Jason Aaron

Crushing Comics S01E10 – Young Avengers, Age of Ultron, & Original Sin

November 10, 2017 by krisis

Today I pull a trio of modern Marvel events, plus my only Marvel Now Omnibus! Watch as I continue the Young Avengers thread from last episode, plus explain Age of Ultron, and enthuse over Original Sin.

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

Episode 10 features Young Avengers: Children’s Crusade (Amazon / eBay / 2017 TPB) and Young Avengers by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie Omnibus (Amazon / eBay), as covered by the Guide to Young Avengers, and Age of Ultron (Amazon / eBay) and Original Sin (Amazon / eBay), explained the Guide to Marvel Events.

Brian Bendis leaves Marvel for DC! (Plus, breaking down Marvel Legacy’s writer roster)

November 7, 2017 by krisis

A few hours ago DC Comics dropped the biggest bombshell comics industry news we’ve heard in years. Forget special events or character deaths – this is truly a “nothing will ever be the same” kind of event.

We’re so excited to start working with @BRIANMBENDIS! pic.twitter.com/v1tgsMaNTr

— DC (@DCComics) November 7, 2017

It’s hard to imagine industry news bigger than that, aside from perhaps Jim Lee abandoning DC to head back to Marvel! Anything less couldn’t possibly compare. That’s because Bendis’s hand in steering the development of Marvel’s comic universe over the course of the past 17 years cannot possibly be overstated.

Brian Bendis completely rebuilt the Avengers franchise into a multi-title behemoth over the course of seven years, defining Marvel’s Universe along the way in a series of major events that fundamentally altered the company’s status quo.

He has solely written the Ultimate version of Spider-Men since 2001, including creating Miles Morales and bringing him to the main Marvel Universe.

He created Jessica Jones and set Daredevil on a course that had seen continued critical success through present day. He took previously forgotten characters like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Spider-Woman and brought them back to prominence for other writer’s to develop.

That assessment doesn’t even mention his Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, Iron Man, or any number of other major titles.

Brian Bendis has just written a lot of comic book issues and stories. Even as a non-fan of most of Bendis’s output, I cannot possible deny his impact.

While it will be a little while before we learn who will be the new driving force behind Marvel’s creative direction, the more imminent question is: who will replace Bendis writing four titles a month!? We’re heading into Marvel Legacy with him writing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Jessica Jones, and The Defenders.

Plus, we have to make sure to leave at least two writers with room to steer The Avengers franchise, which will be up for a shake-up in April. Plus, we need to staff the impending returns of Wolverine and the Fantastic Four (both heavily speculated as potential Bendis territory). And, finally, we ought to spare at least one writer for a marquee X-book.

Let’s take a moment to dissect Marvel’s current roster of writers in Marvel Legacy and figure out how to reassign those books. [Read more…] about Brian Bendis leaves Marvel for DC! (Plus, breaking down Marvel Legacy’s writer roster)

Wolverine by Jason Aaron, Vol. 2 – The #33 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 31, 2017 by krisis

I read Jason Aaron’s run on 2010’s Wolverine series live as it was happening… and I did not like it at the time.

In fact, “did not like” isn’t really strong enough language to describe my reaction to Jason Aaron writing Wolverine. If I was ever going to consider burning some comic books, it would have been this run, which I considered to be offensively bad.

However, with the hindsight of where Jason Aaron took Wolverine after this run I can appreciate what he accomplished, and even enjoy some of the individual turns. Weirdly, if this omnibus ever came to pass, I’d be sorely tempted to buy it.

Wolverine by Jason Aaron, Vol. 2 is the #33 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 collect all of these issue right now as detailed in my Guide to Wolverine.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: This would mirror a pair of Jason Aaron Complete Collections by collecting Wolverine (2010) #1-20, 5.1, & 300-304, plus Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #1-6 and material from Wolverine: Road to Hell.

It should also add X-Men: Schism #1-5 and the digital-first series “Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted” co-written by Aaron with Jason Latour.

Creators: Written by Jason Aaron.

Wolverine series letters by Cory Petit. Wolverine #1-5, 10-14, & 20 pencils by Renato Guedes, inks by Oclair Albert and Jose Wilson Magalhães, and colors by Matt Wilson (with backups drawn by Jason Latour with colors by Rico Renzi). Wolverine #6-9 art by Daniel Acuña (with Jefte Palo colored by Nathan Fairbairn on #5.1). Wolverine #15-16 line art by Goran Sudžuka with color art by Matt Wilson. Wolverine #17-19 line art by Ron Garney with color art by Jason Keith. Wolverine #300-304 by multiple artists, including Ron Garney, Adam Kubert, and Steven Sanders.

