Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Dan Slott

Crushing Comics S01E043 – Survival Skills + Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, and more!

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Today I start out by wondering how I – or, anyone, for that matter – learns basic survival skills like how to balance their checkbooks and what flowers not to eat in the wild.

After that, I unwrap quite a large brick of oversized hardcovers, and give some rapid fire thoughts on Dan Slott’s Mighty Avengers, Brian Bendis’s Dark Avengers, a brief history of Thunderbolts, Iron Man: Iron Age, Fear Itself, and more!

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

Episode 43 features Dan Slott’s Mighty Avengers: Dark Reign, Brian Bendis’s Dark Avengers, Invaders Now, Iron Man: Iron Age, Onslaught Unleashed, and Fear Itself: Shattered Heroes.

Crushing Comics S01E13 – X-Men/Steve Rogers, Spider-Man/Human Torch, Astonishing X-Men, & Storm in World’s Apart (plus, Moon Knight!)

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I haul a massive brick off the shelf today, but before I open it I go off on a long tangent about one of my favorite characters – Moon Knight! Then, it’s time to dig into the books – but, just half of them, since it was a seven-book stack!

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

Episode 13 features X-Men/Steve Rogers: Escape from the Negative Zone (Amazon), Spider-Man and the Human Torch (Amazon), Astonishing X-Men: Northstar (Amazon/ Astonishing X-Men Guide), and Storm in X-Men: Worlds Apart (Amazon) – plus an introductory discussion of Moon Knight (visit the guide!).

Superior Spider-Man – The #43 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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At the end of 2017 Dan Slott will have been writing Peter Parker as Spider-Man for ten years, but his most-memorable Spider-Man story will probably go down as Superior Spider-Man – the one where he wrote Spider-Man not as Peter Parker … or, maybe more accurately, Peter Parker not as himself.

Superior Spider-Man is the #43 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes. And, check out the Definitive Guide to Spider-Man to track down every single issue.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: Collects Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #698-700, Superior Spider-Man (2013) #1-31, & Annual 1-2.

I could see Marvel also including Amazing Spider-Man (2014) #1-6, which adds a bit of resolution to the relatively abrupt ending of this run and butts up nicely to Spider-Verse on the other side.

It could also include some (but probably not all) of Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 & 16-22 and Superior Spider-Man Team-Up (2013) #1-12 & Special, All-New X-Men (2013) Special, and Indestructible Hulk (2013) Special.

(Note that Superior Spider-Man #32-33 were published later as part of Spider-Verse.)

Creators: Written by Dan Slott with Christos Gage with pencils by the rotating team of Giuseppe Camuncoli, Ryan Stegman, and Humberto Ramos (along with one-offs from Marcos Martin, Javier Rodriguez, Phil Briones, and Will Sliney).

Inks by the pencillers along with John Dell III, Victor Olazaba, Cam Smith, Terry Pallot, John Livesay, and Álvaro López. Colors by Edgar Delgado and Antonio Fabela.

Can you read it right now? Yes! This run is perfectly covered in paperbacks and oversized hardcovers as described in the Guide to Spider-Man and is entirely available on Marvel Unlimited.

The Details:

Superior Spider-Man is a spider-story that anyone can appreciate, and truly one of the best Spider-Man runs of all time despite not quite starring Spider-Man.

To explain the why and how of that will involve some major spoilers. [Read more…] about Superior Spider-Man – The #43 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. 

Amazing_Spider_Man_1963_0549See the Guide to Spider-Man for how you can collect this run today. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? In January 2008 Marvel collapsed their line of several Spider-Man titles down to just Amazing Spider-Man, which accelerated to releasing three issues a month from a rotating cast of writers starting with #546. This coincided with a minor reset of some details of Spider-Man’s continuity – more on that below.

While the story arc “Brand New Day” ran from #546 to 564, the title is commonly used to refer to the entire period of accelerated schedule with multiple writers, which ran through #647 in December 2010 – three entire years comprised of 102 issues of Amazing Spider-Man!

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.

Creators: Many!

