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New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 24, 2024

January 23, 2024 by krisis

It’s the fourth new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics January 24 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel Comics January 17 2024 new releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: a ROMnibus appears, Straczynski & Gillen’s Thor runs finally reunited, Al Ewing up to something with Magneto, and more!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

Marvel Comics January 24 2024 Collected Editions

Marvel Two-in-One Epic Collection: Two Against Hydra
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302931766 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four or Guide to Thing (eventually). Marvel is slowly-but-surely pressing on with their collections of this Thing team-up title, which included a few more significant stories than its sibling Marvel Team-Up (1972). This volume (and all collections of this material, in general) skips issue #21, which includes a team-up with Doc Savage – Marvel no longer has the rights to reprint it.

ROM: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus Vol. 1
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302956714 / digital)
See Guide to ROM, Spaceknight. We never thought it could exist, but here it is – the ROMnibus! FYI, there are THREE DM variants of this omnibus cover – Frank Miller X-Men, George Pérez, and Sal Buscema. Marvel will cover this series in a trio of omnibuses, and there’s no guarantee they will print it in any other format (like Epic Collection), so this could be your one chance to finally own a reprinted, remastered collection of this material.

Siege
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952792 / digital)
See Guide to Marvel Universe Events. Marvel has been working through paperback reprints of most of their line-wide events in the past year, likely to serve as complements to the Epic and Modern Era Epic lines. This event isn’t particularly satisfying to read on its own – all three of the Avengers books at the time heavily filled out the action, in particular New Avengers.

Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Menace Revealed Vol. 4
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302953911 / digital)
See Guide to Star Wars Legends – The Old Expanded Universe. This is not only the last Epic of this era (which stretches from pre-prequels through the prequel trilogy), but also potentially the second to last of the Legends Epics! There’s only one major uncollected series remaining – Star Wars: Invasion (2009) #0-16. After that, we’re just down to recollecting old Star Wars comics coverage omnibus format and Epic reprints.

Strange Academy: Year Two
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302953003 / digital)
See Guide to Doctor Strange. This collects the back half of the original 2020 series and its “Finals” mini-series from 2022. Strange Academy had such a massive cast to start that sometimes it could be hard to zero in on the characters, their histories and powers, and how they related to each other. Here at the end the book is hyper-focused on one particular relationship and conflict, which escalates to a pretty epic level by the end. This is a rare in-continuity Marvel book that would work well for a YA crowd, though I’d perhaps call it for 10YO+ due to some themes related to drug use.

Thor by Straczynski & Gillen Omnibus
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953010 / digital)
See Guide to Thor, The Odinson. This is a relatively rare release from Marvel in that it specifically expands the content of a prior omnibus release! The Thor by JMS omnibus was a great read that kicked off the modern era of Thor, but it has always been an incomplete work since Gillen dropped in to finish off JMS’s abandoned plot threads before Matt Fraction took the reins. Now this volume completely plugs that gap, butting perfectly up against Thor by Matt Fraction and Loki by Gillen. Plus, it adds Gillen’s excellent Beta Ray Bill material. Strong recommendation from me on this one for Thor fans – it’s the ground level of his modern comics! [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 24, 2024

Howard the Duck – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 3 – “The Mother of All Balls” Power Rankings

January 21, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race is back with a full cast of 14 queens in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 3 – The Mother of All Balls! Tonight the trio of ball categories are Mother Goose (a look inspired by a nursery rhyme), Significant Mother (a look paying homage to a famous mother), and Call Me Mother/Father (an eleganza look constructed entirely from menswear).

We love an early ball challenge – or, at least, I do – because it shows off a ton of looks while also challenging the queens on their abilities to conceive, construct, and style a look under pressure. I think it’s critical that this challenge now occurs early in the season because it means we can see more of what the entire cast of queen is capable of. That tends to help the show avoid heartbreaking early cuts of potentially powerful queens. It separates the queens who are capable of a deep run from the ones that are still struggling to define themselves.

