Crushing Krisis

New for Patrons: Spider-Ham Guide!

June 2, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m so happy to be getting my Crushing Comics guides back on track, and to kick that off I have a brief guide for a sentimental favorite to offer to all CK Patrons!

The Definitive Spider-Ham Guide

Spider-Ham on the cover of Spider-Man Annual 2019 #1

Long before I was a regular comic reader, I had a meager stack of comics from newsstands and spinner racks that sat on a slim bookshelf in my closet.

One was an old Conan comic from my father. Another was a random issue of Captain America.

The third was Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham (1985) #6.

Peter Porker The Spectacular Spider-Ham (1983) #6

Possibly my first ever comic book?

I don’t know why I had it. I think people in my family assumed I would really love Spider-Man because I shared his name, but at the time (and, to this day) I was much more interested in Wonder Woman.

That one issue (which I still have!) meant I’ve always had a soft, nostalgic spot for Peter Porker. I never expected he would appear in a comic again other than as a one-off joke about the silly excesses of the 80s… until Spider-Verse.

Spider-Verse brought almost every iteration of every spider-character ever back into play for a brief, somewhat-bloody event, which included this Spider-turned-Super-Pig from Earth-8311.

Spider-Ham survived the carnage (not THE Carnage – lower-case carnage) of the event, befriended Spider-Gwen, Spider-Gwen become a hit, and the event inspired one of the most successful and awarded animated movies of all time.

The rest is (recent) history!

This might lead you to wonder: are there many Spider-Ham comic books to read? Are they anything like the zany version of the character who was cartoony even for a cartoon in Into The Spider-Verse.

Well… that depends.

Crushing On: Crispy Baked Falafel (in the style of Philly’s Mama’s Vegetarian)

June 1, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

There were seemingly endless choices for lunch when I worked in Center City Philadelphia, but my long-standing favorite of nearly two decades was heading to the now-shuttered Mama’s Vegetarian for a falafel platter.

I’ve had many, many falafel balls from dozens of other places since then, but nothing has ever been quite the same for me. To me, Mama’s was how all falafels were meant to taste.

As I have grown in my culinary powers over the course of the pandemic, I have conquered several dishes previously far out of my grasp to prepare.

That lead me to ask: Could I create a falafel just as good at home?

At first, it seemed like the major challenge would not be perfecting flavor, but the actual cooking.

You see, I have a confession to make: I hate frying. It’s not a health concern so much as I don’t even like most fried foods (at my advanced age). As a result, I have developed neither the technique nor the patience for the mess of popping and splattering that comes with frying.

I forgot to take any photos of my lovely trays of falafels straight out of the oven because this is not a damn recipe blog, but I did design this alluring sample plate for you while making lunch for the kid today.

Luckily, here in New Zealand nearly every oven comes equipped with a “fan bake” mode, which effectively makes them just-slightly-larger air fryers. (Ovens here are tiny compared to US ovens.) If you brush something with some oil it usually crisps up quite nicely, so I have been fearless in converting fried things to fan-baked things.

Except… falafel is different, as I learned in my first attempt. Their uncooked texture could be described as “several hundred grains of sand who claim to have never met before.” To me, they seemed highly reliant on hitting some hot oil to give them a crispy exterior shell to hold them together.

That meant I not only had to screen recipes for flavor, but also adjust them for baking consistency. I tried a recipe from my typical healthy go-to Cookie & Kate, but it was too bland (rare for her!). Downshiftology’s recipe got me closer, but they were coming out too crunchy. The Guardian’s version tasted right, but the consistency wasn’t solid enough for baking.

After several rounds of test-kitchen-ing from their trio of recipes, I’ve landed on crispy baked falafel that – to me – tastes just like Mama’s without any of the fuss of frying.

Does that make my baked falafel authentic? Er… look, my approach to non-Italian cooking is the same to my approach to Italian cooking, which is: you can’t really make it offensive unless it tastes bad or you use the wrong kind of cheese.

More specifically: First, we don’t like cilantro in this house, so that’s a big departure from nearly every recipe. Second, falafel recipes all subtly disagree on the spices to include, with some recommending lemon zest while others use dill and cayenne pepper and some insist on cardamom. Finally, some of my adjustments I made were for baking stability versus frying.