The rotating writers considered to be Spider-Man’s steering brain-trust consistently including Dan Slott, Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale, and Zeb Wells – though others like Mark Waid and Joe Kelly also contributed arcs in this period.

This initial chunk of Brand New Day included runs of pencil art from Steve McNiven, Salvador Larroca, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo, Barry Kitson, Marcos Martin, Mike McKone, and John Romita Jr..

Probable Contents: Collects The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #546-577, The Amazing Spider-Man: Swing Shift Director’s Cut (2008), Venom Super Special (1995) #1, Secret Invasion: Spider-Man #1-3, and material from The Amazing Spider-Man Extra! (2008) #1.

For a full map of how the Brand New Day period could fit into omnibus volumes, see the end of this post.

Can you read it right now? Yes! Marvel has begun to recollect Big Time in a series of Complete Collections. A first omnibus probably wouldn’t cover all three collections. See the Guide to Spider-Man for full physical collecting info.

Plus, every one of these issues is available on Marvel Unlimited!

The Details:

To talk about this run, we have to first talk about the story that immediately precedes it – “One More Day.”

“One More Day” is one of the most-hated Spider-Man stories of all time, neck-and-neck with its later sequel “One Moment In Time.”

Fans tend to dislike any revisions to their favorite elements of continuity, but this one was particularly egregious – not only breaking up Spider-Man and Mary Jane, but retroactively causing their marriage to cease to exist due to a very out-of-character deal with a literal devil. Their relationship and all of their stories continued to exist – just not their marriage.

The story did come with a few fringe benefits. The world would forget Spider-Man’s secret identity (recently revealed in Civil War), but that meant he was now in hiding due to the Superhuman Registration Act. It revived Harry Osborn from the dead. And, it resulted in the cancellation of all of Marvel’s other Spider-Man titles, which allowed them to accelerate Amazing Spider-Man to be released three times a month. [Read more…] about Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

12 Must-Read Marvel Runs (that ought to be an omnibus) – 1998 to 2008

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As we continue our trip backwards down Marvel Memory Lane, I’m here to convince you to read – or, at least, covet – 12 more Marvel runs, this time from 1998 to 2008.

While my concurrent period of X-Men looked at 2001 to 2008, for the rest of the Marvel Universe 1998 was a better starting point. That’s because Marvel’s Avengers and Fantastic Four franchises relaunched new volumes in 1998, and Spider-Man and Daredevil were rebooted within the next year as well.

(That wound up being less relevant to this post than I planned, since I decided not to touch mapping Fantastic Four or Spider-Man in the style of my exhaustive X-Men mapping. I also won’t hit the titles that are just waiting for a sequel – namely Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man. See my Orphan Report for more on those. And, one of the best runs from this period – Christopher Priest’s Black Panther – is already in the survey results.)

I’ve read less of Marvel outside of X-Men, so I’m being a little choosier with these runs so I don’t lead you astray! That’s not only a choosiness in quality, but in self-containment. While Marvel’s Universe was a little more siloed from 1998 to 2005, once New Avengers arrived titles became increasingly intertwined and reliant on events to launch and intersect with them until we hit peak tie-in after Secret Invasion in 2008, with the entire Marvel Universe being affected by Dark Reign in one way or another.

These runs aren’t that – they’re comics you could sit down and enjoy today regardless of your foreknowledge about a certain plot or character. While some of them intersect event series, none of them rely on your reading the main event to enjoy their chapters.

If you want to see any of these runs released in all-in-one omnibus editions, perhaps you should include some of them on your Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot – votes are due this Sunday!

However, omnibuses are not your only hope! The majority of these runs are collected in hardcovers and trade paperbacks listed in Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, and the vast majority of the issues are available on Marvel Unlimited, a $10/month Netflix-for-Marvel-comics.

Of course, all potential collection mapping comes with a disclaimer: all of my suggestions are subjective and subject to improvement, or at least spirited debate. If you have a correction, alteration, or disagreement, there’s no need to be shy – I’d love to hear from you in the comments, below.

Let’s dig in!

[Read more…] about 12 Must-Read Marvel Runs (that ought to be an omnibus) – 1998 to 2008