Wolverine

Updated: Guide to X-23, Laura Kinney – The All-New Wolverine

April 14, 2023 by krisis

This week’s X-Men Guide Update is my first major update to one of the last major X-Men pages I launched! At the time this character was early in a star-making, joyous run taking over a legacy name from her adopted (and maybe actual) father. Little did I know how much she would go through in the next half decade, including flip-flopping over her codename, being trapped in an alternate reality, being trapped in a time bubble, and… well, the next bit would be a spoiler! Of course, I’m talking about my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine!

Guide to X-23 – Wolverine

I’ve always been a major fan of X-23, ever since first encountering here in the murderous 2008 run of X-Force and then backtracking to read her entire chronological history exactly as it is presented in this guide.

That’s why I was so pleased when Logan’s death stuck for four whole years, during which time Laura Kinney enjoyed the spotlight as Wolverine. It was just as thrilling to see her and Logan reunited at the beginning of Jonathan Hickman’s run and for Logan to affirm that she still held the title, only for Hickman to snatch her out of our grasp later than issue as she became trapped inside the accelerated world of the Children of the Vault for nearly two years of publishing.

Yet, it turned out to be worth out – as Laura emerged to be the Wolverine of the main X-Men squad, while Logan continued to anchor his combined mutant CIA/FBI in X-Force.

As I caught up on more-recent Wolverine reading to update this guide, I discovered the recent totally shocking revelation from just a few months ago! I won’t spoil it here, but it definitely changes the game for Laura’s character – and, it makes this the perfect time to binge her entire reading order.

It was interesting to revisit this guide, which I first crafted in the early days of my Patreon campaign. That was the beginning of my era of tackling solo characters with splintered bibliographies by summarizing all of their appearances as I still do today. Yet, this had many hallmarks of my older guides, like a vague Table of Contents, collections listed without ISBNs and digital links, and crowded reading order sections that didn’t separate recollections like omnibuses and Complete Collections out into their own section.

After a full day of work, my Guide to X-23 – Wolverine is now much tidier, updated with every notable appearance, and annotated with Marvel Unlimited links to help you with your next binge read.

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

April 5, 2023 by krisis

Let’s take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 5 2023 releases.

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 5 2023 Collected Editions

This is a slim week for new collected editions – there’s just four books out, and one is a reprint!

Adam Warlock Omnibus (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949877 / digital)
See Guide to Adam Warlock. This collects Warlock’s full Silver & Bronze Age Warlock saga all in one place for the first time, from his debut as “Him” in the pages of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four to Jim Starlin’s psychedelic late-70s space epic! You can read this and continue directly to Infinity Gauntlet.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Volume 3: The Coming of Galactus
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950415 / digital)
See Guide to Fantastic Four. This is the third time this particular Epic has been back to print. That speaks not only to the fact that it’s one of the Marvel’s most-significant stories of all time, but also speaks to the ongoing success of the Epic Collection line as we head into its second decade. It’s doing exactly the thing it’s meant to do – getting books all into the same format and reprinting them whenever necessary!

Marvel-Verse: Guardians of the Galaxy (2023 digest-size paperback, ISBN 978-1302950705 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This collects a smattering of stand-alone Guardians stories from the middle of Bendis’s run through the beginning of Duggan’s run, including one previously uncollected issue – Guardians of the Galaxy: Dream On (2017) #1. A decent, if scant, sampler platter if you’re averse to sampling digitally on Marvel Unlimited – but it’s hard to take it seriously without any material from the 2008 series.

Star-Lord: The Saga of Peter Quill (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950712 / digital)
See Guide to Star-Lord, Peter Quill. This is the collection if you want to grab Star-Lords earliest set of continuity stories in the Marvel Universe. I say “continuity” stories because the character of Peter Quill as Star-Lord first debuted in the 1970s, but all of his early adventures have been since rendered as occurring in a separate reality due to some unresolvable time travel shenanigans. That means when Quill pops up in the 2003 Thanos ongoing series, it’s technically his first appearance (though, making things even more confusing, at the time he was assumed to still be the same character as that 1970s version). All of this and more is explained in my guide!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 5 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 5 2023

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – February 15, 2023

February 15, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to the third post in my trial run of a return to new release posts! This post covers Marvel Comics February 15 2023 releases.

Marvel Comics February 15 2023 Collected Editions

The Amazing Spider-Man by Zeb Wells Vol. 3: Hobgoblin (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302933135 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (2018 – Present Day). This volume includes Spider-Man’s brief intersection with last year’s A.X.E.: Judgment Day event.

Captain America by Nick Spencer Omnibus Vol. 1 (2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN / digital)
See Guide to Captain America or Guide to Falcon. While much of this run is the dour run-up to the joyless Secret Empire event, it also includes a lot of Sam Wilson being incredibly competent as Captain America, which is a decent read. However, I just don’t think this run is significant enough to warrant a spot on an omnibus shelf – especially not two books of it.

Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty Vol. 1: Revolution (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302931438 / digital)
See Guide to Captain America. The first collection of this Kelly, Lanzing, & Carnero run, which I am absolutely dying to dig into! I’m working my way up to it as fast as I can!

Daredevil & Elektra Vol. 1: The Red Fist Saga (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302926113 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil or Guide to Elektra. This is the first collection of the Daredevil & Elektra co-starring run of Daredevil from Chip Zdarsky & Marco Checchetto that directly follows Devil’s Reign and Elektra’s stint as “Woman With Fear.” There are another two volumes already solicited to follow, and the entire prior Zdarsky run is covered in oversize hardcover – so there’s every reason to jump in (unless you are awaiting an inevitable omnibus in a few years).

