Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Alpha Flight

Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings

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This morning I had the absolute pleasure of announcing the results of the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot with Near Mint Condition!

The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot is an annual poll conducted by a mysterious comic book forum user named Tigereyes. The rules are simple: anyone can email Tigereyes up to 10 picks for their most-wanted, never-before-printed omnibuses of material originally printed by Marvel, even if they may no longer own the licensing rights.

Each first vote gets 10 points, each second vote gets 9 points, all the way down to your tenth vote getting just 1 point. After the voting period, Tigereyes goes through the gargantuan effort of tallying up all the votes – which also involves figuring out what everyone meant by their sometimes inconsistently-named or cryptically-described votes.

For me, the reveal of the results of the Tigereyes Secret Ballot is an international comics-loving holiday. I used to be the primary person on the internet creating statistics from the results every year! However, when I attempted to cover the entire poll entry-by-entry in 2017 I stalled out at the halfway point as the results straddled our move to New Zealand.

That’s why it was worth waking up at 4am NZ time to be ready to share this year’s results with my good friends Omar and Jess on the Near Mint Condition channel, thanks to some last-minute planning with Omar over the weekend.

Our show was nearly three hours long as we dug into the potential contents of every book on the list and whether we’d read them or not. As always, I had just as much fun appearing on-camera as I did chatting with all of the wonderful Minties in the live chat!

Don’t have time for the full 3-hour tour? We actually run down the full 60-book list in just 15 minutes, starting just before the 12-minute mark. I’m sharing the full list below, but it’s more than just a list – every omnibus includes a full suggested omnibus mapping along with a link to the relevant collecting guide on Crushing Comics.

That’s right, y’all – this is a post with SIXTY omnibus mappings in it, mapping well over 2,000 issues of comics. (Actually, it’s even more than that – there’s one tie, and in several entries I get into mapping second volumes if they would complete a run). That makes that one of the longest blog posts in 23 years of CrushingKrisis history.

Are you ready to be rocked by the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus vote? Strap in, true believers, and prepare to be mapped like you’ve never been mapped before.

[Read more…] about Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings

Alpha Flight Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee – The #34 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Alpha Flight is mostly known for its visually distinct team of founding members as written and drawn by creator John Byrne. With a Byrne Alpha Flight omnibus plucked straight from the 2016 survey results to be released earlier this year, is there any point in pushing for another collection of a less recognizable team?

In any other case, the answer might be no, but the next run of Alpha Flight has its own remarkable pedigree – it’s written by Bill Mantlo with Jim Lee first ever sequential art for Marvel!

Alpha Flight, Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee is the #32 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. 

Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes – plus, CK patrons have access to a super-detailed Alpha Flight reading and collecting guide that tracks not only every issue, but a complete reading order for each core team member’s every appearance.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: Alpha Flight by Bill Mantlo, Dave Ross, & Jim Lee would collect at least Alpha Flight (1983) #30-66, Annuals 1-2, and Avengers #272 – marking a clean break on Mantlo’s run of the title before James Hudnall takes over with the “Wrath of the Dreamqueen” arc on #67.

That said, it would make just as much sense for the omnibus to include Wrath of the Dreamqueen in #67-70, as it caps a few running plots. Then, it could push into Hudnall’s run as far as issue #78, which is another relatively clean break just prior to Acts of Vengeance. (Hudnall’s run continues through #86.)  Then, one day Marvel could release a rather hefty final volume would cover #79-130, and maybe Northstar #1-4.

Since running out the latter years of this relatively obscure team likely isn’t a priority for Marvel (who, after all, haven’t even reprinted this series past a trio of Classic trades from the John Byrne era), it seems much more likely they’ll go with the slimmer Mantlo / Ross / Lee volume. I still say it should end on #70, despite that ending on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Creators: Written by Bill Mantlo through #66 and then by James Hudnall with pencils by Mike Mignola (#30-31 & 47), Jon Bogdanove (#32), Sal Buscema (#33-34), Dave Ross (#35-44), June Brigman (#45-46, 49-50, 52, & Annual 2), Jim Lee (#51, 53, 55-62, 64), Hugh Haynes (#54, 63, 65-67), and John Calimee (#68-76, 78 and beyond).

Can you read it right now? Only in floppies! Otherwise, issue #39 is the sole collected issue in this run thanks to its crossover with The Avengers. It’s the same on Marvel Unlimited.

The Details:

Alpha Flight, Vol. 1 was previously a mainstay in the Secret Ballot top 10, but lo and behold we saw it printed in January of this year as Alpha Flight by John Byrne.

Knowing the completionist urges of secret ballot voters, us wanting a volume two is fait accompli regardless of its quality – right?

Well, maybe. But, the Bill Mantlo run from #29-66 that follows John Byrne’s turn on Alpha Flight contains a number of interesting plots that make it worth reading as a companion to the first volume. Byrne created, assembled, and defined the mainstay characters of Alpha Flight, but he didn’t spend much of his run writing them as a complete team. Mantlo pens their most memorable and stable period, but also significantly transforms the members and deconstructs the team. [Read more…] about Alpha Flight Vol. 2 AKA by Mantlo, Ross, & Lee – The #34 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

10 Marvel runs from the 90s you might have missed (and that ought to be omnibuses) – 1990 to 1997

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It’s our third installment of backwards time travel through Marvel runs that could easily fit into an omnibus volume to help inspire your votes on the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot.

Today I’m taking a slightly different perspective than I did for 1998 to 2008 and 2008 to present. For those installments, I focused on runs I knew well or at least could recommend from context. However, when it comes to runs I’ve read, the 90s are pretty thoroughly covered over both by existing omnibuses and the current votes of the poll. Add to that how much of this period are covered by the end of runs from the 80s, that I’ve already mapped X-Men, and my temporary avoidance of exhaustively mapping Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, and the pickings wind up being pretty slim!

Thus, this list comes with a caveat – I’m not necessarily suggesting you run out and buy and read all of these runs right now. I mean, I own nearly all of them, and even having not read them cover to cover I can tell you that most of them are very 90s comic books.

However, they also represent under-collected material that’s relatively unknown to modern readers. While it might be more reasonable to see all of it covered with Epic Collections, I think it would be more expedient to see them collected in this format than to wait around for trade paperbacks.

Ready to dig deep into the extreme 1990s? [Read more…] about 10 Marvel runs from the 90s you might have missed (and that ought to be omnibuses) – 1990 to 1997

New For Patrons: Definitive Guide to Alpha Flight

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I had a day to myself today, and it was partly to reward my Patrons with their Patrons’ Choice poll-winning guide for the month – a Definitive Guide to Alpha Fight, including every appearance from all of its core characters.

Not only does the guide cover how to collect every issue from all four incarnations of Alpha Flight (plus figuring out when to read those pesky annuals and mini-series), but it contains a complete reading order for Heather and James Hudson, Aurora, Puck, Sasquatch, Shaman, and Snowbird, plus orders for Diamond Lil, Madison Jeffries, Marrina, Northstar, and Wild Child during their tenures with the team.

Want access to this guide? Patrons’ Choice guides get picked from a pool of pages I’m not planning to work on for many months, so this one isn’t scheduled for released to the public anytime soon! But, you can be reading it tomorrow in exchange for covering $1.99 a month of CK’s hosting expenses.