Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Collected Editions

This week in comic book collected editions & graphic novels – March 22, 2017

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It’s another week of comic collected editions – both gathered single issues and original graphic novels.

So, what’s out this week? It’s not an easy question to answer. While DC and Marvel keep a relatively consistent schedule, other publishers aren’t as consistent – in fact, this week we have a pair of books originally professed to be out a month ago!

This post covers all of the collections out this week, explains what they are and what they contain, and provides easy links to Amazon, where you can either buy them or at least get more helpful info like their prices and ISBNs.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

None of the major label releases this week are particularly interesting to me (unless, of course, you’ve been waiting with baited-breath for some Bronze Age Justice League!).

However, one that caught my eye was The Interview by Manuele Fior from Fantagraphics, thanks to this description:

Set in 2048, The Interview is a science fiction novel from the author of 5,000 km Per Second that eschews outer space for inner space. It is a moving story about the passage of time, the commonalities and differences between generations, and on our changing society. “I tried to imagine the near future,” says the author, “where not everything is negative and catastrophic, where the end of the world does not come with a violent apocalypse, but rather an intimate and familiar context of daily life that keeps flowing.”

What else is out this week? Keep reading to find out! [Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions & graphic novels – March 22, 2017

Conan The Barbarian: Marvel’s Most Well-Collected Hero (really!)

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Today I bring you a first for Crushing Comics – a guide to a licensed character who has lived with two different publishers over the course of his nearly 5o-year comics career: The Definitive Conan Comics Collecting Guide and Reading Order!

Created with the support of Patrons!

In fact, I’d say that Conan might be Marvel’s best-collected hero of all time – better than X-Men and Spider-Man! More on that, below.

I’ve always been fascinated with Conan, starting from catching scenes from Arnold’s 1982 film on my parent’s TV as a kid and a tattered old copy of Conan The Barbarian #62 I somehow inherited straight through my first attempt at penning new releases posts in 2015.

It was in researching that post that I became obsessed with how deep Conan’s reprinted archives were – Dark Horse had issued dozens of paperbacks covering his entire primary run at Marvel as well collections covering over 100 issues in the new Dark Horse continuity.

Conan-the-Barbarian-1970-0062

Possibly my first comic book ever! I still have the tattered copy in my attic as a keepsake.

As I said then, “[N]ow I kind of want to read Conan. This is how it happens.” I’m a sucker for long runs, and an even bigger sucker for coherent collected shelves.

While I’ve managed to avoid the siren call of collecting these dozens of books, I couldn’t resist trying to untangle the various releases.

Marvel held Conan license from 1970 to 2000 and produced several distinct continuities of Conan in that period – including 23 years of Barbarian (the majority written by Roy Thomas) plus a magazine called The Savage Sword of Conan and King Conan, a title with stories of the more mature hero.

Marvel rebooted Conan in 1994 before Dark Horse acquired the rights (which included rights to reprint Marvel’s stories!). Then, in 2003, Dark Horse launched their own Conan continuity, originally written by Kurt Busiek and hewing very closely to the original Robert E. Howard stories.

Dark Horse’s Conan has run through s sequence of titles ranging from 12 to 50 issues in length, starting with plain old Conan, followed by Conan The Cimmerian – even though that’s actually a befitting title for an initial volume considering it’s how Robert E. Howard originally described him:

Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.”

Between the two publishers, they’ve printed over 850 original Conan comics across multiple continuities and timelines – which definitely merits some guidance when it comes to collecting, especially seeing as some volumes have nearly the same names as each other! And so my Guide to Conan was born.

Just how collected are those Conan issues? Would you believe over 90% of them are available in a modern collected edition from 2003 and forward? Keep reading to learn how it breaks down.

[Read more…] about Conan The Barbarian: Marvel’s Most Well-Collected Hero (really!)

This week in comic book collected editions & graphic novels – March 15, 2017

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Whether or not you are a comic book die-hard, shouldn’t it be an easy thing to say, “Hey, what comic book collected editions are out this Wednesday? Is there a list? Do you think I would like any of them?”

I think it should by easy. And it… kind of is? Previews Magazine has all of the solicits listed, but you can’t actually buy anything from it unless you’ve ordered months in advance through a direct market comic shop. Otherwise, you’re just window-shopping, without even ISBN numbers to guide you.

Plus, the schedule can change literally up until the last day before release. Plus, each publisher releases books at different intervals to the mass market – Dark Horse has some books out this week, DC’s are all next week, and Marvel two weeks from now.

No wonder there’s no easy-to-consume list and relatively few blogs covering the entirety of it.

Luckily, you have this massively obsessed human being to help you out with that. This post covers all of the collections out this week, explains what they are and what they contain, and provides easy links to Amazon, where you can either buy them or at least get more helpful info like their prices and ISBNs.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

I’ve got two picks this week, and you might be a little bit shocked to learn that neither of them are superheroes!

