Doug Moench

Updated: The Definitive Guide to Moon Knight Comic Books

November 28, 2017 by krisis

Today I updated the guide of one of my favorite Marvel characters, as evidenced by my wardrobe on recent episodes of Crushing Comics – The Definitive Guide to Moon Knight!

This update was extra-fun because I love Moon Knight and any excuse to read his issues, but also because I got to correct some continuity confusion to better explain his chronology.

Is this the first time you’ve ever heard of Moon Knight? Or, do you just need a recap before diving in to collecting his comics? Keep reading for an introduction, where the character has been in 2017, and one of my trusty recaps of just how much material you can actually buy in a physical collected edition.

Crushing Comics, S01E06 – Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 3

November 6, 2017 by krisis

On today’s episode I discover and unwrap the first book I packed back in Philly – an omnibus I’ve been hyped for ever since I first shared its announcement back in 2015!

Want to start from the beginning? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 6 features Shang-Chi in Master of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 3 (Amazon/eBay), which is covered in the Guide to Shang-Chi.

10 Marvel runs from the 80s that ought to be omnibuses – 1981 to 1989

May 4, 2017 by krisis

It’s the penultimate stop in our trip backwards through time to find all of the Marvel runs most in need of Omnibus treatment.

Why? For fun. For accumulating rainy-day reading. And, to fuel our 2017 Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot votes!

Marvel in the 1980s is really a tale of two different Marvels. The first half of the decade featured many continuing 70s series, a handful of limited series, and relatively few new ongoing titles – most of which were direct spinoffs of characters from other books.

However, after Secret Wars II in 1986 the line got a serious shake-up, with many titles outside of what I think of as “The Big 9” and their satellite books getting cancelled or rebooted, plus tons of new ongoing and limited series and a whole new line of comics with New Universe!

(“The Big 9” are all of the lines of books that made it from the Silver Age to 2005 while being published continuously, even if that meant being restarted along the way – , Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, and X-Men. After 2005, Thor went on hiatus, and Fantastic Four has been on hiatus since 2015.)

(In a totally weird turn of events, we can now probably add Deadpool to that list of evergreen lines.)

Marvel released a lot of comics in the 1980s, so what should Marvel prioritize getting into omnibuses? I’ve already covered all of the X-Men runs from this period, and I’m not touching Spider-Man or Fantastic Four mapping at the moment. Plus, many key 80s runs are on the survey already, like Peter David’s Hulk, Iron Man by by Michelinie & Layton Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil – but that still leaves a ton of potential runs to cover! [Read more…] about 10 Marvel runs from the 80s that ought to be omnibuses – 1981 to 1989

Collecting Batman (1940, 2011, & 2016) comic books (post Crisis on Infinite Earths)

The Batman comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics and The Definitive Guide to Collecting Batman Comics. Last updated January 2017 with titles scheduled for release through July 2017.

Post-Crisis Batman: Batman (1940) #401 (Nov 1986) – Present

Many of DC’s heroes saw their comics relaunched in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths to delineate where their new continuity began. That was not the case with Batman, whose Detective Comics and Batman continued their runs uninterrupted.

Batman #401 is the first appearance of Post-Crisis Batman. Yet, the true keystone to Post-Crisis Batman is Year One in #404-407. Frank Miller pens a fresh, definitive take on Batman’s first year in the cowl that becomes the in-continuity bedrock of all further Batman stories. [Read more…] about Collecting Batman (1940, 2011, & 2016) comic books (post Crisis on Infinite Earths)

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order via omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through July 2019.

Who is Shang-Chi? To figure out the answer, we need to travel back in time over 40 years to 1974.

Similar to Marvel 70s horror titles Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night that emerged in 1972, Master of Kung Fu (MoKF) both featured a major non-Marvel character and was built to serve a public craze.

shang-chi-3596575-avengers_world_3_alessio_variant In this case, the craze was the titular Kung Fu. It was blowing up in the summer of 1973 thanks to a culmination of factors including the television show Kung Fu, a number of successful movies imported from China’s booming cinema, and one man: Bruce Lee.

Marvel wanted to license the popular Kung Fu to take advantage of the nationwide interest in martial arts (which also yielded Iron Fist), but they failed to obtain the rights. Instead, they turned to another pre-existing mythology: the story behind villain Fu Manchu, a fictional criminal mastermind who coined the mustache of the same name. He was created by author Sax Rohmer in 1912 in a serialized novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Fu Manchu was popular enough to merit an initial trilogy of serialized books in the 1910s and even more starting in the 1930s, plus a number of film adaptions ranging from 1929 to 1980. The character can be a controversial one – even in the 1930s he was seen as a racist caricature representing the “Yellow Peril” of an East-Asian threat to the wider, whiter world.

Enter Marvel Comics. They licensed the Fu Manchu universe from Rohmer’s estate, which was mostly focused on film adaptations in the 60s after Rohmer’s death and final book in 1959.

Instead of keeping it isolated in its own continuity, they created Shang-Chi as a part of the Marvel Universe and made him the son of Fu Manchu! What used to be Special Marvel Edition introduced Shang-Chi and then quickly made him the headliner of the book, swapping the title to Master of Kung Fu with issue #17.

Unlike Dracula, who has always been in the public domain in the US and who entered that status in the 1960s in Britain, Fu Manchu has remained the intellectual property of the Rohmer estate. While all Dracula stories are fair game to tell, print, and reprint, Fu Manchu requires a licensing agreement to use.

At some point after MoKF ended in 1983, Marvel let their rights to the Fu Manchu universe lapse. While they still retained Shang-Chi as a character, they could no longer name his villainous father in print. Further, Marvel could not reproduce or reprint those Fu Manchu stories in print and digital collections until reaching a new arrangement with the Rohmer estate in 2015.