Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

X-Men

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Legion, David Haller – The Son of Xavier!

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I’m back with a brief guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that covers an obscure character – yet, he’s one who has been getting an outsized amount of attention thanks to having his own television show…

Legion, David Haller – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

David Haller is a son that Professor Charles Xavier never knew he had until his introduction in New Mutants #26-28 – and neither did we!

Haller is the product of Xavier’s brief (and somewhat unethical) affair with his patient and eventual colleague Gabrielle Haller, a noted attorney (and, later, an ambassador). When the Haller family becomes the target of terrorism, David unconsciously defends himself with his prodigious mutant powers.

David’s survival comes with a steep cost – his psyche becomes fractured by a post-traumatic dissociative disorder and his nascent powers are shattered along with it. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s Legion, David Haller – The Son of Xavier!

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Dazzler!

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Let’s be honest – while I have the excuse of creating this guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis to fill in one more missing link on the Fresh Start era page (for her new one-shot, out tomorrow!), we all knew I did it just because I love…

Dazzler – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

I’ve always loved Dazzler, purely because she was the Madonna of the Marvel Universe back when I was originally a reader (and a Madonna fan) back in the early 90s. However, her run on Uncanny X-Men by Claremont was much too expensive for me to buy as back issues (and, for some reason I never sought out her 1980 series as a lot at a convention).

As with all of my guides for individual heroes who have not anchored their own titles for long, putting this page together was punishing. It would be easy to simply link to Dazzler’s solo stories, or even to list all of her guest appearances in order.

Of course, I had to do more than that. I browsed nearly every Dazzler appearance outside of her solo series to figure out which were the most important! [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Dazzler!

The Epic X-Men (Re-)Read: New Mutants (1983) #26-28 – The origin of Legion! (Ep002)

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It’s the second episode of our entirely out-of-order dive into my 50-year collection of X-Men comics, and today we’re leaping to a character who has become a multi-media sensation in the past year: David Haller – Legion.

Legion’s debut in New Mutants (1983) #26-28 is a brief arc filled with thematic content that still resonates strongly in the modern day. See the Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men for collection information.

Is the David Haller of this story recognizable to viewers of FX’s Legion? Do these comics still hold up today? And, does Claremont leave the series doing right by his cast of indomitable-willed woman? Watch this mega-sized episode and find out!

Crushing Comics S01E085 – Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, & Laura Martin

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In today’s episode I unwrap my final omnibus, which (as many of you have likely surmised through a process of elimination) is Astonishing X-Men. I use this famously self-contained, blockbuster run as an opportunity to muse on getting back into comics and the surprisingly limited scope of the comic book market.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 85 features the Astonishing X-Men Omnibus, covered in the Guide to Astonishing & Amazing X-Men.

(Yes, I skipped posting Episode 84 – it was just a episode prompting folks to guess the final omnibus.)

The Epic X-Men (Re-)Read: X-Men (1991) #1-3 (Ep001)

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After nearly a decade of collecting and planning, it’s finally here: I’m tackling my entire 50-year collection of X-Men comics with the intent of reading every single issue, and you’re invited along for the ride!

Rather than start from The Silver Age and trundle forward through a lot of very wordy classic comics, we’re taking inspiration from Marvel’s Epic Collections and jumping around from era to era and title to title.

I don’t know how I could start anywhere but with the arc that brought me to comic collecting, which marks the end of the truly classic period of X-Men – Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men (1991) #1-3 (found in the Guide to X-Men, Vol. 2). This story arc is the platonic ideal of a major faceoff against Magneto with a cast of a dozen X-Men, many of them in the Jim Lee uniforms that would follow them to X-Men: The Animated Series a year later.

Do these comics still hold up today? And, does Claremont leave the series doing right by his cast of indomitable-willed woman? Watch this mega-sized episode and find out!

Want to keep up with the next six weeks of (re-)reading? Here’s our schedule: [Read more…] about The Epic X-Men (Re-)Read: X-Men (1991) #1-3 (Ep001)