Stranger Things

Guide to Stranger Things comics & novels – now available to all readers!

November 27, 2025 by krisis Leave a Comment

Happy Thanksgiving from the Upside Down (and by the Upside Down, I mean New Zealand)! To celebrate the holiday and the release of the final season of Stranger Things, I’m excited to release the only complete guide to the Stranger Things expanded universe on the internet: my Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels! This guide was made possible through the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels

If you’ve only ever watched Stranger Things on Netflix, you might be asking, “Does we even need a Guide to Stranger Things? How much other stuff is there?”

Well, I’ve got some news for you! There have been over 50 issues of Stranger Things comics over a dozen different volumes, a series of adult novels, a series of YA novels, junior novelizations of the show, script books for each season, and even a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book!

Not only that, but none of those Stranger Things expanded universe tie-ins were released in order of continuity, and no other source on the internet puts them all in story order and explains their placement. Nope, not even the incredibly-detailed Stranger Things wiki – trust me, I checked.

What’s so fascinating to me about Stranger Things tie-ins is the way The Duffer Brothers have managed the expansion of their story universe. Novels tend to stick closest to the lore of the show, but focus on expanding unseen moments of character history that occured before the show. YA novels always fill in character development for the core cast between the seasons. And, comics explore the wide range of adventures the kids get into that don’t involve the Upside Down (as well as expand the plot of the other lab kids and the background on the Russian plot).

None of that is required if you just want to watch the show. But, whether you just want to spend more time with your favorite character or are craving as many Stranger Things stories as possible, the Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels has got you covered. It’s one of over 250 guides that are part of Crushing Comics, which covers Marvel, DC, indie, and liscenced comic books with hand-curated guides to collecting and reading every story.

Want instant access to future guides like this one? Become a Patron of CK for the cost of one comic a month to gain access to every new guide as it arrives, plus over 100 Patron-Only guides months before the general public gains access.

Stranger Things – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels (New for Patrons!)

November 10, 2025 by krisis Leave a Comment

It’s another slightly scary new guide for Patrons of CK. This one is for something I love outside of comics – so much that I’ve actually written a few blog posts about it! I’ve also kept up with its comics for years, and when I searched the web for a complete guide I came up with nothing. Nada. Zero. Even the supposed main Wiki is missing tons of information and guidance. Well, we all know what happens next – I make a new guide! No guide on the internet has every put every TV Season, Novel, and Comic Book in order … until now, in my brand new Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels!

Guide to Stranger Things Comics & Novels

This guide is available exclusively to Patrons until the debut of Season 5 later this month!

I know what you’re asking yourself: Is Stranger Things really this complicated? Can you just… watch the show and then read the comics?

My friend, I need you to roll for Perception… with disadvantage!

That’s because the comics have never told a story in continuity order. The jump between seasons and tell prequel stories, with occasional one-shots set during seasons and their epilogues. Then, adult novels have added more prequel stories, but YA novels have told stories that overlap seasons – which doesn’t count the junior novelizations of the seasons themselves.

No wonder no other guide has ever gotten this right. Just like Nancy’s relationship with Jonathan and Joyce’s relationship with Hopper, it’s complicated.

Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1

May 29, 2022 by krisis

Stranger Things Season Four, Vol. 1 is WILD, y’all!

(This post will be utterly spoiler free up until I give you a bold warning, below!)

I didn’t meant to do it, but somehow I managed to binge all nine hours of Stranger Things Season Four within a single 24-hour period this weekend. Honestly, I just couldn’t turn it off, even if it meant almost completely sacrificing a day of sleep.

For a moment early in the season it seems like Season Four shared the same weakness as the past two seasons: The Duffers are convinced their breakout stars need their own storylines, which often feel like entirely separate shows within the show.

For a few episodes, it does feel like this story has become too big, too discursive. The core quartet of boys are fractured across multiple plots, and there are even more plotlines that don’t include them or Eleven.

