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Drag Race España Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

April 6, 2023 by krisis

Arranquen sus motores! Just as one of our Drag Race seasons draws to a close tomorrow with finale of Drag Race Belgique and another airs its penultimate episode with the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 reunion, a new season looms on the horizon. It’s Drag Race España Season 3, which debuts on April 16! That means it’s time to meet a cast of 12 drag artists for my Pre-Season Power Rankings!

What is there to rank before we have seen a single second of this new season? Drag Race España released perhaps the most epic pre-season promo of all time, with a campy 60s sci-fi theme and two minutes for each queen to distinguish herself from her competitors.

These combination interview + fashion shoot videos are called “Meet The Queens,” a phrase which España didn’t even translate for these videos (perhaps in a nod to the fact that they are largely for consumption by global audiences rather than local ones).

In addition to trying to divine some hints at how each queen will perform based on their Meet The Queens segments, I also spend a few minutes perusing each of their social channels to scope out their makeup skills, fashion, and performance style.

Remember: I write these pre-season power rankings purely for fun, which is the same reason I recap all of the many Drag Race franchises week after week. If I make any critiques of these incredibly accomplished drag artists, those critiques are purely within the framework of what the show expects of them.

Being good at Drag Race is just one way to be good at the art of drag. The fun of writing these analyses is not to tear queens down, but to spend hours of time and thousands of words on an art form that needs celebration and support now more than ever.

In the case of Pre-Season power rankings, my rankings double as a placement prediction. I have a pretty good track record this past year, including predicting all 3 Français finalists (and the winner), 3 out of 4 American finalists, 2 out of 3 Belgique finalists. Will my psychic powers continue for this Drag Race España Season 3? I have my doubts.

España is revered by many fans as the best of the many global franchises of the show. A lot of that is down to the wildly over-the-top fashions brought by its competitors, which are consistently some of the most elaborate, glamourous, and high-impact looks across all of Drag Race. Yet, España can also be the most unpredictable franchise. It holds queens to an incredibly high standard, which can lead to heartbreaking and sometimes shocking eliminations without ever seeming to be unfair or rigged.

So far, two seasons of España have placed an emphasis on crowning professionals. Season 1 winner Carmen Farala was a nearly-flawless competitor with the poise and graciousness of a real-life monarch, and Season 2 champion Sharonne was a seasoned reality show competitor and talented singer. Will the show keep up that trend this year by crowning another peerless professional? Or is it finally time to get a little weirder to embrace the wildly creative art of Spain’s drag scene?

Lectores, start your engines. Y que gane la mejor drag queen! [Read more…] about Drag Race España Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

April 5, 2023 by krisis

Let’s take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 5 2023 releases.

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 Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 5 2023 Collected Editions

This is a slim week for new collected editions – there’s just four books out, and one is a reprint!

Adam Warlock Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949877 / digital)
See Guide to Adam Warlock. This collects Warlock’s full Silver & Bronze Age Warlock saga all in one place for the first time, from his debut as “Him” in the pages of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four to Jim Starlin’s psychedelic late-70s space epic! You can read this and continue directly to Infinity Gauntlet.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Volume 3: The Coming of Galactus
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950415 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four. This is the third time this particular Epic has been back to print. That speaks not only to the fact that it’s one of the Marvel’s most-significant stories of all time, but also speaks to the ongoing success of the Epic Collection line as we head into its second decade. It’s doing exactly the thing it’s meant to do – getting books all into the same format and reprinting them whenever necessary!

Marvel-Verse: Guardians of the Galaxy (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302950705 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This collects a smattering of stand-alone Guardians stories from the middle of Bendis’s run through the beginning of Duggan’s run, including one previously uncollected issue – Guardians of the Galaxy: Dream On (2017) #1. A decent, if scant, sampler platter if you’re averse to sampling digitally on Marvel Unlimited – but it’s hard to take it seriously without any material from the 2008 series.

Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950712 / digital)
See Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill. This is the collection if you want to grab Star-Lords earliest set of continuity stories in the Marvel Universe. I say “continuity” stories because the character of Peter Quill as Star-Lord first debuted in the 1970s, but all of his early adventures have been since rendered as occurring in a separate reality due to some unresolvable time travel shenanigans. That means when Quill pops up in the 2003 Thanos ongoing series, it’s technically his first appearance (though, making things even more confusing, at the time he was assumed to still be the same character as that 1970s version). All of this and more is explained in my guide!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 5 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 5 – “The Dragodi Festival” Review & Power Ranking

April 4, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fifth episode of Drag Race Sverige (AKA Drag Race Sweden) Season 1 – “The Dragodi Festival.” It’s a Girl Groups challenge in the form of a Eurovision qualifying round, with a reveals-on-reveals runway theme.

