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Crushing Comics: The Unwrapping – End Credits

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My five-month collected editions unwrapping odyssey (which is really part of a larger eight-month packing to move around the world odyssey) has finally come to a close!

To celebrate the end of this first Crushing Comics video series, I present to you my final bookshelf – or, at least, the process of getting there. Plus, I get to do something I’ve wanted to do my entire life – create a set of scrolling end credits (complete with a soundtrack thanks to Arcati Crisis) to thank everyone who supported me as I created this series!

Crushing Comics S01E085 – Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, & Laura Martin

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In today’s episode I unwrap my final omnibus, which (as many of you have likely surmised through a process of elimination) is Astonishing X-Men. I use this famously self-contained, blockbuster run as an opportunity to muse on getting back into comics and the surprisingly limited scope of the comic book market.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 85 features the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus, covered in the Guide to Astonishing & Amazing X-Men.

(Yes, I skipped posting Episode 84 – it was just a episode prompting folks to guess the final omnibus.)

Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

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I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

Crushing Comics S01E82 – X-Men: Schism, the beginning of the end of the X-Men franchise

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In this episode I finally encounter X-Men: Schism, which marks the beginning of the end of the X-Men franchise for me. It’s accompanied in this comic book bundle but two other horsemen of the X-Men’s apocalypse – X-Sanction and Brian Bendis’s Avengers Assemble.

Are you ready for my unleashed x-fan rage?!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 82 features X-Men Schism, Avengers Assemble by Brian Bendis, and X-Sanction.

Crushing Comics S01E081 – How X-Men: Second Coming brought me back to comics

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In the second of three episodes focused on unwrapping a massive brick of oversized X-Men comics, I reminisce about Second Coming – the storyline that tempted me back to reading comics in general and modern X-Men in specific (as discussed back in 2010).

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 81 features X-Men: Second Coming and X-Men: Second Coming – Revelations, both covered in my Guide to Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen.

Crushing Comics S01E079 – childhood scares, Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu, Heartbreak Quadrant, & more!

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Get ready – this is my longest and most content-packed video to date!

I begin by recalling what used to scare me as a kid as I unwrap one of the first books I packed back in the states – Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Volume 2. I unwrap the book from its cellophane and page through live on camera.

This leads me on a lengthy tangent about professional printing processes, including how press sheets word and why expensive books still have printing errors.

Finally, perhaps not realizing how long the episode had already become, I decide to open a random packet of extra books – Image Comics: The Road To Independence, Barrett Stanley’s Heartbreak Quadrant, and the only hard copy version of my novel that exists!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 79 features Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 2 (covered in my Guide to Shang-Chi), Image – The Road to Independence, Heartbreak Quadrant, and Krisis.