Crushing Krisis

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Emma Frost

Patron’s Choice: Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

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Today I’m here with a Patron’s Choice guide for all Patrons of CK that I originally intended to launch back in September, before life got in the way. I always love a deep dive into an X-Men character’s history, and after reading 40+ years and over 1,200 issues of this queen of the X-Men franchise I love her even more than before! I’m happy to share the February 2023 Patron’s Choice: Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen!

Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen

This Emma Frost Guide was unique for me to put together in a way few other guides will ever be.

That’s because I knew Emma Frost as a villain – or, at least, an antagonist – from my initial comic reading years that ended in 1996. But, at the time I never had access to all of her exploits beyond the Dark Phoenix Saga since back issues were so pricey. I more knew her by reputation – and, of course, from fighting her in the classic X-Men arcade game!

Later, I knew about her as an X-Men from my return to reading Astonishing X-Men in the 00s before diving full-time back into X-Men in 2010 starting from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. But, I remained ignorant of anything that happened with her in the five years from 1996 to 2005.

That meant my White Queen knowledge was sort of a figure-eight-shaped, with a pair of big holes in the 80s and the latter half of the 90s. And, those are two periods that were huge for Emma Frost!

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Marauders (2019) #16: Kate Pryde’s revenge against Sebastian Shaw! | This Week in X

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It’s This Week in X for Marauders (2019) #16, released 9 December 2020!

Marauders (2019) #16 finds Sebastian Shaw reaping what he has sowed from four specifically aggrieved parties – and you’ll never guess who exacts the worst revenge!

This issue is one long beatdown (or, if you were as amused by it as we were, a slaptstick routine), but the individual beats said a lot about identity, friendship, loyalty, reparations, and revenge.

Join Peter, Tyler, and Fariha’s specially-nominated guest New Mutant, Harry, for this epic discussion.

Need help making sense of reading and collecting the X-Men? Crushing Comics can help!

Want to keep up with comics commentary all week long? Follow Crushing Comics on Twitter and subscribe to my channel on YouTube.

Generation X, Vol. 1 – The #36 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

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Generation X arrived on the verge of the X-Men franchise’s glory days starting to spoil in the Onslaught era. For that reason, many fans tend to write it off – or, they weren’t even around for it.

Yet, the comic readers who stuck by the X-Men through the 90s know that Generation X wasn’t more of the same compared to other X-Men books of the period. A huge part of that was the Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo creative partnership that lasted through the first few years of the series.

Generation_X_1994_0002Generation X, Vol. 1 AKA by Lobell & Bachalo is the #36 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, and head to my Guide to Young X-Men to see how many issues of this series have already been reprinted in collected editions.

Past Ranking: #26 in 2016

Probable Contents: This volume would certainly include Generation X #1-25 & Annual 1995, 1996, 1997, and material from Generation X Ashcan Edition, San Diego Preview, and material Generation X Collector’s Preview. It wouldn’t be surprising to also see Uncanny X-Men #316-318 and X-Men #36-37 duplicated from the Phalanx Covenant OHC.

That makes for a somewhat short volume that slightly cuts off the end of the Lobdell/Bachalo run, but it marries to the Operation Zero Tolerance OHC, which begins at #26. Alternately, this book could duplicate #26-31 from that volume to include the complete works of the original creative team, also adding #-1 – pencilled by Bachalo.

(It could also add Daydreamers #1-3, which continues from Generation X #25 and has never been collected.)

Either way, the remainder of the series could likely be knocked out in a single additional volume starting from #32.

Creators: This run is primarily written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by Chris Bachalo with Mark Buckingham and Scott Hana on inks.

An army of pencillers fill in for the year where Bachalo is away – notably including Roger Cruz and Tom Grummett. Issues #28-31, if they were to be included, were written by James Dale Robinson.

Can you read it right now? No. There’s are a pair of Generation X classic trades that run from #1-11, but then you’re stuck with floppies until #26. Guide to Young X-Men covers that and all the rest of the series.

It’s the same story on Marvel Unlimited – #1-11, then straight to #26.

Generation_X_1994_0001

The Details:

Generation X was the totally weird X-Men book that no one knew they wanted but everyone was strangely happy to have when it launched in 1994.

It used to be that New Mutants was the book with the young, school-age cast and Excalibur was the oddball book full of humor. That had changed in the prior year, with X-Force focusing more on a proactive approach to preserving the mutant race and Excalibur finally being sucked into all of the standard X-Men crossover drama.

That left a hole to be filled by a quirky book set at a school. That is what Marvel launched out of the Phalanx Covenant crossover, which introduced a new generation of mutant coveted by the race of techno-organic life forms.

Generation X wasn’t just quirky. It was something altogether different and more transgressive than any X-Men title that had come before. It was a book full of superheroes who wore uniforms but hardly acted as a team. If they had any unifying theme, it was that their powers were metaphors for adolescence that doubled as body horror. [Read more…] about Generation X, Vol. 1 – The #36 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 3: 2001 to 2008)

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I’m back with a third installment of the ultimate X-Men omnibus mapping, finding a way to squeeze just about every issue of X-titles into a cohesive bookshelf of handy omnibus volumes.

Okay, they’re not actually all that handy. Most of them could probably be wielded as a deadly weapon.

Today’s era begins with Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men starting on #114 in 2001 and ends with the final issue of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, which is the last thing that happens to any X-Men prior to Messiah Complex. Of course, there are a lot of other series contained in that material – you’ll immediately note that neither of those historic runs address a single issue of Uncanny X-Men!

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Monday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991, and yesterday I covered 1991 to 2001.

There are 25 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Many of their contents are high debatable, but that’s part of the fun – collected edition mapping is a contentious pastime. Heck, I don’t even agree with how Marvel does things half of the time! If you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below.

Now, prepare to be fully educated in the seedy underbelly of this period of all-star X-Men writers, including some books I am sure you never knew existed unless you are a superfreak of a walking Encyclopedia-X like I am.

[Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 3: 2001 to 2008)