Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Collected Editions

This week in comic book collected editions – March 1, 2017

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Whether you’re a comics obsessee or a floppy books neophyte, parsing the new collected editions out each week is a chore.

Sure, a faithful fan can visit the Previews catalog to see what’s out, but it doesn’t always explain what each series should collect and why you ought to care.

And, why would (or: should) a new or dabbling fan have to know what a Previews catalog even is!

I want to help both the masters and the newbies find the books that interest them the most. Thus, this post.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

I think DC has the market cornered this week with two of their three scant releases – Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy and Zatanna by Paul Dini.

More on the Zatanna below. As for Lumberjanes: EV has been addicted to Lumberjanes ever since she turned three, to the point that she always has an invisible camper holding her hand when we cross a street. I’m not sure if Gotham Academy is similarly addictive, but this is probably a good buy for your early-grades comic fan – the most objectionable thing about Lumberjanes is generally how much time they spend hollering.

If you want to get started with Lumberjanes, Volume 1 is just okay, but the story begins to get interesting in Volume 2. For more on Gotham Academy collections, see Guide to Gotham or DC New 52.

And now, on to the books!

[Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions – March 1, 2017

This week in comic book collected editions – February 22, 2017

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The comic collected editions scheduled for release by major comic publishers on any given week are a surprisingly unknowable and subjective list, which is exactly why I’ve done my best to summarize them here in a single post for you.

Why is the release schedule of trade paperbacks, deluxe hardcovers, and omnibuses so unknowable when other new media releases like novels, films and DVDs, and music are so predictable?

Preview Magazine tells us what comic publishers have scheduled to release to the direct market as of three to six months out from publication dates. Yet, that the schedule frequently changes and is not updated in a uniform fashion (although Previews does continue to update it right through the last moment before releases are shipped).

Meanwhile, Mass market booksellers receive comic collections on a delay from the direct market, but the delay differs from publisher to publisher depending on their distribution arrangements. Marvel is consistently delayed two weeks, while Image can range anywhere from one week to over a month.

Yikes.

So what is the book list below? It’s based on a combination of the Previews catalog, Amazon listings adjusted for the common mass market delay, and a poll of the top comic selling websites. There’s no other place you can find a similarly curated list.

Publishers:

What are the must-read books this week?

There are a lot of good collections out this week, but just one is must-buy – and that’s not even due to my personal affinity for the character! Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Lies is the first Wonder Woman collection of the present-day story from her Rebirth comic, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Liam Sharp. Fans already loved Rucka from a mid-2000s WW run, and they’ve been raving about this one.

And now, on to the books! [Read more…] about This week in comic book collected editions – February 22, 2017

DC Comics Collected Editions Solicits – February 2017

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Here’s a look at the lineup of collected editions from DC Comics out in February 2017.

(Looking for Marvel’s February releases? I covered those previously.)

This month DC’s releases are split evenly between the final run of New 52 collections and initial Rebirth era paperbacks, with a trio of huge books in the mix – Green Lantern: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1, Justice League of America: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1, andAbsolute Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang!

Posts like this will help both you and I keep up with DC’s newest collections until my Guide to Collecting DC Comics has guide pages to cover more of their heroes!

All of the links below are to Amazon. Note that Amazon (and other mass market retailers) receive books one to two weeks later than direct market sellers like comic shops. Still, I find Amazon convenient for their uniform format of displaying information like contents and ISBNs. If you purchase though an Amazon link on CK I receive a minor credit as your referrer; your purchase price remains the same. [Read more…] about DC Comics Collected Editions Solicits – February 2017

DC Comics Collected Editions Releases – January 2017

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To continue this week’s DC theme, here is the lineup of collected editions from DC Comics out this month – including their first round of Rebirth collections!

(Looking for Marvel’s January releases? I covered those previously.)

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that kept me from adding DC Comics guides to Crushing Krisis was a knowledge gap – and not just about the comics stories, themselves. I know all of Marvel’s formats by heart – Masterworks, Epic Collections, Complete Collections, and more.

As I work on my 52 DC Comics Guides, I find that I have to do a lot of getting acquainted with their collected editions to understand their major reprint lines outside of Rebirth and New 52. While DC is committed to keeping their biggest stories in evergreen print, they don’t share Marvel’s philosophy that just about every major series ought to be covered in reprinted editions – their 80 and 90s reprints are more sparse, and pre-Crisis 70s and 80s reprints are reserved only for the most acclaimed of runs!

