She-Hulk

New Collecting Guide: She-Hulk, and her new status quo at Marvel

September 20, 2016 by krisis

Yesterday Marvel made a shocking and totally cool announcement that Jennifer Walters – traditionally known as She-Hulk – would drop the “She” prefix and become Marvel’s main Hulk in a new eponymous title from writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Nico Leon.

hulk-2016-promo That will mark her sixth time anchoring a solo series since her debut in 1980, not to mention several runs with The Avengers and Fantastic Four and a ton of mini-series in the past decade. That’s all covered (along with every single guest appearance) in my newly-launched Definitive She-Hulk Collecting Guide and Reading Order. (The guide also covers other She-Hulks, like Betsy Ross.)

This will mark a big shift from past She-Hulk series, which have usually featured a green, grinning woman with her monstrous tendencies almost entirely under control. Here, Walters will get lost in her rage as she tries to maintain her double-life as lawyer and superhero. Says Marvel EIX Axel Alonso in an exclusive with A/V Club:

Jen went through major trauma in Civil War II, and Mariko and Nico’s story will deal with the fallout of that trauma—the anxiety and anger, sometimes self-destructive, that comes along with it. If there is light at the end of the tunnel, Jen is going to have to search hard for it, and she’s going to have to battle with some pretty big monsters—including the one within—to find herself again.

Some fans are already hotly debating if rage and a center-stage turn are the right direction for this typically light-hearted hero who is historically as inane as Deadpool. She-Hulk going all rage-y in lieu of an appearance by her cousin Bruce Banner is a time-honored tradition when she’s on the wider Marvel stage – Brian Bendis used the same trope over a decade ago as one of the inciting events in Avengers Disassembled before setting it up again currently in Civil War II.

Personally, I don’t have an opinion other than, “Yay – more She-Hulk!” I own nearly all of her appearances, and her original series was my first custom binding project last year.

How easy is it to own that all for yourself in collected editions? The She-Hulk Guide can help you catch them all, but let’s take a look at Marvel’s track record of reprinting Jennifer Walters’ starring series through the end of Secret Wars in 2015.
[Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: She-Hulk, and her new status quo at Marvel

She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The She-Hulk 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 November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.

It was 1980 and Stan Lee was in a pinch.

The Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk TV series was wildly popular at the time, and based on the recent precedent of The Bionic Woman being launched from The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee and Marvel Comics were concerned that CBS could spin off a female Hulk character who would not be copyrighted by Marvel.

In Lee’s last act of Marvel Comics creation until the 1990s, he dashed off the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk. It’s a classic Lee contrivance. Bruce Banner’s mild-mannered lawyer cousin Jennifer Walters is nearly killed by a gang seeking revenge, and Banner is the only one that can provide a blood transfusion in time to save her life. With the blood comes the green alter ego – and a second Hulk in the Marvel Universe!

She-Hulk’s path has been distinctly different than Bruce Banner’s. Not long after her introduction she began to retain her every day personality while in Hulk form. This lead to her eventually eschewing her human body and living almost permanently as She-Hulk.

Due to this key difference, She-Hulk is a social butterfly compared to her cousin. She is a long-running member of Avengers and only the second replacement member of The Fantastic Four (she subs for The Thing after the original Secret Wars). Also, after her first series, her titles are typically humorous – thanks to John Byrne’s 4th-wall breaking take on The Sensational She-Hulk.

Despite a few periods of scarcity, She-Hulk has remained a regularly appearing hero in the Marvel Universe ever since her debut. Marvel also added a Red She-Hulk to their roster in 2009. [Read more…] about She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #50 to 45

June 6, 2016 by krisis

rsz_2016-06-06_095604 One of my favorite comic community happenings of each year is when a message board member named TigerEyes announces that it’s time for the “Annual Secret Ballot: Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibus.”

For the uninitiated, what this means is that over a hundred of the biggest Marvel fans and collectors who like to chat each other up on the internet send in their picks for what Marvel material is most worthy of compiling into an oversize Marvel Omnibus Edition, massive tomes that sometimes run over 1,000 pages and up to 50 issues of collected comics.

Whether it’s causation or correlation, books from the secret ballot tend to get printed by Marvel. Here’s the breakdown from the first three years of the survey:

2013 survey: 10 of 29 books were later printed as Omnibus (or are solicited).
2014 survey: 12 of 52 books were later printed as Omnibus (or are solicited).
2015 survey: 7 of 52 books were later printed as Omnibus (or are solicited).

That makes the secret ballot not only a fun exercise, but a useful straw poll to get an idea of what could be coming our way. In fact, the majority of omnibuses released in 2016 that are not from the past three years of comics are from the poll.

I’ll be tackling the results of the 2016 poll starting with this post, complete with likely contents, explanations, how to read the material right now, and the likelihood we’ll ever see the books in print.

Let’s get started! And, if you want to know more about all of the books that have been released to date, my Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is built on a database full of all of the information about these massive tomes so you can sort and filter them. It’s the only tool of its kind on the web!

my first custom-bound comics project

September 20, 2015 by krisis

Top to bottom: Marvel’s B&W Essential She-Hulk Collection, my bind of the same issues, my Sub-Mariner bind, a color Spider-Man Epic collection of about the same length as my bind, and a color Marvel Masterworks collection of about half the length without its dust jacket.

Just a quick one today to share a project I completed earlier this year.

Even with my primary focus being on graphic novel collections of individual comic books, I have a ton of single “floppy” comics boxed up in my house. Some of them are from my original 1990s collection, which I’ve bought others to fill gaps between official collected editions. The rub is I am completely disinterested in reading single comic book. So much picking up and putting down, plus those annoying bags and boards to keep them safe. I love a book I can bring with me to bed or on my commute.

As a result, I took a spare low-grade run of The Savage She-Hulk plus some cheap Saga of The Sub-Mariner recap comics and sent them off to be custom bound per my exact specifications. Some people carefully clip out unnecessary pages and back covers, but I wanted to begin by just getting some whole comics bound.

Here are the results – the only difference between the two books is that the She-Hulk bind is oversewn (stitches pass through all pages a short distance in from the spine) and Sub-Mariner is sewn through the fold (each comic is effectively one signature of the book, with stitches through the fold of the book).

What I loved about learning about book-binding was that it wasn’t just about comic books. I didn’t get to work on anything with a hardcover in my years of print production, and this really opened my eyes to the types of binding methods used in the books we encounter every day.