Warren Ellis

Thunderbolts and Dark Avengers – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Thunderbolts and Dark Avengers comics books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through May 2024.

The Thunderbolts were a curious creation for Marvel, and its most-recent enduring property after 1991’s Deadpool. The team was introduced in early 1997, at a time when the Avengers and Fantastic Four had been banished to the Heroes Reborn pocket universe in the wake of Onslaught. Their absence left a super-team gap in the modern Marvel universe, which was obliging filled by the Thunderbolts.

The Thunderbolts were posed as a brand new super team not only in the Marvel Universe, but in the promotion around the new title. That made it all the more shocking when the end of the first issue revealed the do-good team to be the Masters of Evil masquerading behind newly made heroic identities! Fans flipped out, sales shot up, and Marvel had a new franchise on its hands.

After a brief hiatus in the early 2000s, the title returned and ran through the beginning of Marvel Now. However, it would twice detour its cast to a second title – Dark Avengers. [Read more…] about Thunderbolts and Dark Avengers – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Excalibur – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive, chronological comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Excalibur and Knights of X in omnibuses, hardcovers, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

Introduction to Excalibur

Excalibur is one of the most peculiar of all of the original X-Men spinoffs, and that’s a large part of why it is was beloved by fans and continues to be revived – though never quite in the same form.

In 1988, Excalibur was a light-hearted departure from a particularly heavy period of main X-Men series. Chris Claremont packed up three of his favorite X-Men – Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers (Phoenix II) – and flew them across the pond to the pencils of former Marvel UK collaborator Alan Davis. They added Marvel UK characters (and non-mutants) Meggan and Captain Britain (Psylocke’s brother) to create an irreverent, firmly British spin on an X-book.

It initially launched in the wake of “Fall of the Mutants” in Uncanny X-Men. Claremont’s flagship book found the mutants besieged from foes on all sides.

The lighthearted Nightcrawler and idealistic Kitty Pryde were both early sacrifices to this status quo as casualties of “Mutant Massacre” a year earlier. By the time they healed the X-Men were no longer a fit for them – and, in continuity, believed to be dead!

Meanwhile, Claremont creation Captain Britain had wrapped up a 10-year run at Marvel UK across a number of different comic titles and anthology. The latter five years of his life were stewarded a by a rising star artist named Alan Davis (as well as, briefly, Alan Moore), but with Davis moving on to work on Batman and the Outsiders it looked like the end of the line for Captain Britain.

Claremont collaborated with Davis on a pair of annuals that imported the character (and his sister, Psylocke) to the states, but he was too unknown in the American market to support his own ongoing there.

(There was also the problem of Rachel Summers, who had been supplanted as team psychic by Psylocke, and who brought her own complications of her extensive future knowledge, connection to Cyclops, and massive powers.)

This was the genesis of Excalibur, which saw Claremont reteaming with Davis and using his extensive knowledge of British culture (he was born there) to return to Captain Britain, to give Nightcrawler room to be the dashing swashbuckler he always hinted at in X-Men, and to write Kitty’s coming of age away from the horrors facing the X-Men.

Excalibur was my favorite book in the 90s because of its stable core of lovable characters, and its sensible handling of alternate timelines.

The challenge of the “Excalibur” brand name is that X-Men fans tend to associate it as much with Kitty and Nightcrawler as they do with Captain Britain, but the former two characters have long since been reabsorbed by the core of the X-franchise while Brian Braddock has moved firmly away from mutants.

In 2001, Ben Raab – who had written the final fifth of the initial volume – returned with a four-issue mini-series to follow up on some plot threads.

Claremont relaunched the title in 2004 as focused on Xavier and Magneto living on Genosha in the run-up to House of M, but the name never made any sense for a book that was completely divorced from the themes of the original.

Later, in the wake of House of M introduced a “New” version set in London that paired Captain Britain with Dazzler and Juggernaut, but didn’t capture fan’s hearts like the original did.

