Jim Zub

Updated: Guide to Conan The Barbarian

September 13, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

On Monday I released a new guide celebrating a new #1 comic I loved in Birds of Prey (2023) #1. Today I’m back with a major guide update for another new comic I am really digging – the new Titan Comics relaunch of Conan the Barbarian (2023)! You can find that, and every other Conan comic ever published, in my Guide to Conan!

Guide to Conan The Barbarian

The last time my Conan guide had a major overhaul was in 2019. It was still early in Marvel’s relaunch of the licensed property – around the time of their launch of the in-continuity Savage Avengers (2019).

A lot has happened with Conan since then! [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Conan The Barbarian

Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

January 23, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to The Champions is now available to all CK readers! This guide covers both the 1975 Champions of Los Angeles as well as the 2016 revival of the team as a squad of Marvel’s young characters in the wake of Civil War II This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the outstanding Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to The Champions

When I first covered how to collect the 1975 edition of The Champions they didn’t merit their own guide page. They had 17 issues of their own and then faded into Marvel history while their members scattered to the winds. I relegated them to my Guide to X-Men Ongoings due to the team including Angel and Iceman.

In reality, the problem with reassembling The Champions wasn’t just that Iceman and Beast had been incorporated into The Defenders (visit the Guide to Defenders), and later into X-Factor (visit the newly-updated Guide to X-Factor)

It was also that Marvel lost the ability to publish comics with the “Champions” title! [Read more…] about Guide to The Champions – now available to the public!

The Pull List: Avengers in No Surrender, Detective Comics, Mister Miracle, Paradiso, & more!

January 13, 2018 by krisis

Welcome to the second week of “The Pull List,” where I give a quick rundown of all of the non-X comics I read this week.

My pulls this week came from a wide spread of publishers – Marvel, DC, Image, Aftershock, and Valiant! It was also a week where the minutia of the craft really took me out of enjoying the storytelling. I had a lot of bones to pick with letterers, and many comments about pace and continuity.

This week’s Pull List included:

Avengers (2017) #675
Detective Comics (1937/2016) #972
Judas (2017) #2
Mister Miracle (2017) #6
Monstro Mechanica (2017) #2
Ninjak vs. The Valiant Universe (2018) #1
Paradiso (2017) #2
Port of Earth (2017) #3
Rise of the Black Panther (2018)
Runaways (2017) #5
Sleepless (2017) #2
Witchblade (2017) #2
Wonder Woman (2016) #38.

You might be surprised at which of these books I loved and which left me in a seething rage. There’s at least one where I disagree with seemingly 99% of the folks who I’ve seen react to the book in the past few days. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers in No Surrender, Detective Comics, Mister Miracle, Paradiso, & more!

The Champions – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s The Champions comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through July 2019.

Reading and Collecting The Champions

The Champions is one of Marvel’s most unusual teams, with a strange history both on the page and behind the scenes.

The team began its life as a pitch by writer Tony Isabella. While the details have grown hazy over the years, one thing is certain – Isabella had designs on Angel and Iceman, the two X-Men left over after the original team was splintered by the arrival of the Giant Size X-Men team, and the other three characters – Hercules, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider – were thrust upon him. The title was written entirely by Isabella and then by Bill Mantlo (with Claremont filling in on #4) along with a merry-go-round of artists.

The series opens with them all five characters on the UCLA campus, each for their own reasons, when it comes under assault by a strange group of anachronistic villains. They turn out to be agents of the god Pluto, who intends Hercules to be wed to Hippolyta!

Despite this oddball set-up, The Champions weirdly worked well. It’s a series about heroes being heroes because they simply cannot help it, joined together by proximity more than friendship or destiny. It gave Iceman and Angel a chance to breath away from Cyclops and Jean. It gave Black Widow a rare chance to shine after her breakup with Daredevil – she would go on to become the team’s chairman. And, it showed just how brutal and terrifying Ghost Rider could be – as he tended to have an unsettling effect on his teammates.

If fans took interest, this team could have become the de facto West Coast version of the Avengers years before that team made its debut. Alas, despite Marvel’s best efforts to promote the book it ended early, with its epilogue shuffled into a pair of Spider-Man issues.

That was the end of The Champions for forty years – unusual, given Marvel’s propensity for reviving their intellectual property every so often. In this case, it was because they were barred from doing so! While Marvel’s Champions were dormant, Heroic Publishing had began publishing a Champions comic book to support their popular 1980s role playing game.

Whether Marvel wanted to get the gang back together or not, they couldn’t – so Iceman and Angel returned from X-Factor to the X-Men in 1991, Black Widow and Hercules anchored the “Leather Jacket” Avengers, and Ghost Rider briefly expanded into his own franchise in the 90s.

Flash forward to 2016. Marvel is launching a youthful new team in the wake of Civil War II featuring characters like Miles Morales and Ms. Marvel that is quite deliberately not The Avengers. What could they be called? While the obvious answer seems like it ought to be “New Warriors” (especially with Nova on the team!), Marvel’s editorial team got a twinkle in their eye and asked Legal if they might be able to revive The Champions trademark – and they could!

That’s how we got a new Champions team so unlike the first one – it’s literally just an IP grab by Marvel of their own IP!

Surprisingly, this new Champions turned out to have some real staying power. Marvel’s youngest generation of heroes were never quite the right fir for the Avengers team they hero-worshipped as kids. They’re much more compelling when they are left to their own devices.

Conan Comics – Defintive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Conan comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2023 with titles scheduled for release through June 2024.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan has lived many lives in comics, from a young barbarian to a grizzled old king. Those lives are split into four distinct publishing eras of Conan comics.

His first life in comics was at Marvel from 1970 through 2000, largely under the pen of veteran Roy Thomas in his long-running series Conan the Barbarian as well as the long-running Savage Sword of Conan.

Then, in 2003, Conan comics made the jump to Dark Horse Comics – initially under the pen of Kurt Busiek. Dark Horse launched his book with reverence, assuring fans that they would present adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s original work and its implied connective tissue. The comics were widely-beloved by fans of the character.

Then, in a major twist, Marvel won the license back starting in January of 2019! That not only meant Marvel could release new Conan titles, but that they could also incorporate him into the modern Marvel Universe, as well as reprint their original Conan comics plus reprint the entirety of Dark Horse’s 15 years of Conan in paperback Epic Collection!

Most-recently, at the end of 2023 Marvel relinquished their license back to intellectual property holder Heroic Signatures, who began publishing their own comics directly through Titan Comics in 2023.

Each of those publishing eras is covered in full in the guide below! In each case, titles are listed in the guide chronologically by release date. However, in the table of contents, Marvel’s original run from 1970 to 2000 are listed as an alphabetical index by title, since Marvel published many series outside of the spine of the major ongoing titles.