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine pencils by Adam Kubert, inks by Mark Morales and Dexter Vines, colors by Justin, and letters by Rob Steen. X-Men: Schism by multiple artists. Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted co-written by Jason Latour with line art by Paco Diaz, color art by Marte Gracia and Israel Silva, and letters by Cory Petit.

Can you read it right now? Yes! This run was very thoroughly collected in modern Premiere Hardcovers and trade paperbacks, all listed in the Guide to Wolverine – the simplest way to do it is to pick up Wolverine by Jason Aaron Complete Collections Volume 3 and Volume 4.

Plus, every single issue is on Marvel Unlimited – head to Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine, Wolverine, X-Men: Schism, and Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted.

The Details:

You can think of Jason’s Aaron’s time with Wolverine in three parts – Vicious Wolverine, Vengeful Wolverine, and Fatherly Wolverine.

Yeah, that last one wouldn’t work so well as a title as the first two.

The first Jason Aaron omnibus contains all of the Vicious Wolverine stories. These are super-bloody, knock-down drag out tales that – despite being forgettable – got Wolverine back to short-arc adventures after his ongoing got burdened with bigger stories and event tie-ins.

Fatherly Wolverine is entirely contained in Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron, which features a kinder, more-custodial version of our hero.

That leaves the most remarkable, marketable, and contentious portion of Aaron’s run uncollected in oversize format. [Read more…] about Wolverine by Jason Aaron, Vol. 2 – The #33 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 13, 2017 by krisis

Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron is the #53 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.

Visit the Guide to Thor to learn how to collect this story – and every other Thor comic ever published!

What Is It? Thor: God of Thunder (2012) was Thor’s relaunched comic in Marvel Now, beginning a new run by Jason Aaron that is still going (in a third title) over four years later!

This beautifully illustrated volume is one of my most highly-recommended comic runs of the past half decade to readers both old and new. It found Thor facing off against the brutal God Butcher across three different timelines before his attention turned back to tending to the problems of Earth and Asgard.

Thor: God of Thunder (2012) ran for 25 issues from November 2012 to November 2014, though five issues of Original Sin act as an interlude between #24-25.

It continued to Thor (2014), which ran for 8 issues and an annual from December 2014 to July 2015, when it was interrupted by Secret Wars.

Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results. [Read more…] about Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron Omnibus – The #53 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

12 Must-Read Marvel Runs (that ought to be an omnibus) – 1998 to 2008

May 2, 2017 by krisis

As we continue our trip backwards down Marvel Memory Lane, I’m here to convince you to read – or, at least, covet – 12 more Marvel runs, this time from 1998 to 2008.

While my concurrent period of X-Men looked at 2001 to 2008, for the rest of the Marvel Universe 1998 was a better starting point. That’s because Marvel’s Avengers and Fantastic Four franchises relaunched new volumes in 1998, and Spider-Man and Daredevil were rebooted within the next year as well.

(That wound up being less relevant to this post than I planned, since I decided not to touch mapping Fantastic Four or Spider-Man in the style of my exhaustive X-Men mapping. I also won’t hit the titles that are just waiting for a sequel – namely Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man. See my Orphan Report for more on those. And, one of the best runs from this period – Christopher Priest’s Black Panther – is already in the survey results.)

I’ve read less of Marvel outside of X-Men, so I’m being a little choosier with these runs so I don’t lead you astray! That’s not only a choosiness in quality, but in self-containment. While Marvel’s Universe was a little more siloed from 1998 to 2005, once New Avengers arrived titles became increasingly intertwined and reliant on events to launch and intersect with them until we hit peak tie-in after Secret Invasion in 2008, with the entire Marvel Universe being affected by Dark Reign in one way or another.

These runs aren’t that – they’re comics you could sit down and enjoy today regardless of your foreknowledge about a certain plot or character. While some of them intersect event series, none of them rely on your reading the main event to enjoy their chapters.

If you want to see any of these runs released in all-in-one omnibus editions, perhaps you should include some of them on your Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot – votes are due this Sunday!

However, omnibuses are not your only hope! The majority of these runs are collected in hardcovers and trade paperbacks listed in Crushing Comics’s Guide to Collecting Marvel Comic Books, and the vast majority of the issues are available on Marvel Unlimited, a $10/month Netflix-for-Marvel-comics.

Of course, all potential collection mapping comes with a disclaimer: all of my suggestions are subjective and subject to improvement, or at least spirited debate. If you have a correction, alteration, or disagreement, there’s no need to be shy – I’d love to hear from you in the comments, below.

Let’s dig in!