Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

X-Men

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

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X-Men is one of the most popular comics franchises in history, and in the 90s it rode the crest of the speculator wave to over half a dozen ongoing series and at least twice that many crossover events.

However, when it comes to coverage in oversize editions, you’d think that those crossover events were all there was to X-Men in the 1990s. That’s not the case, and there are hundreds of issues outside of those events that haven’t seen oversize collection – including many that have never been reprinted.

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Yesterday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991 and how it could be collected by omnibus volumes, and tomorrow I’ll be back to cover the Morrison and Whedon era of X-Men.

There are 28 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping is a trivial pursuit (in both senses of the phrase) that is up to a lot of personal interpretation, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!

I think of this era as everything from X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281 in 1991 through the end of Onslaught and continuing to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s take on the X-Men in 2001. We’ve already got a number of omnibus-sized oversize hardcovers clustered at the beginning of this era, but after Age of Apocalypse things get spotty across all of the titles.

Are you ready? (I’m not sure that you could possibly be ready.)

[Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

Comic Book Review: X-Men Gold (2017) #1 by Guggenheim, Syaf, Leisten, Martin, & Petit – The X-Men Are Good (Guys) Again!

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There is a recurring theme in today’s X-Men Gold #1: “past is prologue.”

It’s a theme I lean into heavily in my every day life. Being obsessed with data and truth tends to emphasize the impact of the past on the present. Most fresh starts in life consist of actors with past track records of behavior, models of behavior that have previously been described. They aren’t really that fresh

That’s part of why everyone loves a sudden success story, whether that’s an indie movie or a hot new start-up. It’s not just the success we’re celebrating, but the subversion of trends and predictability.

When you swim in the data of a thing all the time, it’s really hard to be pleasantly surprised by those fresh starts. I looked at the return order probability of hundreds of start-ups. There was no novel return curve to discover. After the first few dozen, everyone snapped into a story I had seen before.

Comics can feel like that, too. It’s a tiny industry where the most read book never even approaches a million eyeballs (and I’m counting individual eyeballs here, not pairs).

Marvel and DC are creating most of their stories with characters who have been around for over 25 years. Most of them have been combined into the same teams before. Most of the writers and artists are part of a crowd that flip flops back and forth, with stops at Image or another indie to take a breather. Most of the world-changing stories just echo back and forth between the big two publishers, copies of copies of copies of big ideas that have already been had.

Past is prologue. We’ve seen it before, so we know what we’ll see. And, like in the rest of life, we’re pleasantly surprised when we get something truly novel…

…and then we want more and more of that novel thing, until it’s our new past and becomes our next prologue.

When Marvel or DC say they are launching something “new,” it’s with the caveat that a seasoned reader already knows the introduction to this story.

The question is: does that mean you can predict where it will wind up?

X-Men Gold #1 (digital)

Written by Marc Guggenheim with pencils by Ardian Syaf, inks by Jay Leisten, colors by Frank Martin, and letters by VC’s Cory Petit.

CK Says: Buy it! Bottom Line: Guggenheim’s new take on flagship X-Men feels familiar and maybe a bit fan-service-y, but that doesn’t stop it from being remarkably fresh as it achieves its back-to-basics aim: the X-Men feel like heroes again.

Marc Guggenheim takes his second swing at the X-Men in three years, and this one is a solid hit. X-Men Gold is a delightful first issue with hints of many past teams, but it has a fresh outlook that’s intent on minimizing the recent past as leaden prologue weighing the series down from the start.

The X-Men’s past being prologue isn’t something you’ll often hear me lament, X-Men_Gold_2017-0001-interior-002as a studied X-fan of over 25 years. I’m all for continuity-dense mining of years of history, but Guggenheim -the successful creator of CW’s Arrow – was wise enough to know now isn’t the time.

What’s X-Men Gold all about? The story’s title says it all: “Back to Basics.”

The X-Men are back to being a team who scrambles the Blackwing because they hear someone is in trouble – mutant or not. Or, at least, that’s what newly-minted leader Kitty Pryde wants them to be, which is how we wind up in medias res with the team facing down Terrax, whose previous X-book exposure comes solely from Dazzler.

Why are they fighting him? Because The Avengers and The Champions didn’t show up and the X-Men are heroes. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: X-Men Gold (2017) #1 by Guggenheim, Syaf, Leisten, Martin, & Petit – The X-Men Are Good (Guys) Again!

Comic Book Review: X-Men Prime (2017) #1 – Marvel relaunches the X-Men with Kitty Pryde in charge!

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Yesterday, Marvel kicked off the relaunch of it’s entire X-Men line of comics with X-Men Prime, a one-shot meant to reset the status quo of Marvel’s mutants in the wake of Inhumans vs. X-Men.