Meanwhile, alongside this episode we also had not one but TWO cast announcements this week for a pair of All Stars seasons! First, we’ll get Drag Race España All Stars Season 1, followed a week later by the Ru-hosted RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World. The casts for both shows are incredible – there are Drag Race Mexico queens on España and two of the fiercest queens from Philippines and France on UK vs. The World.

I’m not sure if there is enough time in my day to power rank BOTH of those franchises, but I absolutely cannot wait to watch them!

Back to Season 16, I am feeling slightly high on my initial rankings of this full cast from last week’s Queen Choice Awards. Not only did I clock all of the Top 3 and 2 of the Bottom 3, but I correctly called the previously top queen who wasn’t as strong as her first episode showing. My rankings aren’t just about my personal preferences, but about what the edit is saying about each queen’s narrative and how they are positioned to tackle the challenges ahead.

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

Miracleman & Marvelman – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 17, 2024

January 16, 2024 by krisis

It’s the third new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics January 17 2024 releases. Missed last week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering Marvel’s January 10 2024 releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: Gaiman & Buckingham close a chapter of Miracleman, Nicieza returns to Cable, and an omnibus of Gillen’s almost-perfect Marvel event!

Marvel Comics January 17 2024 Collected Editions

The Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Volume 27: The Clone Saga
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302953669 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (1963-2018). For many years we’ve assume that the Epic line would cut off prior to the Clone Saga in Amazing Spider-Man, if only because there are already a well-mapped set of “Epic” collections for this period across the Spider-line. Well, guess what? Marvel generally follows the Disney rule that it’s always a good idea to re-release popular material every 7-10 years, and that’s how long it has been since the last set of paperback reprints! It’s unclear right now if the Epic line will collect this period as comprehensively as the prior paperbacks or the omnibuses. This stretches a bit farther than I’d expect in Amazing Spider-Man if it was going to collect everything that ran alongside it, but we’ll need to see a Volume 28 to be certain.

Avengers: Beyond
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952044 / digital)
See Guide to Avengers Flagship Titles (2010 – Present). This collects a fun, five-issue Derek Landy & Greg Land series with ties to the original Secret Wars that follows up on their All-Out Avengers (2022) #1-5. All-Out was much more fun with its one-off issues, whereas this is one continuous story. For me, more of a “read it digital” than “buy it.”

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1: Age of Monsters
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302954161 / digital)
See Guide to Hulk – Bruce Banner. I can’t say that I’m a fan of this Phillip Kennedy Johnson run on Hulk, though it looks great thanks to Nic Klein’s artwork. The majority of Phillip Kennedy Johnson comics include domestic abuse, sexual assaults, and threats of sexual violence – all largely against women, even if it’s just offhand comments or background action. When I’m looking for consistency from a writer, that’s not what I’m talking about.

A.X.E. Judgment Day Omnibus
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302952907 / digital)
See Guide to Marvel Universe Events – AXE: Judgement Day. Want to read a good Marvel event? Maybe a “Top 5 of All Time” Marvel Event? What if I told you that fully HALF of this event and its tie-ins (and by extension this omnibus) were written ENTIRELY by Kieron Gillen, and then another third of it by his X-Office brain trust of Al Ewing, Gerry Duggan, & Si Spurrier. The result is a high quality event with just a few dull issues (we’re looking at you, Ben Percy). However, for maximum impact you’re going to want to read all of Gillen’s Eternals (2021) first – the entire series is a prologue to this event.

Note that the Events Guide has this material in PERFECT reading order, as worked out with my co-reader VapourSnake.

Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 18
(2024 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953164 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. This is wild to say or even to think about, but… Marvel Masterworks is now PAST the initial run of Frank Miller material in Daredevil! This entire volume begins after Miller’s initial departure. Of course, Daredevil is never not good (except for maybe post-300-pre-Kevin-Smith), so this is still Masterworks-caliber material. However, for me personally, my Masterworks shelf ends with Volume 17. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 17, 2024