Crushing Krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 1 – “Rate-a-Queen” Power Rankings

January 7, 2024 by krisis 1 Comment

RuPaul’s Drag Race is back with the first episode of Season 16, Rate-A-Queen – complete with an MTV Spring Break Talent show and a “RuVeal Yourself” runway! When I saw the episode title I couldn’t resist making my return to do the same thing, rating and power ranking the amazing drag artists featured on the show!

Drag Race officially got out of control in 2023, with more franchises than I could even keep up with! In addition to the US flagship and its All Stars edition, in 2023 there was also UK, Canada, Down Under, España, France, Philippines, Belgique, Sverige, Germany, Mexico, & Brazil – plus Queen of the Universe. That’s over a dozen winners in a single year!

All but two of those franchises are expected to return in 2024 (sorry Sverige and Queen of the Universe), plus we have another season of UK vs. The World incoming, a new España All-Stars, the return of Drag Race Thailand, and another new Ru-hosted series.

There isn’t even enough time in my day to watch all of these incredible drag artists from around the world, let alone rank and recap them all! But, when it comes to meeting the new American queens and watching them battle to be America’s Next Drag Superstar, I can always find a little time in my schedule.

With so many drag artist finding their way onto our screens every year, it’s starting to feel like Drag Race has become a game of archetypes. As a dozen dozen queens walk through the workroom doors each year, it’s more important than every to have a defined brand without being stuck in a box.

A successful drag artist needs to know the mold they fit into best and also must understand how to shatter the weight of those expectations. Looking at this past year of winners, we’ve had beauty queens who can do it all, dancers who are funny, and experienced showgirls with a youthful attitude.

This week we had the first part of a split premiere, with seven queens showing off their entrance looks, talent show, and a “Ruveal Yourself” runway before doing their own power rankings with a special Rate-a-Queen gimmick. How did they stack up? Keep reading for my totally personal, totally subjective power rankings of this first half of the cast.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

Guide to What If? (New for Patrons!)

January 3, 2024 by krisis Leave a Comment

New Year, New Comic Guides! In 2023 I launched a massive 33 new comic collecting guides and reading orders exclusively to Patrons of Crushing Krisis, released 11 guides to the public, plus updated dozens of existing guides to Marvel, DC, & Indie Comics. What if I beat those numbers in 2024? That’s a reality I want to live in, and it’s also the titular question of today’s brand new guide for CK Patrons: Guide to What If?

Guide to What If?

Creating a What If? Guide is a different kind of project than my typical comic reading orders. That’s because What If? doesn’t have an order – and it hasn’t had a single ongoing series for over 25 years!

What If? was Marvel’s original way of exploring alternative realities, as narrated by The Watcher. It debuted in 1977, with each issue asking a “What If…” question that altered one essential building block of the Marvel Universe. What if Spider-Man Joined The Fantastic Four? What if Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? What If Phoenix Had Not Died? What if Spider-Man’s Clone Lived? What if Conan the Barbarian Were Stranded in the 20th Century?

Of course, we’ve seen all five of those What Ifs come to pass in the decades since the original series launched, and many more of the questions posed by the original series. What were seen as immutable building blocks of the Marvel Universe in 1977 became fun and sometimes shocking story beats in the 90s and beyond. [Read more…] about Guide to What If? (New for Patrons!)

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 3, 2024

January 2, 2024 by krisis Leave a Comment

It’s the first new comic book day of the new year! This post covers Marvel Comics January 3 2024 releases.

This week in Marvel Comics: a hidden X-Men omnibus, two of the best issues of Fantastic Four of all time, a new Venom, and more!

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

Marvel Comics January 3 2024 Collected Editions

Black Panther by Eve Ewing: Reign at Dusk, Vol. 1
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948832 / digital)
See Guide to Black Panther. This is the first collection of Ewing’s 2023 Black Panther relaunch. This finds T’Challa stalking the streets of a Wakandan city that is analogous to NYC rather than some future utopia. That allows Ewing to focus on the community and culture of Wakanda more than superhero action. That might prove to be too dense or slow a read for some fans, but for fans of the Ta-Nehisi Coates run who were left wanting to see more of Wakanda outside of the capital, this will hit the spot.