Different people in different parts of the world have different ideas of what constitutes a “graphic novel.”

In the US we tend to think of them as collections of individual comics, or less often as singular works like Maus or John Lewis’s March. In Europe, they are “graphic albums” of original work. In Japan, they might be a single Manga book or a massive omnibus.

No matter the definition, just as Will Eisner’s historic work helped to define the comic medium in the 40s, so did his graphic novel A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories literally coined the term “graphic novel” in the US when it was released, partially due to Eisner’s wish that his work be marketed to traditional book shops rather than newsstands and the direct market.

A new volume, Will Eisner’s Contract With God Other Tenement Stories hardcover, collects this work with newly-scanned art and a introduction by comic storyteller and academic Scott McCloud.

It is a collection of four grounded, philosophical, and frankly sexual stories from the same tenement building in Brooklyn, occupied by Jewish-American immigrants and first generation citizens.

Also, the collector in me can’t help but highlight The Chronicles of Conan Volume 34: Betrayal in Zamora and Other Stories. That’s right, Volume Thirty Four. It’s the final Dark Horse volume collecting Marvel’s 25-year run on Conan the Barbarian,

To celebrate it’s release, I crafted my very own Guide to Conan to help you find the 33 other volumes (and what they contain).

And now, onto the full list of books! [Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions & graphic novels – March 15, 2017

The Complete Guide to DC Universe Events – every event in reading order!

A comprehensive guide to line-wide DC Events – including story overviews, characters, issue lists, and how they can be read via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperbacks. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics.

Crisis.

It’s a word inextricably linked with DC Comics ever since their landmark 1985 series Crisis on Infinite Earths, the birth over three decades of sprawling, line-wide events that often keep the promise that “nothing will ever be the same.”

That’s because the biggest of DC’s big events are borne out of necessity. They often are charged with a very practical storytelling goal.

Most fans know that Crisis merged myriad competing versions of heroes and continuity down to a single set by its end in 1986, resulting in historic relaunches of Wonder Woman and Superman and the landmark Batman: Year One story. What many don’t realize is that it also brought characters whose rights DC acquired into the fold – such as Blue Beetle and The Question.

Despite Marvel beating DC to the “special event” punch with 1984’s Secret Wars, Crisis’s scope was something altogether different. It touched every ongoing title, all of which coordinated back to the spine of the event series.

After the mega success of the epic Crisis, DC produced slightly more mortal-sized events in the late 80s and early 90s, including two of the biggest direct crossovers ever executed in comics – The Death of Superman and Batman: Knightfall.

They were back to their timeline-shaking shenanigans with Zero Hour in 1994, and again in the 2000s with Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint, Convergence, and Rebirth – all while innovating with the idea of weekly-series unfolding in near real-time with Trinity, 52, Countdown, and Brightest Day.Infinite Crisis 0001 - textless

While a casual fan might look at these universe-redefining events and assume something to be very broken about the DC Universe’s mode of storytelling, over the years they have proven to be a sign of its resilience.

DC has never made the same promise as Marvel – that every story in a main title is permanently in-continuity. DC phases story concepts in and out of canon when its convenient, and in the process maintains their iconic characters and creates bigger, more sensational events that aren’t weighed down by the accumulated drag of permanent continuity.

They’re also not afraid to experiment with alternate versions of characters and newly licensed universes that – if successful – get folded into the main narrative. (They’ve done it with characters from Charleston, Milestone, and Wildstorm.) [Read more…] about The Complete Guide to DC Universe Events – every event in reading order!

This week in comic book collected editions – March 8, 2017

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For a number of arcane reasons, it’s hard to say, “These are the new comic collections out this week!”

Out where? Mass market booksellers like shops and Amazon get comic collections at a different time than comic stores do, and that lag differs from publisher to publisher.

What’s out? Not every publisher is as big or as consistent as DC and Marvel. The release list shifts day-to-day in the final week before they hit the shelves, so that you have to check the Preview Mag website on a Saturday to see what definitely hit the trucks.

Ah, but here’s the important question: Why care?

First, because single issue AKA “floppy” comics are a pain to keep up with and to keep. It’s way easier and more satisfying to buy complete stories.

But, more importantly – some of these comics are really good stories.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

DC’s Rebirth initiative has generated a lot of hype for major heroes like Wonder Woman and Superman, but some of the below-the-fold titles are generating the most buzz amongst fans.

One of those has been Deathstroke, by beloved author Christopher Priest – who was also responsible for the definitive run on Black Panther. Deathstroke Vol. 1: The Professional is the first volume of his reboot and from what I’ve heard it’s great. If you’ve never read Deathstroke before, he’s the totally serious and merciless assassin that Deadpool has parodied to much greater success.

And now, onto the full list of books!

[Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions – March 8, 2017