Of course, I didn’t know anything about Marvel’s formats and strategies when I began the X-Men guides in 2010 – that was kind of the point of starting them. So, I’m not going to let that stop my exploration of DC! Plus, posts like this will help both you and I keep up with DC’s newest collections until I have guide pages to cover more of their heroes!

All of the links below are to Amazon. Note that Amazon (and other mass market retailers) receive books two weeks later than direct market sellers like comic shops. Still, I find Amazon convenient for their uniform format of displaying information like contents and ISBNs. If you purchase though an Amazon link on CK I receive a minor credit as your referrer; your purchase price remains the same. [Read more…] about DC Comics Collected Editions Releases – January 2017

New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s New Warriors (and an explanation of who they are)

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today I’m happy to announce a humble page that makes me feel like Crushing Comics’s coverage of the Marvel Universe is mere steps away from being preliminarily complete, although I’ll still have dozens of other things to add to it.

That page is The Definitive New Warriors Collecting Guide and Reading Order. This new guide is available exclusively to CK’s Crushing Comics Club Patrons until January 8th. Want early access? Visit CK on Patreon to learn more.

new-warriors-1990-0001New Warriors was an early-90s creation of Marvel, who was witnessing the cresting popularity of New Mutants and realizing they never truly had their own analog to Teen Titans despite having plenty of young heroes to staff such a team. Tom DeFalco, then the writer/editor of Thor, decided it was a hole that needed filling and cobbled together a team to do just that in Thor #411-412 in 1989.

Aside from the recently neglected Richard Rider as Nova, none of the other characters could be described a notable … or even memorable. The most high-profile was probably Firestar, created for the 1981 cartoon Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends that was still seen widely in syndication, but introduced into comics just a year prior by Chris Claremont in the pages of Uncanny X-Men.

Speedball was was a human superball created by DeFalco for a Spider-Man annual and expanded by Roger Stern and the imitable Steve Ditko in his own maxi-series. Namorita was a longtime Sub-Mariner supporting character at a time when Namor was making a major comeback thanks to John Byrne.

Marvel Boy was a largely forgotten creation of the 1970s, a youngster introduced in The Defenders to explain away the future Guardians of the Galaxy leader. His big story was being abused for being a mutant.

To that mix, DeFalco added his own creation, Night Thrasher, as their leader. This made sense, since on their own none of them really showed the kind of initiative it would take to assemble a super-team. Night Thrasher was a sort of Batman-esque hero who assembled a team to fight crime – which makes their initiation facing off against Terrax and then Juggernaut seem a bit outsized.

The team lasted through 75 issues in its initial run, guided two-thirds of the way by Fabian Nicieza. The scripter of both X-Force and New Warriors, Nicieza was known for wringing terrific human drama out of his young superheroes. New Warriors worked for the same reason all of Marvel’s best team titles have – not because it was part of a franchise like Avengers or X-Men, but because the team really became a family along the way.

new-warriors-2014-0001Unfortunately, “assembled to fight crime (but not really ever doing that” and “team as family” combine to make successful reboots a tough prospect. Multiple iterations of New Warriors try the “we stumbled onto a fight” approach and barely live out a year, while an “assembled by Night Thrasher” version lasted for two. The team is probably best known to modern readers for being the cause of Civil War (seriously)! The best return to form was from Christopher Yost in 2014, which found Justice and Speedball in mentor roles across a new team of young heroes that mirrored the original line-up. Unfortunately, it didn’t catch fire and lasted only the requisite year.

Given it’s unremarkable pedigree, why is a New Warriors Collecting Guide so important to Crushing Comics?

It’s the reboots. New Warriors is one of only remaining Marvel series previously uncovered by Crushing Comics that was both long-running and rebooted multiple times. With it now catalogued, there’s scant few Marvel titles that have run for longer than two years and through more than three incarnations I’ve yet to recap – and none with this many issues to their names.

Since New Warriors itself only constitutes 129 issues I took an extra step for this guide. Not only does it cover how to collect each of those issues, but it presents a unified reading order for every appearance of each of the founding members of The New Warriors (except for Nova, who has his own guide, so I added perennial teammates Rage and Silhouette.) Now you can follow the team through events like Infinity War and through times when they were splintered, as in the wake of Civil War.

Just how collected are those 129 issues of New Warriors? [Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s New Warriors (and an explanation of who they are)