Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
Today I unwrap one of my earliest “whale” acquisitions, which involves discussing the origins of the Marvel 616 Universe.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 17 features Captain Britain Omnibus (Amazon / eBay), which is covered in the Guide to Captain Britain & Excalibur.
In this episode I get to show off my (mostly-correct) knowledge about a slightly obscure corner of X-Men lore – Captain Britain’s early, UK-only history. Did you know that it was largely written by Chris Claremont?!
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 15 features Captain Britain – Volume 1: Birth of a Legend (Amazon / eBay) and Captain Britain – Volume 2: Siege of Camelot (Amazon / eBay), both of which are covered in the Guide to Captain Britain & Excalibur.
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.
X-Men is one of the most popular comics franchises in history, and in the 90s it rode the crest of the speculator wave to over half a dozen ongoing series and at least twice that many crossover events.
However, when it comes to coverage in oversize editions, you’d think that those crossover events were all there was to X-Men in the 1990s. That’s not the case, and there are hundreds of issues outside of those events that haven’t seen oversize collection – including many that have never been reprinted.
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. Yesterday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991 and how it could be collected by omnibus volumes, and tomorrow I’ll be back to cover the Morrison and Whedon era of X-Men.
There are 28 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping is a trivial pursuit (in both senses of the phrase) that is up to a lot of personal interpretation, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!
I think of this era as everything from X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281 in 1991 through the end of Onslaught and continuing to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s take on the X-Men in 2001. We’ve already got a number of omnibus-sized oversize hardcovers clustered at the beginning of this era, but after Age of Apocalypse things get spotty across all of the titles.
Are you ready? (I’m not sure that you could possibly be ready.)
The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot allows collected editions fans to play “Fantasy Collections Department” by picking the runs they’d most like to see in an oversized format.
Now that I’ve recapped the history of past years of the Ballot, we’re up to two weeks of the really fun stuff – thinking up dozens upon dozens of suggestions for Marvel omnibuses we’d love to see on our shelves!
I highlighted 50 runs that deserved an omnibus at the close of the survey last year, but this time I’m going to be a lot more comprehensive.
I’ll begin on my home turf: The X-Men. It’s how Crushing Comics guides began, and I own every issue of X-Men in either single issue or collected format, so I’m accutely aware of the gaps in oversized content.
Today I’ll cover both existing and potential Omnibuses for X-Men from their debut in 1963 through the launch of X-Men, Vol. 2 in 1991. Then, tomorrow we’ll look at the tumultuous and under-collected 90s, before finishing up on Wednesday with the pair of most recent X-Men eras – from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in 2001 through present day.
After that, we’ll rinse and repeat this exercise in reverse for the entire Marvel Universe, working backwards from the current All-New All-Different Marvel to look at the top possible omnibuses across the entire line from every period until we’re back to the few books still left uncollected from the 1960s.
So, if you haven’t yet voted in the poll or just need a few more books to fill out your personal Top 20, get ready – the next two weeks of CK will have over 100 omnibus suggestions for you to choose from!
Now, let’s get to some X-Tensive X-Men omnibus mapping, staring with the Classic X-Men era from 1963-1974, before moving on to Chris Claremont’s tenure on X-Men from 1975-1991 (plus, all of the tie-in series from that era.
There are 19 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping can be exact and contentious work, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!