Morbius

Ghost Rider & The Midnight Sons Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot

March 31, 2024 by krisis Leave a Comment

Until April 5, I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted Marvel omnibus volumes every day! Today I’m continuing brief trip into the mystical side of Marvel by peering into all of the omnibuses that don’t yet exist for Marvel’s Ghost Rider – as well as the rest of the Midnight Sons!

This post explains titles and potential Ghost Rider & The Midnight Sons Omnibus Mapping for entries on the Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 12th Annual Secret Ballot. You can vote right now (until 5 April 2024 @ midnight US ET) or watch our mega-length announcement stream reviewing every single voting option.

In addition to Ghost Rider, below I’ll also cover the potential omnibus volumes for Blade, Morbius, and The Darkhold – which were all titles that were a part of the “Midnight Sons” line launched by Marvel in the early 90s!

Ghost Rider is actually one of the trickiest characters to map into omnibus! There are many reasons behind this – his publishing history, the fact that there’s not just one “Ghost Rider,” complexities introduced by crossovers and creator changes, and Marvel’s existing collected editions mapping.

Before we get started, I have to give a shout-out to VinWritesWords, who creates comics guides at Cosmic Circus! There aren’t a ton of other people out there toiling over making comic guides and mapping comic runs, so I delight in every time I meet one. Having Vin as my very remote colleague and fellow comics historian for the past two years has brought me so much joy. He has been there for a quick motivational chat through many times where I was stuck in the middle of making a guide. I love how he makes guides that are focused on streamlined reading experiences and he is one of the biggest experts on the comics internet about the characters I am covering in this post! Vin’s opinions on mapping have definitely influenced how I think about these potential omnibus volumes.

After this post, I’ll only be focusing on two more solo heroes in their own posts – Wolverine and Spider-Man! All other solo characters will be either mapped in a Solo Heroes mega-post or as part of the X-Men line mapping.

If you’re not sure of what to vote for, stick around for my explanations. Or, if you’ve already voted, learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including some of my mistakes and regrets as one of the editors of the options on the final poll.

Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how Marvel could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of Marvel creating a book with that title or covering that period.

Over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics.

Morbius – Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Guide to Morbius, The Living Vampire (New for Patrons!)

February 5, 2024 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m back with the first new guide of February 2024 for all Patrons of Crushing Krisis – and it’s their January Patron’s Choice! It’s a guide for one of the horrific stars of 1970s Marvel, of the first Marvel characters to anchor two titles at the same time, and the most alive vampire you’ll ever meet. That’s right, folks, it’s Morbin’ time, with my Guide to Morbius – The Living Vampire.

Guide to Morbius – The Living Vampire

Morbius is one of those characters who I had next to zero exposure to prior to beginning my Marvel Zombie “read everything” approach to comics in 2011. That meant I had two seemingly conflicting ideas of the character in my mind – that he was a major Spider-Man villain and probably had been in the Sinister Six and that he was some sort of supernatural hero who was an ally of Ghost Rider.

Now that I’ve read every single Morbius appearance to write this Guide to Morbius, I know both those ideas were completely wrong! A better way to describe him would be as a reluctant monster and a begrudging anti-supernatural avenger, but even that fails to fully capture the nuance of his character… at least, when writers remember that he has nuance!

Marvel United: Multiverse adds Maximum Carnage to the campaign! (Plus, the High Evolutionary!)

February 3, 2023 by krisis

CMON’s Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign announced a sixth new expansion box today, and it was a major shocker to me (though it did not contain Shocker): Marvel United Multiverse – Maximum Carnage!

Why was this box such a surprise for me? I had it marked as “Not Likely” on my list of 20 possible predictions because we already have Carnage in the game. Plus, it felt like the cast didn’t contain enough possible symbiote villains or potential heroes compared to a later event like Absolute Carnage or King in Black.

It turns out, 90s nostalgia can always find a way! The Maximum Carnage box is anchored by an alternate “Dark Carnage,” who is explicitly from the much more recent recent Absolute Carnage event. (You can tell from the little swirl on his forehead.)

It also includes a “New Sinister Six” comprised of Scream, Shriek, Scorpion, Demogoblin, Doppelganger, and Morbius, which… I am fairly certain is not a thing.

(It may be a nod to a single issue reference to the “Sinister Sixty,” which included all of these characters – especially since it comes with a KS-Exclusive “Build your Own Sinister Six” play mode. Again, this concept is from the past few years – decades after Maximum Carnage.)

I have no objections to CMON being inventive in order to get an interesting group of characters together into an expansion. However, I find this particular selection puzzling considering they created a modern Carnage without Knull (one of the biggest villains of the past decade), skipped the chance for a re-do on Venom (or adding Agent Venom), and passed on several different “New Sinister Six” line-ups in the comics that include characters we’re lacking – like Lizard, Boomerang, Shocker, Beetle, and Tombstone.

If we’re being honest, I’m probably never going to touch Demogoblin or Doppelganger, but we got an Anti-Hero Morbius plus Scream, so I suppose all’s well that ends well.

I’m much more excited about one of today’s stretch goals, even if it means crossing off a possible expansion from my list: High Evolutionary!

High Evolutionary is a quintessential Marvel Villain with connections to many different characters and franchises. His sculpt looks perfect and he brings some interesting gameplay – including threat cards that double as master plan cards!

(Want to play Marvel United right now? Grab either the Marvel United or Marvel United X-Men core boxes right now. They are fun cooperative games that are fun to play with adults and kids alike.)

Suddenly, my predictive psychic powers aren’t looking so powerful. In my last post, I updated my list of 20 Marvel events and franchises that might merit an expansion box of their own. Now that we’re down to just 1-2 remaining expansion boxes in this Kickstarter campaign, will any of my 19 remaining guesses make the cut? Keep reading for the full list with tweaked odds on what we might see in the final days of the Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign.