Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E07 – “9021-HO”

by

This week on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the cast flashes back 27 years to parody a TV show from before some of them were born!

That’s right, it’s time for one of Drag Race‘s acting challenges.

If you aren’t familiar with them from past seasons, the scripts are “skit from your high school English class that still makes you wince whenever you think about it” realness. The challenges tend to be less about acting or memorization and more about delivering nonsense lines or surviving characters obviously meant to send a queen to the bottom two (generally, any character you’d describe as “butch”).

Yet, this group of queens is so solid that the only person who turns in a real clunker of a performance does so entirely due to her own inner saboteur – and continues her downward slide in the rankings as a result.

Meanwhile, a vague runway theme of “Big Hair” doesn’t help queens like Alexis Michelle, who do better with a little more guidance like they had on last week’s Madonna runway.

Meanwhile, it seems like the season’s top three is starting to really solidify, with a pair of queens sparring for the fourth spot in the last episode before the finals. Can all four girls hold off the competition from the other three remaining queen?

All it takes is a single misstep to sashay away.

[Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E07 – “9021-HO”

Marvel series still awaiting an omnibus from the Masterworks Era (1961 – 1980)

by

This is the final post in our series time-traveling backwards through Marvel’s era of comic books to see what books would make fantastic omnibuses, and this is a big one – it’s what I’m calling “The Masterworks Era.”

After this post, you should have more than enough ammo to fill out your 2017 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, which is due by Sunday at midnight! I’ve suggested over a hundred possible votes!

What exactly is “The Masterworks Era,” aside from something I just made up? It refers to the period of comcis that Marvel has covered with their deluxe, standard-size hardcover Marvel Masterworks reprint line. The Silver Age portion of the line begins with Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.

The end is a little fuzzier. The Silver Age is understood to end in 1970-71, but with a handful of exceptions Marvel has already pushed past that point with every line of Masterworks collections. In fact, their newest two Masterworks lines are The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976), Spider-Woman (1978), and The Savage She-Hulk (1980)! 

Yes, that’s right – Masterworks now cover comics that began in the 1980s! That’s like when the oldies station of my youth started playing Madonna songs. Plus, the farthest outlier, Uncanny X-Men, has reached all the way up to issue #188 in 1984.

When it comes to classic Omnibuses, until this year Marvel followed a specific formula almost every time – one omnibus contained three Masterworks volumes. We’re now seeing them deviate from that formula with Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil,  and Thor, all of which contained more than the customary three volumes.

To figure out what comics are due for potential omnibuses to feature in this post, I had to first figure out both what has been covered by Masterworks volumes and what has been skipped! That’s not really a part of this discussion, but if you’re interested, I’ve shown my work.

A list of titles that are eligible for Masterworks treatment

How am I defining “due” here? It’s any superhero universe series that the Masterworks line has skipped entirely or any Masterworks line with three or more un-omnibused volumes.

Any comic with a Masterworks line that’s in-progress with only one or two volumes is not included: Ka-Zar, Luke Cage, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-in-One, Not Brand Echh Vol. 1, Rarities Vol. 1, Rawhide Kid, She-Hulk, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Woman.

I also didn’t include the one-and-done Masterworks volumes Champions and Deathlok as potential omnibuses, since the omnibus would be the same as the Masterworks!

Are you ready to travel back in time from 1980 to the beginning of Marvel’s Silver Age in 1961? Here we go! [Read more…] about Marvel series still awaiting an omnibus from the Masterworks Era (1961 – 1980)

10 Marvel runs from the 80s that ought to be omnibuses – 1981 to 1989

by

It’s the penultimate stop in our trip backwards through time to find all of the Marvel runs most in need of Omnibus treatment.

Why? For fun. For accumulating rainy-day reading. And, to fuel our 2017 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot votes!

Marvel in the 1980s is really a tale of two different Marvels. The first half of the decade featured many continuing 70s series, a handful of limited series, and relatively few new ongoing titles – most of which were direct spinoffs of characters from other books.

However, after Secret Wars II in 1986 the line got a serious shake-up, with many titles outside of what I think of as “The Big 9” and their satellite books getting cancelled or rebooted, plus tons of new ongoing and limited series and a whole new line of comics with New Universe!

