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Excalibur

X-Men Team Titles Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot

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Until April 5, I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted Marvel omnibus volumes every day! It’s finally time, y’all… time to MAP MY X. This post offers maps for team X-Men series that were NOT “flagship” books with “X-Men” in the title – like New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Force, Generation X, and more.

Announcing Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot LIVE on Near Mint Condition

This post explains titles and potential X-Men Omnibus Mapping for entries on the Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot. You can vote right now (until 5 April 2024 @ midnight US ET) or watch our mega-length announcement stream reviewing every single voting option.

This post covers X-Team titles from New Mutants, Excalibur, X-Factor, X-Force, Generation X, Exiles, Academy X, Weapon X, & Marauders.

If you’re not sure of what to vote for, stick around for my explanations. Or, if you’ve already voted, learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including some of my mistakes and regrets as one of the editors of the options on the final poll.

Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how Marvel could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of Marvel creating a book with that title or covering that period.

Over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics.

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Updated: Guide to Excalibur

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I’m excited to share this X-Guide update, not only because it contains my favorite comic of all time, but because it’s my first ever “normal” guide update! Updated today, it’s my Guide to Excalibur – including a complete Excalibur Reading Order and links to read every physical and digital collection of Excalibur ever released!

Guide to Excalibur

The Reading Order Guide to Excalibur - image from Excalibur (1988) #1

The Guide to Excalibur was the first 2010s guide that I rebuilt to my new style and standard in 2021, which means this is the first routine maintenance update I’ve done so far this decade.

Over the past year, Excalibur wrapped up its collection of the 2019 Tini Howard & Marcus To run in both trade paperback and oversize hardcover. Howard continued some characters and themes of that title into Knights of X (2022) with artist Bob Quinn, which was just five issues and collected in a single trade paperback.

(Howard is still writing Betsy Braddock, but now she has graduated to her own Captain Britain title!)

When it comes to past Excalibur collections, the two years since my last update brought us two major releases – plus some big news in the last month. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Excalibur

Anatomy of a Comic Book Guide (and a comic book collection)

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Finally slaying the ancient dragon that was my Guide to Legion of Super-Heroes inspired me to keep track of all of the many steps and processes it takes to put together a new comic book guide.

I think more people making more great guides to consuming comics (and other media!) makes the internet better for all fans. I love Omar’s Near Mint Condition video Reading Orders, How To Love Comics’s guide to reading your first comic, ComicsXF Primers, and ComicReleases solicits roundsups. All of them overlap with what I’m doing a little bit, but they’re all helping people find the comics they might love, which is why I started doing this in the first place.

Below I’ve listed my process for putting together a comic guide, which is also how I build a personal reading list or new comic collection! When I get interested in a new character, author, or title for the first time, my approach is almost identical to guide-building, even if I don’t plan on making a guide.

Throughout the list, I used my well-established Excalibur Guide and my new Patrons-only Legion of Super-Heroes Guides as examples. I tried to share some interesting behind-the-scenes nuggets along the way for all of you process wonks.

Feel free to use this guidance to help you put together your own handy guides, whether that’s for personal use or on a website. I certainly have some “secret sauce” and proprietary tools that help me make my guides so definitive, but anyone could work through this checklist to figure out a comics property from top to bottom. It takes me anywhere from 4 to 30 hours, depending on the complexity of the character or title I’m researching.

Here’s the breakdown of my steps.

  1. Create a list of series or volumes
  2. Decide on scope
  3. Organize (but don’t over-sort)
  4. Research your series list (this will include narrowing and expanding)
  5. Compile a collected editions list
  6. Assemble the stuff
  7. Conduct a clean-up pass
  8. Consider the meta-data
  9. Enjoy! (No, really! Make a plan for enjoying this hard work.)
  10. Schedule your first check-up

Now, let’s dig in! [Read more…] about Anatomy of a Comic Book Guide (and a comic book collection)

This Week in X of Swords, Week 10, Part 1: The Quiet Council fractures in X-Men #15 & Excalibur #15!

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The final week of X of Swords is so huge we had to break it in two!

Join Peter, Tyler, and Fariha as we dissect two of the three X-Men comics of 25 November, 2020 – X-Men (2019) #15 and Excalibur (2019) #15. They’re the 20th & 21st chapters of X of Swords, and they’re packed with political debate and action on the battlefield.

We have a lot to discuss about the tensions amongst the Quiet Council as one of their members wants to lead a more X-Men-esque heroic mission. Plus: the price of utopia, and what it means to be a mutant (vs. being an X-Man).

Need help making sense of reading and collecting the X-Men?

Recapping X of Swords, Week 8: Marauders #15, Excalibur #14, & Wolverine #7 | This Week in X

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Join Peter, Tyler, and Fariha as we dissect the eighth week of X of Swords in the X-Men comics of 11 November, 2020 – Marauders (2019) #15, Excalibur (2019) #14, & Wolverine (2020) #7.

They’re the 14th, 15, & 16th chapters of X of Swords, and the duels have finally begun – but, do they all contain the crossed swords we were expecting? We discuss dinner etiquette, double-crossing schemes, how Doug is neither a lover nor a fighter, and which duel we all loved to hate. Plus, we have a LOT to say about the artwork this week!

Need help making sense of reading and collecting the X-Men?