In 2019, the Dawn of X relaunch curated by Jonathan Hickman tapped the “Excalibur” name for a new spin on the concept. Tini Howard’s new volume focused not on the Britishness of the brand name, but on Captain Britain and their magical connections to Otherworld established by Claremont’s original run. It also swaps Brian Braddock for his sister Betsy as Captain Britain, and duplicates the original import of fan favorites Kitty and Nightcrawler by bringing in Rogue and Gambit – along with Jubilee, Rictor, and Apocalypse! The book would be one of two anchors to the first big event of the new era of X-Men – X of Swords (alongside the X-Men flagship title). [Read more…] about Excalibur – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Astonishing X-Men an Amazing X-Men – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men 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 August 2024 with titles scheduled for release through March 2025.

Astonishing X-Men launched under the unprecedented auspices of being an X-Men with the hottest possible creators that you could follow without a tangle of other comics to buy.

Though that concept would be slightly watered-down over the years, the theme of a standalone, fan-pleasing X-Men book focused on relationships as much as heroics has always been the mission statement of Astonishing X-Men, and it was echoed in 2014’s Amazing X-Men.

Note: Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) and Amazing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) were both four-issue limited series that were part of the Age of Apocalypse alternate timeline. Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2 was a three-issue limited series that was a precursor to a major Apocalypse storyline.

When Astonishing launched in 2004, Grant Morrison’s massively popular run on New X-Men had just come to a somewhat abrupt halt, at least in part due to disputes behind the scenes. That lead to a line-wide re-alignment of X-Men titles, including cancelling Chris Claremont’s sideline title X-Treme X-Men and moving him back to the flagship Uncanny X-Men.

Marvel had unleashed something entirely new with Morrison’s run that no existing Marvel writer could replicate – not even Claremont: Morrison was an outside voice to the X-line who brought a much-needed injection of fresh ideas and a legion of new fans.

Enter Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly (though they’d all see cancellation by the time Astonishing kicked off). He was geek royalty with a massive fanbase, and despite having only written a handful of Buffy comics to that point, he had grown up with the X-Men. In fact, Buffy was based on Claremont’s archetype of Kitty Pryde (and Dark Willow on Phoenix)!

Marvel contracted Whedon to pen 12 issues, paired with rising superstar artist John Cassaday (who was in-progress on Planetary and just off of a run on Captain America). Rather than hand Whedon and Cassaday an existing title as they had with Morrison, Marvel created an entirely new one for the pair.

It was a prescient move on Marvel’s part, as when Whedon and artist John Cassaday hit delays within the first year of the book, it allowed the rest of the X-Men universe to keep moving while the pair toiled over each new issue. Marvel took the unusual step of treating Astonishing as “continuity-free” – though it acknowledges events like M-Day, it is free of crossovers and was released at a different rate than other X-books. In fact, it took four years for these 25 issues to be released – effectively putting them on a bi-monthly schedule.

Whedon took over the concept of a more academically-minded team from Morrison, with a staff of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, and substituting Shadowcat for the recently departed Jean Grey. Dozens of Xavier Institute students are featured in the background of the early issues.

With Whedon & Cassady’s run on the book over, Marvel continued the trend of using Astonishing‘s crossover-free setting to lure high-profile creators – this time landing Warren Ellis. Creator of the critically acclaimed Planetary, Ellis actually got his start on Excalibur in the mid-90s. Ellis swaps Kitty Pryde and Colossus for Storm and Armor and gives the book a speculative fiction and sci-fi theme. Afterwards the book was handed to Daniel Way and Christos Gage, Greg Pak, and finally novelist Marjorie Liu – who played up the team-as-family theme.

Amazing X-Men began as Jason Aaron’s take on an X-Men away team as his run on Wolverine & The X-Men wound down, but it wound up as a single-shot story of Nightcrawler’s resurrection when he was whisked away to helm Original Sin and then launch Star Wars. Popular X-Men Academy and X-Force writer Christpher Yost wrote the majority of the remaining issues, which maintained a more light-hearted 80s feel to both the team and the stories.

Marvel relaunched Astonishing X-Men as part of their 2017 ResurrXion era, first penned by Charles Soul – who fit the A-lister billing – and then by Matthew Rosenberg, who would transition directly to writing the flagship Uncanny X-Men in early 2019.

The great thing about this pair of titles is that any time the writer changes is a great place to start! There is never any ongoing continuity – every run by a different writer is completely self-contained.