Len Wein

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guides to Swamp Thing and DC’s Houses & Horrors

February 16, 2019 by krisis

Today’s new guides for Patrons of Crushing Krisis fill in another of the six original pillars of Vertigo Comics, plus add some context to the foundations of the Sandman Universe…

Swamp Thing – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

The Houses & Horrors of DC:
House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Horror Anthologies, and more!

Working on these guides emphasized the counter-intuitive fact that some well-known DC characters have appeared in far fewer comics than their lesser-known Marvel counter-parts.

Swamp Thing has a pretty obvious Marvel analog in Man-Thing, who not only shares a similar design and concept, but a creator in Len Wein.

Swamp Thing is the better-known character of the two by an order of magnitude, partially due to his pair of campy 1980s horror flicks. I assumed he would have a rich history of appearances throughout the DC Universe, especially since Man-Thing appears all over the place as a silent team member, a teleportation gimmick, and a random guest-star.

That’s just not the case. [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guides to Swamp Thing and DC’s Houses & Horrors

Swamp Thing – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Nova – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Dec 22, 2024! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading order on collecting Nova comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated December 2024 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.

Marvel was known in the 1970s for piloting both new and returning heroes in anthology titles before promoting them to their own series. That’s why it was so remarkable that the original Nova, Richard Rider, debuted in the first issue of his own series in 1976!

It was a prescient move by Marvel, with the 70s sci-fi craze due to hit its peak the following year with Star Wars! The character was originally designed by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein a decade earlier in a 1966 fan-zine.

Nova was the first of Marvel’s many attempts to recapture the youthful magic of early Spider-Man at a point in the 70s when very few heroes in their line-up still came off as starry-eyed teenagers.

That gave Nova a strong focus during his ongoing series, but meant he was stranded with few connections in a world of adult heroes once it was over. He disappeared from Marvel for nearly a decade.

That changed when Marvel finally collected a number of existing teen heroes (plus a few new ones) into New Warriors, a sort of unbranded companion to New Mutants transition into the self-directed X-Force. The title ran for years and over time felt more like a family than a team with a charter.

Much like Nova’s original teendom restricted his connections, so did his association with the New Warriors brand. It took another half decade for them to finally break out of their orbit, but it was in a big way.

Richard Rider became one of the heroes to anchor Annihilation, a massive space blow-out that would revive Marvel’s cosmic line of heroes and cultures. It thrust Nova into an amazing five-year epic, during which he becomes a formidable commander who goes toe-to-toe with Thanos.

That all ends with the Thanos Imperative, and Nova going missing in its wake. After a few years of silence, Marvel brought back Nova – only, it wasn’t Richard Rider! Sam Alexander took up the mantle of Nova, but not from Rider – from his father, another prior (and missing) Nova.

Sam carried on the proud tradition of both Spider-Man and Richard Rider as a bumbling, well-meaning teen who does more damage than good. His series is a charming, high-gloss coming of age tail that dovetails into him being drafted by the real Avengers – and, also, finally meeting Richard Rider.

X-Men by Chris Claremont – Definitive Collecting Guide to Uncanny X-Men #94-280

The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and trade reading order for the original run of Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.

Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont (1975 – 1991)

X-Men did not officially become Uncanny X-Men until issue #142. However, the cover featured the “Uncanny” adjective starting with #114. Ultimately, many fans and comics resources refer to the entire relaunch from issue #94 forward as Uncanny X-Men – a convention Marvel upholds with the titling of their Marvel Masterworks reprints.

This 16-year period of X-Men by Chris Claremont is indisputable as the most classic era of X-Men, as well as generally considered to be one of the best runs of superhero comics of all time. The vast majority of thematic material later expressed in other forms of X-Men media including films, games, and toys originated in this run.

It all begins in 1975 with Len Wein and Dave Cockrum on Giant Size X-Men, which brought back Wolverine from a single appearance in Incredible Hulk and introduced a trio of characters that have become anchors of the franchise: Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler. It also brought Banshee and Sunfire back into the X-Men cast from their earlier Silver Age appearances, plus introduced Krakoa – the mutant island!

Chris Claremont took over writing duties from Len Wein just a few issues later. Under his pen, the trio of Wolverine, Storm, and Colossus would persist throughout a historic 16-year run that saw X-Men go from a marginal book returning from cancellation to the most-popular comic book franchise in America.

Along the way Claremont and a who’s who of artist collaborators steered the title through many signature foes and historic plots that have influenced movies, books, games, and toys for decades.

The first half of Uncanny X-Men by Chris Claremont – alongside Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, and John Romita Jr. – features a core of the classic Giant Size team, plus Kitty Pryde, under the leadership of Cyclops and Professor Xavier.

It included classic storylines like Proteus, The Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, The Brood Saga, and God Loves Man Kills. Claremont and his collaborators introduced characters including Moira MacTaggert, Lilandra and the Shi’ar Empire, Arcade, Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Callisto, Caliban, Forge, Selene, and many more – including importing Mystique and Deathbird from his run on Ms. Marvel! Plus, it saw him launch New Mutants and begin Magneto’s heroic turn.

The latter half of Chris Claremont’s landmark run on Uncanny X-Men – with Romita Jr., Marc Silvestri, & Jim Lee – begins with Storm usurping leadership of the team from Cyclops, who leaves the team for X-Factor. That means none of the original five X-Men star in this period of the book. Storm, Wolverine, and Colossus have seniority, and the team features some lesser-known characters such as Longshot, Dazzler, and original-body Psylocke, while introducing Mister Sinister, Jubilee, assassin-body Psylocke, and Gambit – plus, bringing back Sabretooth from his Bronze Age run on Iron Fist. And, it featured Magneto’s slide back to villainy.

That period bears a distinctly more dark and rebellious tone, with 21 issues passing with no X-Men team in existence! It also introduces the idea of both X-book and Marvel-wide crossovers with Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno, and X-Tinction Agenda.

This guide is not a complete reading order that follows the team through all of their various guest appearances! Instead, this guide focuses only on the issues of the Chris Claremont run and issues routinely collected alongside them. For a complete X-Men reading order for this period, start with The Definitive X-Men Reading Order: Second Genesis.