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Kelly Sue Deconnick

Haul Around The World: Mignola-Verse, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Kelly Thompson, & more!

March 28, 2018 by krisis

The first “season” of my YouTube comics show is over, but it’s not like my monthly hauls of new collection editions are going to cease just because I’m simmering up some new content!

Welcome to “Haul Around The World,” where I unveil my most-recent package of collected comics shipped to Wellington from the shores of America (at least, I think they come via boat – that’s the only way to explain how long it takes them to get here).

Want to watch a full season of comic book unpacking? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Crushing Comics, Haul Around The World, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Kelly Thompson

20 Must-Read Marvel runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2012 to 2015

April 28, 2017 by krisis

Each year, a mysterious and intrepid comic book fan known only as Tigereyes reaches out to some of the biggest collected editions communities on the web to ask them a single question: What are the top 10 Marvel Omnibuses you’d most like to buy?

Thus, the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot was born.

While we only get to see the top 50 or so results of the survey each year, based on the number of voters it’s entirely possible that there are over ten times that many omnibuses nominated by voters. The long tail of the survey would make not only for interesting analysis, but terrific rainy-day reading.

To help inspire that long tail as well as your own rainy day reads, I’m covering dozens of Marvel runs that would make for terrific omnibuses. For the past four days I highlighted every potential missing X-Men omnibus from 1963 to 2015. Now, I’m going to stroll backwards through time to look at the rest of Marvel, starting with their newest comic runs released from 2012 to present.

The fact that these books aren’t currently omnibuses (and may never be) doesn’t have to stop you from sampling them – even if you’ve never read a comic before in your life! Each one is a terrific self-contained comic experience that can be enjoyed without any crossovers or companion series.

You can either pick up existing collections as outlined by Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, or just sign up for Marvel Unlimited, a Netflix-for-comics where 100% of the issues from today’s post are available to read on any device.

[Read more…] about 20 Must-Read Marvel runs (that ought to be an omnibus) from 2012 to 2015

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Al Ewing, Ales Kot, Ant-Man, Avengers Arena, Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Charles Soule, Chris Samnee, Collected Editions, Cullen Bunn, Dan Slott, Daniel Way, Esad Ribic, Hulk, Indestructible Hulk, Inhuman, Inhumans, Iron Man, Jason Aaron, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Kieron Gillen, Loki, Mark Waid, Marvel Comics, Marvel Now, Mighty Avengers, Moon Knight, Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus, Nick Spencer, Nova, Peter David, Phil Noto, Punisher, Rick Remender, Robbie Thompson, Secret Avengers, Silk, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Superior Spider-Man, The Falcon, Thor, Thunderbolts, Tom Taylor, Venom, Warren Ellis, Will Sliney

Why female comic characters matter (to a baby)

August 27, 2015 by krisis

If we were to look at the pie chart of activities of my life (which would still be a terrible use of a pie chart because even when looking at proportional representation out of 100% it’s harder to compare the relative sizes of things in that format – death to pie charts) it would be obvious that comic book reading takes up a not-insignificant amount of my time.

If we are in a room with this comic book EV needs to run to it and bring it back to me to page through. Spidey who is a girl AND is in a rock band? Is there any better thing in the multi-verse?

If we are in a room with this comic book EV needs to run to it and bring it back to me to page through. Spidey who is a girl AND is in a rock band? Is there any better thing in the multi-verse?

That meant that EV had a lot of comic books read to her from as soon as she could be propped up to semi-sit-up on her own. Yet, even when she didn’t even have the means to escape from my reading, her attention span wouldn’t necessarily last an entire issue, let alone a whole trade paperback. That changed quite suddenly when I read her Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy last summer, a story primarily staring Spider-Girl at its center. EV sat transfixed by the whole thing. She let me read the entire book to her multiple times in one sitting.

I didn’t think too much of it – I just love reading DeConnick’s dialog, so maybe that did the trick, which also explained EV staying put in the fall for Captain Marvel, Volume 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More. The realization didn’t hit me until I read her the critically acclaimed, newly-Hugo-winning Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1 (and to E, who lingered in the room, feigning not paying attention but actually listening quite closely).