Clobberin’ Time
(2024 paperback, ISBN 978-1302934668 / digital)
The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing has been experiencing a real resurgence the past few years, including this series written and illustrated by Steve Skroce. It feels like Thing spent most of the 2010s being somewhat uncool and under-utilized, only really featured prominently by Brian Bendis in Guardians of the Galaxy. However, he got the most attention of the entire team in Dan Slott’s Fantastic Four run – not a surprise, since Slott has written him in the past. And now he is often the centerpiece of Ryan North’s F4 run, and he gets his own adventure here from Skroce, ho has an outstanding talent for toeing the line between the heartfelt and the profane (as seen in on of my all-time favorites, Maestros).

Daredevil by Mark Waid & Chris Samnee Omnibus, Vol. 2
(2024 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302952808 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. This is a new printing of the tome that collects the back half of the Waid/Samnee run. While the run is delightful overall and this is self-contained enough to be enjoyed without the first volume, I think this second bit isn’t quite as strong as the first bit. You might as well start at the start.

Fantastic Four by Ryan North Vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302934927 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four. I just caught up on this run last week for the April solicits show on Near Mint Condition, and issues #10-11 are two of my favorite Fantastic Four issues of all time. Ryan North is turning in an all-time great run on this title in one- and two-issue installments. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – January 3, 2024

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – September 20, 2023

September 19, 2023 by krisis

It’s time to take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics September 20 2023 releases.

Plus, I’m getting close to caught up on reading all of the Marvel Universe – so I have some commentary on some of the single issues and new collections.

Marvel Comics September 20 2023 Collected Editions

The Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 22: Round Robin
(2015 paperback, ISBN 978-0785192688 / 2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950545 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (1963-2018). I’ve just updated all of the Amazing Epic Collections on the guide and I was shocked at how many of them have been back to print in the past three lines. Even Epics of relatively insignificant runs! Marvel has truly found a way to create a Manga-Style, well-organized, evergreen line of their entire comics history and we love to see it.

The Avengers Omnibus Vol. 4
(2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953621 / digital)
See the freshly rebuilt Guide to Avengers (1963-1996)! This is the last of the four reprints in addition to a brand new Volume 5 out this month. We love to see this line advancing without new Avengers movies on the big screen, which used to be the only way it got a new volume.

Bloodline: Daughter of Blade
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302924423 / digital)
See Guide to Blade. This series has an awkward history – originally it was meant to be launched by Tim Seeley several years ago, and then it was shelved and seemingly lost before it was revived (and revised) by Danny Lore. Unfortunately, this just didn’t hold together for me. It wasn’t Lore’s fault – I think the artist had trouble keeping up with a story that repeatedly mixed casual scenes with action scenes. The discontinuity of storytelling in the art eventually wore me down.

Captain Marvel: The Saga of Carol Danvers
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951818 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers. This is a peculiar trade that’s more of a sampler for the movie crowd then a trade for a consistent bookshelf. It collects the opening eights issues of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s 2012 Carol Danvers series (which includes a great pair of issues where she meets up with Monica Rambeau) as well as the origin-redefining The Life of Captain Marvel (2018), which brought her comic origins more in line with the MCU (booo!).

New for Patrons: Guide to Monica Rambeau – Photon, Spectrum, & Captain Marvel

September 18, 2023 by krisis

This week I’m back with a new guide for all Patrons of CK to spotlight a character who used to be just a footnote in another guide! She has been known by many names at Marvel, but ever since she was created by Roger Stern 41 years ago she has never quite disappeared from sight. Now, in 2023, she’s poised to have her biggest year ever thanks to this Novembers The Marvels. That’s right, it’s her time to shine: Guide to Monica Rambeau – Photon, Spectrum, & Captain Marvel.

Guide to Monica Rambeau – Photon, Spectrum, & Captain Marvel.

I adore Monica Rambeau and get excited every time she shows up on the page. Yet, I really hadn’t read her at all before I encountered her in a guest appearance in Captain Marvel (2012) #7-8 to argue with Carol over who should use the Captain Marvel name!

That’s because all of Monica’s past appearances – as Captain Marvel, Photon, and Spectrum – fell curiously between my prime reading years. I always knew that Monica Rambeau was a creation of Roger Stern’s for his run in Avengers, but those weren’t the back-issues I was tracking down in my X-crazed 90s collecting years, and she was mostly absent from comics the entire time I was collecting save a handful of solo stories. Then, I totally missed out on her 2006-2010 resurgence when I came back to reading in 2010!

I thought I’ve picked up a lot from context over the past 13 years of reading, but now that I’ve been through every single Monica Rambeau appearance I realize just how much I was missing – which makes me even happier to have created this guide.