New Comic Book Guide

New for Patrons: Guide to Shadowhawk by Jim Valentino

March 15, 2023 by krisis

I’m back with more of my Indie Comics Month with another new guide for all Patrons of CK! This guide is for perhaps the least popular of the Image flagship titles, but the one with perhaps the most straight-forward, self-contained, and satisfying runs of them all. It’s all explained in my Guide to ShadowHawk by Jim Valentino!

Guide to ShadowHawk by Jim Valentino

ShadowHawk was the only one of the Image launch books that I did not dabble in back in the early 90s, which means the character has always been a mystery to me – as were his serially-numbered 90s mini-series and what seemed like repeated returns from the dead.

I’m not sure I can explain why, other than that Jim Valentino was the least explosive of the Image Comics founders and launch artists at the time. I knew Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, & Rob Liefeld from X-Men, and had at least seen Todd McFarlane on Spider-Man and Erik Larsen on Spidey and Hulk. However, Valentino mostly kept to his Guardians of the Galaxy (1990), which was set millennia into the future of Marvel Comics. With no crossovers into my beloved X-line, I hardly knew who Jim Valentino was.

Also, Valentino’s ShadowHawk simply wasn’t my style of hero. He looked like a shiny, armored Batman or a direct Darkkawk knockoff, roaming the dark alleyways of NYC. Even with a set of shiny Wolverine claws, he never seemed that interesting to me.

(Little did I know he was actually an indie version of totally different character I’d eventually come to love: Moon Knight!)

What I did know about ShadowHawk, likely thanks to regularly reading Wizard Magazine, is that he was HIV-positive. I was keenly aware of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the early 90s. A debate over whether AIDS was a “plague” sent by god to punish sinners is what caused my permanent fracture with my Christian faith, and by the time of the reveal in ShadowHawk I was being certified as a peer sex educator.

I never knew anything more about ShadowHawk. Was he gay? Was he a future star of the musical RENT? Having that knowledge divorced from any other details of the character made his seemingly repeated death and return seem like it was in mildy-bad taste to me. I never knew the full story of ShadowHawk being HIV-positive, the numbering of his series, and his many incarnations until I researched this guide!

First, here’s the story, in Valentino’s own words from the back matter of Return of ShadowHawk (2004) #1: [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Shadowhawk by Jim Valentino

Shazam Guide, The Captain Marvel of DC Comics – now available to the public!

March 13, 2023 by krisis

To celebrate this week’s release of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, I’m happy to present my Shazam Guide – The Captain Marvel of DC Comics – now available to all readers of CK!

Guide to Shazam, DC’s Captain Marvel

Read my original Shazam Guide launch post for an essay on Billy Batson’s origins and how DC has gradually lost the magic that once made Shazam and his family the most-loved (and highest-selling) heroes in all of comics.

If you’r thinking about reading Shazam for the first time you may find yourself daunted by the fact that he has been around for over 80 years. However, his Golden Age comics from 1940-1953 are almost wholly uncollected, and they are completely disconnected from his present day continuity.

DC revived Shazam in 2012 starting with a new origin and a large adopted family that match closely with the film continuity. However, I don’t think it’s worth starting there. There’s simply not that much material to read, and none of the stories are particularly satisfying. They often have a cruel, violent edge that is a total mismatch for the wide-eyed wonder of the character.

For a terrific, hefty Shazam read, try starting back in 1994 with Jerry Ordway’s The Power of Shazam. The first half of the nearly 50-issue series are collected as The Power of SHAZAM! Book 1: In the Beginning (2020 paperback, ISBN 978-1401299415 / digital) and The Power of Shazam! Book 2: The Worm Turns (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1779521743), plus the entire series is available on DC Universe Infinite.

The title is set in pre-Crisis continuity, which isn’t presently relevant for Shazam, but it’s a complete and well-thought-out series that sees him as a part of the larger DC Universe alongside heroes likes Superman and Wonder Woman. I read much of the series while putting together this guide, and it’s enjoyable from start to finish.

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it! My Shazam Guide covers every appearance the character has made from 1940 through last month, with links to collected editions and digital reading options for every major starring issue. Start at the launch of one of his many series, or just jump in randomly to an issue with a cool cover.

