Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Matt Wilson

The Pull List: Avengers in No Surrender, Detective Comics, Mister Miracle, Paradiso, & more!

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Welcome to the second week of “The Pull List,” where I give a quick rundown of all of the non-X comics I read this week.

My pulls this week came from a wide spread of publishers – Marvel, DC, Image, Aftershock, and Valiant! It was also a week where the minutia of the craft really took me out of enjoying the storytelling. I had a lot of bones to pick with letterers, and many comments about pace and continuity.

This week’s Pull List included:

  • Avengers (2017) #675
  • Detective Comics (1937/2016) #972
  • Judas (2017) #2
  • Mister Miracle (2017) #6
  • Monstro Mechanica (2017) #2
  • Ninjak vs. The Valiant Universe (2018) #1
  • Paradiso (2017) #2
  • Port of Earth (2017) #3
  • Rise of the Black Panther (2018)
  • Runaways (2017) #5
  • Sleepless (2017) #2
  • Witchblade (2017) #2
  • Wonder Woman (2016) #38.

You might be surprised at which of these books I loved and which left me in a seething rage. There’s at least one where I disagree with seemingly 99% of the folks who I’ve seen react to the book in the past few days. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers in No Surrender, Detective Comics, Mister Miracle, Paradiso, & more!

The Pull List: Babyteeth, Black Bolt, Captain America, Crosswind, Giant Days, and more!

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What did I read this week that was newly released and wasn’t X-Men?

I’m still a long way off from being caught up to all of present-day Marvel, so I have to choose my battles – reading series that are in the early stages of their Legacy numbering or have few enough issues that I can catch up all the way. A handful of indie series I follow (one only begrudgingly) also dropped this week.

This post covers:

Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron is the #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. 

Thor_God_of_Thunder_2012_0001Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

Visit the Guide to Thor to learn how to collect this story – and every other Thor comic ever published!

What Is It? Thor: God of Thunder (2012) was Thor’s relaunched comic in Marvel Now, beginning a new run by Jason Aaron that is still going (in a third title) over four years later!

This beautifully illustrated volume is one of my most highly-recommended comic runs of the past half decade to readers both old and new. It found Thor facing off against the brutal God Butcher across three different timelines before his attention turned back to tending to the problems of Earth and Asgard.

Thor: God of Thunder (2012) ran for 25 issues from November 2012 to November 2014, though five issues of Original Sin act as an interlude between #24-25.

It continued to Thor (2014), which ran for 8 issues and an annual from December 2014 to July 2015, when it was interrupted by Secret Wars.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results. [Read more…] about Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Review: Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Vaughan & Chiang

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E and I had our first DVD player when we lived in Pine Street, just after I graduated college. I suppose it was in a laptop of hers, because we didn’t have a television and I remember watching movies in bed.

I was excited to reclaim some of the films of my youth long since lost on the beta tapes they were captured on, so between that year and the next I filled them all in. Dark Crystal, The Lost Boys, Labyrinth, and more.

The thing about these nostalgia viewings is that you can re-watch the thing you once loved, but it might not produce the same magic. I was so excited to show E The Lost Boys, labelling it as a sort of proto-Buffy as we settled into bed to watch it, but it was laugh-out-loud lame. Yet, there are still new layers to unravel in Labyrinth.

The 80s produced so much of those wonderful coming of age stories, and I don’t think I’m saying that because I was young at the time. Actually, I was ignorant of most of the stuff like Stand By Me and The Goonies, because at the ripe old age of seven I already felt I was too old for their messages. The Lost Boys, at least, had vampires. Yet, looking back there are so many seminal movies in that Amblin Entertainment model set by E.T. and Goonies that are still referenced today, right down to their feel being aped by films like Super 8.

Paper-Girls-vol-01I’ve never seen Stand By Me or The Goonies. I know, I know – it’s sacrilege. Just now I looked them up on Wikipedia to make sure I wasn’t mistaking them for something else.

It’s odd for me to watch this new generation of media being produced by the folks who came of age with the first set – usually a few years older than me, probably old enough to have seen these films in theatres on their own.

The 80s vibe is unmistakeable, but I don’t know all their influences by heart the way I do things that reference David Bowie or Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Paper Girls, Vol. 2 2.0 stars Amazon Logo

Collects issues #1-5 written by Brian K. Vaughan with line art by Cliff Chiang, color art by Matt Wilson, and letters by Jared K. Fletcher.

Tweet-sized Review: Vaughan and Chiang’s Paper Girls tries for all-girls Goonies but maybe foregrounds too many monsters too soon

CK Says: Skip it (for now)

Paper Girls is the newest Brian K. Vaughan jam to hit its first collection, but I think you’d be better off waiting for a second trade paperback before you start reading.

Vaughan is the master creator of critical hits like Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Marvel’s Runaways, The Private Eye, and the still-running deeply personal space fantasy Saga, which is currently the biggest independent comic after The Walking Dead. Vaughan is joined on this creator-owned Image Comics series by artist Cliff Chiang, directly from his run on DC’s Wonder Woman, and uber-colorist Matt Wilson, from everything.

Paper Girls promised a return to normalcy after the devious Saga, focusing on a group of girls on their 1988 paper route. Of course, Vaughan would never go full-normal on us – these girls would surely tangle with something fantastical. [Read more…] about Review: Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Vaughan & Chiang