Crushing Krisis

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

April 5, 2023 by krisis

Let’s take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 5 2023 releases.

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 Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 5 2023 Collected Editions

This is a slim week for new collected editions – there’s just four books out, and one is a reprint!

Adam Warlock Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949877 / digital)
See Guide to Adam Warlock. This collects Warlock’s full Silver & Bronze Age Warlock saga all in one place for the first time, from his debut as “Him” in the pages of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four to Jim Starlin’s psychedelic late-70s space epic! You can read this and continue directly to Infinity Gauntlet.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Volume 3: The Coming of Galactus
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950415 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four. This is the third time this particular Epic has been back to print. That speaks not only to the fact that it’s one of the Marvel’s most-significant stories of all time, but also speaks to the ongoing success of the Epic Collection line as we head into its second decade. It’s doing exactly the thing it’s meant to do – getting books all into the same format and reprinting them whenever necessary!

Marvel-Verse: Guardians of the Galaxy (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302950705 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This collects a smattering of stand-alone Guardians stories from the middle of Bendis’s run through the beginning of Duggan’s run, including one previously uncollected issue – Guardians of the Galaxy: Dream On (2017) #1. A decent, if scant, sampler platter if you’re averse to sampling digitally on Marvel Unlimited – but it’s hard to take it seriously without any material from the 2008 series.

Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950712 / digital)
See Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill. This is the collection if you want to grab Star-Lords earliest set of continuity stories in the Marvel Universe. I say “continuity” stories because the character of Peter Quill as Star-Lord first debuted in the 1970s, but all of his early adventures have been since rendered as occurring in a separate reality due to some unresolvable time travel shenanigans. That means when Quill pops up in the 2003 Thanos ongoing series, it’s technically his first appearance (though, making things even more confusing, at the time he was assumed to still be the same character as that 1970s version). All of this and more is explained in my guide!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 5 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 5 – “The Dragodi Festival” Review & Power Ranking

April 4, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fifth episode of Drag Race Sverige (AKA Drag Race Sweden) Season 1 – “The Dragodi Festival.” It’s a Girl Groups challenge in the form of a Eurovision qualifying round, with a reveals-on-reveals runway theme.

This season of RuPaul’s Drag Race featured one of the most-obvious frontrunners of all time in Sasha Colby, but it still felt competitive and fun. Even if Sasha is the obvious winner, we still got to see some other high-achieving queens do well for themselves. The show never cut Sasha any slack and made sure to bring the fiercest-of-the-fierce competition to the finale.

Don’t worry, you’re reading the right post: this is about Drag Race Sverige! However, I bring up Sasha and her winning run because production’s hand in steering a Sasha-friendly outcome could not often be felt. That’s not the case here on Sverige, which seems to be doing anything within its power to produce a result that honors the local drag legends over edgy upstarts or newer queens.

I don’t know how else to explain the totally nonsensical judging of the past few episodes. There’s making each episode count on its own, and then there’s totally ignoring the challenge and runway criteria to produce the result that favors your slightly-boring designated frontrunner.

Last episode, Imaa Queen had one of the worst three Snatch Game performances but one of the best runways, and was sent to lip sync. That makes sense – even the best runway cannot save you from a bad challenge performance! Yet, tonight the best runway saved one of the worst challenge performances, and another weak challenge performance with a weak runway was saved from lip syncing.

The chaotic judging means we’ve lost the two most-revolutionary queens in a row, leaving us with three competent but slightly-dull showgirls as front-runners and a pair of younger queens who lack the nerve (and style) to win the season. To be fair, two of those top three were my top picks at the start of the season, and the third I said could surprise us if her drag wasn’t too boring.

As it turns out, slightly-boring drag might be exactly what this season is looking for. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit cruel. What I mean is that the judging might be telling us something about Sweden’s drag culture that promo photo shoots and social media can’t. It feels like Sverige is very focused on longevity. It has paid homage to classics and idols, both in how it addresses its queens and in the way it has treated its guest judges. Perhaps as a first season in a drag season with a clear divide between traditional showgirls and punk queens there was never any way for the latter to defeat the former.

What does that mean for our Power Rankings? Who cares! Only one queen maintains her ranking compared to Snatch Game, but much like Snatch Game we’re playing a game where show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

(Want to watch Drag Race Sverige outside of Sweden? For most of the world, it’s available as part with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Läsare, start your engines. Och må den bästa Drag Queen vinna!