That baby would sit still to read books with female heroines.

I tested my theory. Spider-Man? A few pages. Hulk? No interest. Thor? Barely a glance. Storm? Entire issues. The lady version of Thor? Glued to the pages. Spider-Gwen? She picks it up every time we walk up to the attic. Hell, one of her first few dozens words was “Lumberjanes” so she could request the comic of the same name (which I dislike; maybe more on that later).

Tonight we read the first few issues of Ryan North’s delightful Squirrel Girl (recommended highly for kids!) while EV spent the entire time hanging off of me and giggling with glee.

What’s interesting about those books is that they include varying amounts of action and extremely distinct artwork, but they are each about more than a superhero who happens to have breasts. They feature women being women. I don’t mean doing “girl” things. I mean as heroes, their women are distinct in their voices, actions, hopes, and fears from male characters. They could not simply be gender-swapped.

The exercise lead me to look through EVs other books with a critical eye. Most protagonist characters in baby books default to male – the female is almost always the mother! And do you know how many books we have that feature a father in something other than a vestigial, dismissal role? Only a handful I can think of – Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Gaiman’s delightful Fortunately, The Milk, the classic Make Way For Ducklings, and my favorite, Maurice Sendak’s Pierre. However, of those, three of the protagonists are male and three have mothers as the primary female.

In case you are ever wondering – representation matters. Even a baby who cannot say a single word will tune in to media with a character she identifies with more readily than one she doesn’t. I didn’t have to run a very length or scientific experiment to figure it out. When we’re asking to see Black Widow on Avengers merchandise or wondering if we could see Miles Morales – a black, latino Spider-Man – onscreen, it’s not just because we like those characters or are demanding diversity for diversity’s sake.

We want the next generation of real life superheroes to see themselves in the media we allow them to consume.

(Little does EV realize that I have every issue of Wonder Woman from 1975 to present sitting in the attic, waiting to be read to her.)

(I’m also excited to capitalize on her Spider-Lady Love when Silk hits TPB later this year, since she is a rarely-represent female asian hero that’s not the sex-bomb yellow-face routine of Psylocke.)

Filed Under: comic books, Year 16 Tagged With: Avengers Assemble, Captain Marvel, feminism, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Representation, Ryan North, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Squirrel Girl

Comic Book Review: Marvel’s Infinity #2

September 5, 2013 by krisis

Jonathan Hickman and the Avenger’s writing and editorial team are turning linewide crossovers into highly choreographed dance before our very eyes.

From the relatively staid Infinity #1 sprang Hickman’s own Avengers #18 and New Avengers #9 – one a space battle that forged unlikely allies, the other a civil war between Earth’s remaining mighty heroes. From Avengers #18 spun Kellie Sue DeConnick’s two-sided coin of Avengers Assemble #18 and Captain Marvel #15, following two Avengers Quinjets into and out of the battle through the eyes of two best friends separated by the gulf of space.

They were four highly enjoyable comic books. The coordination between Avengers, Assemble, and Captain Marvel was nothing less than extraordinary – each one mirrors scenes from the other to construct a prismatic view of the same battle.

That brings us to the second entry in the main event – Infinity #2. Would it play out yet another dimension of the same space battle? Would it breathe some life into the characters from the prior issue? Would the teenage angst of the art improve?

Let’s find out.

Infinity 0002Infinity #2 of 6  

Script and graphic design by Jonathan Hickman. Art by Jerome Opena & Dustin Weaver. Color art by Justin Ponsor.

Rating: 3 of 5 – Good

#140char review: Infinity #2: The plot picks up as a still impersonal story snaps between Earth & space but it’s Opena’s portion of art that makes this epic.

CK Says: Consider it.

Infinity #2 is a thriller from its opening pages, and writer Jonathan Hickman can’t even take all the credit.

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior01

Marvel needs to back up a Brinks truck to the front door of Eisner-winning artist Jerome Opena to ensure his participation on big event books for many years to come. Surely his highly-detailed, cinematic art takes a steady hand and long hours to produce, but every damn frame of it in this comic book is utterly gorgeous – especially wall-worthy recaps of the battles shown in New Avengers. Justin Ponsor’s colors ground Opena’s lined work, adding to its depth and texture.