All I can promise is that they authentically taste like my memory of Mama’s. [Read more…] about Crushing On: Crispy Baked Falafel (in the style of Philly’s Mama’s Vegetarian)

Krisis on Near Mint Condition, Mapping Scarlet Witch!

May 31, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

Earlier Tonight I was incredibly excited to re-unite with my “Map My X” compatriots Ødfel and Ryley as well as Near Mint Condition host Omar to dig into mapping a theoretical Scarlet Witch omnibus!

If you’ve never seen one of our “Map My X” streams before, here’s what you need to know: it is a game of fantasy omnibus mapping.

All four of us enter with sometimes wildly different potential maps of 30-60 issues worth of material to cram into a single Marvel Omnibus with a maximum page count in the 1600-page range. Then we haggle for two hours between the four of us and our live commenters over what’s in, what’s out, and what awesome cover should grace the front of the book.

And, if Marvel eventually gets around to printing it, we get to see just how right we were – like when we perfectly hit the mark with our New Mutants, Vol. 2 mapping!

Here’s our incredibly deep diving into the Scarlet Witch Reading Order from her debut in 1964 through the early 1990s (plus, a glimpse at the state of my totally rock-and-roll mane of curls, a frequent topic in the comments section):

The final mapping we all agreed to in the video was:

Scarlet Witch Classic Omnibus, collecting Uncanny X-Men #4-5 (and material from 6-7 & 11), Strange Tales #128, Avengers (1963) #16, 76, 128, 185-187, 234 (and material from #181-182), Giant-Size Avengers #1 & 4, Vision & Scarlet Witch (1982) 1-4, Marvel Team-Up #125 (2nd story), Marvel Fanfare #6 & 58 (2nd story), Marvel Two-in-One #66, Doctor Strange (1974) #60, Vision & Scarlet Witch (1985) #1-12, West Coast Avengers #2 & 42-45 (and material from 46), Marvel Super-Heroes (1999) #10 (1st story), Solo Avengers (1987) #5 (2nd story), Marvel Comics Presents (1988) #60-63 (3rd story), Avengers West Coast #47-57 & 60-62 (and material from 58-59), Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sins (1992) #3-7, and Scarlet Witch (1994) #1-4 (plus extras from the Vision & The Scarlet Witch – The Saga Of Wanda And Vision 2021 trade paperback).

However, that was NOT the mapping I walked in with! I felt the book should include more classic material and cut off after Avengers West Coast #62, to be followed up with a The Avengers & Scarlet Witch volume to collect the remainder of West Coast.

Here was the map I walked into the show planning to pitch:

Scarlet Witch Classic Omnibus, Uncanny X-Men (1963) #4-7 & 11 (and material from 53), Strange Tales (1951) #128, Avengers (1963) #16-18, 22, 25, 75-76, 128, 181-182, 185-187, 234, & 312 (and material from 47-49), Giant-Size Avengers (1974) #1 & 4, Marvel Two-In-One (1974) #66, Vision & Scarlet Witch (1982) #1-4, Marvel Team-Up (1972) #125 (2nd story) & #129-130, Marvel Fanfare (1982) #6 & 58 (2nd story), Power-Man & Iron Fist (1978) #102, Doctor Strange (1974) #60, Vision & Scarlet Witch Vol. 2 (1985) #1-12, West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 (1985) #2 & 42-45 (and material from 46), Marvel Super-Heroes Vol. 3 (1990) #10 (1st story), Solo Avengers (1987) #5 (2nd story), Marvel Comics Presents (1988) #60-63 (3rd story), and Avengers West Coast (1989) #47-57 & 60-62 (and material from 58-59).

What’s the difference? Aside from the slightly earlier cut-off, I was planning to include a lot more material to form a more complete Scarlet Witch Reading Order!

I erred on the side of including more of Scarlet Witch’s Silver Age material, both to establish her leaving the Brotherhood, and to show some of her key early adventures with the Avengers, including all of their major Magneto encounters.