This issue represents the first time in many years that I can approach the X-Men as anything resembling a “new” reader. That’s because I’ve barely read a single issue of X-Men in Marvel’s All-New, All-Different era following Secret Wars. I usually trade-wait before reading, and in the middle of trade-waiting I was distracted from my Marvel reading by DC Rebirth and my WildStorm read.

What is X-Men Prime? Is it any good? Will it lead to me reviewing X-Men comics every week from now on?

Let’s find out!

X-Men Prime (2017) #1 (buy digital)

Written by Marc Guggenheim, Greg Pak, and Cullen Bunn with line art from Ken Lashley, Ibraim Roberson, Leonard Kirk, and Guillermo Ortego and color art by Morry Hollowell, Frank D’Armata, and Michael Garland.

Bottom Line: This “Kitty Pryde: This Is Your Life” issue is an easily skippable recap, more about her as a character than about the last two years of x-comics. It would be a fine free comic, but offers little entertainment for a steep $4.99 cover price.

X-Men Prime is an insubstantial read that still manages to make a major change in the X-Men’s status quo. That comes along with a choice that may or may not work out in the end.

The choice is to make Kitty Pryde the leader of the X-Men, which explains why this issue could just have easily been called “Kitty Pryde: The Return #0.”

Now, let me be clear – Kitty Pryde is never disappointing to me. She is one of my favorite characters in all of comics!

That’s in part because Kitty Pryde is the eternal point-of-view character. That’s been true from her beginnings as the X-Men’s teen sidekick through her years in Excalibur and her return as an outsider first to Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men and then to Matt Fraction’s run on Uncanny X-Men. 

Even when Kitty is the heart of a given team, she’s also the rational, grounded character who speaks with the voice of the reader. That’s why it’s fascinating to see her step in to lead dozens of characters we’ve grown to love over the past half century. Can she remain our POV-character when she’s the one in charge of all of the X-Men’s comings and goings? Can she even credibly take charge of characters like Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Iceman, Magik, and more?

This issue does little to explore that reality. It’s more of a “Kitty Pryde, this is your life” walkthrough that focuses more on her relationships than her (or the reader) catching up on the X-Men’s recent history. It also includes minor scenes of the original X-Men and Lady Deathstrike (more on those below).

The strategy of the main story, scripted by incoming X-Men Gold writer Marc Guggenheim, seems to be that Kitty’s emotional ties to the team are more important than detailing anything that’s happened in the past five or ten years, or giving any hint of what’s to come. Aside from the sparest of recaps of Inhumans vs. X-Men by Storm and an explanation of the unlikely location of the X-mansion, there’s honestly very substance little to this main story.

Despite the lack of content, the story still managed to be an emotional moment for me because it features Ken Lashley as the primary artist on a core X-Men title drawing Kitty Pryde. Lashley was one of my favorite 90s artists on Warren Ellis’s run of Excalibur, my favorite comics title of all time. He still makes for appointment reading whenever he shows up on a current comic. So far he’s not announced for any of the upcoming X-titles, but I have my fingers crossed that he will be the alternating arc artist on the bi-monthly Gold title. and he will be one of the alternating artists on Gold.

More than the dialog, it’s Lashey’s art that reminds us that Kitty is still the heart and rational brain of the X-Men through scenes with Storm, Colossus, Magik, and the teen versions of the original X-Men. It certainly seems she might work as their leader when the issue ends with her saying, “We’re also going to show that world what we are. No mutants. Not freaks. Not homo superior. But heroes.”

Kitty’s words mirror the complaint of many major fans of the X-Men who have been disappointed with their recent status quo. We just want the X-Men to be heroes. Still mutants first, but heroes second before they are an endangered species. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: X-Men Prime (2017) #1 – Marvel relaunches the X-Men with Kitty Pryde in charge!

Xavier Files: Hellion

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Back in February, fellow X-Men-obsessed blogger threw down a challenging gauntlet of an X-Men quiz on Twitter:

Let me tell you: these questions are some stumpers. I’m a tremendously large X-Men buff with a ridiculous mastery of mutant trivia, but my knowledge pales in comparison to folks like Xavier Files blogger Matt or Jay & Miles (which is fair, seeing as it’s their job to explain the X-Men).

Still, I’m always up for a challenge, so I spent a few minutes thinking, jotted down my answers, and threw my hat into the ring. And, lo and behold, I was the person with the most correct answers! I got a staggering six right, although I contest that the phrasing of one of them probably should have earned me a seventh point ;)

Nonetheless, to the victor goes the spoils – in this case, my choice of an X-character for Xavier Files to profile! I wracked my brain for my favorite B- and C-list X-Men who had histories worthy of a lengthy write-up highlighting their best stories.

Despite very nearly picking erstwhile Nightcrawler lover Cerise and hijab-wearing Muslim mutant Dust, I picked a young mutant who has been through a surprising amount of plot twists in the past decade – from young upstart to romantic lead to walking wounded to ne’er-do-well student.

