading the same few things over and over, in particular, Tom and Lorenzo (now shuttered) and Onion’s AV Club, plus indiewire and l’etoile. So, I figure if I’m going to watch it obsessedly for the next three months, I ought to write a bit about it too!

Let’s be honest – there’s really nothing to recap other than fashion on the first episode when there are 14 queens and four outfits to reckon with. That’s not even a minute per outfit!

Rather than try to make some sort of cohesive narrative out of it, I’m just running down the queens in order of appearance – first in their entrance, then as they debuted spring and fall looks on the catwalk, and finally as they hit the catwalk with resort wear over a nude illusion. I wrote this as I watched, so I didn’t have any spoilers to influence me.

Gentlemen, start your engines! If you want to play along at home, grab a season pass! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race, S7E01 Recap: Born Naked

Nova – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Dec 22, 2024! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading order on collecting Nova comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated December 2024 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.

Marvel was known in the 1970s for piloting both new and returning heroes in anthology titles before promoting them to their own series. That’s why it was so remarkable that the original Nova, Richard Rider, debuted in the first issue of his own series in 1976!

It was a prescient move by Marvel, with the 70s sci-fi craze due to hit its peak the following year with Star Wars! The character was originally designed by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein a decade earlier in a 1966 fan-zine.

Nova was the first of Marvel’s many attempts to recapture the youthful magic of early Spider-Man at a point in the 70s when very few heroes in their line-up still came off as starry-eyed teenagers.

That gave Nova a strong focus during his ongoing series, but meant he was stranded with few connections in a world of adult heroes once it was over. He disappeared from Marvel for nearly a decade.

That changed when Marvel finally collected a number of existing teen heroes (plus a few new ones) into New Warriors, a sort of unbranded companion to New Mutants transition into the self-directed X-Force. The title ran for years and over time felt more like a family than a team with a charter.

Much like Nova’s original teendom restricted his connections, so did his association with the New Warriors brand. It took another half decade for them to finally break out of their orbit, but it was in a big way.

Richard Rider became one of the heroes to anchor Annihilation, a massive space blow-out that would revive Marvel’s cosmic line of heroes and cultures. It thrust Nova into an amazing five-year epic, during which he becomes a formidable commander who goes toe-to-toe with Thanos.

That all ends with the Thanos Imperative, and Nova going missing in its wake. After a few years of silence, Marvel brought back Nova – only, it wasn’t Richard Rider! Sam Alexander took up the mantle of Nova, but not from Rider – from his father, another prior (and missing) Nova.

Sam carried on the proud tradition of both Spider-Man and Richard Rider as a bumbling, well-meaning teen who does more damage than good. His series is a charming, high-gloss coming of age tail that dovetails into him being drafted by the real Avengers – and, also, finally meeting Richard Rider.

#MusicMonday: “Bang Bang” – Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nikki Minaj

September 1, 2014 by krisis

One of many fan-made “Bang Bang” promo covers with a decidely retro feel.

I have always loved Motown. This post is about Jessie J’, Ariana Grande, and Nikki Minaj’s late-summer hit, “Bang Bang.”

These two statements are closely related, I promise.

I grew up revering Motown music. I was obsessed with “Stop! In The Name of Love,” and listened to Oldies 98.1 WOGL on every car ride with my father. The beauty of the great majority of Motown songs is their disarmingly simplicity. The classic and seemingly complex “I Want You Back” is mostly just one endlessly descending bassline. Smokey Robinson created intricate riffs and harmonies over the simplest of blues progressions. My favorite dance tune – “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” – distills down to just one pair of chords.

As it turns out, simple songs with clearly distilled messages are hard to ignore.

This presents a terrific conundrum when it comes to Motown covers on acoustic guitar. “I Want You Back” translates to plenty action on an acoustic guitar, and Smokey songs can be dressed up or stripped down as you choose. Yet, other songs lose their sing sans arrangement and bassline. Plus, what to do with “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” – so simple in its execution that it hardly holds together on one instrument? There, the power must be in your delivery and interpretation – there’s nothing spare to dress with.

Which brings me to “Bang Bang,” a raunchy summer slam from two of the hugest young female voices in pop. I heard it for the first time a few weekends ago while standing in a cell phone store, and my immediate first reaction wasn’t, “Who is singing?” or “Why is the production so huge?”

Nope. My reaction was, “This is so Motown!” I tried to explain it to E later that day, but not being the Hitsville connoisseur that I am she didn’t wholly appreciate the distinction. However, when I confessed it to Ashley in Smash Fantastic rehearsal yesterday, she shrieked, “I know!”

At which point we attempted our first cover of the ridiculous hot weather confection that is “Bang Bang” and discovered its true Motown realness: It’s just one damned chord! C7, over and over again. I thrashed it over and over in rhythm while Ashley annihilated that crazy Jessie J vocal that starts on an Eb. (I claimed Ariana’s verse as my own, as I love belting to her range. We are still negotiating over the Nikki verse.)

The similarity doesn’t stop there. Despite the decidedly unsubtle chorus, the first linee in Grande’s verse is practically cribbed from pint-sized Michael Jackson, “She might’ve let you hold her hand in school. But I’mma show you how to graduate.” Is that so different than the punnish innuendo in “The Love You Save,” where he sings, “When Alexander called you, he said he rang your chimes. Christopher discovered you’re way ahead of your times!”

It remains to be seen if Ashley and I can make our cover interesting enough to hold its own sans all of the arrangement and production on the studio cut, but at least now we understand why the song screamed “Motown!” at us on first contact.