Mike McKone

Updated: Guide to Exiles

April 21, 2023 by krisis

This week I have an X-Men guide update that’s not for an X-Men guide, although it’s actually an extremely X-Men guide. Confused yet? Hopefully this update will help alleviate your confusion, because today I rebuilt my Guide to Exiles!

Guide to Exiles

Here’s my simple pitch for Exiles: Imagine if Marvel’s What If? had a single team visiting all of the many realities it explored, and most of them were mutants.

(Or, if you’re as old as I am, picture Sliders, but with mutants!)

That aptly describes Exiles as it was originally launched by Judd Winick and Mike McKone. It was anchored by the beloved Blink from Age of Apocalypse and featured a version of Morph who resembled his X-Men: The Animated Series incarnation, but all of the other characters were alternate versions of Marvel-616 mutants. Or, in one case, a potential next generation of mutants with the introduction of Nocturne – Nightcrawler’s daughter!

Part of the enduring charm of the original 100-issue run of Exiles is that it’s a straight sprint that isn’t involved in any Marvel-616 mutant shenanigans. It included mutants, but it was NOT an X-book tangled up with the rest of the line. Other than a single story in X-Men Unlimited and a three-issue dalliance with House of M, Exiles was 100% self-contained from issues #1-99 & Annual 1.

Then, Chris Claremont happened. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Exiles

Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 14, 2017 by krisis

Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 is the #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.

See the Guide to Spider-Man for how you can collect this run today. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.

What Is It? In January 2008 Marvel collapsed their line of several Spider-Man titles down to just Amazing Spider-Man, which accelerated to releasing three issues a month from a rotating cast of writers starting with #546. This coincided with a minor reset of some details of Spider-Man’s continuity – more on that below.

While the story arc “Brand New Day” ran from #546 to 564, the title is commonly used to refer to the entire period of accelerated schedule with multiple writers, which ran through #647 in December 2010 – three entire years comprised of 102 issues of Amazing Spider-Man!

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.

Creators: Many!

The rotating writers considered to be Spider-Man’s steering brain-trust consistently including Dan Slott, Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale, and Zeb Wells – though others like Mark Waid and Joe Kelly also contributed arcs in this period.

This initial chunk of Brand New Day included runs of pencil art from Steve McNiven, Salvador Larroca, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo, Barry Kitson, Marcos Martin, Mike McKone, and John Romita Jr..

Probable Contents: Collects The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #546-577, The Amazing Spider-Man: Swing Shift Director’s Cut (2008), Venom Super Special (1995) #1, Secret Invasion: Spider-Man #1-3, and material from The Amazing Spider-Man Extra! (2008) #1.

For a full map of how the Brand New Day period could fit into omnibus volumes, see the end of this post.

Can you read it right now? Yes! Marvel has begun to recollect Big Time in a series of Complete Collections. A first omnibus probably wouldn’t cover all three collections. See the Guide to Spider-Man for full physical collecting info.

Plus, every one of these issues is available on Marvel Unlimited!

The Details:

To talk about this run, we have to first talk about the story that immediately precedes it – “One More Day.”

“One More Day” is one of the most-hated Spider-Man stories of all time, neck-and-neck with its later sequel “One Moment In Time.”

Fans tend to dislike any revisions to their favorite elements of continuity, but this one was particularly egregious – not only breaking up Spider-Man and Mary Jane, but retroactively causing their marriage to cease to exist due to a very out-of-character deal with a literal devil. Their relationship and all of their stories continued to exist – just not their marriage.

The story did come with a few fringe benefits. The world would forget Spider-Man’s secret identity (recently revealed in Civil War), but that meant he was now in hiding due to the Superhuman Registration Act. It revived Harry Osborn from the dead. And, it resulted in the cancellation of all of Marvel’s other Spider-Man titles, which allowed them to accelerate Amazing Spider-Man to be released three times a month. [Read more…] about Amazing Spider-Man: Brand New Day Omnibus, Vol. 1 – The #51 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Astonishing X-Men an Amazing X-Men – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2024 with titles scheduled for release through March 2025.

