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New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s X-Man, Nate Grey

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Today’s new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis covers an unusual X-Men character, a copy of another character who went one to helm one of the longest-running X-Men solo series before disappearing into the aether (literally) for nearly a decade…

X-Man, Nate Grey – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: yes, this is really a guide for one 80-issue ongoing and fewer than 50 additional appearances by a character who went forgotten for a decade, and then for another half decade after a brief return.

That’s it! And, yet, X-Man AKA Nate Grey is about to make a major comeback to the world of X-Men, so it was time he got his own guide.

He debuted as part of “Age of Apocalypse” in 1995, and it’s important to remember that this event was quite specifically not an alternate reality at the time. It was the only version of Marvel’s reality that existed in the present day thanks to Legion going back in time to murder his father, Charles Xavier, rather than his target Magneto. (Oops!)

Nate Grey was a critical figure in the Age of Apocalypse – a version of Cable unravaged by time and the TO virus. While our Cable relied on his tactical skill and his leverage over the timestream to thwart his enemies, Nate Grey only needed Cable’s heritage of raw, uninhibited mutant power – the kind that Mr. Sinister had spent years trying to realize in our original timeline.

Age of Apocalypse was well-received and marvelous fun to read at the time. The idea of four of its characters and one of its titles persisting into Marvel-616 continuity was thrill! Of course, it made the most sense for that title to be X-Man, the most unique and singular of all the converted books.

However, there was the question of what to do with Nate Grey. In the Age of Apocalypse he was the most-powerful rebel, but in 616 Marvel he had nothing to rebel against. There was no narrative to welcome Nate Grey to the main Marvel timeline.  [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s X-Man, Nate Grey

The Falcon, Sam Wilson – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

You cannot see this page because it is currently exclusive to Patreon supporters.

Thank you for being a reader and supporter of Crushing Krisis!

This site would have never grown past the original guides to X-Men without readers like you, and I will never forget that!

It not only takes (a lot of) time to produce hundreds of pages of comics content, but also money for hosting, registration, and software. The financial support from Patreon pledges has kept this site running when I would otherwise have had to suspend it or refocus my spare time on freelance work.

I completely understand if you cannot afford to support CK or are not interested in doing so. The core of my coverage of the X-Men and the Marvel Universe is available to all readers for free – absolutely nothing has changed about that. I still appreciate your support and you are always welcome to ask me questions in comments here or on Twitter or YouTube!

As a thank you to readers who support Crushing Krisis on Patreon, I provide early access to new guides like this one. Patrons generally chip in $1-2 a month to help cover the costs of hosting CK and to make awesome new content like this possible.

I literally could not have launched the DC section of Crushing Comics without the support of Patrons, nor would I have worked on Star Wars or Conan, nor would I have the time to launch a YouTube channel or revise the X-Men Reading Order.

That said, all readers benefit from the support of Patrons – because all of those exclusive guides eventually become regular free content for every reader.

Guides launched with the support of Patrons and now available to all readers: 22 Guides!

DC Comics: DC New 52, DC Rebirth, DC Elseworlds & Infinite Earths, DC Universe Events, Detective Comics, Batman, Batman by Grant Morrison, Batwoman, Gotham, Green Arrow, John Constantine – The Hellblazer, Robin(s), Watchmen, & Wonder Woman

Marvel Comics: Marvel Era: Fresh Start, Marvel Ultimate Comics, Jessica Jones AKA Alias, Magneto, New Warriors, Star Wars, & X-23

Other Publishers: Conan (Marvel & Dark Horse)

Plus, top-to-bottom revisions to guides including: Iron Fist; X-Men Reading Order Eras 0, 1, and 2; Uncanny X-Men #281-393; Uncanny X-Men #394-544

Current Exclusives For Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 8 Guides!

DC Guides: Batman – Index Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Domino, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Scarlet Witch, Vision

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 31 Guides!

DC Guides: Animal Man, Aquaman, Catwoman, Batman – Index Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Flash, Justice League, Nightwing, Outsiders, Suicide Squad, Teen Titans & Young Justice

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Ant-Man & Giant-Man, Champions, Darkhawk, Dazzler, Domino, Falcon, Gwenpool, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Moon Boy / Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan, Power Pack, Scarlet Witch, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom, Vision

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!

Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men (The Silver Age)

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This is available to everyone, but it was made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis:

The Revised & Expanded X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men 

One of the biggest factors in CK’s popularity exploding in the early 2010’s was the X-Men Reading Order I debuted back in 2012.

It emerged from a moment of frustration, as all of my best projects tend to. This time, my ire was focused on the fact that no one had produced an actually readable chronological guide to reading X-Men. Existing guides were either simply ordered by release date or ridiculously complex lists that broke down every single-panel flashback.

None of them were comprehensive of every book, nor were they appropriate for the Trade Era of collected editions.

Despite being a major feature of CK, I can’t say I’ve ever been proud of the presentation of the Reading Order. A lot of the pages have a certain “git’er’done” quality to them that was a hallmark of CK’s early expansion that I’ve never had the time to improve.

Honestly, they always makes me think of the scrawlings of a Serial Killer, like the notebooks upon notebooks in Se7en. That’s what it looked like to figure out – I had giant rolls of paper unspooled across the floor with scribbles and crossouts and loop-de-loop arrows on them. [Read more…] about Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men (The Silver Age)

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Vision

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Today’s new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis is long overdue – 17 months overdue, to be precise, since it was the last guide you all voted for in a Patrons’ Choice Poll just a few weeks before my entire life got flipped turned upside down…

Vision – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

Despite anchoring five significant limited series spanning from 1982 to 2017, Vision has spent the majority of his publishing life as a team character in Avengers beginning in 1968.

In that sense, he is one of the most quintessential anchoring Avengers, because he’s never really appeared elsewhere! Plus, what character could be more of a core Avenger than an android created by Ultron (himself the creation of Hank Pym) based on the brain waves of Wonder Man and who falls in love with Scarlet Witch!? [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Vision

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Power Pack

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Today’s new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis was actually the guide that caused me to start the avalanche of smaller guides to fill in the gaps in my Marvel Legacy era page! It’s for a group of characters who have always been curiously X-Men adjacent, despite definitely not being mutants…

Power Pack – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

Power Pack’s long-running association with the X-Men is down to their creator, Louise Simonson.

Simonson was coming off years as an editor, and heading into several years of writing X-Factor and, later, a portion of New Mutants. Not only that, but she frequently pulled Power Pack into the X-Men’s 1980s line events – they tied in to Mutant Massacre (where they faced Sabreooth), Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno!

That’s the only tie the four siblings of the Power family had to Marvel’s mutants. They got their powers not through their genes, but in the style of Green Lantern – via an alien who was part of an intergalactic struggle dying at their feet on Earth.

Power Pack was one of the only Marvel titles to be explicitly in-continuity and purposefully written with early grade readers in mind. That made them popular both with kids and adults in the 80s, but it left them without an audience in the 90s as comics shifted towards teens and speculators. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Power Pack