Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Haul Around the World: Captain Marvel: Ms. Marvel – A Hero is Born Omnibus

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It’s another Classic Collection version of Haul Around the World, shot BEFORE my big move!

This book was part of my order from mid-February 2019. This might be my most-anticipated omnibus of the decade! Finally, an oversize collection of the gorgeous artwork on Ms. Marvel’s 1977 debut, mostly scripted by Chris Claremont.

Most modern readers are completely unaware of the pedigree of this material or the full history of Carol Danver’s character. Even though Marvel has released this in two other color formats in the past two years, I still gladly picked it up.

In this haul:

The HiX-Men Report: House of X (2019) #5

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HiX-Men Report is back with House of X (2019) #5, which is the issue that reveals everything about Xavier’s master plan in the present day.

This was a tough episode for me – and not only because we just moved into our new house 24 hours ago! I had a lot of problems with how this issue was constructed.

As it turns out, it’s also a controversial issue in the X-Men fan community due to the near-religious fervor shown by our beloved mutants. We spend some time digging into what’s so unsettling about new mutant rituals.

20 X-Men Questions with an X-Pert & a New Mutant – Part 1

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As a complement to our weekly HiX-Men Report, Fangirl and I assembled on our own to tackle 20 big questions about the X-Men.

Part of what makes the Report so unique is that Fangirl is a relatively new X-Men reader, despite being a voracious consumer of thousands of comics each year. She comes to every issue of Hickman’s X-Men with fresh eyes, but we don’t get to tackle every one of her X-questions in our panel format. Also, as someone who has been making guides aimed at new X-Men fans for almost a decade, I also had some questions for Fangirl’s fresh eyes!

In this first of four episodes, we talk Magneto’s helmet, the Phoenix Force, the best leader of mutantkind, and more!

Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis (The Phoenix Era)

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

The Revised & Expanded X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis

This era covers every X-Men story starting with Giant Size X-Men #1 in 1975 through “Days of Future Past” in Uncanny X-Men #141-142 in 1981. That includes every back-up from Classic X-Men.

The guide allows you to read every X-Men story from the period perfect continuity order, but also presents a simplified version of that order so you can enjoy bigger chunks of the most important stories without inserting every minor guest appearance.

This was a fun reading order to revise for a few different reasons. [Read more…] about Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis (The Phoenix Era)

free license & drunken birds

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New Zealand is so nice that they gave me a driver’s license just because I asked for one.

It’s probably for the best that they don’t know how long I waited to get my license back in Pennsylvania (and that it involved several months of parallel parking practice). With that in mind, just walking into an auto inspection shop to be magically and immediately licensed with just the barest of visual tests seems both ludicrous and like a grave error on the part of my new country.

Let’s be honest: driving is pretty different here. It’s not just the whole left side of the road thing and all the roundabouts. It’s not understanding what the method is behind when there are white lines versus yellow lines versus double lines. It’s not being able to quickly decipher all of the various “watch out for wildlife” semiotic signs. It’s not knowing the procedure of what to do if you are pulled over by the police.

The woman who issued my license was a gem, like a bawdy and hilarious alternate take on Joni Mitchell. I gave my typical cold steel stare to her camera and when she saw the photo she told me, “You already look like you’re angry for being pulled over for whatever you were doing before the officer asked for your license.”

“Oh, I’m not going to get pulled over. I drive like the most cautious grandmother you’ve ever met. The only problem could be that I don’t know what all the road signs mean.”

“Oh really? Should I be worried?”

“Well, I figured out that ‘Give Way’ was about everyone being very polite, which isn’t possible in the States. But I remain very concerned about the ‘Watch for Kereru’ signs. Have you seen those birds? One flew into the side of my house and it was like a bomb went off!”

Let me back up for a moment.

Kereru are like extremely oversized and somewhat adorable wood pigeons. They are the wild turkey of the pigeons family. E spotted one last year when we were looking at houses, and when she pointed it out to me I said, “That whole thing is one bird? Are you sure?”

I am not a doctor of birds like my friend Lori, but my layperson speculation is that the kereru’s brain is maybe not complex enough to account for them being the size that they are and also a bird that is meant to fly through the air.

They carry themselves very proudly in the fashion of a beast that is completely unaware of anything happening in their immediate surroundings. It gives them the distinct look of something that ought to be extinct. You know what I mean – you’ve seen the museum dioramas. If kereru existed anywhere other than an island with virtually no land mammals they would’ve never made it this long. I’ve seen some kereru in action here prior to the one that hit the side of our house, and they have a very dazed and confused quality to them at all times.

Part of that is the public intoxication factor.

You see, kereru get bombed on ripe fruit. I swear, this is a real thing and not some apocryphal Kiwi myth. They gorge themselves on ripe fruit during the summer. Again, they are the size of a roasting bird, so that is a lot of fruit. Then, the kereru doze off in said heat due to said gorging, and the fruit actually ferments in their crop (which is an extra storage compartment in the esophagus, like pockets in a dress). They are living, breathing, self-fermenting bags of wine.

The result: drunken bird bombs who have no idea of their surroundings and do not know which was is up.

It was not especially warm on the day a kereru tried to detonate itself against the side of our house, so I cannot say for sure if it was drunk. I was downstairs in my office doing some sort of comic book thing. Suddenly, I heard what I was sure was some sort of explosive crash. I assumed a delivery truck had come up our drive too quickly and crashed into our house.

I ran upstairs to investigate the damage from above, which is when I noticed a giant, bird-shaped smear on our sliding glass door and an extremely large, extremely confused kereru looked more dazed than usual on the deck below.

From here, allow me to direct you to this primary source account of the drama, as discussed between E and I in our ongoing chat thread: [Read more…] about free license & drunken birds