Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Marvel Comics

This Week in X: All-New Wolverine #32, Astonishing X-Men #9, New Mutants – Dead Souls #1, Old Man Logan #36, Weapon X #15, & X-Men Blue #23

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It’s the eleventh week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X has six new titles to review – so many that I mistakenly omitted one the first time I edited this video. I’ve never had to count as high as six before!

This week, I cover:

  • All-New Wolverine #32, a pleasant (if pandering) one-shot epilogue to “Orphans of X”
  • Astonishing X-Men #9, a dull middle chapter that does a lot of telling rather than showing
  • New Mutants – Dead Souls #1, a solid hit for lovers of every era of New Mutants
  • Old Man Logan #36, which flirts with some heavy themes before turning into a MacGuffin hunt
  • Weapon X #15, a surprisingly satisfying (and unsurprisingly bloody) tussle
  • X-Men Blue #23, far and away the best issue of this series and a return to form for Cullen Bunn

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up.

Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

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I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

Crushing Comics S01E081 – How X-Men: Second Coming brought me back to comics

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In the second of three episodes focused on unwrapping a massive brick of oversized X-Men comics, I reminisce about Second Coming – the storyline that tempted me back to reading comics in general and modern X-Men in specific (as discussed back in 2010).

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 81 features X-Men: Second Coming and X-Men: Second Coming – Revelations, both covered in my Guide to Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen.

The Pull List: Action Comics, Avengers, Calexit, Detective Comics, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Terrifics, Thanos, & more!

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This week The Pull List is holding steady at a still-staggering 32 comic books.

I’m not sure if I was being a moody reader or if every company shipped some bunk books this week, but the average rating for the week was 2.70 – a full third of a point lower than the past few weeks. While that means most of the books were still better than average, it’s not by a whole lot.

Artwork from Thanos #16, line art by Geoff Shaw with color art by Antonio Fabela.

Here’s what I pulled this week, with *s on adds (whether I just caught up with them or started them fresh):

  • DC Comics
    • Action Comics #998
    • Detective Comics #975
    • The Flash #41
    • * Mera – Queen of Atlantis #1
    • Milk Wars: JLA/Doom Patrol Special
    • Raven: Daughter of Darkness #2
    • * Suicide Squad #36
    • Teen Titans #17
    • The Silencer #2
    • * The Terrifics #1
    • Wonder Woman #41
  • Image Comics
    • * The Beef #1
    • Days of Hate #2
    • Gasolina #6
    • Twisted Romance #4
    • Void Trip #4
  • Marvel Comics
    • All-New Wolverine #31
    • Avengers #682
    • Captain Marvel #129
    • * Champions #17
    • Legion #2
    • * Lockjaw #1
    • Moon Knight #192
    • Thanos #16
    • X-Men Blue #22
  • Smaller Publishers: Aftershock, Black Mask, Boom! Studios, Dark Horse, Titan
    • Abbott #2, Boom! Studios
    • * Alisik #1, Titan Books / Statix Press
    • Backways #3, Aftershock Comics
    • * Calexit #2, Black Mask Studios
    • Hungry Ghosts #2, Dark Horse / Berger Books
    • * Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Coronation #1, Boom! Studios
    • * The Wilds #1, Black Mask Studios

Picks of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week:
Detective Comics (2016) #975

A great-looking, contemplative issue that brings together the members of the Bat-Family we don’t usually see in this book – Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Damian.

Batman has pulled these trusted lieutenants together as an inner council to decide Batwoman’s fate as a member of the Bat-family, yet in some ways their conversation is also a litigation of Bruce and his methods as the head of this dysfunctional household. Meanwhile, Batwoman holds herself accountable for her own actions, with a surprising result.

This isn’t an issue that’s going to appeal to a more casual reader – it looks amazing, but it has hardly any conflict. However, for someone who has been reading from the start this pierces right to the heart of this title and the ideological divide between Batwoman and Batman that has been brewing all along.

Part of what makes it so power is that Batwoman also has an avowed “no kills” philosophy, but she is willing to make exceptions when other lives hang in the balance. Batman won’t make exceptions, so he gets to watches thousands of Gothamites die from his moral high ground.

It’s heartbreaking to think of this book writing by someone other than Tynion or with a cast other than this one. Everything about it works so incredibly well. Yet, we’re in the “disassembled” phase, and there’s certainly more conflict to come before Tynion moves on.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week:
The Wilds (2018) #1, Black Mask Studios

A strong and sombre new zombie comic, The Wilds is definitely a descendent of Walking Dead but with a completely different tone – due in no small part to its pair of woman creators, Vita Ayala and Emily Pearson.

We get the same old zombie-pocked landscape with isolated camps trading resources and doing their best to survive, except the zombies are walking plant life – humans who have turned into semi-sentient flower pots. It makes for strangely calming, beautiful zombies to see all of their typical goriest bits covered in blooming flowers.

Pearson’s art evokes such masters of the modern form as Allred and Noto, employing their same plain, truthful faces and uncomplicated backgrounds.

Beneath the flowery dressing, this is the familiar story of a single senior errand runner who thinks it might be time to get out of the game, and how an act of compassion on her last journey might spell the end of the safety of her heavily fortified compound. There’s no slam bang action beats in this one, but the strange stillness of it is pulling me towards reading more.

[Read more…] about The Pull List: Action Comics, Avengers, Calexit, Detective Comics, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Terrifics, Thanos, & more!

Crushing Comics S01E079 – childhood scares, Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu, Heartbreak Quadrant, & more!

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Get ready – this is my longest and most content-packed video to date!

I begin by recalling what used to scare me as a kid as I unwrap one of the first books I packed back in the states – Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, Volume 2. I unwrap the book from its cellophane and page through live on camera.

This leads me on a lengthy tangent about professional printing processes, including how press sheets word and why expensive books still have printing errors.

Finally, perhaps not realizing how long the episode had already become, I decide to open a random packet of extra books – Image Comics: The Road To Independence, Barrett Stanley’s Heartbreak Quadrant, and the only hard copy version of my novel that exists!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 79 features Shang-Chi – Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 2 (covered in my Guide to Shang-Chi), Image – The Road to Independence, Heartbreak Quadrant, and Krisis.