Kyle Yost

Crushing Comics S01E13 – X-Men/Steve Rogers, Spider-Man/Human Torch, Astonishing X-Men, & Storm in World’s Apart (plus, Moon Knight!)

November 13, 2017 by krisis

I haul a massive brick off the shelf today, but before I open it I go off on a long tangent about one of my favorite characters – Moon Knight! Then, it’s time to dig into the books – but, just half of them, since it was a seven-book stack!

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

Episode 13 features X-Men/Steve Rogers: Escape from the Negative Zone (Amazon), Spider-Man and the Human Torch (Amazon), Astonishing X-Men: Northstar (Amazon/ Astonishing X-Men Guide), and Storm in X-Men: Worlds Apart (Amazon) – plus an introductory discussion of Moon Knight (visit the guide!).

X-Force – Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

X-Force comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2022 with titles scheduled for release through February 2023.

X-Force was born in an act of pure marketing. Over time, it became synonymous with the idea of a team of X-Men that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

Artist Rob Liefeld grew to be one of the hottest artists in the industry as he drew the final year of New Mutants. Comics were reaching the early height of the speculator craze, and Liefeld wanted to take the team in a new, more X-TREME direction. Thus, New Mutants ended and X-Force was born – a team of proactive young mutants lead by Cable, for whom the ends always justified the means.

Liefeld didn’t last very long on the title before defecting to Image, but X-Force as the proactive X-team has remained part of the X-Men brand ever since. Fabian Nicieza continued writing through Liefeld’s departure until issue #43, setting the tone and voice for many of the recurring characters.

Generally, the X-Force cast consisted of some combination of Cannonball, Boom Boom, Warpath, Sunspot, Rictor, Shatterstar, & Siryn, as mentored by Cable and Domino. The cast also sometimes included Feral, Dani Moonstar, & Karma. (Though Wolfsbane is associated with these characters via New Mutants, at the time she was appearing in X-Factor and Excalibur.)

In 2001, X-Force took a detour to reality TV-inspired, mature-readers X-Statix, followed by brief return by Liefeld and his familiar cast in 2004.

The title returned to popularity and acclaim in 2008 as a team of covert team killers lead by Logan and authorized by Cyclops. This team included connections to earlier incarnations with Warpath, Domino, Wolfsbane, & (eventually) Boom Boom, to which it added Wolverine (X-23) and Archangel. Elixir and Vanisher supported the team.

After that series ended with the “Second Coming” crossover, X-Force returned under the coveted “Uncanny” adjective. There may have never been a series more deserving! Rick Remender penned a fierce, all-time classic story that began as a hunt for Apocalypse but turned into much more. Remender brought Psylocke to the X-Force brand and turned her into its marquee star, along with Grant Morrison’s Fantomex and a team that included Wolverine and Deadpool.

In Marvel Now, Marvel launched not one but two X-Force titles at the end of 2012. Cable & X-Force was a familiar, 90s-tinged version of the team. A new volume of Uncanny X-Force lead by Psylocke and included Storm, Bishop, Spiral, Puck, & Fantomex. Both books were later consolidated into the darkly comedic X-Force (2014) with both Cable and Psylocke, as penned by Si Spurrier.

The title went on a brief hiatus from 2015-2018. The 2017 ResurrXion line replaced it with a familiar-feeling Weapon X title starring Warpath and Sabretooth. Marvel briefly revived the classic Cannonball & Boom Boom cast in 2018 for a 10-issue run by Ed Brisson that followed his Extermination mini-series.

In 2019, the entire X-line launched into the Age of Krakoa from the clean start of Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X. This recast X-Force as a combination Krakoan FBI & CIA in a title anchored by Wolverine, Quentin Quire, Domino, and Forge, among others.

Astonishing X-Men an Amazing X-Men – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2022 with titles scheduled for release through January 2023.

Astonishing X-Men launched under the unprecedented auspices of being an X-Men with the hottest possible creators that you could follow without a tangle of other comics to buy.

Though that concept would be slightly watered-down over the years, the theme of a standalone, fan-pleasing X-Men book focused on relationships as much as heroics has always been the mission statement of Astonishing X-Men, and it was echoed in 2014’s Amazing X-Men.

Note: Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) and Amazing X-Men, Vol. 1 (1995) were both four-issue limited series that were part of the Age of Apocalypse alternate timeline. Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2 was a three-issue limited series that was a precursor to a major Apocalypse storyline.

When Astonishing launched in 2004, Grant Morrison’s massively popular run on New X-Men had just come to a somewhat abrupt halt, at least in part due to disputes behind the scenes. That lead to a line-wide re-alignment of X-Men titles, including cancelling Chris Claremont’s sideline title X-Treme X-Men and moving him back to the flagship Uncanny X-Men.

Marvel had unleashed something entirely new with Morrison’s run that no existing Marvel writer could replicate – not even Claremont: Morrison was an outside voice to the X-line who brought a much-needed injection of fresh ideas and a legion of new fans.

Enter Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly (though they’d all see cancellation by the time Astonishing kicked off). He was geek royalty with a massive fanbase, and despite having only written a handful of Buffy comics to that point, he had grown up with the X-Men. In fact, Buffy was based on Claremont’s archetype of Kitty Pryde (and Dark Willow on Phoenix)!

Marvel contracted Whedon to pen 12 issues, paired with rising superstar artist John Cassaday (who was in-progress on Planetary and just off of a run on Captain America). Rather than hand Whedon and Cassaday an existing title as they had with Morrison, Marvel created an entirely new one for the pair.

It was a prescient move on Marvel’s part, as when Whedon and artist John Cassaday hit delays within the first year of the book, it allowed the rest of the X-Men universe to keep moving while the pair toiled over each new issue. Marvel took the unusual step of treating Astonishing as “continuity-free” – though it acknowledges events like M-Day, it is free of crossovers and was released at a different rate than other X-books. In fact, it took four years for these 25 issues to be released – effectively putting them on a bi-monthly schedule.

Whedon took over the concept of a more academically-minded team from Morrison, with a staff of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, and substituting Shadowcat for the recently departed Jean Grey. Dozens of Xavier Institute students are featured in the background of the early issues.

With Whedon & Cassady’s run on the book over, Marvel continued the trend of using Astonishing‘s crossover-free setting to lure high-profile creators – this time landing Warren Ellis. Creator of the critically acclaimed Planetary, Ellis actually got his start on Excalibur in the mid-90s. Ellis swaps Kitty Pryde and Colossus for Storm and Armor and gives the book a speculative fiction and sci-fi theme. Afterwards the book was handed to Daniel Way and Christos Gage, Greg Pak, and finally novelist Marjorie Liu – who played up the team-as-family theme.

Amazing X-Men began as Jason Aaron’s take on an X-Men away team as his run on Wolverine & The X-Men wound down, but it wound up as a single-shot story of Nightcrawler’s resurrection when he was whisked away to helm Original Sin and then launch Star Wars. Popular X-Men Academy and X-Force writer Christpher Yost wrote the majority of the remaining issues, which maintained a more light-hearted 80s feel to both the team and the stories.

Marvel relaunched Astonishing X-Men as part of their 2017 ResurrXion era, first penned by Charles Soul – who fit the A-lister billing – and then by Matthew Rosenberg, who would transition directly to writing the flagship Uncanny X-Men in early 2019.

The great thing about this pair of titles is that any time the writer changes is a great place to start! There is never any ongoing continuity – every run by a different writer is completely self-contained.