Brett Booth

Every Missing WildStorm Omnibus, Mapped | 2025 Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Poll

May 13, 2025 by krisis

It’s time to map the DC Universe! In June, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll! This post explains every WildStorm omnibus that does NOT exist – all of which will appear as options on the 2025 poll.

Through the end of May I’ll be covering DC entire publishing history by mapping missing omnibus volumes to fill in every gap in your DC oversize shelf! That’s all leading to the kickoff of the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll on Near Mint Condition the first week of June.

In the past year DC has finally acknowledged that they have more WildStorm material to print beyond Jim Lee’s run on WildCATs, the first volume of The Authority, and Planetary. We got a second Authority omnibus, a WildCATs compendium that significantly expanded on the material in the Jim Lee Absolute Edition, and a Compendium of pre-Authority Stormwatch material!

That’s all great progress, but it still mostly collects material that has been collected before. There’s 30 potential omnibus volumes worth of WildStorm material that DC could still collect! While sales on the three recent books might be a good indicator of demand, it would be huge for a WildStorm book to make it into the on-air results of the Tigereyes poll this year.

Wildstorm Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Poll

May 10, 2024 by krisis

It’s time to dive into the WildStorm Universe – perhaps my favorite shared universe in all of comics! I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted DC omnibus volumes every day until May 19th! Then, on the 19th, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the first annual Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Annual Poll! This post covers omnibuses missing from DC’s WildStorm imprint, including WildCATs, Stormwatch, Gen13, Deathblow, Wetworks, and more!

This post explains potential WildStorm Omnibus Mapping for votes on the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Secret Ballot. I’m posting all of these maps before the poll begins to give people the time to consider their favorites, correct our mapping mistakes, and catch books I might have missed.

There are three comic properties where I own every issue from their inception through 2012. One is X-Men, obviously. Another is Wonder Woman, covered earlier this week. The third is WildStorm. I own every floppy comic book ever published by WildStorm and I have them all packaged for binding – basically, I have this entire omnibus mapping already-collected in shortboxes in my garage!

I have to give a special shoutout to two amazing fellow WildStorm fans: WildStorm4Life, who runs the main WildStorm Universe group on Facebook, and Bryan Jose, who runs the Weathering WildStorm reading order blog. WildStorm4Life was instrumental in aiding my collecting every WildStorm issue by sharing his own binding maps with me over a decade ago!

If you don’t know DC well enough to know what to vote for, stick around for my explanations! Learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including giving us feedback if we missed the mark.

If voting is now open, you can use this as your crib sheet! Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how DC could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of DC creating a book with that title or covering that period.

High-effort, heavily-researched, over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics.

Updated: Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane

March 2, 2023 by krisis

I’m back today to continue my Indie Comic Month run through the original titles from the 1992 launch of Image Comics. As it turns out, I already had a guide for this title, which I launched in 2019. However, a lot of things can change in just a few years, and this title’s 30th anniversary in 2022 opened up a whole new universe of comics and collections. It’s time for a major update to my Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane!

Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane

When I first created this Guide to Spawn back in October 2019, Spawn seemed like it was in “Legacy Mode” with no signs of change on the horizon. Little did I realize that had begun to change the very month I published the guide!

To me,”Legacy Mode” is when a longstanding comic is only publishing more issues because it has a core of fans that will keep buying them. There’s no extra effort being put into marketing it beyond that existing core of fans. The stories start to feel repetitive and insular. And, there’s no efforts being made to collect or re-collect older issues of the title – since the assumption is that all of the fans already own all of the collections!

That described Spawn as it existed prior to October 2019, but not after. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Spawn by Todd McFarlane

Back Issue Review: Lumberjanes, DC Comics Titans, & Unstoppable Wasp

February 18, 2018 by krisis

I haven’t been doing much back-issue reading this week, which means this Back Issue Review isn’t as sprawling as its been in past weeks.

I did manage to knock out four volumes worth of youthful titles. None of the were major standouts, but they all presented nuanced looks at the meaning of friendship and identity.

Lumberjanes (2014) #25-28(AKA Vol. 7 – A Bird’s-Eye View), Boom! Entertainment, Inc
Titans (2016) Rebirth & #1-6 (AKA Vol. 1 – The Return of Wally West), DC Comics
Titans (2016) #7-10 & Annual 1 (AKA Vol. 2 – Made In Manhattan), DC Comics
Titans (2016) #12-18 (AKA Vol. 3 – A Judas Among Us), DC Comics
The Unstoppable Wasp #1-4 (AKA Vol. 1 – Unstoppable), Marvel Comics

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Backlash #6-7

November 26, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]When we last saw our heroes this book was a chauvinist wreck being scripted by man-children. I wonder what will happen next!

backlash_v1_06 No matter what I say about the lumpy scripting on this book, it’s definitely in the upper half of good looking WildStorm ongoings as Stormwatch wobbles through multiple artists and Deathblow switches away from Tim Sale.

While Brett Booth is a large part of that, so is a set of DC-esque vibrant colors from Martin Jimenez. Together, they make what could be a spy book feel like a superhero adventure. That lends a lot of implied joy to the proceedings that the script isn’t bringing to the table. Even spitting the three chapters of issue #7 between Melvin Rubi, Booth, and Dan Norton doesn’t change that – each of them delivers, especially Rubi on the intro.

Plotwise, the trio of scripters continue to be hapless. Issue #6 neatly ties up the book’s raison d’être in a neat little bow, with the VR device leading Backlash right to S’Ryn and having him neatly resolve her broken psyche with the help of Voodoo. That story probably deserved more than just one issue.

I’m not sure what the point of the title will be after WildStorm Rising, but luckily that’s not my problem this month!

Then, issue #7 finds the quickest possible route to dispose of that new status quo, while pitting a still unsympathetic Taboo against a term of mercs who I was rooting for 100%.

(The letters columns in #7 include a cascade of praise for the one-note evil sexbot Taboo. I’d ask what book they were reading, but then I remembered some stuff about teenage boys and just shook my head.)

Also, there are some intractable continuity problems here – Backlash visits the WildCATs headquarters with a recovered Voodoo in Backlash #6, placing it after WildCATs #18. Then Backlash #7 begins with two weeks elapsing. The trouble is that WildCATs #19 happens just seconds after #18 and immediate moves into the start of WildStorm Rising, which puts Backlash #8 way into the crossover (but not really, since Backlash’s #8 is one of the chapters).

These issues needed some kind of reshuffling to extend the story in #7 – perhaps by inserting the disconnected Australian Outback in #8 to displace the big finalé with S’Ryn into #8, leaving Slayton and Diane’s sudden breakup to end this pair of books.

Want the recap? Keep reading for the details of this pair of issues. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow brings us a new arc sans Tim Sale on Deathblow #13-15, followed by the start of new Union and Gen13 ongoings on Monday.

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#6-7) or Amazon (#6, 7). [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Backlash #6-7