I suspect this is the sort of comic art movie-goers are hoping to find when they crack open an issue or buy it digitally. Marvel can’t afford to have this sort of weary realism grace the pages of every book – nor would that be appropriate. But it’s a welcome delight after events handled by the slick, animated style of Coipel and Immonen. When it comes to The Avengers and massive events, readers deserve the best of that style – and right now Opena is its pinnacle at Marvel (along with veteran Mike Deodato on Hickman’s Avengers books).

Not all of the book is Opena – after a low-orbit prologue, he sticks to the space battles, leaving two scenes of Earth-bound action to compatriot Dustin Weaver. Weaver, whose notable slowness has marooned a second series of Hickman’s SHIELD two-thirds of the way through, is in solid form in his two segments if not a match for Opena.

As with Cheung before him, he draws terrific architecture and monstrous aliens. However, he also nails all of the human figure-work and faces – at least, for the men he does. He can’t seemed to decide how to draw Inhuman queen Medusa from panel to panel.

(And, let’s face it – his marquee panel of a determined Black Bolt looks like Grumpy Cat.)

Overall, the art is just a mugging Inhumans away from five-stars, but how does the story fare?

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior02

Hickman is in finer form here than in the first chapter, deftly playing between the scenes of the four tie-in issues that intervened. A brief prologue showing an armed infiltration of a S.W.O.R.D. satellite base is isn’t strictly necessary, but wisely frames the action on Earth that we saw in New Avengers #9 to draw it into the context of this story. Opena’s panel’s of Sydren are perhaps the best he’s ever looked (and I think I own his every appearance so far). Similarly, Hickman and Opena dispatch of the three-issue space battle in a single page that expertly weaves in the action we’ve missed.

Scenes in the Inhumans’ floating city shows why Thanos’s interest have suddenly turned to Earth while The Builders’ obliterate societies across the galaxy, while in the intervening pages we see The Builders’ plot of destruction is not as one-sided as we thought.

In getting there, we view a series of thrilling still-frames from a kinetic space battle that casts our Avengers (and Claremont-created Gladiator of the Shi’ar) as a new pantheon of powerful gods to replace our creators of old. What use does an adult society have with its progenitors? Once we are given life, how long must we show gratitude and deference before striking our own path? The Builders seem to be contemplating these same questions, as they send a sole Ex Nihilo (meaning “out of nothing” – a concept intrinsically linked with creation) on a mission that runs counter to his life’s purpose.

This is the Hickman I know and love – interlacing questions of determinism and theology amidst his punch-ups.

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior03

Yet, even as Hickman hits his narrative stride, he shows that he’s still adjusting to story-telling on comics biggest stage. Both the space battle and the wake of the Nihilo’s action are narrated by a removed speaker, keeping the reader at a distance from the heroes we so desire to get close to. In particular, their humanitarian mission to the victims of the Ex Nihilo comes off as a maudlin waste of pages despite Opena in full gravitas mode. Just a word from Thor’s lips to pair with his actions could have loaned these scenes the narrative heft to match their imagery, but Hickman misses the chance.

A final Earth-bound sequence by Weaver is all exposition to get us to the issue’s big reveal. It’s a doozy in terms of Marvel continuity, but it would have been heavier if we could expect a Secret Invasion style “Who could it be?” surprise in the coming issues. Unfortunately, the mystery doesn’t have a very deep bench of characters to draw its answer from. It would have probably been more interesting to make the subject a mutant than an Inhuman, which would have also made the X-Men more relevant to the event. Alas, Marvel has other intellectual property to flog in 2014, and Hickman dutifully steers the story in that direction.

