Krakoa

Marvel Reprint Announcement: X-Men – X of Swords Oversize Hardcover!

June 9, 2026 by krisis Leave a Comment

Near Mint Condition just announced a very welcome reprint that is a major surprise, even if Omar already tipped that we could expect it a few months ago: X-Men – X of Swords Oversize Hardcover!

First, let’s talk about why a reprint of X of Swords is so incredibly needed!

X of Swords was the first (and only!) linewide direct crossover of the X-Men’s Age of Krakoa from 2019 to 2024. The story kicked off at the one-year mark of Krakoa continuity, weaving together threads from Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men (2019) and Tini Howard’s Excalibur (2019). The story massively expanded the lore of Krakoa, Apocalypse, and Otherworld in a totally amazing way. For me, it’s one of the best X-Men event storylines of all time – up there with Inferno and Second Coming!

The original deluxe hardcover of X of Swords was the initial release of the story as a collected edition just months after it wrapped up, in January 2021. That made it the FIRST Krakoa oversize hardcover after HOXPOX; the hardcover collections of single series didn’t hit shelves until several months after this release.

At the time, that made a lot of sense: the single series collections skipped X of Swords, as did the X-Men by Hickman omnibus, so you’d want it on your bookshelf to intermingle with those books.

Even knowing that would be the case, demand for the X of Swords oversize hardcover far outstripped supply – as is the case for just about any X-Men even in hardcover. Prices were already getting wild before Marvel announced the X-Men: Age of Krakoa – Dawn of X Omnibus Vol. 1 for release in September 2025.

That announcement sent fans into wild speculation. Would X of Swords by the Volume 3 of that omnibus line? Or, would Marvel expect you to have already bought the hardcover?

Personally, I thought Marvel would do an expanded X of Swords as “Dawn of X Omnibus Vol. 3” that collected past it to some of the epilogue stories that followed, particular in X-Men (2019) and Excalibur (2019). So, I was surprised when the next Krakoa omnibus after Dawn of X Omnibus Vol. 2 was in fact Reign of X Omnibus Vol. 1. They had skipped X of Swords entirely!

At that point, things were looking a bit dire. Marvel could have announced this reprint to hit at the same time of that Reign of X book this September, but they didn’t. Prices spiked even higher – the book was selling on eBay for $300 or more! [Read more…] about Marvel Reprint Announcement: X-Men – X of Swords Oversize Hardcover!

Marvel Omnibus Announcement: X-Men: Age of Krakoa – Reign of X Omnibus Vol. 2

June 5, 2026 by krisis Leave a Comment

Near Mint Condition recently announced the first new Marvel omnibus coming in February 2027, and it is a major announcement – X-Men: Age of Krakoa – Reign of X Omnibus Vol. 2!

The announcement of this book isn’t exactly a surprise. Krakoa era omnibuses have proven to be major sellers for Marvel, with the first two volumes of “Dawn of X” both requiring rush restocks to keep up with demand.

The general shape of the contents of this volume are not a surprise, either. Anyone who pays close attention to the mapping of these books (e.g., me) could have told you with 99% certainty that this volume would collect through the end of the original 2021 Hellfire Gala, inclusive of all of the issues that were a part of the Gala.

Personally, I thought this would stretch another 4-5 issues past the Gala to pick up either the Trial of Magneto (2021) mini-series or the first arc of X-Men (2021) by Gerry Duggan. It seemed like grabbing those extra issues would act as a solid epilogue the Gala and would set up the next omnibus to be a reasonable length.

Instead, this ends with the Gala, but does pick up pretty much every minor anthology story from non-X titles it could possibly grab in this period. I think that’s an awesome sign from Marvel that they’re paying close attention to the mapping of these books and are not just copy-and-pasting the Krakoa era release schedule into omnibus.

What does this mean for the following Krakoa omnis? I think we’ll need TWO MORE books to make it all the way to the end of Jonathan Hickman’s run with Inferno (2021) before the act break for The X Lives/Deaths of Wolverine. Just covering the next 2-3 months of issues after this is another 46-issue omnibus, which doesn’t even get us all the way to Inferno (2021) [Read more…] about Marvel Omnibus Announcement: X-Men: Age of Krakoa – Reign of X Omnibus Vol. 2

Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings

April 17, 2023 by krisis

This morning I had the absolute pleasure of announcing the results of the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot with Near Mint Condition!

The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot is an annual poll conducted by a mysterious comic book forum user named Tigereyes. The rules are simple: anyone can email Tigereyes up to 10 picks for their most-wanted, never-before-printed omnibuses of material originally printed by Marvel, even if they may no longer own the licensing rights.

Each first vote gets 10 points, each second vote gets 9 points, all the way down to your tenth vote getting just 1 point. After the voting period, Tigereyes goes through the gargantuan effort of tallying up all the votes – which also involves figuring out what everyone meant by their sometimes inconsistently-named or cryptically-described votes.

For me, the reveal of the results of the Tigereyes Secret Ballot is an international comics-loving holiday. I used to be the primary person on the internet creating statistics from the results every year! However, when I attempted to cover the entire poll entry-by-entry in 2017 I stalled out at the halfway point as the results straddled our move to New Zealand.

