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This is available to everyone, but it was made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis:

X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men 

Now that I’ve re-read all of the X-Men Classic back-up stories as part of our Epic X-Men (re)Read, I had some adjustments to make to this guide. As a result, I rebuilt my reading order database for all of the Original 5 X-Men + Xavier + Havok, Polaris, Magneto, & Mimic.

That didn’t lead to too many changes, but I adjusted the placement of several stories. Also, reader comments lead me to update or add placements for all of X-Men First Class, Ka-Zar #2-3, Avengers #102-104, and several other stories and guest appearances.

Last week I had a chance to sit down with Jace from “The Comic Source” to talk about the behind-the-scenes of the past decade of Crushing Comics!

Our discussion including my approach to outlining comic guides, how I find the time to read thousands of comics a year, and why my focus is on opening gates rather than gatekeeping. Check out our full conversation on The Comic Source podcast or at Apple Podcasts,  Spotify,  SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play.

I’m taking a brief break from the world of Lanterns to publish a team guide for Pledgeonaut-level Patrons and up that will be helpful to many readers (and TV viewers) later this month…

Doom Patrol – The Definitive Guide

Doom Patrol is sometimes referred to as DC’s analog for The X-Men, but really it’s a uniquely perfect example of DC’s peculiar revolving door of publishing continuity.

They began as a Silver Age team at the same time as the X-Men, introduced in the sci-fi pulp anthology My Greatest Adventure in 1963 before spinning off into their own title later that year.

While Doom Patrol’s “The Chief” was an Xavier-like figure, their members are much closer to a take on the Fantastic Four. Team anchor Robotman is as orange and inhuman as The Thing after losing his physical body in a car crash. The radioactive Negative Man shares his origin with the F4, and Elasti-Girl is like Mr. Fantastic’s powers in Sue Storm’s spot as the token female.

The original lineup was rounded out by Beast Boy, the wild young member analogous to Human Torch. He’d later be stole by Teen Titans and become a breakout star in his own right.

Like The X-Men, Doom Patrol didn’t quite have the sales to make it out of the Silver Age and into the Bronze. Their ongoing title was canceled in 1969 with the seeming death of the entire team.

It took nearly a decade before Robotman was resurrected and paired with a new trio of teammates. They made only a handful of appearances, but Robotman (and the memory of the original team) was kept alive by Beast Boy as star of the massively popular Teen Titans.

Doom Patrol returned in Post-Crisis DC in 1987, as part of the trend of DC reviving forgotten Silver and Bronze age concepts (along with Animal Man and Suicide Squad).

While the initial run by Paul Kupperberg is often ignored, it’s delightfully solid mid-80s comics – as good as the many supporting X-books springing up around that same time.

Everything changed in 1989 when Grant Morrison took over, in the middle of an increasingly-bizarre run of Animal Man. If his Animal Man flirted with the fringes of DC’s heroic universe, Doom Patrol broke through those borders entirely. It became a lasting hallmark of the intellectual side of 90s comics, and one of the most popular works in Morrison’s lengthy bibliography.

(A following run by Rachel Pollack isn’t as well-known, but is much loved by longtime fans. It’s notable for being one of the first mainstream comics to include a transgender featured character – Coagula.)

It’s after the Vertigo run ends that things get interesting.

That’s because DC tries three different times to integrate Doom Patrol back into their mainstream heroic universe. All three iterations have their own successes and failures, and they all lasted almost exactly two years. Notably, in 2004 John Byrne tried to erase the entire past continuity of the team, which was then fixed by Infinite Crisis (which resolved many continuity tangles that had accumulated since Zero Hour).

A misguided Doom Patrol revival in New 52’s Justice League was much worse, restoring the Silver Age cast but again trying to wipe the slate clean of their continuity, more necessary than ever as Beast Boy was now considered a permanent fixture of the Titans franchise.

As with many titles outside of the tight core of Justice League and popular solo heroes, it felt like Doom Patrol’s rich Silver Age and Vertigo history would never again be acknowledged. While DC’s Rebirth relaunch in 2016 was wildly popular with fans, its slightly tweaked continuity still left out dozens upon dozens of major Post-Crisis heroes whose history was still in question after Flashpoint.