(“The Big 9” are all of the lines of books that made it from the Silver Age to 2005 while being published continuously, even if that meant being restarted along the way – , Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, and X-Men. After 2005, Thor went on hiatus, and Fantastic Four has been on hiatus since 2015.)

(In a totally weird turn of events, we can now probably add Deadpool to that list of evergreen lines.)

Marvel released a lot of comics in the 1980s, so what should Marvel prioritize getting into omnibuses? I’ve already covered all of the X-Men runs from this period, and I’m not touching Spider-Man or Fantastic Four mapping at the moment. Plus, many key 80s runs are on the survey already, like Peter David’s Hulk, Iron Man by by Michelinie & Layton Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil – but that still leaves a ton of potential runs to cover! [Read more…] about 10 Marvel runs from the 80s that ought to be omnibuses – 1981 to 1989

May The Force Be With You (on your bookshelf): The Guide to Star Wars Comics & Canon

by

While I’m seeing the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie in the theatre tonight I couldn’t let that be my only celebration of space on Star Wars day, so I spent all last month cooking up something special for you: The Guide to Star Wars Comics, Films, Canon Stories, & Legends Comics

Yes, you read that right. This is not just a guide to Marvel’s comics from 2015 forward. The guide includes all of Marvel’s current Star Wars comics, a complete Star Wars canon viewing/reading order broken up by film era, and a chronology of the old Expanded Universe comics – now known as “Star Wars Legends” and collected in Epic Collections and Omnibuses.

Star_Wars_1977_0044I know I’ll never approach being the biggest or most well-informed Star Wars geek on the internet, despite my enduring love for the franchise. I wanted to create a guide for other geeks like me – who love the movies and want to branch out to novels or comics, but don’t need an exhaustive encyclopedic list of the placement of every event and magazine short story.

Also, I’ve had a ton of recent conversations with other parents who wanted to show their young children Star Wars stories and had no idea there were young readers versions and Little Golden Books corresponding to every film in the series. That’s why every film page lists ALL of the major adaptions, including YA novelizations and read-along books/CD sets.

However, the biggest undertaking in the guide was the page for “Star Wars Legends.” With the help of CBR forum all-star Taral, I not only got the Marvel Epics in the right order, but mapped exactly what issues are still to come in each Epic line, plus listed where they appear in Dark Horse’s paperback omnibuses.

Taral is a walking Star Wars encyclopedia – I couldn’t have figured this out without his aid! He just started a new blog about comics, and he’s setting out to re-read ALL of the Star Wars Legends comics. He’s only two posts in so far, so please leave him comments letting him know you’re excited for him to continue:

I hope this guide can help you find the exact Star Wars stories you’re most interested in reading!

May the Force be with you!

 

10 Marvel runs from the 90s you might have missed (and that ought to be omnibuses) – 1990 to 1997

by

It’s our third installment of backwards time travel through Marvel runs that could easily fit into an omnibus volume to help inspire your votes on the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot.

Today I’m taking a slightly different perspective than I did for 1998 to 2008 and 2008 to present. For those installments, I focused on runs I knew well or at least could recommend from context. However, when it comes to runs I’ve read, the 90s are pretty thoroughly covered over both by existing omnibuses and the current votes of the poll. Add to that how much of this period are covered by the end of runs from the 80s, that I’ve already mapped X-Men, and my temporary avoidance of exhaustively mapping Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, and the pickings wind up being pretty slim!

Thus, this list comes with a caveat – I’m not necessarily suggesting you run out and buy and read all of these runs right now. I mean, I own nearly all of them, and even having not read them cover to cover I can tell you that most of them are very 90s comic books.

However, they also represent under-collected material that’s relatively unknown to modern readers. While it might be more reasonable to see all of it covered with Epic Collections, I think it would be more expedient to see them collected in this format than to wait around for trade paperbacks.

Ready to dig deep into the extreme 1990s? [Read more…] about 10 Marvel runs from the 90s you might have missed (and that ought to be omnibuses) – 1990 to 1997