Astonishing X-Men launched under the unprecedented auspices of being an X-Men with the hottest possible creators that you could follow without a tangle of other comics to buy.

Though that concept would be slightly watered-down over the years, the theme of a standalone, fan-pleasing X-Men book focused on relationships as much as heroics has always been the mission statement of Astonishing X-Men, and it was echoed in 2014’s Amazing X-Men.

Note: Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) and Amazing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) were both four-issue limited series that were part of the Age of Apocalypse alternate timeline. Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2 was a three-issue limited series that was a precursor to a major Apocalypse storyline.

When Astonishing launched in 2004, Grant Morrison’s massively popular run on New X-Men had just come to a somewhat abrupt halt, at least in part due to disputes behind the scenes. That lead to a line-wide re-alignment of X-Men titles, including cancelling Chris Claremont’s sideline title X-Treme X-Men and moving him back to the flagship Uncanny X-Men.

Marvel had unleashed something entirely new with Morrison’s run that no existing Marvel writer could replicate – not even Claremont: Morrison was an outside voice to the X-line who brought a much-needed injection of fresh ideas and a legion of new fans.

Enter Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly (though they’d all see cancellation by the time Astonishing kicked off). He was geek royalty with a massive fanbase, and despite having only written a handful of Buffy comics to that point, he had grown up with the X-Men. In fact, Buffy was based on Claremont’s archetype of Kitty Pryde (and Dark Willow on Phoenix)!

Marvel contracted Whedon to pen 12 issues, paired with rising superstar artist John Cassaday (who was in-progress on Planetary and just off of a run on Captain America). Rather than hand Whedon and Cassaday an existing title as they had with Morrison, Marvel created an entirely new one for the pair.

It was a prescient move on Marvel’s part, as when Whedon and artist John Cassaday hit delays within the first year of the book, it allowed the rest of the X-Men universe to keep moving while the pair toiled over each new issue. Marvel took the unusual step of treating Astonishing as “continuity-free” – though it acknowledges events like M-Day, it is free of crossovers and was released at a different rate than other X-books. In fact, it took four years for these 25 issues to be released – effectively putting them on a bi-monthly schedule.

Whedon took over the concept of a more academically-minded team from Morrison, with a staff of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, and substituting Shadowcat for the recently departed Jean Grey. Dozens of Xavier Institute students are featured in the background of the early issues.

With Whedon & Cassady’s run on the book over, Marvel continued the trend of using Astonishing‘s crossover-free setting to lure high-profile creators – this time landing Warren Ellis. Creator of the critically acclaimed Planetary, Ellis actually got his start on Excalibur in the mid-90s. Ellis swaps Kitty Pryde and Colossus for Storm and Armor and gives the book a speculative fiction and sci-fi theme. Afterwards the book was handed to Daniel Way and Christos Gage, Greg Pak, and finally novelist Marjorie Liu – who played up the team-as-family theme.

Amazing X-Men began as Jason Aaron’s take on an X-Men away team as his run on Wolverine & The X-Men wound down, but it wound up as a single-shot story of Nightcrawler’s resurrection when he was whisked away to helm Original Sin and then launch Star Wars. Popular X-Men Academy and X-Force writer Christpher Yost wrote the majority of the remaining issues, which maintained a more light-hearted 80s feel to both the team and the stories.

Marvel relaunched Astonishing X-Men as part of their 2017 ResurrXion era, first penned by Charles Soul – who fit the A-lister billing – and then by Matthew Rosenberg, who would transition directly to writing the flagship Uncanny X-Men in early 2019.

The great thing about this pair of titles is that any time the writer changes is a great place to start! There is never any ongoing continuity – every run by a different writer is completely self-contained.