Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Dave Gibbons

Back Issue Review: The Flintstones, Green Lantern Corps, Eugenic, Space Battle Lunchtime, and more!

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Welcome to our second pilot post of Back Issue Review, where I give you the run-down on all the not-new comics I read this week. (Did you miss last week’s edition?)

I know the knee-jerk reaction for a lot of readers to a post like this might be to say either “I don’t read comics” or “I’ll just tune in when you talk X-Men.”

My reply to you is that comics as a medium is so much more than what you’re seeing on the big screen or in the pages of X-Men books.

I’d love to connect you with a new favorite read, but also with a wider awareness of the medium.

Today’s back issue review includes write-ups on:

  • After Eden (2017) #1-4
  • Captain Canuck (2015) #3
  • Centipede (2017) #1
  • Cowboy Ninja Viking (2009) #1
  • Eugenic (2017) #1-3
  • The Flintstones (2016) #1-6
  • Green Arrow (2016) #10-11
  • Green Lantern Corps (2006) #1-3
  • Grimm Fairy Tales: Return to Wonderland (2007) #4-6
  • Jonesy (2016) #1, Scalped (2007) #1
  • Space Battle Lunchtime (2016) #1-8
  • X’ed (2015) #1-4

That’s a lot of indie comics and absolutely no Marvel!

Please let me know if you like this this post – it’s the second pilot of this new weekly series, but there’s no guarantee it will be back for more.

And now – let’s get to the comics! [Read more…] about Back Issue Review: The Flintstones, Green Lantern Corps, Eugenic, Space Battle Lunchtime, and more!

Review: Doomsday Clock #1 vs. Watchmen #1

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It is 2017, and every classic work of art or commerce is just another chance to launch a new franchise. Everything old is flogged again.

The Handmaid’s Tale is now an Emmy-winning television show that has extended its universe both before and after the story in the classic novel. The long-running Archie comics have been turned into a nonsensical thirst-trap of a TV show about sex and murder where it is every season of the year on every day to allow for a full range of fashionable costuming.

Classic franchises are groaning under the weight of being re-franchised. It’s franchising squared. Disney is determined to pump out Star Wars movies almost as frequently as they used to release Star Wars novels back in the day and Warner Brothers has rushed a Justice League into the theatres before we’ve had a chance to care about most of the individual heroes who would form it.

There’s even news that Amazon is planning to make an ongoing series out of Lord of the Rings, ignoring the extended fart sound that was made by the bloated Hobbit trilogy and the fact that they could simply serialize the original film series across two entire seasons if it was carved into TV sized chunks.

I’m trembling in anticipation for the “long awaited” adaptations of some of my favorite TV commercials and magazine ads.

(That is only halfway a joke.)

And here we are, revisiting Watchmen, one of the comic medium’s true masterpieces, because we cannot leave well enough alone.

Yes, we already had a Watchmen movie and a Before Watchmen, but they were each one-time events. This is more than an event. It’s also a mash-up with DC’s ongoing universe that we never asked for but cannot help but watch like rubberneckers delighting in a gruesome accident. (Which says nothing for the ethical concerns, .)

If anything can be forgiven of being a retread of past ground, shouldn’t Watchmen? After all, it was Alan Moore’s original idea to take a dead comics universe and put its characters through a meat grinder of a final story. He might have wound up using his own original characters in the end, but he’s just as culpable of re-franchising as any of these modern examples. Moore’s career is full of these examples – MiracleMan, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and even Peter Pan. He loves digging up comics corpses to reanimate as much as films studios do!

And therein lies the truth of the matter. Moore always got a pass because his work was derivative but delightful. All of these franchise sins can be forgiven if the new extension of the franchise is good. The Handmaid’s Tale won that Emmy, after all, and everyone loves an Archie with abs.

Why not revive the Watchmen? Everybody’s doing it and they’ve been doing it forever – since long before Moore did it back in 1986.

Doomsday Clock #1  & Watchmen #1 4.5 stars

Doomsday Clock #1 written by Geoff Johns, drawn by Gary Frank, and colored by Brad Andersen. Watchmen #1 written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins.

Doomsday Clock is not meant to be a slavish, panel-by-panel homage to Watchmen, but the parallels are clear.

