Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Crushing On

Updated: Silver Age X-Men Guide

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Earlier this year I launched an initiative to completely overhaul all of my X-Men team title guides with up-to-date collections, revised formatting, and links for digital buying and reading. Now, those guides will all continue to receive regular updates throughout the year! First up: My uncanny Silver Age X-Men Guide – covering every major collection format for Uncanny X-Men (1963) #1-66, their hiatus years guest appearances, and modern “Hidden Years” stories inserted into that period!

Silver Age X-Men Guide

Guide to Silver Age X-Men

Since this Silver Age X-Men guide had a major update back in February, this update focused on adding just a few new collections:

  • Confirming that the Marvel Masterworks Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 reprints are indeed “Remasterworks” with revised restoration.
  • Adding the newest volume of the “Mighty Marvel Masterworks” digest-sized paperback reprint series
  • Adding a new section for Marvel’s licensed reprints with other companies, including a new Penguin Classic collections and a massive Taschen artbook with newly-shot artwork and restoration.
  • I also added some additional detail about collection formats and hiatus years appearances.

I think it’s so cool that Marvel is leveraging its new relationship with Penguin Random House to produce comics collections in their typically academic- and classics-focused Penguin Classics line! What an awesome way to celebrate the X-Men’s 60th birthday this month!

This Silver Age X-Men Guide update is just the first of a series of regular X-Men guide updates. I now have over 200 guide pages to maintain, but the X-Men guides will always be the closest to my heart and some of the highest-trafficked pages on CK! But, don’t worry – my upcoming page updates won’t be restricted just to revisiting these X-title guides again. There are some fresh page updates heading your way as well!

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!
[Read more…] about Drag Race España Season 3, Episode 2 – “Drag Vision” Review & Power Rankings

Crushing On: Caught In The Act by Courtney Act (2022)

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I can both love and loathe celebrity auto-biographies, but I definitely loved Caught in the Act.

I can love them because they are a glimpse at the inner life of someone whose art I’ve spent years – sometimes decades! – consuming. They can add fresh context to work that I already appreciate.

I can loathe them because they are often more artifice than reality. Prose is just another method of performance. Sometimes you wind up with a few shocking revelations or debaucherous anecdotes, but that doesn’t meant you’ve gotten any closer to truly knowing the author.Caught in the Act by Courtney Act

(I should know – I’ve been doing it for nearly 22 years now.)

No, I’m not talking obliquely about Prince Harry’s new bestseller, Spare. The first physical, non-graphic-novel book I read this year is Caught in the Act, a memoir in three parts by Courtney Act – contestant on Australian Idol Season 1, finalist on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6, winner of Britain’s Celebrity Big Brother Series 21, and finalist twice-over on Australia’s Dancing With The Stars.

That’s quite a resume. I first glimpsed Courtney in her “Meet The Queens” interview for Drag Race in 2014 and I was instantly transfixed. I had seen drag queens before and I understood they were often men dressed in exaggerated versions of feminity, but Courtney looked more like a glamorous pop star.

Little did I know how right I was, but also how much that dichotomy often plagued Courtney. (She is credited both as Courtney Act and as Shane Jenek on the book’s cover and is comfortable with either he/him or she/her pronouns.)

The three acts of Caught in the Act are Courtney’s childhood in suburban Australia, her coming out of the closet and into the Sydney drag scene, and her international stardom (and ensuing relationships). I found each portion fascinating, but I think the one that affected me the most (and most unexpectedly) was the portion of the book about Courtney’s childhood.

Courtney and I virtually the same age, separated by only a few months. Even though we grew up across the globe from each other in different cultures, we were exposed to much of the same pop culture. Courtney talks about Madonna and the X-Men, which is shockingly familiar to me. She also talks about years of suffering in silent confusion as she tried to work out why some things in life were “boy things” and some were “girl things.” That felt familiar too.

Early in the book, she says:

I wish there’d been honest and frank conversations going on as well as visible queer people in the world and on TV. I can’t begin to explain what a significant difference that would have made, or what a difference increased visibility since then has made for queer kids today. Growing up in a world of queer invisibility was so isolating. The strange part is I didn’t know I was isolated – I didn’t know I was learning shame, or to hid who I was for safety: it came instinctively for survival. Every now and again I wonder if I’ve retrofitted shame where it didn’t exist. Then I remember: shame is a deposit made for a future debt, and it accumulates over time with compound interest.

