House of M

Crushing Comics S01E035 – What are you carrying on your back? + Secret Wars, House of M, & Secret War

December 8, 2017 by krisis

This episode begins with me contemplating the things other than comics I lugged around the world with me (some, unintentionally). Do you have these things in your life? Action figures, board games, old sleeping bags, and serving platters someone loaned you for a big party?

Luckily, this brick of comic books are definitely things I mean to bring with me to Wellington – the original Secret Wars, House of M, and Secret War (no “s”).

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

Episode 35 features the oversize hardcovers of Secret Wars (1984), House of M, and Secret War. Learn more about all three books in my Guide to Marvel Events!

The Definitive Scarlet Witch Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive Scarlet Witch issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for comic books, omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated October 2017 with titles scheduled for release through April 2018.

Wanda Maximoff is The Scarlet Witch – one of the most powerful mutants in Marvel’s universe, and the sometimes daughter of Magneto. She is able to alter reality at her whim with blasts of pure chaos, causing anything from a wall suddenly crumble down upon a villain to an alteration to the fabric of our universe.

Scarlet Witch is one of Marvel’s earliest reformed villains and one of their most dedicated heroes. She forms a link between the X-Men and Avengers franchises that has been in place since 1965.

For the prior year, Wanda and her brother Quicksilver had appeared together as members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants since their debut in X-Men (1963) #4. However, in May of 1965 the mutant twins shocked both Marvel’s characters and their readers by applying for membership with Captain America’s reformed Avengers in Avengers (19630 #16.

While Quicksilver has come and gone from The Avengers since then, Scarlet Witch has remained a mainstay of the team. Her initial membership ran for a nearly-continuous 20 years before she spun off into a year-long maxi series with her beau The Vision in 1985, which depicted their unusual romance and eventual home life. Wanda even gave birth to a pair of twins.

After that domestic interlude, Wanda returned to active Avengers membership with the West Coast Avengers. Under the pen of John Byrne, she had her own “Dark Phoenix” period, turning on her teammates. However, she quickly returned to heroism and broke away from The Avengers with her other teammates to form the more proactive Force Works in 1994, lead by Iron Man (but not before briefly headlining her own limited series).

A subsequent return to The Avengers was short-lived, as the results of Onslaught shunted Wanda and her teammates into a pocket universe in 1996 before they returned in a new flagship title in 1998. Scarlet Witch was a founding member and an ongoing anchor of the team.

Everything changed in 2004, when red-hot writer Brian Michael Bendis was given free reign to rebuild the flagging Avengers franchise. His answer was a four-issue arc called “Avengers Disassembled,” which would both elevate and irrevocably alter Scarlet Witch’s profile in the Marvel Universe. It’s follow-up, the X-Men and Avengers crossover House of M, would emphasize Wanda as the link between the two teams and also prove her to be one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

After that climax, five whole years passed with only the scantest hints of Wanda’s continued existence. She returned in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, which both addressed her absence and resolved her seeming connection to a pair of Young Avengers – Wiccan and Speed – who closely resembled Wanda and her brother.

With Scarlet Witch back in action, she was a natural choice to anchor a “Unity” team of Avengers and X-Men in Uncanny Avengers in 2012 to welcome the Marvel Now era. A second volume of that book called into question her long-established link to Magneto (which many fans took as a rebuke of FOX being able to use Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in their X-Men movies). Then, after Secret Wars, she starred in her own ongoing series for the first time in 2016 before making a return to Uncanny Avengers in 2017.

House of M Omnibus – The #59 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 9, 2017 by krisis

The House of M Omnibus is the #59 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.

What Is It? House of M (2005) is an alternate reality mystery that finds the Avengers and the Astonishing X-Men in a world where mutants dominate a society that is racist against regular humans. It prominently stars Wolverine, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Magneto.

House of M was Marvel’s first major, line-wide event since Onslaught in 1996 as well as the first significant X-Men and Avengers crossover since then. It was also the first time that Marvel thrust its entire line into an alternate universe story (in an expansion of their strategy for the X-Men-only Age of Apocalypse in 1995).

House of M resulted in massively changed status quo for several Marvel characters, including Ms. Marvel and Wolverine. In its aftermath, Marvel’s mutant population was decimated from millions to just a few hundred, which began a six-year mega-arc that eventually ended in Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012.

The House of M (2005) mini-series event ran for 8 issues from August 2005 to November 2005.

Past Ranking: This is the debut appearance of this book on the ballot!

Creators: Written by Brian Michael Bendis with pencils by Olivier Coipel, inks by Tim Townsend (with Scott Hanna, Rick Magyar, & John Dell III), colors by Frank G. D’Armata (with Paul Mounts), letters by Chris Eliopoulos, and covers by Esad T. Ribic.