That mutant is Hellion, and ! Once you’ve caught up, head to the Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men to start reading.

Oh, did you want the answers to those trivia questions?

Click to expand the answers.

New Collecting Guide: Magneto (plus: a list of his key appearances!)

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today I get to announce the second villain to join the Crushing Comics pantheon of comic guide pages: Magneto, The Master of Magnetism!

That’s right, night I bring you The Definitive Magneto Collecting Guide and Reading Order. This new guide is available exclusively to CK’s Crushing Comics Club Patrons until January 15th. Want early access? Visit CK on Patreon to learn more.

I’ve long said that of all the Marvel characters who never had their own title (well, until 2014), Magneto’s arc is one of the most consistent and fascinating.

x-men-1991-0001-magneto_variantStan Lee and Roy Thomas had established the allegory of Xavier’s closed hand approach to leading mutants versus Magneto’s closed fist long before Chris Claremont first penned the character in 1975. Magneto transform from a one-note villain in X-Men #1 in 1963 to a man blinded by the frenzy of needing to defend his own people by either establishing a sovereign nation for them or bending the entire world to his will.

Chris Claremont made Magneto’s seemingly Sisyphean struggle resonate more deeply when he began to gradually reveal that Magneto was the survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi Germany in a series of references and flashbacks starting in Uncanny X-Men #150 in September of 1981. Suddenly, his fervor over leading mutant-kind was contextualized, though it still could not excuse his acts of violence (as in the same issue, when he drowns an entire Russian submarine full of sailors). His repeated attempts to carve out a sovereign, defensible homeland for mutants were suddenly and tragically recast as a way of recreating Israel prior to the World War II rather than after.

Marvel really loves to say that each of their annual events “will change everything,” but the original Secret Wars did just that for Magneto in 1984. By grouping him with the heroes in the outset of the story, The Beyonder (and, by extension, his author and editor-in-chief Jim Shooter) recognized the layer of nobility that Claremont had so deftly played up in Magneto’s previous appearance.

In turn, that cleared the path for Claremont to begin Magneto’s rehabilitation as soon as he returned from the company’s first line-wide event. He placed Magneto into a sympathetic position, shipwrecked and under the care of Lee Forrester on his own former island base, and then had Xavier personally commission him as the leader of the X-Men in the run-up to Secret Wars II in 1985.

That flawed nobility has never since left the character. Even through several later returns to villainy, Magneto’s focus is never pure evil (or, if in hindsight it seems to be, it’s quickly retconned away). That’s partly due to his relative scarcity through 2010. After “Acts of Vengeance” in 1989-1990, Magneto rarely appeared outside of X-books, and was always promptly mothballed upon his exit – as in his memorable turn in Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men, Vol. 2 #1-3 in 1991.

In a March 1999, Alan Davis and Fabian Nicieza finally granted Magneto his wish, with him assuming rule over the island of Genosha off the Southeastern African coast. As with the unending holy war between Palestine and Israel, Magneto’s Genosha was built atop the ruins of a country known not only for discrimination against mutants, but for pressing them into slavery and genetic mutilation.

uncanny-x-men-1963-0516-pg12It seems that the land is cursed with ill intent, and Magneto couldn’t escape that when a super-sentinel cuts him and his millions of subjects down in cold blood in the shocking opening scenes of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Yet, Claremont would find a way to cheat that death (after all, it’s his speciality) in a 2004 iteration of Excalibur, using Magneto as leverage to kick off the House of M event.

The wake of House of M left Magneto without powers or purpose, given than less than 200 mutants remained on the Earth. It was Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction – hot off their co-authored run on Immortal Iron Fist in 2008 – who set Magneto on a new path that culminated in his becoming one of the anchors of the X-Men books from 2010 to the present day.

Fraction’s run on Uncanny X-Men saw Magneto reclaim his powers and then submit himself to the service of Cyclops, who had been pressed into leading the entire mutant race past its potential extinction due to the events of Messiah Complex.

Kieron Gillen and then Brian Bendis loved the subtext of Magneto’s inability to simply play the right hand man, but it was Cullen Bunn who seized upon it in his unexpectedly riveting Magneto solo series in 2014. There, in the vacuum of positive or negative leadership of the mutant race, Magneto began to silence or subvert elements he found unacceptable all while undermining Cyclops as a revolutionary leader through being a triple-agent with SHIELD.

The arc of Magneto’s ascendence was so strong that after the line-wide reset of Secret Wars, it was Bunn who was tasked with writing the always-popular flagship of Uncanny X-Men – with Magneto at the helm.

That’s a lot of story over the course of over fifty years of Magneto’s publishing life. The Magneto Guide walks you through every issue in reading order, often proving context and major story beats to help orient you to each tale.

That adds up to hundreds of comics from dozens of different titles. What if you’re not interested in all of that, but just in the spine of the story I’ve described in this post? Don’t worry – I’ve got you covered…

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