This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the astonishing Patrons of Crushing Krisis. They’ve had early access to the guide for the past month! Join for as little as $1 a month or $10.20 a year to get early access to dozens of existing guides and every new guide as it makes its first appearance on CK.

New for Patrons: Guide to WildCATs (& WildStorm Events!)

March 8, 2023 by krisis

I’m back with another Indie Comics Month guide for all Patrons of CK! This is the guide that was the first itch I had to create indie comics guides more than six years ago when I first launched mu Patreon campaign! At the time, I couldn’t believe that anyone would spend time on a guide page for an Image launch title from 1992 whose comics continuity was dead in the water. Now it has a hot new book to its name in the main DC Universe! That’s right, it’s time for a guide to Image’s fourth flagship title, the co-flagship of Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint that later joined him at DC Comics. It’s a brand new Guide to WildCATs.

Guide to WildCATs
This guide is now available to all readers thanks to the wild ongoing support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

(Bonus: I also launched a quick Guide to WildStorm Events with every line-wide event in reading order.)

I know this material well, not only because I loved WildCATs back in the 90s, but because I was in the middle of putting together a complete run of WildCATs for binding when we moved to New Zealand! I have personally hunted down every issue in this guide without the help of a guide. This is a page that held absolutely no surprises for me.

That’s not the case for WildCATs itself, which I think is a book that would surprise a lot of people if they read beyond the famous first thirteen issues by Jim Lee. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to WildCATs (& WildStorm Events!)

New for Patrons: Guide to Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen

March 7, 2023 by krisis

“Indie Comics Month” on Crushing Krisis continues! Today, my focus is back on the original Image Comics flagship titles that began launching in 1992. Last week I debuted a Guide to Youngblood and made a massive update to my Guide to Spawn. Today, I’m back with a guide for all Patrons of CK for the third of Image’s original ongoing titles – and one of the longest-running indie comics! That’s right, it’s Erik Larsen’s green-skinned, head-finned cop with amnesia in my brand new Guide to Savage Dragon!

Guide to Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen

Savage Dragon was my least favorite of all the Image Comics launch titles back in 1992, which has less to do with the character of Savage Dragon and more to do with the fact that I wasn’t familiar with Eric Larsen from my brief time of hoovering up X-Men comics the way I was with Lee, Liefeld, and Silvestri – nor did he have cool, mysterious powers like Spawn or Shadowhawk.

With 30 years of hindsight, I can see that Erik Larsen launched the most unique and sustainable character out of all of the Image flagships – and that Larsen proved himself to be one of the most-consistent Image founders alongside Todd McFarlane. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen

New for Patrons: Guide to Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess

March 6, 2023 by krisis

If you thought I was skipping a Indie Comics Month day just because I launched that Guide to Star-Lord earlier today, you thought wrong! Just like I launched my new Guide to Lumberjanes last Friday after a significant X-Men guide update, I’ve got a list of some favorite all-ages series and smaller indies to launch alongside my major Marvel guide launches and updates for the rest of this month. Today I bring to all Patrons of CK I guide to the only princess I’ve allowed onto our bookshelves (other than Diana!) – and that’s because she’s the self-saving kind! Yes, it’s a Guide to Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess from the always-brilliant Jeremy Whitley!

Guide to Princeless & Raven the Pirate Princess

If Lumberjanes is my #1 all-ages comic recommendation, Princeless is a very close #2. Princeless every bit as witty, silly, and thought-provoking as Lumberjanes and with a terrific concept.

And, I only found it because I am incredibly stubborn and an absolutely voracious comic-reader!

You may recall my story about how most of the comics-reading internet decided that the utterly brilliant Unstoppable Wasp was terrible, which meant it took me a while to get to read it. Once I did, I wanted to read everything by author Jeremy Whitley, who seemed to have a real golden touch when it came to writing dynamic, empowered, but also flawed young women.

In looking up his other credits, I noticed he was writing a book I had never heard of: “Princeless” for Action Lab Comics. I had Action Labs on my “publisher quota” list for 2019 to force myself to sample at least 10 issues from them on my way to reading 4,000 comics that year, but I was hesitant. I had read one semi-acclaimed title from Action lab’s “Danger Zone” adult-oriented line and it was one of my most-hated books of the last decade. Maybe of all time!

If anyone had the goodwill to get me to give them another shot, it was Whitley. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess