Crushing Krisis

New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s Jessica Jones

November 13, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I’m excited to debut this month’s second new comic guide – The Definitive Jessica Jones Reading Order!

This new guide is available exclusively to CK’s Crushing Comics Club Patrons until December 18th. Want early access? Visit CK on Patreon to learn more.

alias_vol_1_01 This new guide goes beyond listing the collections that include Jessica Jones’s major appearances. It’s a reading order for every issue she’s ever appeared and recaps the action from her guest appearances so you can follow her complete story from Alias to today without reading dozens of comic books.

In fact, if you loved Jessica Jones on Netflix, you can get nearly her complete Marvel appearances on your bookshelf in just 10 books! More on that below.

Jessica Jones is a modern Marvel success story – a character launched in an anything goes, adults-only comic in 2001 when Marvel was crawling out of their bankruptcy years who stuck around and is now at the forefront of their Netflix television offerings and back with a new solo series this month.

And, like a massive amount of Marvel’s 2000s successes, it’s all because of Brian Bendis.

Brian Bendis invented Jessica Jones from the spaces between superhero stories. It imagined what happened to the heroes who weren’t quite heroic enough, and dropped out of the business. What would these more marginally-powered people do for a living? And what would they do when their paths occasionally crossed with the more heroic.

There were so many connections to the history of the Marvel Universe in Jessica Jones’s original series, Alias, that when I read it for the first time a few years ago it sent me digging through my back issues.

Had there really been a hero called Jewel who was briefly in The Avengers? Was Jones née Campbell really a classmate of Peter Parker’s in early Spider-Man stories? Was she really Ms. Marvel’s best friend?

new-avengers-2010-008 While the official answer is “no,” Bendis definitely did his homework in finding moments that could suggest that Jessica existed in the past. He also lent more credence to his creation by combined her with actual marginal heroes like Luke Cage and Spider-Woman, who hadn’t been put to good use for a few years and made perfect sense kicking around beneath notice with Jessica Jones.

(Yes, we also probably wouldn’t have Luke Cage on Netflix without Bendis’s influence. Little did we know he had them both earmarked for his future run on Avengers. It’s wild to think about it!)

Jessica Jones’s Netflix series picks up some plot points verbatim from Alias, but by fast forwarding to a confrontation with Purple Man it skips letting Jessica live with all the character flaws Killgrave left in his wake. Alias plays these beats for two years of single issues. Jessica is depressed and without direction, a hard-drinking nymphomaniac who can’t quite hide how much she cares about others even as she is bent on self-destruction.

It’s hard to say where the show will go without the specter of Killgrave haunting Jessica’s every move the way it did in the comic. That’s not only because it can’t crib as directly from Alias, but because after Jessica Jones transforms into a do-gooding, domestic figure who is often played shrilly against Luke Cage for easy laughs by Bendis in his run on New Avengers.

2017 will be an interesting year for Jessica Jones. Will a new Jessica Jones solo series recapture Alias’s magic? Will her TV show find interesting material having already burned through her single defining story?

I can’t wait to find out. In the meantime, you can catch up on everything that came before with The Definitive Guide to Jessica Jones. Or, if you’re newer to Jessica Jones in a comic form, you can capture all of her significant issues in just 10 easy-to-find volumes. [Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s Jessica Jones

35-for-35: 1994 – “Closer” by Nine In Nails

November 13, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]There are a lot of amazing songs from 1994, but come on. There is only one choice.

No, not “Black Hole Sun.” Or “Stay (I Missed You).” The other one.

“Closer” is a perfect song.

It would be amazing even without the f-bomb chorus and the deeply unsettling video, because it shows Trent Reznor in the height of his early powers. He effortlessly fuzed industrial rock with funk influences in a song that is always building, never retreating.

nine-inch-nails-closer (Yes, funk – go and listen to the synth bass on verse and tell me that’s not influenced by funk. It’s a totally 70s bassline. Then close your eyes and let your booty shake to that chorus and try to tell me this isn’t a totally queer disco cut.)

It starts as simple as possible – kick and snare – though the kick is muffled so it sounds like the heartbeat coming from within your chest while the snare sounds like the sudden exhalation of air. It goes on uncomfortably long – 20 seconds, with no interruption.

Finally, just when the tension is getting to be to much, three new elements appear: the funk bassline, a 16th note ticking of a clock, and Trent’s soothing, almost too-pretty baritone voice singing “you let me violate you.” He sounds so close to us. Not only can we hear his inhales, but the messy little tatters of air that slip out at the end of his words.

Again, just as it’s getting almost too personal having Reznor slinking that far into your ear, more elements are piled on top – a sighing duo of Trents singing “help me” with sour harmony and a hi-hat riding every upbeat. Altogether it feels like a strange parade, and that’s before the debauched thrum of bass and spiral of synth that springs up beneath the guttural “I want to fuck you like an animal” that announces the chorus.

And then, another layer – what sounds like a pounded harpsichord plus the sci-fi warble of a theremin. They in turn are joined by the reemergence of the hi hat ride and a vibrating synthesizer that rises with the harpsichord, oozing into the cracks of its hammered strings. Trent is not so handsome-sounding now. trent-reznor-1994 He sounds desperate. Not desperate to fuck – just desperate for anything he can get, and he’ll offer everything he has – all the good and bad:

You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything

The second chorus sounds the same, or at least you think so given the cacophony that now surrounds Reznor’s voice, but there is another element – an overblown low flute which occasionally rings dissonantly against the other elements. Finally, the bridge brings some relief, one chance to breathe, stripping everything away except the vibrating synthesizer, the heartbeat-exhale one-two of the drums, and a nasty synth bass hit. But, crawling from the depths of that comes a burning electric guitar, more synthesizers, obscured voices, and random stabs of brutal electronic noise, all heaving and panting towards a climax, that rising harpsichord with the synth entwined, the signature synthesizer, and finally the great chiming descending riff – really, the first riff that has done anything but climb the entire song.

Then, just as hard as it was pressed up against you, it’s all gone, leaving just a warbly electronic piano on its wake and you catching your breath.

And that says nothing of the masterful Mark Romanek video, which can speak for itself. It’s held by many as the best music video of all time. In fact, Reznor himself once said, “The rarest of things occurred: where the song sounded better to me, seeing it with the video. And it’s my song.” Its creepy vibe has always felt inextricably tied to the disturbing imagery in David Fincher’s Se7en, released the following year.

There was a certain adolescent glee in pumping this song up on the radio, even with its omitted carnal word, but I think we all understood: it’s not a song about sex. It’s a song about sex being something you hope you’ll be able to feel. Even a horny teenager can understand the difference, because they know they biologically want and need both.

“Closer” is a perfect song.

Children’s Book Review: The Incredible Book Eating Boy & A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers

November 12, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]At this point I think we can fairly say that EV devours books.

As a kid who only knows the TV as something she gets to enjoy once a week, her version of on-demand entertainment is demanding E or I to sit on the couch with her for two hours or more each day reading books. We have to have several dozen books in the rotation at any given time lest she latch on to one too strongly and drive us completely out of our minds.

EV loves reading so much that she now appreciates reading books about reading. Two of her favorites of late are The Incredible Book Eating Boy (yes, really, no hyphen) and A Child of Books, both by Oliver Jeffers.

One is a favorite snack, while the other is just empty calories.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy & A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers

The Incredible Book Eating Boy: CK Says: – Read it

Read Time: 5-8 minutes
Gender Diversity: Male protagonist, all speaking characters male, female background characters
Ethnic Diversity: all white
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): atlases, monumental, ejecting, digest, embarrassing
Themes To Discuss: importance of reading, moderation, overeating, intellect, working hard vs. easy solutions, libraries (& library fines)

A Child of Books: CK Says: – Skip it

Read Time: <5 minutes
Gender Diversity: Female protagonist leading a male protagonist
Ethnic Diversity: colorless (and could reasonably be non-white based on features)
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): imagination, make-believe, invention
Themes To Discuss: power of imagination

Oliver Jeffers cares about the power of stories. Not just their ability to occupy and transport us, but their ability to sustain us and help us weave the reality with which we surround ourselves. In his books, words and even letters have magical, tangible powers.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy is a literal take on how books can nurture us. In it, young Henry (who bears a passing resemblance to Doug of NickToons fame) is reading a book while licking a popsicle and gets his hands crossed, leading him to munch on a tome. It’s not half-bad, and he discovers that in addition to filling his stomach with sustenance they also instantly fill his brain with knowledge.

Books aren’t too much more expensive than groceries, so Henry’s dad doesn’t mind his new habit at first. Henry delights in every genre of book, but he likes red ones the best. It’s only when his ambition to become the smartest person in the world leads him to get overfull of books and his speech turns to nonsense that they get concerned. Plus, they’re faced with a tremendous library bill! Henry has to wean himself back onto broccoli, but he’ll always enjoy a much of a hardcover from time to time – as evidenced by the die-cut bite-marks on the back of the book!

The Incredible Book Eating Boy is my favorite kind of whimsical book for kids. It’s silly without being about breaking rules or lying – the fantasy of its silliness is perfectly clear. Despite being relatively sparse on words, it tells a rich, involving story via its illustrations. There’s enough there to significantly embellish the story, if you have a little one that allows you to go off-script. [Read more…] about Children’s Book Review: The Incredible Book Eating Boy & A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #9, 25, & 10

November 12, 2016 by krisis

We’re finally here! It’s the issue of Stormwatch that inspired this month of blogging even though I had never read it before.

