Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Domino

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Domino – star of Deadpool 2!

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Today’s new guide started for Patrons of Crushing Krisis as a quick’n’dirty way to cover a new X-Men title but turned into one of the most thorough single character guides I’ve created…

Domino – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

Domino is a character I’ve always loved. Sure, she started out as part of an influx of X-TREME characters (and extreme T&A) in Liefeld’s X-Force launch, but Domino is the rare 90s comics babe who has become much more than that while maintaining agency in her depictions as a sexy, sexualized character.

Domino has all the skill of Deadpool and all the leadership ability of Cable. She’s funny, self-deprecating, and self-interested. She has a thing for big hunks of men and has no hesitance about making her affections known. She lead X-Force as a knowledgable friend rather than a commanding parent, and it shows in her continuing relationships with characters like Boom Boom and Warpath. She’s a complex, damaged character whose trauma never entirely defines her.

That makes Domino a treat whenever she appears, as she has in all but one iteration of “X-Force” – making her the team’s most-consistent cast member!

In reading her new ongoing series from Gail Simone, I realized that I’ve missed out on a lot of Domino’s major development; I stopped reading comics in the 90s before the “Road Trip” era of X-Force and her pair of limited series. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Domino – star of Deadpool 2!

Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #55 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #55 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.

What Is It? This is a shared volume between X-Force (1991) and their leader Cable (1993), whose titles were tightly intertwined in this period from March 1994 to February 1995.

While it’s usually not productive to assume Marvel will group related titles together in this way, they’ve already set the precedent with the forthcoming Deadpool & X-Force Omnibus beginning to collect Cable’s solo series.

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

Creators: Written by Fabian Nicieza (with Glenn Alan Herdling, Scott Lobdell, Larry Hama, and Jeph Loeb III) with pencils by Tony Daniel and inks by Kevin Conrad on X-Force (with Terry Dodson and Paul Pelletier) and army of artists on Cable and the crossover issues.

Probable Contents: Collects X-Force (1991) #32-43 & Annual 3 and Cable (1993) #9-20 along with crossovers into New Warriors #45-46, Excalibur #82, and X-Factor #106, and Wolverine #85.

This is a slim, unsurprising set of contents that cover just a year of storytelling. All of the contents have been previously collected across four volumes (as well as five issues from the Phalanx Covenant oversize hardcover). In fact, it would make a future Volume 2 a little simpler if this volume covered a bit more, but a major direction change in both titles after Age of Apocalypse makes that unlikely.

See the full map in Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001). Note that Cable #20 is part of the “Legion Quest” crossover, but has already been collected once without the direct crossover issues.

Can you read it right now? Yes! You need to pick up X-Force: Child’s Play, X-Force: Phalanx Covenant, Cable Classic, Volume 2, and Cable Classic, Volume 3. Find out more in the Guide to X-Force and Guide to Cable.Cable_1993_0009

Unfortunately, Marvel Unlimited currently stops just short of this run in its coverage of X-Force (1991) and they only have a handful of the Cable (1993) issues.

The Details:

You could easily subtitle this period of X-Force and Cable “Family Matters,” as the runs of both books are deeply concerned with the connections between long-serving teammates in X-Force and generations of family in Cable.

X-Force begins this period with one of its more entertaining line-ups – Cannonball, Boomer, Richtor, Shatterstar, Warpath, and Siryn – plus frequent co-stars Cable and Domino.

It’s a truly delightful cast of characters, a trio of whom would later become mainstays in Peter David’s X-Factor, which plays out the theme of Richtor and Shatterstar’s unlikely friendship that developed in these issues.

This run begins with a four-issue “Child’s Play” crossover with New Warriors. We tend to have a modern view of crossovers as disconnected plays for increased sales, but that wasn’t necessarily the case with this Fabian Nicieza’s story. [Read more…] about Cable & X-Force Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #55 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus – The #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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X-Force_2008_0002The X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus is the #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot – and I’ve included the complete X-Force reading order (and casualty count) below!

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? X-Force (2008) maintained the proactive mandate of 1991’s X-Force iteration but added a no-holds-barred bloody approach to the X-Men’s take on counterterrorism.

That’s what you get when Cyclops appoints Wolverine to lead a team of hunter-killers, although he’s not too happy about his line-up. X-23 is there – despite Wolverine trying to steer her to non-violence, as is Warpath – a reluctant killer, both Angel and Rahne – not entirely in control of themselves, and later Domino, Vanisher, and Elixir.

X-Force (2008) ran for 28 issues and one annual from April 2008 to September 2010.

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

Creators: Written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost with art by Clayton Crain along with pencils by Mike Choi, Alina Urusov, Carlo G. Barberi, Gabriele Dell’Otto, and Jason Trent Pearson, inks by Sandu Florea, colors by Sonia Oback, Edgar Delgado (AKA Pato), and Dave Stewart, and letters by Jeff Eckleberry and Cory Petit.

Probable Contents:  X-Force (2008) #1-25 & Annual 1, X-Force: Sex & Violence #1-3, Cable (2008) #13-15 (and material from #6-7 & 12), Messiah War one-shot, X-Men: Future History – The Messiah War Sourcebook, X-Force/New Mutants: Necrosha One-Shot, X-Necrosha: The Gathering, and X-Force Special: Ain’t No Dog, as well as some background material. See below for a full reading order.

[Thanks to John S. on FB for catching two of the one-shots I omitted!]

Click to expand a discussion of further content for this volume.

Can you read it right now? Yes!X-Force_2008_0007

With the exception of Messiah War and Second Coming, X-Force has now been released in four formats! A pair of oversized hardcovers – Volume 1 and Volume 2 – are the quickest way to collect the non-event issues, but Complete Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2 paperbacks add the Necrosha material.

See the Guide to X-Force for every possible iteration. Or, just head to Marvel Unlimited – every issue is available there (although, note you have to type “X Necrosha” to find the Necrosha one-shots in search.

The Details:

There no other way to say it: X-Force was a shock.

Up to this point it the X-Men’s 40 years of history we had seen plenty of bloody panels – many of them courtesy of Wolverine, Cable, and Deadpool, but also some in books like X-Statix. Yet, even when the X-Men were at their most proactive and forceful, they were rarely a team of killers. That’s something we associated more with their enemies, like the Marauders or Omega Red.

(And of course, there were some major-scale genocidal wipeouts courtesy of Dark Phoenix (billions!) and the mega-sentinel at the beginning of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (millions!).)

X-Force was the first time that we had an X-Men team devoted to merciless killing. [Read more…] about X-Force by Kyle & Yost Omnibus – The #57 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

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X-Men is one of the most popular comics franchises in history, and in the 90s it rode the crest of the speculator wave to over half a dozen ongoing series and at least twice that many crossover events.

However, when it comes to coverage in oversize editions, you’d think that those crossover events were all there was to X-Men in the 1990s. That’s not the case, and there are hundreds of issues outside of those events that haven’t seen oversize collection – including many that have never been reprinted.

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Yesterday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991 and how it could be collected by omnibus volumes, and tomorrow I’ll be back to cover the Morrison and Whedon era of X-Men.

There are 28 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping is a trivial pursuit (in both senses of the phrase) that is up to a lot of personal interpretation, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!

I think of this era as everything from X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281 in 1991 through the end of Onslaught and continuing to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s take on the X-Men in 2001. We’ve already got a number of omnibus-sized oversize hardcovers clustered at the beginning of this era, but after Age of Apocalypse things get spotty across all of the titles.

Are you ready? (I’m not sure that you could possibly be ready.)

[Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)