Probable Contents: This omnibus would definitely collect House of M (2005) #1-8 plus The Pulse: House of M Special (2005) #1 and Secrets of the House of M (2005).

Those contents have already been published in an oversize hardcover, which is just 312 pages long. Marvel reprinted a similar hardcover of Civil War for their 2016 film, but it was not relabelled as an omnibus. What else could this volume contain?

Click to expand a discussion of further content for this volume.

There were three oversize hardcovers worth of House of M tie-ins, each weighing in at about 350 pages – House of M: No More Mutants, House of M: Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and House of M: Wolverine, Iron Man, Hulk. They are all now out of print and relatively expensive to obtain.

It is likely that most voters had that all-inclusive volume in mind when selecting this choice for their ballot. Together, those tie-ins represent 1048 pages of material, which (combined with the main event) would produce a 1360 page omnibus. That’s larger than Marvel’s current biggest printed volume by a signature (16 pages). The length is potentially feasible, though it would leave no room for the bonus materials many fans look forward to in omnibus editions.

We’ll call that version, “House of M Complete Collection Omnibus.”

Alternately, all of that material could be saved for a sizable “House of M Companion” omnibus, and this volume could instead include both lead-up and aftermath stories to the event. Excalibur (2004) #11-14 in Excalibur, Vol. 3 contained the lead-in to the event – another 96 pages. The quintet of X-Men: The Day After, X-Men: Generation M, X-Men: Son of M, X-Men: The 198, and Sentinel Squad O.N.E. covered the fallout of the event, called “Decimation.” Together, they account for a combined 712 pages. New Avengers #16-20 was not part of Decimation, but it also served as an epilogue – another 120 pages.

An omnibus of all that material would be a slightly-more-reasonable 1344 pages – as long as Marvel’s longest current book. Less the inessential lead-in from Excalibur and the disconnected Avengers epilogue, it would be 1120 pages.

We’ll call that version, “House of M: No More Mutants Omnibus.”

If Marvel went with the “No More Mutants Omnibus,” it would reasonable to see the additional material from the “Complete Collection” omnibus as its own “House of M Companion.” Conversely, if Marvel went with the “Complete Collection Omnibus,” it would also be reasonable to see a “House of M Companion: Decimation” omnibus containing all of the follow-up material.

For the full details on all of the issues contained in the prelude, tie-in, and aftermath titles and how they are presently collected, see the Guide to Marvel Universe Events.

Can you read it right now? Yes! The House of M trade paperback has “evergreen” status at Marvel – meaning they always keep it in print. However, all of the various supporting books are long since out of print and may cost you a lot of money to purchase. Learn more about them in the Guide to Marvel Universe Events.

And, fear not – every single issue of House of M and its tie-ins are available on Marvel Unlimited for just $10 a month!

The Details:

House of M is one of Marvel’s biggest and most-accessible stories of all time for a litany of reasons.

It featured a team of blockbuster creators, told an alternate reality tale that was massive in scope, kicked off Marvel’s modern age of yearly line-wide events, and was an Avengers and X-Men team-up that actually changed everything that came afterwards for both teams.

However, it might be most notable for being a major inflection point for Marvel. The pre-House of M Marvel of early 2005 would be unrecognizable to readers of both today and of a decade prior to House of M.

Marvel’s line was beginning to expand after their gaunt late-90s bankruptcy years, but it was not the interconnected universe to which fans of the early 90s were accustomed. Titles tended to keep to themselves, without major interaction across Marvel’s Universe. Crossovers were all but extinct. Most of the hype and fan interest was around Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, which launched fresh, modernized version of their four core franchises starting in 2000.

Yet, the prior year had brought with it two major shake-ups in the main Marvel Universe that captured fan imagination (and, in one case, ire). [Read more…] about House of M Omnibus – The #59 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Collecting Marvel Universe Events as graphic novels

A comprehensive guide to line-wide Marvel Events – including story overviews, characters, issue lists, and how they can be read via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperbacks. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through February 2019.

Marvel Events Handbook Secret Wars. Inferno. Age of Apocalypse. Civil War. Secret Invasion. Avengers vs. X-Men. When it comes to epic-sized comic book events, Marvel Comics is the all-time champion.

These line-wide Marvel Events are overarching stories that can involve dozens of Marvel heroes – if not all of them, all at once! Events occur as either or both of direct crossovers between ongoing titles and special limited-series.

That can make them hard to keep track of, especially at the current rate of one or more events each year. It’s also hard to track down every issue or graphic novel. It’s easy to miss issues or buy the same comic in overlapping collections.

That’s why I created this page – it includes summaries, issue lists, and collection info for every major Marvel event, ever.

Click the links below to leap down the page to the corresponding section. I have omitted most line-specific crossovers with only one or two cross-line spinoffs, such as X-Men’s Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Hulks. [Read more…] about Collecting Marvel Universe Events as graphic novels