Daredevil Epic Collection: The Man Without Fear (2016 paperback, ISBN 978-0785195481 / 2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950361 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. A reprint of the first in Daredevil’s 21-book Epic Collection line covering his 1964 series in full. Right now we have every volume except 7-12, most of which have been collected in other formats (including Miller’s entire run).

Doctor Strange Epic Collection Volume 11: Nightmare on Bleecker Street (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951054 / digital)
See Guide to Doctor Strange. I’ve just given this guide a major shake-up to bring it up to date on collections, although I still have a lot of work to do on guest appearances and formatting. I was surprised to see how aggressive Marvel has gotten with Epic Collections of his 1988 series, since they’ve also been covering it in omnibus volumes at the same time. I would’ve guessed that they’d want to pump out some classic Stern material to coincide with last years Multiverse of Madness film, but I suppose the Masterworks line is still not too far ahead of that point.

Edge of Spider-Verse (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302947170 / digital TBA)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (2018 – Present Day). This is the prologue to Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse redux that played out in Spider-Man (2022).

Genis-Vell: Captain Marvel (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302946722 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers or Guide to Captain Marvel, Genis-Vell (eventually) for the return of the son of Captain Mar-Vell

Hulk: Planet Hulk Omnibus (2017 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302907693 / 2023 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949686 / digital)
See Guide to Hulk, Bruce Banner for this 2023 straight reprint of the 2017 omnibus.

Iron Man, Books of Korvac IV: Source Control (20xx paperback, ISBN 978-1302932701 / digital)
See Guide to Iron Man. I was absolutely obsessed with the first three volumes of this epic Christopher Cantwell Iron Man series, though I haven’t yet read the contents of this final book.

Marvel Knights: Make the World Go Away (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302949709 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. I’m a little puzzled about this one, as this book collecting the six-issue Marvel Knights anniversary series by Matt Rosenberg & Donny Cates was already issued in trade with the same contents in 2019… and neither collection puts Daredevil in the title, which would help it sell better! It primarily stars Daredevil and fits in just prior to his Zdarsky series.

Marvel Masterworks: The Invincible Iron Man Vol. 16
See Guide to Iron Man. This book pushes the Iron Man Masterworks collection into 1983!

Star Wars – Bounty Hunters Vol. 5: The Raid on the Vermillion (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-0785194798 / digital)
See Guide to Star Wars Expanded Universe Comics. This is one of the current Star Wars ongoing series set in the period directly following Empire Strikes Back.

X-Men: Hellfire Gala – Immortal (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302952099 / digital)
See Guide t0 X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. This second annual Hellfire Gala merits a much less fancy and much slimmer release compared to the special oversize hardcover gold edition from 2021’s event. It collects the Hellfire Gala one-shot, the mirth-filled Tini Howard follow-up to the prior gala from Secret X-Men (2022) #1, and a number of digital shorts.

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics February 15 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics.

Harbingers of Failure

June 17, 2022 by krisis

Earlier this year in a jaunty bit of Q&A with Twitter followers, my comic books colleague Adam from the Battle of the Atom podcast asked me the following question:

“Why do you hate the good stuff sometimes?”

Adam was mostly asking about comics, but this is a question that has followed me my entire life. Any of my friends who have gone to the movies with me has asked the same question.

Image by Yatheesh Gowda from Pixabay

It doesn’t matter what the thing is. You can hand me a random stack of anything: comics with no credits, new albums by unfamiliar artists, or even a selection of burger condiments. it’s all the same. I will enjoy a consistent amount of each sampling, and I will tend to prefer some of the unpopular stuff while eschewing some of the most most mainstream items.

I always thought this was because I have unique wiring in my brain. I thought it was that certain tropes or styles simply lack appeal for me.

I’m sure that’s true, to some extent, but I’ve recently learned that it might also be because I am a “harbinger of failure.”

I first heard about this concept last year while watching a 2017 episode of the British quiz show QI, or Quite Interesting, as gleaned from a 2015 MIT News article on a study conducted by two MIT professors. Here is how QI summarized it:

The difference between the next big thing and a turkey is that there are people who will always buy the turkey – as in the American showbiz term for something that flops commercially.

There is a kind of consumer called “harbingers of failure”, whose always buy a new product that later goes on to fail. Thus, people with a “flop affinity” are in demand from people in market research because they are good at predicting what products will go on to be unsuccessful.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed 10,000,000 transactions at a chain of convenience stores, and they found that people who buy the nail polish that fails are also the people who buy the ice cream that fails. Harbingers of failure in the past have also bought watermelon-flavored Oreo biscuits and a range of ready-meals made by the people who made Colgate toothpaste called “Colgate Kitchen Entrees.”

The moment I heard this explanation, I recognized myself in it.

More on that in a moment. First, let’s talk about the flipside of being a Harbinger of Failure: disliking popular things. [Read more…] about Harbingers of Failure

Wolverine: Black White & Blood #1 – All three bloody tales broken down! | This Week in X

December 5, 2020 by krisis

It’s This Week in X for Wolverine; Black White & Blood #1, released 4 November 2020!

So why are we just reading it now? Our This Week in X crew skipped Wolverine: Black White & Blood #1 back in November because we were deep in the throes of X of Swords, but now we’re back to pick apart each of these three three-color Wolverine stories, presented in stark Black, White, and Red.

Join Peter, Tyler, and Fariha’s specially-nominated guest New Mutant, Harry, for this dissection (with a special guest appearance from our wayward mutant sister, Fariha).