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Announcing Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot! – LIVE on Near Mint Condition

March 24, 2024 by krisis

It’s time for the most wonderful Omnibus time of the year! That’s right, today is the kickoff of Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot – and, I am thrilled beyond words to say that I am both announcing and co-organizing this year’s poll alongside the legendary Tigereyes and Omar!

[cue screaming in excitement and waving my arms around Kermit-style]

Announcing Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot!

This annual Tigereyes Marvel Omnibus poll is the reason many of you even know who I am or visited CrushingKrisis in the first place! This year, I’m not only co-hosting the announcement of the poll – I’m also a part of the team that’s actually constructing, monitoring, and tabulating the poll alongside Tigereyes! Read on to understand what that means – and why it’s so necessary this year.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 7 – Haters Wedding Roast power rankings

March 23, 2024 by krisis

I’m back with more coverage of the Drag Olympics of Drag Race! RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 7 – Haters Wedding Roast, a stand-and-plant stand-up challenge delivered from behind a wedding dais paired with a “Take Me Up The Aisle” bridal runway.

If you engage in a retrospective Ru-watch of Drag Race, it’s interesting to watch how the show transforms over the years from a competition where drag queens must occasionally be funny to a full-fledged comedy competition. At this point, the show is known (and memed) as much for its laugh-out-loud absurd moments as for its fashion. At this point, there’s no way to win RuPaul’s lasting affection if you’re not at least a little bit funny.

The peculiar thing about that transformation into a full-on comedy competition is that it hinges entirely on RuPaul’s sense of humor. What Ru finds funny is grounded strongly in references that are older than most of her competitors. Though she’s twenty years older than me, RuPaul and I have an incredibly similar set of comedy references – Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, 80s sitcoms like The Golden Girls, campy game show hosts and guests, and the deadpan early seasons of Saturday Night Live.

That’s a big reason why campy queens and old souls tend to do so well with RuPaul – they tap into her comfort zone when it comes to humor. Would someone learning to be funny today for the young consumers of now be funny to RuPaul? Would they do well on Drag Race? I’m never sure. I think we got a hint of this with Willow Pill, who has a darker, edgier kind of humor that’s right on the edge of Millennial and Gen Z. RuPaul ate that up. Yet, most times when we see anyone with a more youthful sense of ironic humor on the show, Ru is quick to serve them neutch and chop them down at the first chance.

This Haters Comedy Roast included two sets that were legitimately hilarious for audiences of all ages. That gave us a tiny but critical shuffle to the rankings compared to last week’s Strictly Come Prancing power rankings. What does that mean for next week’s finale? I think we have a clear powerhouse pair of potential winners, but also a black horse (wonk wonk) who could come through and surprise them both.

I’ll be back next week to congratulate our winner and reflect on my predictions and power rankings for the season!

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best international drag superstar win!

Drag Race Belgique Season 2, Episode 8 – Grande Finale

March 22, 2024 by krisis

Bon retour, mes chers lecteurs, dans mon classement final! Drag Race Belgique Season 2 Episode 8 was the Season 2 Grande Finale! That means a winner was crowned, and there are no more performances to rank!

Producing a season of Drag Race is a delicate process. Any reality competition show relies on the strength of its casting. The alchemy of the cast is what makes a show compelling. Eliminations serve a dual purpose of narrowing the field to both the best competitors and the strongest personalities who will produce good television. A reality competition based on art is even more fragile – now, the show relies not just on the personalities of its cast, but their talent and inspiration.

X-Men: From The Ashes – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Updated May 8, 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men: From the Ashes, including X-Men flagship titles by Gail Simone, Jed McKay, Eve Ewing, and more in comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated May 2025 with titles scheduled for release through January 2026.

In March 2024 Marvel Comics answered the question of how the X-Men line will move on from The Age of Krakoa with the announcement of X-Men: From the Ashes.

Editor Tom Brevoort introduced the From the Ashes era by saying, “The X-Men are fractured in the aftermath of the end of Krakoa, scattered across the globe without a central base of operation. What that means in practice is that all three titles carrying the name X-MEN are core X-MEN series—they all center around one of the major aspects of what the team has been about at different points. This is very much by design. We want to field a wide assortment of X-titles with different styles and tones and approaches, an X-MEN book for virtually any taste.”

This new era of X-Men comics launched in July 2024 with three co-flagship books all with “X-Men” in the title, as well as three further team books (NYX, X-Factor, X-Force) and three solo titles (Phoenix, Storm, Wolverine). Those nine books quickly expanded with a trio of mini-series (Dazzler, Mystique, Sentinels) and a second wave of solo book announcements (Laura Kinney – Wolverine, Psylocke, Magik).

This era is marked by a “play the hits” approach to X-Men that gets them back to being hated and feared and eschews as much of the complex character work and morally gray approach of Krakoa as possible. The line is almost universally designed to call back to existing runs and concepts, with only Storm offering a truly original vision out of the initial 12 comics in the line. In particular, NYX is particular reverent of developments from Krakoa.

This guide will be regularly updated as issues are released and new titles are announced.

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Debating our Evergreen X-Men Omnibus List – LIVE on Near Mint Condition

March 21, 2024 by krisis

Are you ready to rumble? Today, I’m live with Near Mint Condition to share my Evergreen X-Men Omnibus List – that means the X-Men books should never go out of print!

Omar of Near Mint Condition, Jess the Omnidog, Lars of Mad Norwegian Press, cosplayer and X-Men mega-fan Ødfel, GLAAD-Award Winning author Joe Glass, and more distinguished panelists will share their lists, too… and then we’ll fight tooth and nail over our officially endorsed Evergreen X-Men Omnibus List of 10 books. Plus, viewers on the live stream will get to have their say to correct our mistakes!

It’s the show that is half serious recommendations, half a cut-throat game show of all of us trying to block other people’s recommendations so that all of our own make the list. Will we allow Omar to get Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 on the Evergreen X-Men Omnibus List, or will we blockade him with votes for Phoenix Vol. 1? Will side books like X-Factor and X-Force make the cut, or will we just stick to Uncanny X-Men and X-Men? And, what about Wolverine!?

Tune in to Near Mint Condition on YouTube to find out!