Patron’s Choice: Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire

April 3, 2023 by krisis

Indie Comics Month may be over, but I have a promise to fulfill to all Patrons of CK – their first ever indie Patron’s Choice guide! Out of 25 independent and licensed comics franchises in their February poll, my indefatigable Patrons have selected one of the newest extended universes in comics. It’s one that has proven to be a hit with fans and critics alike! Welcome to my Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire!

Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire!

Black Hammer is like a modern retake on Astro City by Kurt Busiek. Jeff Lemire imagines a city of iconic heroes struck from familiar, archetypal molds whose history spans from the Golden Age through the end of the Bronze Age and the transition to the modern era.

Yet, the most iconic of those heroes never make the transition to the modern era. That is the story of Black Hammer.
[Read more…] about Patron’s Choice: Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 7 – “Discour de Reine” public speaking challenge Review and Power Ranking

April 2, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – Discour de Reine, or “Queen’s Speech.” Each of the Top 4 had to deliver their own coronation speech as Belgium’s queen for a day, and then walk the runway wearing “Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute.“

A “public speaking but make it funny” challenge is one of those late-season episodes where the judging can be very subjective.

Here I felt that the opposite happened – the judging seemed the most level-headed it had been all season.

Part of that is that the queens easily self-selected into the perfect four roles for a semi-final episode: the overconfident queen who goes over time, the brainy queen finally hitting her mark, the queen who plays it to safe one too many times, and the anxious queen struggling to make herself heard.

The judges had to go by the stratification of the challenge itself, because the runway wasn’t much help. Everyone looked good, but the bigger problem was the judges themselves couldn’t seem to agree on what the theme meant! Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute is a seaside resort town, and the judges seemed to be split on if they were looking for the actual glamour of the region (which they felt was something more chic than eleganza) or just something glamourous that suggested the region with a nautical theme.

It seemed like that made the queens somewhat immune to hearing the tough runway critiques they’ve encountered earlier in the season, with Susan especially benefiting from the indecision. Ultimately that yielded an unsurprising lip sync, a fair result, and a Top 3 I’ve been rooting for since the pre-season. That means there is zero shake-up from last week’s makeover rankings as we head into the finale next week.

(Want to watch Drag Race Belgique outside of Belgium? For most of the world, it’s available as part with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 14 – “Blame It On The Edit” Review & Power Ranking

April 1, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourteenth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Blame It On The Edit.”

This is the final competitive episode of the season, with our top four queens writing a verse for RuPaul’s gaslighting anthem “Blame it on the Edit” and appearing in the music video inspired by Michael & Janet Jackson’s “Scream”! Plus, a “Drag Excellence” final runway and a final lip sync to reach the Top 3… or, so they claim.

I know many fans who don’t enjoy these semi-final RuMix episodes with their Tic Tac Chat interview segments.

I get it. There are typically no surprises in these episodes. No one is going to be allowed to fail spectacularly at the video at this point in the competition (and one queen nearly did tonight). Ru and Michelle are going to get exactly what they need for the edit from an interview segment, whether that’s a humanizing personal story or painting a queen to be bland and professional.

Yet, all of those reasons are part of why I often enjoy these episodes. Even if a queen is clearly not destined to win the season, we still get to see her living her dream at the top of the game of drag artistry. I know some folks watch this show for reality drama, but I’m here to see drag excellence – and semi-finals like this one tend to deliver.

Plus, it turns out this episode did have some surprises in store! A rightful challenge winner was paid dust, and what could have been an obvious cut to get down to a Top 3 was eschewed. That meant every queen swapped rankings compared to my power rankings from last week’s makeover challenge!

However, this also means that my Pre-Season predictions were nearly perfect. I clocked 3 out of the Top 4 queens based on their “Meet The Queens” interviews and social media presence, and the fourth finalist was my prediction for #6 – just two spots out of contention. Alas, Jax and Malaysia Babydoll Foxx did not come through for me in 4th and 5th place like I thought they would!

(But, seriously, I dare you to find anyone else who had both Anetra and Luxx in their top three in pre-season predictions without the benefit of spoilers. I am very proud of myself on that one.)

Next week’s episode is the cast Reunion, followed by the grand finale on April 14! That means this is my final power ranking of Season 15, although I will also be posting about both of those episodes. If you’re worried about running out of fresh Drag Race, never fear: Drag Race España Season 3 begins on April 16, and Drag Race All Stars Season 8 is due to follow within the next two months!

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