Marvel Comics

Cable Math & Maps: Collected Issue Counting and Future Omnibus Mapping

February 2, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to a post comprehensively mapping Cable – from his 1990 debut in the pages of New Mutants to present day!

This is the second pilot of my “Math & Maps,” series where we dissect how every issue from a character or title has been collected and then figure out the best way to add it to our shelves in omnibus editions. Last time, we tackled X-Factor Mapping. This time, we’re looking at Mapping Cable – Nathan Dayspring Gray Summers – based on my recently-updated Guide to Cable.

Are you ready to map?!

To get started with our Cable Math & Maps, let’s look at the current collection standings for all of Cable’s series. This only includes series where he is a title star, but not series like X-Force (1991) and Cable & X-Force (2016) where he’s the leader in a team book.

Series	Total Issues	in Color*	in Epic	in Oversize
Cable	262	247	0	136
as a percentage:		94.27%	0%	51.91%

Note that Cable: Blood & Metal (1992) #1-2 are collected in the X-Force Epic Collection line, but Cable does not have his own line.

How does that break down across every Cable series from 2012 to present? What am I even counting? And, how can it all fit onto our bookshelves in a set of tidy hardcovers? Read on to find out! And, when you’re done, be sure to leave a comment to let me know if you’d like to see more posts like this in the future.

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – February 1, 2023

February 1, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to a trial of a kind of post I haven’t written for years: a post covering Marvel Comics February 1 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 every new release, I’ll point you to the right guide, which will be updated to reflect the current series and issue.

I last attempted this sort of post five whole years ago. Time flies! Seriously, it feels like it was just a few months ago. At the time, I had several dozen fewer Marvel guides than I do today and I was more than a year behind on reading the entire Marvel Universe. Trying to point readers toward the right collection information for every issue was like trying to bale out a boat with a sieve. I needed to spend the time guide-building!

There are still many more Marvel guides left to build, but I have much better coverage than I did a half a decade ago. I’m going to experiment with bringing this post back this month as a way to catch up on everything that Marvel is offering – both for myself and for my 100+ Marvel reading guide pages.

Marvel Comics February 1 2023 Collected Editions

Vol. 1: The Man in the Ant Hill (2015 paperback, ISBN 978-0785198505 / digital / 2023 paperback, 978-1302950354)
See Guide to Ant-Man for this straight reprint of the existing Epic just in time for the Ant-Man movie.

Captain Mar-Vell Omnibus Vol. 1 (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302948658 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers for coverage of this series (though, a Mar-Vell guide may be coming…). This omnibus is a big deal, as the three color Masterworks that cover this material have been out of print for some time. It’s nice to see Marvel focusing on a classic hero without much current exposure.

Daredevil By Frank Miller & Klaus Janson Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302945534 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil for this reprinting of the perennial one-and-done classic Daredevil ominbus.

Fantastic Four by Dan Slott, Vol. 3 (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302945343 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four for this hardcover recollection line, which continues to be one of the lines Marvel is reprinting most-aggressively. It’s almost as if they’re getting reading for a movie…

by Gerry Duggan, Vol. 2 (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302945213/ digital)
See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa for this hardcover recollection line. This completes Duggan’s run in hardcover.

Miles Morales: The Avenging Avenger! (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Miles Morales for this digest-size recollection of Miles’s post-Secret Wars Marvel-616 series.

Silver Surfer Epic Collection Volume 5: The Return of Thanos (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948290 / digital)
See Guide to Silver Surfer for this new Epic Collection! This brings us past halfway point of Silver Surfer’s Epic line, with 8 books released and 6 still to go to cover his material through the end of his 1987 ongoing. Still missing are Volumes 2, 8, 10, 11, 12, & 14.

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Omnibus Vol. 1 (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302947941)
See Guide to Star Wars, Episode 4 – A New Hope or Star Wars Expanded Universe Comics for this new printing of the surprisingly hot 2021 Gillen omnibus.

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics February 1 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics.

Guide to Spider-Man comics from 2018 to present day – now available to the public!

February 1, 2023 by krisis

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to every Spider-Man comic from 2018 to the present day s is now available to all CK readers! This guide covers every Spidey ongoing, mini-series, and event unless it’s headline by another character with their own guide, like Spider-Gwen or Spider-Ham. That includes all of Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man (2018) run, the 2021 BEYOND! run starring Ben Reilly, and the current Zeb Wells Amazing Spider-Man (2022) run that spun out the Dark Web event. This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the amazing Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (2018 – Present Day)

I have a love/hate relationship with my main Guide to Spider-Man, of which this new guide is a spin-off.

If we’re being honest, that main Spidey page less of a guide and more of a complete reading order, not unlike my mega-popular Definitive X-Men Reading Order Guide. It’s one of the longest pages on all of CK. It has literally every Spider-Man appearance from 1963 through the mid-2010s from every single ongoing title, mini-series, and guest appearance.

That’s a lot to wrangle when I want to add just one new collection! [Read more…] about Guide to Spider-Man comics from 2018 to present day – now available to the public!

New for Patrons: Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne

January 30, 2023 by krisis

My newest guide for Patreon supporters of Crushing Krisis is for one of the longest-running women of Marvel. In fact, while researching this guide I realized she may be the first Silver Age female Marvel hero to merit her own series of solo anthology stories! She’s also the first woman with a lengthy stint as a team leader at Marvel. All of that makes it absolutely wild that she has never had her own solo series until this month!!! Find all of those Marvel milestone moments in my brand new Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne!

Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne
This guide is now available to the public thanks to the astonishing support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

I won’t lie – getting this Guide to Wasp done was a battle, even though I got a very early start on it!

That’s because Janet van Dyne has appeared in a staggering 1,296 Marvel comics as of this month, which includes 1,295 comics that were not her own comic.

Building a guide for a character who has mostly appeared in their own series is always more straight-forward than building one for a perennial team member and guest star – even if that character has many series like Wolverine. That’s because their series established their prevailing narrative. Even if Wolverine made three times as many guest appearances in a period compared to his number of solo issues, it will be the solo issues that establish his character arc at that time.

Janet van Dyne has never had that privilege. For a character who is about to celebrate her 60th anniversary, her major character moments are relatively few and far between. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne

Updated: Guide to Excalibur

January 27, 2023 by krisis

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 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