Marvel Comics

Updated: Guide to X-23, Laura Kinney – The All-New Wolverine

April 14, 2023 by krisis

This week’s X-Men Guide Update is my first major update to one of the last major X-Men pages I launched! At the time this character was early in a star-making, joyous run taking over a legacy name from her adopted (and maybe actual) father. Little did I know how much she would go through in the next half decade, including flip-flopping over her codename, being trapped in an alternate reality, being trapped in a time bubble, and… well, the next bit would be a spoiler! Of course, I’m talking about my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine!

Guide to X-23 – Wolverine

I’ve always been a major fan of X-23, ever since first encountering here in the murderous 2008 run of X-Force and then backtracking to read her entire chronological history exactly as it is presented in this guide.

That’s why I was so pleased when Logan’s death stuck for four whole years, during which time Laura Kinney enjoyed the spotlight as Wolverine. It was just as thrilling to see her and Logan reunited at the beginning of Jonathan Hickman’s run and for Logan to affirm that she still held the title, only for Hickman to snatch her out of our grasp later than issue as she became trapped inside the accelerated world of the Children of the Vault for nearly two years of publishing.

Yet, it turned out to be worth out – as Laura emerged to be the Wolverine of the main X-Men squad, while Logan continued to anchor his combined mutant CIA/FBI in X-Force.

As I caught up on more-recent Wolverine reading to update this guide, I discovered the recent totally shocking revelation from just a few months ago! I won’t spoil it here, but it definitely changes the game for Laura’s character – and, it makes this the perfect time to binge her entire reading order.

It was interesting to revisit this guide, which I first crafted in the early days of my Patreon campaign. That was the beginning of my era of tackling solo characters with splintered bibliographies by summarizing all of their appearances as I still do today. Yet, this had many hallmarks of my older guides, like a vague Table of Contents, collections listed without ISBNs and digital links, and crowded reading order sections that didn’t separate recollections like omnibuses and Complete Collections out into their own section.

After a full day of work, my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine is now much tidier, updated with every notable appearance, and annotated with Marvel Unlimited links to help you with your next binge read.

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 12 2023

April 12, 2023 by krisis

Let’s take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 12 2023 releases.

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 12 2023 Collected Editions

Ghost Rider (2022) Vol. 2: Shadow Country (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302947972 / digital)
See Guide to Ghost Rider. This continues collecting the current Benjamin Percy series, plus the Ghost Rider: Vengeance Forever (2022) #1 one-shot. The upcoming crossover with Wolverine is still one volume beyond this – we’ll get a Volume 3 later this year before the crossover is collected in its own book. The Ghost Rider Guide is updated with all of those collections!

Guardians of the Galaxy Epic Collection: Earth Shall Overcome (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950439 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This is an Epic Collection not of the main MCU Guardians team in their early appearances, but of the original Guardians of the Galaxy team which were based in the future.

Thor Mighty Marvel Masterworks Vol. 3: The Trial of the Gods (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302948931 / digital)
See Guide to Thor – The Odinson. This is Marvel’s new digest-size Silver Age collection line, which DOES NOT line up perfectly with the break points in existing hardcover Masterworks.

Nova, Vol. 1: Sam Alexander (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302950422 / digital)
See Guide to Nova(s). This is volume is part of Marvel’s initiative to recollect all of their 2010s teen heroes into library-friendly, digest-sized paperbacks. This covers the first two arcs of Sam’s 2013 Marvel Now series.

Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948351 / digital)
See Guide to Shang-Chi. This collects the third series (and subsequent one-shot) of Gene Luen Yang’s ongoing run on Shang-Chi.

War of Kings Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN / digital)
See Guide to Marvel Universe Events – War of Kings & Realm of Kings. This collects the heart of the multi-year intergalactic epic that mashed up X-Men, Inhumans, and the new Guardians of the Galaxy. This is immensely satisfying to read all in a single, coherent collected order – even if you don’t have the Prelude or Aftermath omnibuses to sandwich it.

X-Men Epic Collection Volume 22: Legacies (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951115 / digital)
See Guide to Uncanny X-Men – The Crossover Era or Guide to X-Men, Vol 2 (1991). This is the fourth Epic Volume that interweaves both flagship X-Men titles in reading order – exactly what we’ve always wanted! This covers the aftermath of X-Cutioner’s Song, the lead-up to Fatal Attractions, and the introduction of Kwannon as Revanche – Psylocke’s body double!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 12 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 12 2023

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

April 5, 2023 by krisis

Let’s take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 5 2023 releases.

Marvel Comics April 5 2023 Collected Editions

This is a slim week for new collected editions – there’s just four books out, and one is a reprint!

