Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

It’s gonna be May! Oh, wait, it’s ALREADY May…

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Hello, friends!

Unfortunately, my non-CK life and workload have piled up and gotten in the way of making my planned posts for the month of May. I’m doing well and I don’t plan on taking the month’s-long break I did in 2022, but I do need to suspend daily posting for a bit while I focus on other responsibilities.

It’s a bummer, because I had a rockin’ editorial calendar designed for y’all! Alas, sometimes the best laid plans of bloggers must fall by the wayside to make room for the rest of life. I will be back soon with posts about Drag Race, especially with All Stars starting later this week!

Drax Guide – now available to the public!

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My countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 continues! Today I have another green-skinned warrior, though he’s not related to Gamora. In fact, one of his earliest objectives was to kill her! I never fully understood this character until I put together his guide, when I realized his key character trait wasn’t his strength or his single-mindedness, but his endless cycle of death and rebirth all triggered by the brutality of everyone’s favourite purple-skinned mad titan, Thanos. Learn about the man known as “The Destroyer,” who was revived to be Thanos’s arch-nemesis in my Drax Guide!

Drax Guide

Drax Guide

What do I mean about an endless cycle of death and rebirth? Drax’s earliest incarnation was a revival of an Earth man as a powerful golem hell-bent on Thanos’s destruction, but on his mission he has died several times over, which each revival leading to a tweak to his powers (and, sometimes, his intellect). Read more about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe merged those multiple versions of Drax into one in my original launch essay from when I debuted this guide to Patrons of CK.

If you really want to understand Drax’s cosmic comic origins, you absolutely must read a back-up story from the obscure Logan’s Run (1977) #6 as well as Warlock & The Infinity Watch (1992) #12-13. You’ll appreciate Drax more with that core of understanding, no matter which of has many incarnations you read next. I wish I had already known that material when I first read the Annihilation event prologue in Drax The Destroyer (2005). At the time, the themes of that book went totally over my head – I just saw a violent green guy and was confused about why he came back to life so quickly!

Drax has the most fully-developed comics history out of all of the core Marvel Cinematic Universe members of the team, but it also often feels like he doesn’t get the full focus of the book the way Star-Lord and Rocket often do. For a strong modern arc that connects to Drax’s origins, check out Guardians of the Galaxy (2019) #7-12 by Donny Cates.

All of Drax’s many incarnations and every one of his Marvel Comics appearances are detailed in my Drax Guide. Whether you’re trying to put your single comics in a perfect reading order or reserve some Destroyer-filled reads from your local library, my guide has every issue and collected edition you’re looking for.

Gamora Guide – now available to the public!

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As we continue the countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, I have another new character guide to share with all readers of CK. I had so much fun reading through every issue in this guide to understand how the most dangerous woman in the universe was introduced as a bounty hunter, turned out to be Thanos’s agent, abruptly died, became a long-term love interest to Adam Warlock and member of the Infinity Watch, and reached new heights of popularity as a Guardian of the Galaxy. You guessed it: it’s my Gamora Guide!

Gamora Guide

Gamora Guide

Want to learn more about that rich comics history and Gamora’s canonical relationship with Thanos? Check out my original launch essay from when I debuted the Gamora Guide to Patrons of CK.

Gamora’s comics history is tied closely to both Warlock and the birth of the modern Guardians. I think it’s worth reading Starlin’s Warlock material for just how wildly psychedelic it is, but Gamora really comes into her own as Warlock’s tough lady-friend slash bodyguard during Warlock & The Infinity Watch. That includes a fuller accounting of her origins, which you can read from two different perspectives in Warlock & The Infinity Watch (1992) #9 & 11 during the original Infinity War.

What Gamora still sorely lacks are present day solo adventures, aside from a pair of team-ups in Guardians Team-Up (2015) #4 (with She-Hulk) & 6 (with Nightcralwer). That’s in part because her starring turns in Gamora (2016) and Thanos (2019) we both told in flashback. However, it’s also because she is such a critical anchor of the Guardians team that allows Star-Lord, Drax, and Rocket to rotate in and out of the roster. For an especially strong story of Gamora as a member of the team, read the sequence of Gerry Duggan’s All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (2017) into Infinity Countdown (2018) and Infinity Wars (2018) – which form one mega-arc that develop’s Gamora’s character.

The Gamora Guide explains how to to read all of those issues, whether you are tracking down floppy comics to place in a perfect reading order, buying collected editions for your bookshelf, or reading online on Marvel Unlimited.

Drag Race España Season 3, Episode 2 – “Drag Vision” Review & Power Rankings

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Welcome to my review and power rankings for Drag Race España Season 3 Episode Two – “Drag Vision.” It’s a Eurovision-themed group choreography challenge to “SloMo” by Chanel where no one came out on top after the queens were thoroughly chastised for their messy performance by the judges.

They weren’t angry, just disappointed.

Seriously – you think RuPaul screaming about H&M is scary? Try watching all five España judges very calmly read their contestants for filth for their lumpy pads, ill-considered tights, clockable wig lines, and approximate dancing in the “Drag Vision” choreography challenge.

I didn’t need the disappointed judges to inform me that this was a lackluster maxi-challenge performance. It was obvious to see that nearly all of the queens were out of sync with each other and struggling with their wigs.

However, I was surprised to hear the judges reading the queens for their looks (and lumpy pads), considering all of the “Drag Vision” dance costumes were obviously supplied by the show. I suppose the message was, “every detail matters.” Supremme and the other judges don’t want the queens resting on their laurels when production hands them something to use in a challenge.

Of course, that begs the question of how much production had a hand in the outcome of an under-rehearsed dance routine and rushed dance costumes. On an American season I’d immediately assume that the drama was manufactured. On España, I’m more willing to believe it happened organically.

Between the wobbly maxi-challenge and an “España en Eurovisión” runway that invited imitation over haute couture, there’s not much to discuss about individual queen placements this week, though it did introduce some major shakeups compared to the premiere episode Power Rankings. I did correctly call our second elimination, and I suspect I have the next one right… but the rest of the ranking feels uncertain. Are a few favored queens and potential front-runners beginning to emerge?

(Want to watch Drag Race España outside of Spain? For most of the world, it’s available as part with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Lectores, start your engines. Y que gane la mejor drag queen!
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Star-Lord Guide – now available to the public!

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I’m back to continue my countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 in just 8 days! Today, I have a guide to the character who assembled the modern Guardians of the Galaxy and became their defacto leader, even if his increased goofiness by-way-of the Marvel Cinematic Universe made him a less-convincing commander than he began in Annihilation. Follow Peter Quill through his every Marvel Comics appearance (across two different incarnations) in my Star-Lord Guide!

Star-Lord GuideStar-Lord Guide

Want to learn more about the disparity between Star-Lord’s on-screen depiction and his Marvel Comics history, or how he was stealthily rebooted from a prior character without anyone realizing it in the early 10s? Check out my original launch essay from when I debuted the Star-Lord Guide to Patrons of CK.

If you want to read the very best of Star-Lord, you mostly want to read tons of Guardians of the Galaxy comics, which not only feature him as the leader but also the central driver of plot. However, his brief 2016 Chip Zdarsky & Kris Anka solo series helped to balance the sexy, silly aspects of his MCU version with his existence in Marvel-616, and Al Ewings most-recent run on Guardians of the Galaxy (2016) included a surprising amount of character work that unlocked new aspects of Peter’s personality linked to his now-obscure alternate-universe beginnings.