Crushing Krisis

Updated: The Definitive Guide to The Defenders Comic Books

November 2, 2017 by krisis

Today I’ve got a comprehensive update to a team guide – The Defenders – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order!

The Defenders have waited a long time for their year in the spotlight – since their debut as a team in 1972! Finally, 45 years later, it’s The Defenders time to shine with their own Netflix series and no Avengers or X-Men movies to outshine them.

But, wait… do these 2017 Defenders have anything to do with their 1972 counter-parts?

It’s kind of a long story, but I’ve got the Cliff Notes for you Keep reading to learn all the highlights, including Defenders 1972 vs Defenders 2017, all the newest collections, and the overall percentage of Defenders comics we’ve seen collected in color.

Crushing Comics, S01E02: Thor by JMS & Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction

November 2, 2017 by krisis

Here’s the first full-length episode of my new show, Crushing Comics! (Episode 1 was just a brief teaser.)

The main theme of Season 1 will be unwrapping dozens of anonymous bricks of books from my collection, which each contain an oversize surprise. It’s liking unboxing my past seven years of hauls all over again!

Episode 2 features Thor by JMS Omnibus (Amazon / eBay), as covered by the Guide to Thor and Iron Man by Matt Fraction (Amazon Vol. 1 / Amazon Vol. 2 / eBay) as covered by the Guide to Iron Man.

All three books get a thumbs-up from me, but you’ll have to watch to here all about Thor’s big Ragnarok, plus learn how I cannot pronounce the names of either of the major creators on that run.

first day of school, finally

November 1, 2017 by krisis

Yesterday was EV6’s first official day of school.

I don’t just mean the first day of proper “you might learn something there” school. I mean it’s her first day of public or private care outside of our own home. Ever.

It’s quite the belated start to school for her, considering she’ll be heading into Year 1 (the NZ equivalent of Kindergarten) just nine months from now. Many kids have logged four years of being cared for out of the home by this point in their lives.

As with many things here in New Zealand, our perception of pre-Year-1 school from abroad was a little different than the reality here on the ground.

While kiwi kids have a guaranteed Year 1 start date on their fifth birthdays, all care prior to that is optional despite 20hrs of each week being state-sponsored for 3-4yr-olds.

Given the state sponsorship, we were relatively sure getting into a daycare would be relatively easy, and there seemed to be tons of them. That’s compared to Philadelphia, where for many quality pre-schools you need to have your child on a waiting list before they are even born!

The complication arose from just how much school we were interested in Some care centers only offered 20hrs a week of care. Basically, they were set up to capitalize on the state-sponsored benefit, but that was it. That would be great for right this moment, but if I wound up in full-time job prior to EV6’s Year 1 started date we’d be in a pickle. By contrast, outside of the city the full-time child care centers were much smaller than their US equivalents and they all had wait lists – just not quite as long as the ones in Philly.

We sent out notes to the closest full-day schools on my birthday back in September. Two replied in short order – both to offer us a spot on wait lists stacked up into 2018. Eek.

Luckily, for once my resident OCD Godzilla really paid off for us. [Read more…] about first day of school, finally

This November on Crushing Krisis

November 1, 2017 by krisis

A year ago today, I began an unusual experiment on Crushing Krisis called “Blog of Tomorrow.”

November has always been a big month of blogging at CK, but in 2016 the idea was that I would spend an entire month posting as if blogging was my full time job in order to convince you, the reader, to contribute to CK’s Patreon campaign. Each day including a one-two daily punch of a Song of the Day and a “From The Beginning” read of Wildstorm. Plus, I debuted a new comic collecting guide each week and shared installments of my namesake novel, Krisis, for the first time.

It was every bit as insane as it sounds. I’m not sure I slept at all the entire month. The resulting 90+ posts were some of my best blogging of all time and I became a much better blogger in the process of writing them, which is not something I expected to be able to say in my 17th year of doing this! And, along the way, a small subset of CK’s readers kindly volunteered to pay for all of its hosting costs(!!!).

The only way I keep up that level of daily effort throughout 2017 was if readers were literally paying my salary – which would require an order of magnitude of more donations. That would be amazing, but it was never the point. The goal of my experiment wasn’t getting to writing the “Blog of Tomorrow” on a permanent basis, but to push myself to invent the quality and quantity of content that such a blog might entail.

Today, it is once again November 1st.

Part of me was tempted to go all-out yet again, trying to squeeze close to a 100 posts into a single month. It’s not like I lack for content. I have no end of ideas of series of posts to tackle, even if they would mean going another month sans sleep.

Yet, as much as I love big projects, I hate repeating myself. We’ve already proved that my blogging full-time could probably generate more content than most of you could read (or, at least, enjoy) on a daily basis.

This year, instead of thinking bigger, I want to think wider. Less posts and less hours, but more content and visibility. I’d love to get you back to visiting every week and knowing you have several posts of catching up to do each time.

What does that look like? [Read more…] about This November on Crushing Krisis

Updated: The Definitive Guide to Luke Cage, Power Man

October 31, 2017 by krisis

Today I have another freshly spruced-up comic character guide for you: The Definitive Guide to Luke Cage.

Need the short story on what Luke Cage has been up to in 2017 both in comics and in collected editions? Keep reading for a recap, plus a quick reintroduction to the character and a final tally of how many of his starring comics have been collected in color.