Then, Young Animal arrived.

Young Animal was an alternative imprint chaired by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who had become a popular indie comics author by way of his Umbrella Academy for Dark Horse. Way was tasked with finding a different wavelength for DC’s continuity in the midst of Rebirth. Way curated a team of authors to re-envision old heroes like Shade and Cave Carson, but he kept the jewel of the line for himself: Doom Patrol.

The ensuing series is something truly all-new, and all-different. It’s not just heroic, nor is it trying to recapture Vertigo’s magic. This Doom Patrol a vibrant tangle of familiar characters and new ideas. It’s not a continuation of Vertigo Doom Patrol – or any other prior version – but it is a worthy successor. And, it was positioned perfectly to take advantage of the altogether strange 2019 TV adaption of the team for DC Universe!

Current Exclusives For Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 20 Guides!

DC Guides: Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Omega Men

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Sabretooth, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 48 Guides!

DC Guides: Animal Man, Aquaman, Books of Magic, Catwoman, Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Doom Patrol, Flash, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Harley Quinn, Houses & Horrors, Justice League, Lucifer, Mister Miracle, Nightwing, Omega Men , Outsiders, Suicide Squad, Swamp Thing

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Ant-Man & Giant-Man, Captain Britain, Champions, Darkhawk, Blade, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Falcon, Gwenpool, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Moon Boy / Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan, Power Pack, Sabretooth, Scarlet Witch, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey

Indie & Licensed Comics: None right now

Zach joined me on this episode because I had never read a single issue from the first half of this box of Hulk comics. Can he convince me to shelve any of them? They’re all covered in my Hulk Guide.

Welcome to the first post in a countdown of my Top 125 [American digital] comics of 2019!

I read >2500 comics released between November 2018 & November 2019 from more than 550 series and more than 30 publishers, because I wanted to be able to say that one year I made a definitive list of my favorite comics considering everything.

To arrive at this list, I sampled nearly every US digitally-available release from Marvel, DC, Image, Aftershock, Ahoy, Boom, Cave Pictures, Comixology, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Humanoids, IDW, Lion Forge, Mad Cave, Valiant, Vault, & Zenescope, plus many comics from other publishers.

(Why November to November? Even though I was still reading in December 2019, most best-of-year lists cut off in October or November, and I wanted to be roughly analogous. Why a Top 125? Because it felt like a cut-off where I could favorably recommend almost any title on the list.)

Even though this is a subjective list of favorites, there’s still some objectivity baked into it.

I rated every issue I read, totaled the ratings within the release window, applied two algorithms to rank their scores, and then took some liberties with ordering based on pure love.

(My 1st algorithm combats recency effects and gives more credit to longer-running series since it’s harder to maintain quality on a longer run. My 2nd algorithm is my “recommendation index,” a modified Net Promoter Score that weighs a series’ awesome issues against its dull ones)

Okay, that’s enough of a preamble – onto my Top 125 Comics of 2019!

Ready? (Or, if you prefer a Twitter countdown, start here!) [Read more…] about Krisis’s Favorite Comic Series of 2019 – #125 – 101

We’ve finally graduated to videos shot in my new space but we still have months of boxes to unpack! This was my order from April 2019, left boxed until the big move was over in October.

In this haul:

• from Marvel Comics
  • Daredevil Marvel Masterworks, Vol. 11 – visit the Guide to Daredevil
  • Fantastic Four Complete Collection – Heroes Return, Vol. 1 – visit the Guide to Fantastic Four
  • Infinity War Omnibus – visit the Guide to Marvel Events
  • Sgt. Fury Epic Collection, Vol. 1 – Howling Commandos
• other publishers
  • Lumberjanes, Vol. 11
  • Lumberjanes Novel, Vol. 2: The Moon is Up
  • Steven Universe, Vol. 3: Field Researching
  • Steven Universe, Vol. 4: Just Right