Guardians of the Galaxy

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – September 20, 2023

September 19, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

It’s time to take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics September 20 2023 releases.

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right guide within my Crushing Comics Guide to Marvel Comics to find out how to collect each character in full – and, if a guide is linked from this post, that means it is updated through the present day!

Plus, I’m getting close to caught up on reading all of the Marvel Universe – so I have some commentary on some of the single issues and new collections.

Marvel Comics September 20 2023 Collected Editions

The Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 22: Round Robin
(2015 paperback, ISBN 978-0785192688 / 2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950545 / digital)
See Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (1963-2018). I’ve just updated all of the Amazing Epic Collections on the guide and I was shocked at how many of them have been back to print in the past three lines. Even Epics of relatively insignificant runs! Marvel has truly found a way to create a Manga-Style, well-organized, evergreen line of their entire comics history and we love to see it.

The Avengers Omnibus Vol. 4
(2023 oversize hardcover, ISBN 978-1302953621 / digital)
See the freshly rebuilt Guide to Avengers (1963-1996)! This is the last of the four reprints in addition to a brand new Volume 5 out this month. We love to see this line advancing without new Avengers movies on the big screen, which used to be the only way it got a new volume.

Bloodline: Daughter of Blade
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302924423 / digital)
See Guide to Blade. This series has an awkward history – originally it was meant to be launched by Tim Seeley several years ago, and then it was shelved and seemingly lost before it was revived (and revised) by Danny Lore. Unfortunately, this just didn’t hold together for me. It wasn’t Lore’s fault – I think the artist had trouble keeping up with a story that repeatedly mixed casual scenes with action scenes. The discontinuity of storytelling in the art eventually wore me down.

Captain Marvel: The Saga of Carol Danvers
(2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302951818 / digital)
See Guide to Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers. This is a peculiar trade that’s more of a sampler for the movie crowd then a trade for a consistent bookshelf. It collects the opening eights issues of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s 2012 Carol Danvers series (which includes a great pair of issues where she meets up with Monica Rambeau) as well as the origin-redefining The Life of Captain Marvel (2018), which brought her comic origins more in line with the MCU (booo!).

Drax Guide – now available to the public!

April 29, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

My countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 continues! Today I have another green-skinned warrior, though he’s not related to Gamora. In fact, one of his earliest objectives was to kill her! I never fully understood this character until I put together his guide, when I realized his key character trait wasn’t his strength or his single-mindedness, but his endless cycle of death and rebirth all triggered by the brutality of everyone’s favourite purple-skinned mad titan, Thanos. Learn about the man known as “The Destroyer,” who was revived to be Thanos’s arch-nemesis in my Drax Guide!

Drax Guide

What do I mean about an endless cycle of death and rebirth? Drax’s earliest incarnation was a revival of an Earth man as a powerful golem hell-bent on Thanos’s destruction, but on his mission he has died several times over, which each revival leading to a tweak to his powers (and, sometimes, his intellect). Read more about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe merged those multiple versions of Drax into one in my original launch essay from when I debuted this guide to Patrons of CK.

If you really want to understand Drax’s cosmic comic origins, you absolutely must read a back-up story from the obscure Logan’s Run (1977) #6 as well as Warlock & The Infinity Watch (1992) #12-13. You’ll appreciate Drax more with that core of understanding, no matter which of has many incarnations you read next. I wish I had already known that material when I first read the Annihilation event prologue in Drax The Destroyer (2005). At the time, the themes of that book went totally over my head – I just saw a violent green guy and was confused about why he came back to life so quickly!

Drax has the most fully-developed comics history out of all of the core Marvel Cinematic Universe members of the team, but it also often feels like he doesn’t get the full focus of the book the way Star-Lord and Rocket often do. For a strong modern arc that connects to Drax’s origins, check out Guardians of the Galaxy (2019) #7-12 by Donny Cates.

All of Drax’s many incarnations and every one of his Marvel Comics appearances are detailed in my Drax Guide. Whether you’re trying to put your single comics in a perfect reading order or reserve some Destroyer-filled reads from your local library, my guide has every issue and collected edition you’re looking for.

Gamora Guide – now available to the public!

April 28, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

As we continue the countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, I have another new character guide to share with all readers of CK. I had so much fun reading through every issue in this guide to understand how the most dangerous woman in the universe was introduced as a bounty hunter, turned out to be Thanos’s agent, abruptly died, became a long-term love interest to Adam Warlock and member of the Infinity Watch, and reached new heights of popularity as a Guardian of the Galaxy. You guessed it: it’s my Gamora Guide!

Gamora Guide

Want to learn more about that rich comics history and Gamora’s canonical relationship with Thanos? Check out my original launch essay from when I debuted the Gamora Guide to Patrons of CK.

Gamora’s comics history is tied closely to both Warlock and the birth of the modern Guardians. I think it’s worth reading Starlin’s Warlock material for just how wildly psychedelic it is, but Gamora really comes into her own as Warlock’s tough lady-friend slash bodyguard during Warlock & The Infinity Watch. That includes a fuller accounting of her origins, which you can read from two different perspectives in Warlock & The Infinity Watch (1992) #9 & 11 during the original Infinity War.

What Gamora still sorely lacks are present day solo adventures, aside from a pair of team-ups in Guardians Team-Up (2015) #4 (with She-Hulk) & 6 (with Nightcralwer). That’s in part because her starring turns in Gamora (2016) and Thanos (2019) we both told in flashback. However, it’s also because she is such a critical anchor of the Guardians team that allows Star-Lord, Drax, and Rocket to rotate in and out of the roster. For an especially strong story of Gamora as a member of the team, read the sequence of Gerry Duggan’s All-New Guardians of the Galaxy (2017) into Infinity Countdown (2018) and Infinity Wars (2018) – which form one mega-arc that develop’s Gamora’s character.

The Gamora Guide explains how to to read all of those issues, whether you are tracking down floppy comics to place in a perfect reading order, buying collected editions for your bookshelf, or reading online on Marvel Unlimited.

Star-Lord Guide – now available to the public!

April 26, 2023 by krisis 2 Comments

I’m back to continue my countdown to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 in just 8 days! Today, I have a guide to the character who assembled the modern Guardians of the Galaxy and became their defacto leader, even if his increased goofiness by-way-of the Marvel Cinematic Universe made him a less-convincing commander than he began in Annihilation. Follow Peter Quill through his every Marvel Comics appearance (across two different incarnations) in my Star-Lord Guide!

Star-Lord Guide

Want to learn more about the disparity between Star-Lord’s on-screen depiction and his Marvel Comics history, or how he was stealthily rebooted from a prior character without anyone realizing it in the early 10s? Check out my original launch essay from when I debuted the Star-Lord Guide to Patrons of CK.

If you want to read the very best of Star-Lord, you mostly want to read tons of Guardians of the Galaxy comics, which not only feature him as the leader but also the central driver of plot. However, his brief 2016 Chip Zdarsky & Kris Anka solo series helped to balance the sexy, silly aspects of his MCU version with his existence in Marvel-616, and Al Ewings most-recent run on Guardians of the Galaxy (2016) included a surprising amount of character work that unlocked new aspects of Peter’s personality linked to his now-obscure alternate-universe beginnings.