Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

My Best Pesto

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I don’t remember the first time I had pesto, but it is one of my favorite things to add to any food.

pesto-in-jar-crushingkrisisPasta. Salmon. Shrimp. Toast. Eggs. Chips dipped directly into it. Pesto makes everything better. It’s also pretty much an entire spinach salad in every few spoons, which is how I help justify how quickly I can consume it compared to the amount of cheese and oil it contains.

I clearly recall having it at the appropriately-named Ristorante Pesto on Broad Street as a teenager, but that seems like such a late point in life to have tasted pesto for the first time.

Thus, while I wish I could say this is an old family recipe, it’s not – it’s just adapted from The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook over the course of dozens of trials over the course of the past decade. It used to be that E made it and then I just greedily consumed it. Finally, I became impatient about waiting for her to decide she felt like making pesto and so I made it myself and realized it is so easy to do (as long as you have a decent food processor).

Now I make double and triple batches every time so I can enjoy as much pesto as I want on my pasta and everything else.

Here is the ingredient list for an 8oz batch of pesto, which is probably enough to toss with for pasta for four. I use the alterations in parenthesis every time, but they make things more complex – you’ll do just fine ignoring them your first time. [Read more…] about My Best Pesto

The 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot Results (and, what’s been printed?)

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With voting open for the 5th Annual Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the 2016 secret ballot results, but that was the fourth year of the survey!

Last year I devoted just one summary post to what got printed and what disappeared, but to this point the only place to read the full results of prior ballots was to dig through dozens of message board posts.

Today and over the weekend, I’m going to work backwards through the results of the first three years of the ballot. There were 52 books on the 2015 ballot results due to a pair of ties. How many of those books have we seen printed since then?

Of 52 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibuses of 2015…

7 of 52 (13.5%) omnibuses were printed in 2016

Doctor Strange, Vol. 1, Master of Kung-Fu, Vol. 1, War of Kings, Avengers West Coast, Vol. 3 AKA by John Byrne, Spider-Man (1990) by Todd McFarlane, Captain America, Vol. 2, and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Vol. 1

10 of 52 (19.2%) additional omnibuses have been solicited to date

The 7 above, plus in 2017 Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3, Alpha Flight by John Byrne, Amazing Spider-Man by David Michelinie, Thor, Vol. 3, Daredevil, Vol. 1, Avengers by Jonathan Hickman, Vol. 1, Daredevil by Mark Waid (Vol. 1), X-Force, Vol. 2 (as Deadpool & X-Force), 27. Realm of Kings, Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen

That means 17 (32.6%) of all 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibuses have been printed as Omnibuses! But, what about the proposed material hitting other formats? [Read more…] about The 2015 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot Results (and, what’s been printed?)

The Orphan Report: Marvel’s abandoned omnibuses and open omnibus lines

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In yesterday’s post reviewing what’s been printed from the 2016 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot I joked that ballot voters want nothing more than to un-orphan a lonely volume one omnibus.

That got me thinking: How many Marvel Omnibus orphans are there? That is, “Volume 1” omnibuses without a sequel.

While we’re at at, what are all of the open omnibus lines – in effect, a line with more than one book in it with one or more books left to go before the run is entirely covered?

Since comic fans are nothing if not completionists, it seems like these books should all be heavily represented on this year’s Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot. Was that the cast last year? And, if it’s not, should these books be filling out everyone’s survey choices in 2017?

Let’s find out!

The Orphan Report

There are 24 Little Orphan Omnis out there right now, although only 2/3rds of them are true “Volume 1” orphans. The remaining third are unnumbered books that still imply a continuing volume (or, in one case, a preceding one).

Of the 22 Orphans:

  • 7 orphans saw their sequels appear on the 2016 survey results
  • 6 orphans missed having their sequels on the 2016 results (though 3 of these weren’t true “Volume 1” omnibuses)
  • 9 orphans were printed (or are due) in 2017, so their sequels haven’t had a chance to be voted on yet (including 4 books that were printed after appearing in the 2016 results)
  • 2 orphans did not have enough additional issues for a second volume as of last year’s vote

Let’s take a tour of the Omnibus Orphanage, shall we? [Read more…] about The Orphan Report: Marvel’s abandoned omnibuses and open omnibus lines

Comic Book Review: Secret Empire #0 by Spencer, Acuna, Reis, & Lanham – On bad stories, responsible portrayals, and Holocaust etiquette

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Should certain stories be off-limits?

Consider if you have ever watched a movie or read a book where you felt a certain story beat was in particularly poor taste. Perhaps it should have been avoided altogether.

Does that mean no author ought to attempt it again?