Both issues open with similar narration. Both are largely contained in a 3×3 nine-panel grid structure, and this first issue of Doomsday Clock employs a similar rhythm of breaking the grid to Watchmen #1. Both issues end with a sudden scene change punctuated by a historic quote that is followed by illuminating back matter.

There is an additional storytelling parallel that Doomsday Clock #1 ought to have picked up from Watchmen #1. Watchmen included several scene transitions throughout the issue, though each one turned out to be an extension of Rorschach’s journey through the narrative.

The first scene change in Watchmen is the most significant. On page nine, we cut from Rorschach looking at the Comedian’s photo of the old Watchmen to that same photo hanging above Hollis Mason as he enjoys a beer with Dan Dreiberg. Their conversation reveals they are the two Nite Owls, old and new.

The scene could have existed elsewhere, but the transition immediately lends it additional context: some of the Watchmen are still alive, and some of their mantles were handed down to others.

A page later, we realize this story is still the story of Rorschach, who shows up unexpectedly in Dreiberg’s house as he returns. The implication is that Rorschach, too, was a Watchman – which also tells us that the membership has changed over time, pre-explaining the upcoming scenes with Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan, and Silk Spectre.

For all his withering critique of society in his journal, Rorschach was once involved in protecting it. We immediately realize that, in a way, his pessimism is him bemoaning his own failures. [Read more…] about Review: Doomsday Clock #1 vs. Watchmen #1

New For Patrons: Watchmen – The Definitive Collecting Guide

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Today I launched a somewhat unusual guide directly to Patrons of Crushing Krisis – Watchmen: The Definitive Collecting Guide.

“But, Peter,” you might say, “Watchmen is only 12 issues long. How does that warrant an entire guide?

I’m so glad you asked. This guide does more than break out the many ways the original Watchmen series is collected. It also has information about the genesis of the Watchmen characters. It explains the differences between the three different cuts of the film, including one that incorporates the Tales of the Black Freighter material. It covers DC’s 2012 return to the Watchemen with Before Watchmen.

Much like my Complete Guide to Batman by Grant Morrison, this page is something I’ve always sought on the internet but never quite found. I look forward to adding more to it as the upcoming Doomsday Clock event as it unfurls.

This guide will become available to the general public in a few weeks to coincide with the release of the first issue of Doomsday Clock. Want it before then? Patrons get early access to every guide, including extended access to special Patrons’ Choice guides like Scarlet Witch.

Watchmen – The Definitive Collecting Guide

The Watchmen comic books definitive collecting guide absolute, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics Guide to Collecting DC. Last updated June 2024 with titles scheduled for release through August 2024.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen is widely recognized as one of the most classic single comic stories in the history of the medium.Watchmen Trade Paperback

The 12-issue series tells a story embroiled in all the worst fears of the mid-80s while drawing on a rich history of comic archetypes to create a world of characters who feel analogous to the casts of every major comics universe. It uses those archetypes, as well as the very format of the comic medium, to deconstruct the idea of superheroes – with graffiti in the background of panels rhetorically asking readers “Who watches the Watchmen?”

The same traits that make Watchmen a prohibitive classic can also make it a challenging for modern readers. That’s not just because they might lack the historical context or comics knowledge for this series. Instead, it’s because since Watchmen (and also The Dark Knight Returns, released in the same year) American superhero comics have evolved a sense of self-awareness that echoes the narrative tone of this series.

Watchmen existed for over 20 years as a completely self-contained series with some minor background material included in its collected editions. That all began to change with the 20th Anniversary of the title, which brought a modern restoration to its colors, continued through 2009 with the release of Watchmen’s film adaptation, and seemed to reach its peak in 2012 with a series of Before Watchmen comic books that expanded the universe of the original series for the first time.

However, DC Comics saved the biggest expansion of Watchmen for its 30th Anniversary, revealing that the actions of Moore and Gibbons’s characters had somehow created the “Rebirth” of their entire comic line. After a year-and-a-half of teasing, that story began to be told in Doomsday Clock, another 12-issue series that picks up from just after the final scenes of the original Watchmen to integrate its characters into DC’s current continuity. [Read more…] about Watchmen – The Definitive Collecting Guide