That idea that we can’t tell if our adult shame is the same as our childhood shame bowled me over. I stopped and stared in shock at that page for a long while. I’ve never read someone so clearly explaining why the process of coming out can be so long and slow, even when surrounded by an entirely supportive environment. Courtney captures the emotions of childhood, but adds the the adult lens of someone who is on the forefront of conversations about gender all around the world.

What shocked me most about Caught in the Act wasn’t Courtney’s backwards tumble into fame, her drug use, or her sexual encounters. No, the most-revealing aspect of this book is just how long it took her to come to terms with her own gender identity. [Read more…] about Crushing On: Caught In The Act by Courtney Act (2022)

Music Monday: “Break My Soul (The Queens Remix)” – Beyoncé, featuring Madonna’s “Vogue”

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Beyoncé went meta with her “Queens Remix” of lead single “Break My Soul” by interpolating Madonna’s “Vogue” into her instance classic House song, and I cannot stop devouring and dissecting it.

Somehow, Beyoncé just improved my favorite pop song of all time.

I’ve been spinning Beyoncé’s new record Renaissance for a few weeks now. If there’s one quick way to my music-loving heart, it’s to produce an album full of durable songs that’s dancefloor ready from front to back. While I’m not an official BeyHive member, but Beyoncé is on my list of artists of whom I keep a complete discography – so, I’ve had (and have heard) all of her songs.

My complete collection doesn’t usually extend to remixes, but in this case I made an exception. That’s because this remix of “Break My Soul” interpolates Madonna’s “Vogue” and ads a whole set of new lyrics from Beyoncé riffing on Madonna’s classic film star rap in the original song.

It’s well-established on this blog that “Vogue” is my personal gold standard of pop singles. When Madonna released it 32 years ago it struck me like a lightning bolt, as much for it message of finding acceptance on the dancefloor as for its House beat.

“Vogue” was Madonna’s first dabble in House music, thanks to co-writer and producer Shep Pettibone and his samples from The Salsoul Orchestra’s post-disco classic “Ooh I Love It (Love Break Groove).” Voguing itself was a NYC ballroom culture dance style that hadn’t broken through far into the mainstream at the time. It’s unsurprising Madonna would hear a house beat and think of the dance, but it was pure serendipity that she wound up making the word and the dance synonymous with House music across the world.

(This was memorably documented on the first episode of Season 2 of Pose, “Acting Up,” which gives a fictionalized glimpse at how the NYC ballroom scene initially reacted to Madonna’s track.)

As I’ve grown and learned more about house music, voguing, and ballroom, I realize that even though Madonna was using “Vogue” to shine a spotlight on ballroom culture, she was also appropriating it for her own use. It was the moment that marked her ascension to global dominance. She used that platform to preach acceptance and to raise awareness for HIV/AIDs, and she employed many dancers and choreographers along the way, but it’s not as though of all her success trickled down the people who were innovating Voguing in the ballroom scene. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Break My Soul (The Queens Remix)” – Beyoncé, featuring Madonna’s “Vogue”

Music Monday: “Feeling So” – Shea Coulée

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I am a sucker for any song that uses layers of instrumental riffs to emphasize an insistent, galloping, every-quarter-note rhythm, and Shea Coulée’s “Feeling So” does that in the best possible way.

Every time I listened to “Feeling So,” the first thought that pops into my head is “wow, this is like an update of ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Tears For Fears.” Every single time I think it is a new thought, and I am impressed with myself for noticing the reference, and then after a minute I think, “Hold on, surely this has occurred to me before…”

I think the the thing the two songs have in common is how they layer different instruments with slightly differing rhythms to achieve the net effect of emphasizing every beat. In “Rule The World,” it’s the way the insistent bassline marries to the back-and-forth step of the synth, later topped with the peal of of guitar picking from the intro.

“Feeling So” is built the same way. It has an opening synth riff that continues burbling in the background like a melodic fountain. It has the same driving gallop of bass. And, it has that same step-and-repeat of passing synth chords.

The difference is how “Feeling So” later breaks that that rhythm. When the staccato chords of the pre-chorus interrupt the bassline it feels like a change in temperature – as if we’re on the verge of a shock. But, the song eases us back into the familiar gallop with the reintroduction of the bubbling synth in the background of the next section.

I think it’s the continuous rhythm, break, and return that has encoded this song into my brain so deeply, tempering my neural pathways with every repeat of the cycle.

Also that it really does song like an update of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” with a hint of the sunny disposition of Madonna’s “Cherish” – and that’s a sonic lineage that I cannot resist.