Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

This Week In X: Iceman #11, Rogue & Gambit #3, Venom #163, X-Men Gold #23, & X-Men Red #2

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It’s the tenth week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X is packed with X-Men titles, including all three of the current X-Men teams … but I wasn’t too thrilled with the selection!

This week, I cover:

  • Iceman (2017) #11 is a pleasing summation to this series, rather than just a conclusion.
  • Rogue & Gambit (2018) #3 trades heavily on a continuity-obsessed love of the couple.
  • Venom (2017) #163 starring X-Men Blue is the final issue of the Poison X arc.
  • X-Men: Gold (2017) #23 has an interesting premise in need of defined character voices.
  • X-Men: Red (2018) #2 somewhat squanders the good will of the first issue.

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up.

Indie Series Spotlight: Lumberjanes (Ep02)

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This is the second episode of my new YouTube show, Indie Series Spotlight!

Any conversation about my favorite recent independent and creator-owned series would be incomplete without a mention of Lumberjanes – a consistent favorite of all three members of our household.

When I first picked up the first volume of Lumberjanes I was seriously unimpressed. It seemed like short-attention-span theatre. Every character seemed to spend their entire time yelling, or occasionally punching monsters on the head.

It wasn’t until I started reading the series out loud to EV6 that the charm of the series and its characters became more apparent to me, and I quickly discovered that Volume 2 recast the series as a mythologically-rooted mystery with some seriously deep continuity. From that point forward, we’ve all been hooked!

The first half of this video is a general discussion of Lumberjanes and the second half is a story-specific portion full of spoilers!

Indie Comics Spotlight Episode #2 features Lumberjanes, the first five volumes of which are currently available to read for free as part of the Comixology Unlimited library!

Crushing Comics S01E081 – How X-Men: Second Coming brought me back to comics

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In the second of three episodes focused on unwrapping a massive brick of oversized X-Men comics, I reminisce about Second Coming – the storyline that tempted me back to reading comics in general and modern X-Men in specific (as discussed back in 2010).

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 81 features X-Men: Second Coming and X-Men: Second Coming – Revelations, both covered in my Guide to Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen.

Crushing Comics S01E080 – X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha

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I’m down to just three more bricks of comic books, but this first one is huge – it’s got over a half a dozen X-Men hardcovers inside! In the first of a three-part unwrapping, I dig into X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, and discuss why this might be my favorite modern period of X-Men comics.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 80 features X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, covered in guides to Uncanny X-Men and X-Force, respectively.