Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
Hello, internet friends and strangers!
It has been a quiet few months on Crushing Krisis, and an even quieter few on my YouTube channel, where I have maintained complete radio silence since the beginning of May.
There’s not an epic tale behind my disappearance. It was actually the result of several smaller details conspiring against my video-making and blogging.
Here are some thoughts on Father’s Day (even though it isn’t Father’s Day in New Zealand until September.)
A year ago today our immigration process had just gotten underway. I would’ve told you it was difficult.
It wasn’t. It was complicated, but easy. We arrived in New Zealand as a family with a place to live, albeit a temporary one, and our belongings on the way.
Today, there are asylum-seeking people who walk into the US with everything they own and the first thing that happens is they lose their children.
I cannot stop thinking about it. We’re the same – parents looking for a better life for their children. I had more privilege to wield and more support, but there’s fundamentally nothing different about EV and I compared to the children being torn away from their parents at the borders of America.
I have made a lot of difficult, life-altering choices in the past five years for the sake of being a parent – choices I would have never made before a child existed in my life. Every one was so she could gain access to some aspect of life, some aspect of happiness, that I was not afforded.
To think that there are parents out there making harder choices, ones motivated by the realities of violence and poverty, and that the first thing that happens to them in the United States is that they experience persecution and having their families shattered – possible irrevocably shattered… [Read more…] about on fathers and borders
Today’s new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis fills in one of the major gaps in my DC coverage and brings my collection of Bat-Family guides a little bit closer to being complete:
Nightwing, Dick Grayson – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide
Dick Grayson occupies a distinct spot in both DC and Marvel history as a rare hero who had a long-standing, in-continuity early identity to which he will likely never be reverted.
That’s because Grayson was the original Robin to Bruce Wayne’s Batman in the Golden and Silver Ages – but, he’s spent the entire Post-Crisis modern age of comics as Nightwing (except for those few years he was Batman).
As a reader of primarily Marvel Comics, the first time I encountered Dick Grayson was during his time as Batman in Grant Morrison’s epic run with the caped crusader. I really didn’t know a thing about him other than that he was the first Robin, which made him seem pretty boring to me – like a character DC kept publishing just out of habit. It seemed like a dull gimmick to turn him into Batman.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Grayson was new to wearing the cowl, but not to being a hero. He wasn’t as foolproof as Bruce as Batman, but he was more emotionally complex and pragmatic. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to DC’s Nightwing, Dick Grayson
Sometimes creating a new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis turns into a getting-to-know you process about a hero or team I’ve never read before. That was definitely the case with today’s new guide, about a team of heroes who existed entirely outside of my comics knowledge…
The Outsiders – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide
I’ve always been dimly aware of The Outsiders, mostly because Batman and the Outsiders (1983) #11 was one of the first dog-eared comic books of my early childhood – years before I started collecting.
Yet, as of a few weeks ago, I couldn’t have told you who a single one of the characters in the header image were aside from Katana. Heck, it was years into New 52 before I realized that the Katana I know from that classic cover image was the same one who starred in Birds of Prey and Suicide Squad! Based on her costume, I thought she was some kind of DC Sunfire analog.
What I learned in putting together this team guide is that the Outsiders really are outsiders. Batman formed the team specifically to work outside the rules and regulations of the Justice League. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to DC’s The Outsiders
Let’s be honest – while I have the excuse of creating this guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis to fill in one more missing link on the Fresh Start era page (for her new one-shot, out tomorrow!), we all knew I did it just because I love…
Dazzler – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide
I’ve always loved Dazzler, purely because she was the Madonna of the Marvel Universe back when I was originally a reader (and a Madonna fan) back in the early 90s. However, her run on Uncanny X-Men by Claremont was much too expensive for me to buy as back issues (and, for some reason I never sought out her 1980 series as a lot at a convention).
As with all of my guides for individual heroes who have not anchored their own titles for long, putting this page together was punishing. It would be easy to simply link to Dazzler’s solo stories, or even to list all of her guest appearances in order.
Of course, I had to do more than that. I browsed nearly every Dazzler appearance outside of her solo series to figure out which were the most important! [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Dazzler!