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ROM
Guide to ROM, Spaceknight (New for Patrons!)
Today, Marvel Comics is releasing an omnibus we never thought would come to exist, so I’m releasing a guide I never thought I’d ever make exclusively for Pledgeonaut Patrons of Crushing Krisis. It’s a guide to a toy that became a comic that defined the toy (which was a bit of a flop, as it turns out), but is now back thanks to our collective nostalgia. That’s right, it’s a Guide to ROM, Spaceknight – including his reading order at both Marvel Comics and IDW Publishing!
Okay, I know what you’re thinking (unless you are exactly in the Gen X age range to have specific existing nostalgia for this comic book). You’re thinking: “Really, Krisis? A whole guide just for a comic book about a toy? Is this really necessary?”
In a word: YES.
In several more words: ROM is perhaps the most-shining example of Marvel’s 1970s and 1980s licensed character comics, which involved a bevy of Marvel’s best creators breathing life into media properties and toy lines in the form of a richly-built world and dynamic supporting casts.
Of course, Marvel’s Star Wars continuity is well-known and well-loved. And, Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe is rightfully lauded for its incredible tight coordination with the continuity of the toy line (for which he wrote all of the packaging copy). However, ROM by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema, & Steve Ditko is remarkable for expanding a single failed toy launch into a heroic, dramatic, and occasionally tragic seven-year comic run that crossed over with the likes of the X-Men, the Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Power Man & Iron Fist, and more!
Except… Marvel was never allowed to reprint any of the issues… UNTIL TODAY, the day of the release of the first of three ROMNIBUS volumes collecting Rom’s complete 1979 series as well as the handful of guest appearances that Marvel has always been forbidden to reprint.
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Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings
This morning I had the absolute pleasure of announcing the results of the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot with Near Mint Condition!
The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot is an annual poll conducted by a mysterious comic book forum user named Tigereyes. The rules are simple: anyone can email Tigereyes up to 10 picks for their most-wanted, never-before-printed omnibuses of material originally printed by Marvel, even if they may no longer own the licensing rights.
Each first vote gets 10 points, each second vote gets 9 points, all the way down to your tenth vote getting just 1 point. After the voting period, Tigereyes goes through the gargantuan effort of tallying up all the votes – which also involves figuring out what everyone meant by their sometimes inconsistently-named or cryptically-described votes.
For me, the reveal of the results of the Tigereyes Secret Ballot is an international comics-loving holiday. I used to be the primary person on the internet creating statistics from the results every year! However, when I attempted to cover the entire poll entry-by-entry in 2017 I stalled out at the halfway point as the results straddled our move to New Zealand.
That’s why it was worth waking up at 4am NZ time to be ready to share this year’s results with my good friends Omar and Jess on the Near Mint Condition channel, thanks to some last-minute planning with Omar over the weekend.
Our show was nearly three hours long as we dug into the potential contents of every book on the list and whether we’d read them or not. As always, I had just as much fun appearing on-camera as I did chatting with all of the wonderful Minties in the live chat!
Don’t have time for the full 3-hour tour? We actually run down the full 60-book list in just 15 minutes, starting just before the 12-minute mark. I’m sharing the full list below, but it’s more than just a list – every omnibus includes a full suggested omnibus mapping along with a link to the relevant collecting guide on Crushing Comics.
That’s right, y’all – this is a post with SIXTY omnibus mappings in it, mapping well over 2,000 issues of comics. (Actually, it’s even more than that – there’s one tie, and in several entries I get into mapping second volumes if they would complete a run). That makes that one of the longest blog posts in 23 years of CrushingKrisis history.
Are you ready to be rocked by the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus vote? Strap in, true believers, and prepare to be mapped like you’ve never been mapped before.
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Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #25 to 21
It’s time for the next set of results from the 2016 Secret Ballot for Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibus by Tigereyes. I covered #30-26 in the last installment.
This set of books is decidedly more classic than some of the ones we’ve seen so far, with all of the issues under consideration released by 1991. Unsurprisingly, that means we’ve seen all of these votes on past year’s of the survey. They’re all relative longshots save for one, but for a number of different reasons.
Marvel has released these oversized omnibus editions for over a decade now, with a staggering amount of their most-popular material now covered in the format – from Silver Age debuts to modern classics. Is your favorite character or run of issues already in an Omnibus? My Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is the most comprehensive tool on the web for answering that question – it features every book, plus release dates, contents, and even breakdowns of $/page and what movies the books were released to support.
And now, it’s the omnibuses that placed at #25 through 21! [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #25 to 21