Marjorie Liu

Updated: Guide to Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men

August 24, 2022 by krisis

Today I have an update to one of the first guides that I created for the site, 12 years ago in August 2010 – my Guide to Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men!

Guide to Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men

No new collections have been released for the three series in this guide – Astonishing X-Men (2004), Amazing X-Men (2014), and Astonishing X-Men (2017). However, that doesn’t mean there was nothing to update and improve! The guide now includes ISBNs for all collections, links for digital purchasing options, links to read on Marvel Unlimited, an improved table of contents, and more-specific information about creators and release dates.

Updating the Guide to Astonishing X-Men always makes me feel old in X-Men years, because hen I first penned this guide it was entirely about Joss Whedon & John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men! I launched my original X-Men guides before “Second Coming” was over in 2010, and was just catch up on the team’s move from San Francisco in general to Utopia in specific.

One of the great things about both Astonishing X-Men and Amazing X-Men is that they were always books that appealed to mega-fans but were easy to pick up for casual readers. Every creator change on either title brings a new jumping-on point, whether that’s Whedon’s self-contained run, Marjorie Liu’s character-focus, or Christopher Yost’s throwback to vintage Claremontian themes.

If you’re a multi-media X-Men fan who has always wanted to check out their comics, even single section of the Guide to Astonishing X-Men & Amazing X-Men could be a good place for you to start.

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-23: Who she is, her best stories, and every appearance in trade reading order!

March 1, 2017 by krisis

To celebrate the release of Logan in theaters this week, this week I’m releasing a guide that was on on my to-do list for a long time: The Definitive X-23 Collecting Guide and Reading Order.

That might lead you to ask, “Who is X-23, and what does she have to do with Logan?”

It’s a fair question.

You won’t see her name in any of the marketing of this week’s final Hugh Jackman Wolverine film. If you pay attention to such things you’ve probably seen a brooding young girl with a familiar set of claws between her knuckles.

Whether they call her by her codename or not in the film, that girl is X-23. In fact, whether they call her that or not would be a pretty big spoiler about her origins in the film. If you’re 100% spoiler averse when it comes to knowing the comics history of characters in comics movies, you probably should enjoy the trailer again and then stop reading now.

X-23, Wolverine – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The X-23 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 April 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

X-23 is the original codename of Wolverine, Laura Kinney. She has been called both Logans clone and his daughter, but in her own way she’s Marvel’s Harley Quinn.

That’s because, like Quinn, X-23 originated in a medium other than comics. She was created for the cartoon X-Men Evolution by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, who would also oversee her comics journey for half a decade in a pair of mini-series and on two teams.

Kyle and Yost’s material is stellar from beginning to end. Their run on X-23 often explored the theme of her savagery – how she was raised to be a perfect assassin without being a person.

Afterwards, Author Marjorie Liu took X-23 over for two years for her first solo ongoing title. Liu focused more on X-23’s human side and her internal emotional life, forging connections with Gambit and Jubilee.

Unfortunately, her development goes on a detour from that point.

With the cancellation of her title in the midst of a reshuffling of the X-Men line, X-23 was shipped to Avengers Academy for a year. Christos Gage extended Liu’s work, but it was in a crowded team title. Afterward, Dennis Hopeless picked up X-23 and other Academy cast members for Avengers Arena – where she was cast mostly an unintentional villain.

After the end of Arena, X-23 is adopted by All-New X-Men, weirdly filling out the young cast of the 1960s original X-Men with a Wolverine analog. She’s mostly played for big action beats and romance, but her development finally gets back on track in the aftermath of Wolverine’s death in Wolverines.

Finally, in the wake of Secret Wars, X-23 regained a solo title for the first time in half a decade – this time taking on the mantle of Wolverine(!) while also continuing in All-New X-Men. [Read more…] about X-23, Wolverine – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

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.