This season of RuPaul’s Drag Race featured one of the most-obvious frontrunners of all time in Sasha Colby, but it still felt competitive and fun. Even if Sasha is the obvious winner, we still got to see some other high-achieving queens do well for themselves. The show never cut Sasha any slack and made sure to bring the fiercest-of-the-fierce competition to the finale.

Don’t worry, you’re reading the right post: this is about Drag Race Sverige! However, I bring up Sasha and her winning run because production’s hand in steering a Sasha-friendly outcome could not often be felt. That’s not the case here on Sverige, which seems to be doing anything within its power to produce a result that honors the local drag legends over edgy upstarts or newer queens.

I don’t know how else to explain the totally nonsensical judging of the past few episodes. There’s making each episode count on its own, and then there’s totally ignoring the challenge and runway criteria to produce the result that favors your slightly-boring designated frontrunner.

Last episode, Imaa Queen had one of the worst three Snatch Game performances but one of the best runways, and was sent to lip sync. That makes sense – even the best runway cannot save you from a bad challenge performance! Yet, tonight the best runway saved one of the worst challenge performances, and another weak challenge performance with a weak runway was saved from lip syncing.

The chaotic judging means we’ve lost the two most-revolutionary queens in a row, leaving us with three competent but slightly-dull showgirls as front-runners and a pair of younger queens who lack the nerve (and style) to win the season. To be fair, two of those top three were my top picks at the start of the season, and the third I said could surprise us if her drag wasn’t too boring.

As it turns out, slightly-boring drag might be exactly what this season is looking for. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit cruel. What I mean is that the judging might be telling us something about Sweden’s drag culture that promo photo shoots and social media can’t. It feels like Sverige is very focused on longevity. It has paid homage to classics and idols, both in how it addresses its queens and in the way it has treated its guest judges. Perhaps as a first season in a drag season with a clear divide between traditional showgirls and punk queens there was never any way for the latter to defeat the former.

What does that mean for our Power Rankings? Who cares! Only one queen maintains her ranking compared to Snatch Game, but much like Snatch Game we’re playing a game where show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

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

Läsare, start your engines. Och må den bästa Drag Queen vinna!

Patron’s Choice: Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire

April 3, 2023 by krisis

Indie Comics Month may be over, but I have a promise to fulfill to all Patrons of CK – their first ever indie Patron’s Choice guide! Out of 25 independent and licensed comics franchises in their February poll, my indefatigable Patrons have selected one of the newest extended universes in comics. It’s one that has proven to be a hit with fans and critics alike! Welcome to my Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire!

Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire!

Black Hammer is like a modern retake on Astro City by Kurt Busiek. Jeff Lemire imagines a city of iconic heroes struck from familiar, archetypal molds whose history spans from the Golden Age through the end of the Bronze Age and the transition to the modern era.

Yet, the most iconic of those heroes never make the transition to the modern era. That is the story of Black Hammer.
[Read more…] about Patron’s Choice: Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 7 – “Discour de Reine” public speaking challenge Review and Power Ranking

April 2, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – Discour de Reine, or “Queen’s Speech.” Each of the Top 4 had to deliver their own coronation speech as Belgium’s queen for a day, and then walk the runway wearing “Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute.“

A “public speaking but make it funny” challenge is one of those late-season episodes where the judging can be very subjective.

Here I felt that the opposite happened – the judging seemed the most level-headed it had been all season.

Part of that is that the queens easily self-selected into the perfect four roles for a semi-final episode: the overconfident queen who goes over time, the brainy queen finally hitting her mark, the queen who plays it to safe one too many times, and the anxious queen struggling to make herself heard.

The judges had to go by the stratification of the challenge itself, because the runway wasn’t much help. Everyone looked good, but the bigger problem was the judges themselves couldn’t seem to agree on what the theme meant! Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute is a seaside resort town, and the judges seemed to be split on if they were looking for the actual glamour of the region (which they felt was something more chic than eleganza) or just something glamourous that suggested the region with a nautical theme.

It seemed like that made the queens somewhat immune to hearing the tough runway critiques they’ve encountered earlier in the season, with Susan especially benefiting from the indecision. Ultimately that yielded an unsurprising lip sync, a fair result, and a Top 3 I’ve been rooting for since the pre-season. That means there is zero shake-up from last week’s makeover rankings as we head into the finale next week.

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

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!