That’s why it was worth waking up at 4am NZ time to be ready to share this year’s results with my good friends Omar and Jess on the Near Mint Condition channel, thanks to some last-minute planning with Omar over the weekend.

Our show was nearly three hours long as we dug into the potential contents of every book on the list and whether we’d read them or not. As always, I had just as much fun appearing on-camera as I did chatting with all of the wonderful Minties in the live chat!

Don’t have time for the full 3-hour tour? We actually run down the full 60-book list in just 15 minutes, starting just before the 12-minute mark. I’m sharing the full list below, but it’s more than just a list – every omnibus includes a full suggested omnibus mapping along with a link to the relevant collecting guide on Crushing Comics.

That’s right, y’all – this is a post with SIXTY omnibus mappings in it, mapping well over 2,000 issues of comics. (Actually, it’s even more than that – there’s one tie, and in several entries I get into mapping second volumes if they would complete a run). That makes that one of the longest blog posts in 23 years of CrushingKrisis history.

Are you ready to be rocked by the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus vote? Strap in, true believers, and prepare to be mapped like you’ve never been mapped before.

X-Men, The Age of Krakoa (2019 – 2024) – The Definitive Collecting Guide

Updated Feb 17, 2025. The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men Age of Krakoa, including X-Men flagship titles by Jonathan Hickman, Gerry Duggan, Kieron Gillen, & Al Ewing, in comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2025 with titles scheduled for release through September 2025.

Comics mega-star Jonathan Hickman took over the X-Men franchise as both a writer and “Head of X” in July 2019, and since then nothing has been the same.

That’s not the only reason 2019 was a historic year for the X-Men. As a film media property, the rights to X-Men returned to the Marvel fold when Disney acquired FOX in March of 2019.

Certainly, this change to the licensing of Marvel’s Merry Mutants had an effect on the potential for massive comic plots to return to the somewhat languishing X-line. By many accounts, Hickman and his massive pitch for a massive shift in status quo for the X-Men had been around for some time in the X-Office during All-New All Different Marvel and RessurXion.

Even knowing a major change was coming to the X-line couldn’t prepare readers for what Jonathan Hickman had in store. He launched his era with a pair of intertwined mini-series – House of X and Powers of X, widely abbreviated as HOX and POX or HOXPOX – both filled with major bombshells of plot. Hickman revised the history of several characters in a major way that will forever color re-reads of classic material, and he used that change to set up an utterly shocking set of present day circumstances for the mutant race.

From the conclusion of HOXPOX, Marvel launched an initial line of six ongoing comics – a flagship X-Men title from Hickman, and five supporting books.

Marauders by Gerry Duggan was the most integrated with elements introduced by HOXPOX. Excalibur by Tini Howard used a newly-available character to spin new continuity about mutant magic. New Mutants by both Hickman and Ed Brisson examined the younger generation of mutants as evangelists to stray members of the mutant race. X-Force by Benjamin Percy looked at the security of the new world of mutants, both internally and externally. Fallen Angels by Bryan Edward Hill was the one fizzled launch book – it tried to integrate Kwannon into the new status quo, but stumbled along the way.

After the initial wave of books, early 2020 brought a new wave of ongoings and mini-series – as well as a replacement for the canceled Fallen Angels with Hellions by Zeb Wells following Kwannon’s continuing adventures. Notable, X-Factor by Leah Williams addressed one of the core concepts of Hickman’s new status quo for mutants.

Marvel Comics, along with most other publishers, paused their physical releases starting in late March of 2020 due to the global pandemic. This pushed back the first major event of the Hickman era to begin in September. X of Swords was a massive 22-part direct crossover through all of the ongoing books in the line pulled together plot threads from Hickman’s flagship as well as Howard’s Excalibur. It addressed virtually no plots outside of that, though it would certainly have an effect on all of the books coming out of the event.

After X of Swords, a third wave of new books launched in late 2020 and 2021, including one directly out of the event – Al Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D.. That wave of books largely concluded at the end of 2021 alongside the end of Hickman’s time on Krakoa with Inferno (2021).

Then, after a poorly-received band-aid event (X Lives/Deaths of Wolverine) to give the line time to reorient without Hickman, 2022 saw the launch of additional flagships in Kieron Gillen’s Immortal X-Men (focused on the Quiet Council) and Al Ewing’s X-Men Red (focused on Storm on Mars). Just a few months into both titles, they converged for the tightly-coordinated linewide Avengers / X-Men / Eternals: Judgment Day event, which was more than 50% written by Gillen on his own!

The line continued its three-flagship era into 2023, adding a number of five-issue limited series alongside the long-running Ben Percy titles of X-Force (2019) and Wolverine (2020). Then, halfway through 2023, the Hellfire Gala significantly altered the line and sent it into the “Fall of X” – again spawning a number of short-running limited series. After the first six months of Fall of X, the line moved on to its six month finale with the tightly-coordinated Fall of the House of X / Rise of the Powers of X.

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