Crushing Krisis

Updated: Guide to Excalibur

January 27, 2023 by krisis

I’m excited to share this X-Guide update, not only because it contains my favorite comic of all time, but because it’s my first ever “normal” guide update! Updated today, it’s my Guide to Excalibur – including a complete Excalibur Reading Order and links to read every physical and digital collection of Excalibur ever released!

Guide to Excalibur

The Guide to Excalibur was the first 2010s guide that I rebuilt to my new style and standard in 2021, which means this is the first routine maintenance update I’ve done so far this decade.

Over the past year, Excalibur wrapped up its collection of the 2019 Tini Howard & Marcus To run in both trade paperback and oversize hardcover. Howard continued some characters and themes of that title into Knights of X (2022) with artist Bob Quinn, which was just five issues and collected in a single trade paperback.

(Howard is still writing Betsy Braddock, but now she has graduated to her own Captain Britain title!)

When it comes to past Excalibur collections, the two years since my last update brought us two major releases – plus some big news in the last month. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Excalibur

X-Factor Math & Maps: Collected Issue Counting and Future Omnibus Mapping

January 26, 2023 by krisis

A few weeks ago I updated the Guide to X-Factor to present day, which means now it’s time for mathing and mapping X-Factor! How much of X-Factor been collected from its start in February 1986 to the team’s most-recent appearance Dec 2021? How many issues have been collected in color, Epic Collection, or Omnibus formats? And, what’s the perfect X-Factor mapping to collect the remaining issues into an impressive shelf of omnibus volumes

Get ready for the deepest possible dive into the data behind the physical collections of X-Factor!

This is a pilot of a new post format that acts as a companion to major guide updates. It’s a way to bring back my popular series of omnibus-focused posts from 2017, where I looked at dozens of likely entries on Tigereyes’ annual Marvel Omnibus straw poll and then mapped the results.

Those posts were major favorites for many readers, but each one could take as long as a brand new comic guide – and, back in 2017 I still had many guides still to build. Oh, and there was also the brief interruption where I found out we would be moving to New Zealand in the middle of the 50-post series!

To get started with our X-Factor Math & Maps, let’s look at the current collection standings for X-Factor:

Series	Total Issues	in Color*	in Epic	in Oversize
X-Factor	325	282	74	176
as a percentage:		82.46%	22.77%	54.15%

* I am no longer including Essentials in my tally of collected issues now that they are long out of print and Marvel has retired the black-and-white reprint format.

How does that break down across every X-Factor series? What am I even counting? Read on to find out! And, when you’re done, be sure to leave a comment to let me know if you’d like to see more posts like this in the future.

Marvel United: Multiverse enters the Age of Apocalypse! (plus, predicting the 10 most-likely expansion boxes)

January 25, 2023 by krisis

Yesterday, CMON’s Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign announced a second new expansion box bringing more heroes and villains to the game… and they’re all more mutants! That’s right, CMON has dipped into one of Marvel’s most-popular alternate timelines to announce Marvel United Multiverse Age of Apocalypse box!

There’s no question that Age of Apocalypse is Marvel’s most-popular and well-known excursion into an alternate timeline parallel to 616 other than the expansive Ultimate Universe. Based on that, it’s no surprise to see the box pop up here – especially since it checks off four unique X-characters we were missing.

(See my Guide to Marvel Universe Events – Age of Apocalypse for details on how to read the entire event.)

Am I pleased? Not entirely. I think this box brings both good choices and questionable choices with it.

The good choices are very good choices: we get playable heroes of Nate Grey and Morph, and some seriously scary villains in the form of AOA Apocalypse, Holocaust / Nemesis, and Dark Beast.

That’s five key mutants we were missing from the massive list of possibilities in my prior post on the campaign.

It’s the other pair of choices that I question, plus one conspicuous absence. [Read more…] about Marvel United: Multiverse enters the Age of Apocalypse! (plus, predicting the 10 most-likely expansion boxes)

New for Patrons: Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne

January 24, 2023 by krisis

My newest guide for all Patreon supporters of Crushing Krisis is for one of Marvel’s newest characters to hold down her own solo title – two of them, in fact! In my humble opinion, hers are the finest all-ages comics Marvel has produced in their main 616 continuity in the past decade and I absolutely treasure the memories of reading them for the first time with my daughter. She’s not quite the same as her MCU sibling, nor is she quite the hero you might expect her to be. It’s my brand new Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne!

Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne
This guide is now available to the public thanks to the unstoppable support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

Nadia van Dyne was one of many Legacy characters introduced to take up classic heroic mantles in All-New All-Different Marvel in 2016.

At the time, it was obvious that Marvel’s editors wanted to replace the entire Avengers starting line-up with newer versions, even if they weren’t currently Avengers- Sam Wilson as Cap, Jane Foster as Thor, Riri Williams as Ironheart, Scott Lang as Ant-Man, and Amadeus Cho as Hulk (plus Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales as Spider-Man, and Sam Alexander as Nova, for good measure).

There’s only one founding Avenger missing from that line-up – The Wasp!

The tricky thing about that plan is that Marvel had brought back the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne, in the pages of Uncanny Avengers just as they had finished sweeping aside Steve Rogers, Odinson, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner to make way for their new cast of Legacy Heroes.

Oh, and one more complication: Marvel had just introduced a Wasp in the MCU, but she was Hank Pym’s & Janet van Dyne’s grown-up daughter. They couldn’t replicate that in the comics… could they?

Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

January 23, 2023 by krisis

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to The Champions is now available to all CK readers! This guide covers both the 1975 Champions of Los Angeles as well as the 2016 revival of the team as a squad of Marvel’s young characters in the wake of Civil War II This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the outstanding Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to The Champions

When I first covered how to collect the 1975 edition of The Champions they didn’t merit their own guide page. They had 17 issues of their own and then faded into Marvel history while their members scattered to the winds. I relegated them to my Guide to X-Men Ongoings due to the team including Angel and Iceman.

In reality, the problem with reassembling The Champions wasn’t just that Iceman and Beast had been incorporated into The Defenders (visit the Guide to Defenders), and later into X-Factor (visit the newly-updated Guide to X-Factor)

It was also that Marvel lost the ability to publish comics with the “Champions” title! [Read more…] about Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!