With “Images of Tomorrow,” Stormwatch #25 leapt one year into the future to show the dark timeline that awaited the team …but I’m already getting ahead of myself. First, we have to read issue #9, with H. K. Proger on script and Ryan Benjamin penciling.

The issue makes the unusual move of giving us a second story in a row with a point-of-view character outside of our main cast. This time it is Sunburst, one of the members of Stormwatch Prime rescued from Gamorra in #6-7.

stormwatch_v1_025_cover The story is a “race to defuse the bomb” tale that gives us some backstory on Sunburst as well as context for his relationships with his teammates Nautika and Flashpoint. However, that was just a red herring (both for Sunburst and for us as readers), as at the end we learn the point of the story was for Defile to finally crack Sunburst’s psyche after he proved unbreakable during his captivity.

This would seem like a minor fill-in issue on its own, but paired with the portents of #25 it takes on considerably more foreboding.

Steven T. Seagle randomly steps in on scripting duties on #25, but he’s abetted by Scott Clark on his Stormwatch swan song after penciling six of the first eight issues. Between Seagle’s script, Clark’s slightly perverted character designs, and the darkness of the tale, the book is fantastic.

Every page carries a chilling new reveal that you’d typically expect from a “What If?” tale, except this one professes that it’s really going to happen! If I had sat down to read it at the time I would have never dropped this book.

Silver Surfer scripter Ron Marz takes the title over with #10 for a run through #24. While I was a little peeved to lose Brandon Choi on his best title, Marz quickly made me forget my annoyance. You can feel his expertise lock in immediately with the dreadful pall that hangs over Battalion’s narration, and the nuanced descriptions of his teammates doubling as introductions we’re getting for the first time.

Marz is re-teamed with his Stormwatch Special collaborator Dwayne Turner, who does a much better job drawing a solid, dour version team of the team this time around. Maybe that’s because Marz gives him so much more room to breath than in the rushed pace of the Special. Each member gets their own spread to show off their abilities as he explains their histories.

It was a brilliant move to turn this Avengers-style procedural drama about policing the globe into a towering tragedy via glimpsing the horror of a future that cannot be prevented it. It elevates Battalion – already a great character – to the position of being WildStorm’s own tragic Hamlet. And, we the reader are left dreading every page turn for what it might reveal about Battalion and Diva’s fate.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of these two teams going head to head. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we get to one of my favorite runs of this entire era – Gen 13’s original mini-series! Will it hold up to re-read 20 years after my last time paging through? I can’t wait to find out.

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#9-10 & 25) or Amazon (#9, 25, 10). Since further Stormwatch series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the images in this post. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #9, 25, & 10

35-for-35: 1993 – Rid of Me by PJ Harvey

November 12, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]This is where the choices are going to get really painful for me. I have a dozen favorite songs from 1993, at least.

Ace of Base’s “The Sign” and how it marked the end of my pop music fandom for the better part of a decade. Janet’s genre-bending “If” full of sex and squalling guitars. “River of Dreams” and the one time I could connect with my father over a piece of current music. Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club, a front to back listenable record that is so obviously the work of a collective of songwriters rather than a singular voice.

Juliana Hatfield, Liz Phair… I can keep going.

But, if we are going to talk about songs that really changed my whole damn life, we need to be talking about Polly Jean Harvey’s breakthrough album, Rid of Me.

All of it.

I didn’t come around to Harvey until a few years after Rid of Me, when I saw Tracy Bonham cover her “50ft Queenie.” Being a voracious consumer of female-vocal rock, it didn’t take much to convince me to head down to Borders to pick up the album that contained the original.

I was not prepared for what I heard. Rid of Me is a powerful and at-times terrifying album. This had all the rawness of Hole but the measured perfection of Tori Amos. It had guttural strength that stood up to anything on In Utero and spectral power that made it seem like a spiritual sister to Bjork’s Debut. While many fans and critics prefer her To Bring You My Love, the raw power of Steve Albini-produced Rid of Me remains her seminal work in this household.

I can’t pick just one song to highlight, so let’s just talk about half the record.

“Missed” never fails to stun me. It’s a lost track from Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary’s lament to a lost Jesus kept away in a tomb after Mary Magdelene insisting “Everything’s Alright.” It’s beautiful – takes my breath away on every play even after listening to it for 20 years.

The biblical theme continues on Bob Dylan’s famous “Highway ’61 Revisited,” the title track of his 1965 record.

Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

Who on their second album decides to take a mid-record break to cover Dylan’s strutting country-rock paean to the famous road as a squalling, foreboding rock song? The Dylan original and faithful covers sound trite next to this muscular, paranoid version. The surging power chords, the surprisingly nuanced drumming, the jangling single note riff.

I’ve always felt this ought to be the credits tune to an adaptation of The Stand, with its depiction of God sparing Abraham’s son at the start to a roving gambler trying to start the next world war just to see if god would stop him in the final stanza. [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1993 – Rid of Me by PJ Harvey