I find that to be a difficult question to answer. Personally, I loathe plots where someone who is abused comes to trust or love their abuser. I think that plot relies on outdated trope about the internalization of cruelty as a form of affection.

Creators ought to be wise enough to steer clear of that plot in most instances, but I don’t think it should be outlawed. I can imagine a time when you might want to steer into that curve – not to be divisive or subversive, but to say something about your flawed characters. But it’s not a curve that should be mistaken for terrific character development.

There are other plot points that result in me getting up and walking away from the book or TV show I had been consuming a moment prior, whether they be personally triggering, advocating harmful behavior, racist, sexist, homo- or trans- phobic, or just plain dumb.

I don’t think any of them ought to be off-limits. Writing a bad story is entirely up to you. I won’t stand in your way, nor should anyone else.

I do think some portrayals of plots ought to be off-limits – not by rule, but in practice –  because they irresponsibly normalize dangerous behavior without context. People are now savvy enough to understand how to reject dangerous stories at face value, but not all consumers understand how to reject dangerous framing of concepts.

This can be insidious. I cannot watch a TV show or a movie that portrays sexual violence with a romanticized gaze. If you are going to make the choice to depict a sexual assault, it should be viscerally disturbing to the viewer. Their gut should twist. Not because you are editorializing about sexual assault, but because that’s what sexual assault is.

It is the difference between my ability to endlessly re-watch Watchmen despite it disturbing rape scene and my inability to make it through the sexual violence in the first season of Game of Thrones. One was viscerally disturbing. The other one kind of wanted to be sexy. Yet, many people causally watch both the former and the latter.

(You can substitute another topic for sexual violence, if you prefer.

This week, the depiction of death by suicide has become a hot topic due to its portrayal on 13 Reasons Why.

Romanticized portrayals of violence or self-harm erode a viewer’s ability to discern the objective truth of an event in reality. The fictionalized version takes over – whether that’s the seductive ease of ignoring informed consent or the glamorization of suicide.

It’s not that people object to suicide as thematic content. It’s the way it was framed.

Last week, news broke that a new BBC show depicting the UK Black Panther movement was centering a South Asian woman as it primary protagonist rather than a black woman. Regardless of the dubious historical accuracy of such a choice, choosing to cast non-black woman as central to a black civil rights movement erases black women from their own history. We saw a similar act of erasure of trans women of color in the movie Stonewall.

It’s not that people object to non-black characters appearing in historic civil rights narratives. Is the lack of portrayal of black woman.)

Having established my particular dichotomy of offensive story vs. irresponsible portrayal, now let me lay this one on you:

Last year, Marvel Comics and author Nick Spencer made Steve Rogers – the original Captain America – a Nazi.

(Let’s not split hairs – Hydra is a Nazi organization whose ideals have been slightly sanitized for comics. More on that in a moment.)

He isn’t pretending. He wasn’t brain-washed. Hydra used the Cosmic Cube to retroactively change Steve Rogers from American boy with a heart of gold to Nazi-sympathizing double-agent.

On one hand, I don’t think Cap being altered to be a truly vile villain should be off-limits as a story. I don’t think making him the symbol of everything he has fought against ought to be immediately rejected.

On the other hand, Nazis. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: Secret Empire #0 by Spencer, Acuna, Reis, & Lanham – On bad stories, responsible portrayals, and Holocaust etiquette

The 2016 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot – What’s been printed?

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It’s time to vote for your Top 10 most-wanted Marvel Omnibuses for 2018 on the 2017 Secret Ballot, but that begs a question: How many omnibuses from the 2016 Secret Ballot did we get in 2017?

Here’s the short answer:

We saw 10 Omnibuses solicited for 2017 – 20% of the list!

Those books are Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 3 Omnibus, Alpha Flight by John Byrne Omnibus, Avengers by Jonathan Hickman Omnibus Vol. 1, Spider-Man by David Michelinie and Erik Larsen Omnibus, Loki: Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen Omnibus, The Mighty Thor Omnibus Vol. 3, Deadpool & X-Force Omnibus, Daredevil by Mark Waid Omnibus Vol. 1, Daredevil Omnibus Vol. 1, War of Kings Aftermath: Realm of Kings Omnibus, plus kinda sorta Punisher: Back to the War Omnibus

We also saw some or all of the content of 8 Omnibuses solicited in other formats for 2017 – 16% of the list!

That means, of all the books we desired the most in 2016, we saw some format of 36% of them in 2017. That’s not bad!

Want to know the specifics of what saw print, what we’re still waiting on, and how I did with my “Will We See It in 2017?” predictions from last year? Keep reading!

[Read more…] about The 2016 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot – What’s been printed?