Adam Warlock Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949877 / digital)
See Guide to Adam Warlock. This collects Warlock’s full Silver & Bronze Age Warlock saga all in one place for the first time, from his debut as “Him” in the pages of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four to Jim Starlin’s psychedelic late-70s space epic! You can read this and continue directly to Infinity Gauntlet.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Volume 3: The Coming of Galactus
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950415 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four. This is the third time this particular Epic has been back to print. That speaks not only to the fact that it’s one of the Marvel’s most-significant stories of all time, but also speaks to the ongoing success of the Epic Collection line as we head into its second decade. It’s doing exactly the thing it’s meant to do – getting books all into the same format and reprinting them whenever necessary!

Marvel-Verse: Guardians of the Galaxy (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302950705 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This collects a smattering of stand-alone Guardians stories from the middle of Bendis’s run through the beginning of Duggan’s run, including one previously uncollected issue – Guardians of the Galaxy: Dream On (2017) #1. A decent, if scant, sampler platter if you’re averse to sampling digitally on Marvel Unlimited – but it’s hard to take it seriously without any material from the 2008 series.

Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950712 / digital)
See Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill. This is the collection if you want to grab Star-Lords earliest set of continuity stories in the Marvel Universe. I say “continuity” stories because the character of Peter Quill as Star-Lord first debuted in the 1970s, but all of his early adventures have been since rendered as occurring in a separate reality due to some unresolvable time travel shenanigans. That means when Quill pops up in the 2003 Thanos ongoing series, it’s technically his first appearance (though, making things even more confusing, at the time he was assumed to still be the same character as that 1970s version). All of this and more is explained in my guide!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 5 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

New for Patrons: Guide to Drax the Destroyer

March 23, 2023 by krisis

I’m back with the fourth in my impromptu mid-month run of guides to green heroes for all Patrons of CK. Did I have any inkling this grouping of four guides would all debut back-to-back, or that they would overlap with Saint Patrick’s day in the process? I wish I could say it was all intentional, but it certainly was not! This hero is the oldest of all the green heroes I’ve covered in the past week, he’s as deadly as Gamora, and he’s even had more transformations than those famous mutant turtles. It’s my new Guide to Drax the Destroyer!

Guide to Drax the Destroyer

Part of the fun of putting together my definitive guides and reading orders is that I get a new understanding of a character’s progression.

In the case of Drax, I’ve seen all of his appearances before, but I’ve never reviewed them all sequentially to understand the major plot cadences that have caused his character to change over the years – sometimes radically. Of all of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax is the team member who has had the most distinct eras in his comic history.

What’s so interesting about Drax and his eras is how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has mined each one for a minor detail of his character. While his film incarnation often feels the farthest from the comics out of all of the guardians, really he is equally close to each of his disparate eras from the 1970s through present day.

Updated: Guide to X-Men Legacy

March 17, 2023 by krisis

This week’s X-Men guide update includes some of my favorite runs of all time, because they each had keen single-character focus that mined past continuity to allow characters to grow and change. It’s my Guide to X-Men Legacy.

Guide to X-Men Legacy

X-Men Legacy was Mike Carey’s reinvention of X-Men (1991) in the wake of “Messiah Complex” in 2008. He made the bold move of jettisoning a fan-favorite team lead by Rogue to refocus the book entirely on Professor Xavier. It was one of the few times in X-Men history Xavier was truly the lead character in an X-Men book – the other being Claremont’s short-lived Excalibur (2004).

After a year of focusing on Xavier, Carey pivoted his focus back to Rogue. Rogue had been a lead character many times over, even anchoring a pair of mini-series and an ongoing title. However, no one had ever before dug so deeply into her character and her powers as Carey. In giving Rogue a respite from the idea of her powers as a curse, he was able to unify the many aspects of her personality we had seen (and loved) over the years – as revolutionary, rebel, leader, lover, and mentor.

Simon Spurrier did something similar on his 2012-2014 run of X-Men Legacy, except he was working with a character with barely any history at all! Professor Xaver’s son Legion had only ever figured heavily into a handful of past comic arcs – his introduction in Claremont’s New Mutants, the final 30 issues of Claremont’s run, LegionQuest as a lead-in to Age of Apocalypse, and Zeb Wells’ recent run on New Mutants. Yet, Spurrier treated him similarly to how Carey dealt with Rogue – digging into why his powers and his life had always been so fractured, and what his humanity looked like beneath that.

I wish this Guide to X-Men Legacy update included new collected editions, especially of Carey’s incredible run on Rogue. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen new collections containing any Legacy issues since the 2018 reprint of Spurrier’s run, aside from a few issues recollected in last year’s Avengers vs. X-Men omnibus. That doesn’t mean there was nothing to update! I added links to buy and read the entire run digitally, clarified the contents of several collections, and slightly tweaked the recommended reading oder.

With Marvel just wrapping up the reprints of the 2001-2012 era of Uncanny X-Men and X-Men (1991) last year it feels like the time is right to recollect X-Men Legacy (2008), which has never been collected beyond its original hardcovers and trade paperbacks. Perhaps we’ll see it recollected in the new “Modern Epic” line – especially if Rogue continues to have a prominent role in the X-Men line in 2023 and beyond.