I also felt it was worth including a Team-Up two-parter with Vision from #129-130, as well as a Wanda-focused issue of Power-Man & Iron Fist. And, finally, I had less of a problem with double-dipping all of “Vision Quest” and “Darker Than Scarlet” from the Avengers by John Byrne omnibus, since they are her signature stories.

Want to work through your own Scarlet Witch mapping? Check out my previously patrons-only Definitive Guide to The Scarlet Witch to find a complete Scarlet Witch Reading Order of all of her appearances from the Silver Age through 2018!

Music Monday: “Running Up That Hill” – Kate Bush

May 30, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

The entire internet is talking about Kate Bush today.

I love it! (If you’re wondering why, it has to do with yesterday’s post. If you’re ready for spoilers, Variety has a great write-up and interview about it.)

I came to Kate Bush relatively late in my life of music consumption. As a teen, my main lady piano rocker who communes with the ethereal world was Tori Amos.

I’d encounter older music fans who felt Tori was derivative of Kate Bush, so of course as a major Ears With Feet (that’s what Tori fans were called, in her heyday) I completed eschewed Ms. Bush for nearly a decade, until I picked up her LP Aerials at Tower Records in 2005.

That record was certainly Amos-esque, so I felt I finally understood the comparison. Imagine my surprise when in 2018 I finally dug into the rest of Kate Bush’s catalog to discover how much more she is than “lady piano rocker” (just as Tori is, as well).

I’m sure I had heard “Running Up That Hill” many times prior to that (including from Tori’s own cover of it, medleyed with her own “God”). It hit me in a completely different way when I finally I listened to it in the context of opening of Hounds of Love

The insistent galloping of the drums. The strange synthesizer sighs swirling around my head, darting from headphone to headphone.

And, that iconic chorus:

And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places

Be running up that road
Be running up that hill
Be running up that building

Say, if I only could, oh

When I first heard “Running Up That Hill”, it made me think of Sisyphus. His is the eternal struggle of pushing the same boulder up the same hill every day, only for it to roll back down again. He is the undying patron of lost causes and impossible struggles.

Would you willingly exchange places with him, even for a day? Could you survive? [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Running Up That Hill” – Kate Bush

Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1

May 29, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

Stranger Things Season Four, Vol. 1 is WILD, y’all!

(This post will be utterly spoiler free up until I give you a bold warning, below!)

I didn’t meant to do it, but somehow I managed to binge all nine hours of Stranger Things Season Four within a single 24-hour period this weekend. Honestly, I just couldn’t turn it off, even if it meant almost completely sacrificing a day of sleep.

For a moment early in the season it seems like Season Four shared the same weakness as the past two seasons: The Duffers are convinced their breakout stars need their own storylines, which often feel like entirely separate shows within the show.

For a few episodes, it does feel like this story has become too big, too discursive. The core quartet of boys are fractured across multiple plots, and there are even more plotlines that don’t include them or Eleven.

Even as the plot feels bigger than ever before, Season 4 finally acknowledges that the show has never been about singular stars. It’s not a show about Eleven, Hopper, or even Hawkins. It’s about how your circle of friends grows and changes as you change how you define yourself. It’s about how things that used to be scary are now commonplace, and how the newest hurdle in your life always feels the highest.

Stranger Things could’ve become a horror anthology series returning to Hawkins again and again without our core cast of misfits. However, this time it really feels like a story about the misfits (like S1 did) as much as it is about the horror around them… and what caused it. The show’s ever-growing ensemble of actors makes it work the best it has since Season 1 (which I crushed on back in 2016).

Be warned: Stranger Things Season 4 is bloodier and scarier than any of the past volumes. There are fewer jump scares, but more outright gore and onscreen violence.

Also, the first few minutes of the first episode focus on the aftermath of graphic violence that might be triggering for some viewers – this week, especially. It received a special content warning in the states, but we didn’t get it here in New Zealand. If you’re sensitive to images of violence against children, you can safely skip from the big “knockout” blackout at the 7-minute mark to the end of the opening credits. You’ll see the same scene again in a less disturbing fashion later in the season.

(Continue reading if you want very minor spoilers about the characters and their arcs as of the beginning of the season.) [Read more…] about Review: Netflix’s Stranger Things – Season Four, Vol. 1