Even as the plot feels bigger than ever before, Season 4 finally acknowledges that the show has never been about singular stars. It’s not a show about Eleven, Hopper, or even Hawkins. It’s about how your circle of friends grows and changes as you change how you define yourself. It’s about how things that used to be scary are now commonplace, and how the newest hurdle in your life always feels the highest.

Stranger Things could’ve become a horror anthology series returning to Hawkins again and again without our core cast of misfits. However, this time it really feels like a story about the misfits (like S1 did) as much as it is about the horror around them… and what caused it. The show’s ever-growing ensemble of actors makes it work the best it has since Season 1 (which I crushed on back in 2016).

Be warned: Stranger Things Season 4 is bloodier and scarier than any of the past volumes. There are fewer jump scares, but more outright gore and onscreen violence.

Also, the first few minutes of the first episode focus on the aftermath of graphic violence that might be triggering for some viewers – this week, especially. It received a special content warning in the states, but we didn’t get it here in New Zealand. If you’re sensitive to images of violence against children, you can safely skip from the big “knockout” blackout at the 7-minute mark to the end of the opening credits. You’ll see the same scene again in a less disturbing fashion later in the season.

(Continue reading if you want very minor spoilers about the characters and their arcs as of the beginning of the season.) [Read more…] about Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1

Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things, Season One

July 19, 2016 by krisis

As with the release of any of Netflix’s “bing it all at once” television seasons, this weekend my social feed went from a stray mention of Stranger Things on Friday to a steady stream on Saturday as more and more people began to sample the eight-episode thriller.

I didn’t want to be a late adopter this time around (or: be spoiled!), so I jumped onto the bandwagon on Saturday night – and wound up finishing the entire show within 48hrs!

That’s not just because I love to binge on TV. In many ways, Stranger Things is Neflix’s most cohesive and successful original work yet. While the performances might not be of the raw caliber of acting as those in House of Cards or Orange Is The New Black, they all work perfecting in the unflinching service of this period 1980s thriller.

Stranger Things, Season 1

There are very light, “this is the concept, these are the characters, this happens in the beginning of Ep1” spoilers in the first section; a more spoiler-filled take for those who’ve already seen the show follows, below.

CK Says: Watch it!

Stranger Things is a Netflix original that’s obsessed with the 80s work of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and Amblin Entertainment. It’s about a hidden horror, a terrifying secret, and how a group of kids bear the burden of both on the behalf of an entire sleepy town.

While Stranger Things is reverent of those influences, the show rarely feels derivative as it unfurls a sci-fi plot that is as human as it is creepy. The focus is always on the characters and rarely on the fantasy, even though the fantastical element are a seamlessly-executed success.

The opening frames introduce us to Hawkins, Indiana in November of 1983. We briefly glimpse a terrified scientist fleeing through the abandoned, flickering halls of a research facility on the outskirts of town before he is captured by an unseen creature.

The rest of Hawkins seems none the wiser to these events – it could not be more average. The geeky kids play Dungeons & Dragons and are obsessed with Star Wars. The teens are shot-gunning beers and talking about sex without consequence. The parents are stringing together jobs and cooking dinner without worrying too much about where their kids are hanging out and with whom. A surly sheriff hasn’t had to deal with any major crime – the last notable one was in the 20s!

Anything past idle teenage vandalism would be notable in this tiny ville. Yet, it’s also idyllic enough that a missing child can be chalked up to a wrong turn on a hike or deciding to take a Greyhound for an adventure to the city. That disappearance is accompanied by the appearance of a seemingly-mute young girl with a shaved head. She’s desperate to escape an anonymous group of men and women in black who want to haul her back to that same mysterious lab. When she encounters a trio of nerdy kids searching for their missing friend, it acts as a flashpoint that begins to unveil the horror that’s been unleashed on the small town. [Read more…] about Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things, Season One