We end Infinity #2 in a far more interesting place than we began, questioning the motives of a pair of seemingly-unconnected but equally-complex enemies. It’s clear this crossover isn’t going to be the two-front bash-em-up its lead-up suggested. Yet, one-third of the way through the event, it’s a fair question to ask if Hickman will ever make these stunning images and surprising developments truly visceral. For all the barbs thrown at past event-pilots Bendis and Fraction, they each knew how to give voice to fan favorite characters and twist a personal knife amidst the destruction of battle.

Though the story of Infinity has now proven its intrigue, I fear Hickman might stay removed from the action for the duration of this series. Maybe that’s how it should be … maybe that’s how we avoid a disappointing event. Even so, it’s also going to leave each issue slightly unsatisfying as we finish it.

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Avengers, Brian Bendis, Dustin Weaver, Ex Nihilo, Gladiator, Infinity, Inhumans, Jerome Opena, Jonathan Hickman, Justin Posnor, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Marvel Comics, Matt Fraction

Comic Book Review: Avengers Assemble – Science Bros (#9-13)

September 3, 2013 by krisis

If you are part of the entire population of the free world who kinda dug The Avengers movie, afterwards you may have been moved to consider, “Wow, can I read more high-action, high-drama, high-comedy stories like that in Avengers comic books?”

avengers-assemble-science-bros-tpb

Yes and no. There are certainly action-packed, drama-filled, laugh-inducing Avengers tories out of umpteen thousand different Avengers issues Marvel has released over the decades, but few come close to the glossy sheen of the film. It’s a big challenge for Marvel, which frequently finds itself flat-footed when it comes to delivering the right comic into the hands of an inspired movie-goer.

Enter Avengers Assemble – a comic Marvel pulled together in 2012 with the specific mandate of being friendly to the movie-loving audience headed from cinemas straight to their local comic book store.

The first collection of issues #1-8 was a highly-enjoyable intergalactic romp written by Brian Bendis, but the universal scope of the adventure did more for capitalizing on Thanos’s split-second reveal in the credits of the movie than it did for matching the tone of the film.

Enjoyable comics, but not exactly a sequel.

Then there is the proceeding run of issues #9-13, by Marvel writer and Manga-adaptation vet Kellie Sue DeConnick, just released as a trade paperback called Avengers Assemble: Science Bros. It features the entire movie cast and the ever-awesome Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman – plus, a brief appearance from a peanut gallery of perennial favs, Spider-Man and Wolverine.

AvgAs - 0009 - pg10The first story features a science squabble between big brains Tony Stark and Bruce Banner that could have easily occurred in the car they drove away in at the end of The Avengers. When a science-y mystery arises, they each pick one teammate to see who can solve it first. Stark, ever the competitor, picks Thor. Banner, knowing his Hulk persona might need some minding, picks the beguiling Spider-Woman. The Captains America and Marvel wind up as team three, doing the fist-fighting dirty-work while the science bros embark on (and ultimately bungle) their initial mission.

The second story finds a former victim of Black Widow calling in a marker – a chance for her to repay a bit of the red in her ledger. Against her wishes, both Hawkeye and Spider-Woman accompany her on the mission as an ongoing part of their ex-lovers’ spat. It starts as a simple search and rescue, but becomes more complex when the person the Avengers are rescuing turns out to have a different repayment in mind for Natasha’s sins of the past.

This comic feels just like the movie, splitting it neatly in two halves between the super-powered members of the team and its more human side. From the pointed banter between Stark and Banner, to Spider-Woman both taming and sympathizing with Hulk, to Captains America and Marvel shouldering the hard part of the mission, the first story reads like a natural extension of the film so perfectly that you can play it in your head as a direct sequel. The second story does that beautiful thing that comics can do – expanding a minor plot point of the movie to its own tale that deepens the backstory of a character.

DeConnick navigates both stories with ease, proving that comics can be fun and funny, and entertaining while being appropriate for readers of all ages. The artwork isn’t the cinematic, lifelike stuff of some of Marvel’s go-to talents, but it’s bold and engaging throughout. That’s especially true of Stefano Caselli on the first story – he needs a regular Marvel gig, pronto!

CK Says: Buy it! 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Avengers Assemble, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Collected Editions, Hawkeye, Hulk, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Marvel Comics, Marvel Now, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Wolverine

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