Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Mike Carey

Crushing Comics S01E080 – X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha

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I’m down to just three more bricks of comic books, but this first one is huge – it’s got over a half a dozen X-Men hardcovers inside! In the first of a three-part unwrapping, I dig into X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, and discuss why this might be my favorite modern period of X-Men comics.

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

Episode 80 features X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, covered in guides to Uncanny X-Men and X-Force, respectively.

Indie Series Spotlight: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder (Ep01)

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This is the pilot for the fourth video series on my YouTube channel – Indie Series Spotlight!

After months of opening my massive collection of Marvel oversized hardcovers, I realized I was really missing talking about my love of comics not released by Marvel. Since returning to comic reading in 2012, I’ve become a massive fan of independent and creator-owned comics – they occupy a full third of my comic reading time, and they dominated my list of favorite comics in 2017.

In this new show, I’ll be sharing my indie comics love with you one series at a time. Each series will be something I strongly recommend to new readers – including folks who have never read a comic before in their lives! For each series, I’ll start by giving a general pitch of the title and then get into spoiler territory for readers who need even more convincing.

First up: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder. I picked this series up out of blind devotion to Mike Carey, who I love from his work on X-Men: Legacy and Unwritten, not realizing it would become one of my favorite indie comic runs of all time! It’s hard to discuss this series’ massive scope without spoiling it, but it spans genres from police procedural to massive action movie!

I hope you’ll enjoy this new show, because I’ve got over a year’s worth of indie series mapped out to discuss!

Indie Comics Spotlight Episode #1 features Suicide Risk Volumes 1-6, which are currently available as part of the Comixology Unlimited library!

Crushing Comics S01E072 – X-Men: Supernovas and Uncanny X-Men: The Rise & Fall of the Shi’ar Empire

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Today I start out by talking about “the perfect weather.” If you’re the kind of person who loves it super hot on the beach or frigid on the slopes, would you really want to experience that every day? My favorite kind of day is breezy and springlike, maybe 68 to 72 degrees – and I see no problems with waking up to that every day of my life.

After that, I open a massive block of oversize modern X-Men – so big I had to break it up into a pair of episodes. In this one, I start out with a pair of weirdly orphaned oversized volumes.

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

Episode 72 features X-Men: Supernovas and Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire, which are covered by my X-Men, Vol. 2 & New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men by Brubaker, Fraction, & Gillen guides, respectively.

Back Issue Review: Barbarella, Black Sable, Giants, Grass Kings, Shade The Changing Girl, and Slots

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This week in Back Issue Review I catch up with five indie series that have new issues out this week, plus one DC series that feels pretty indie. Between feminist explorers, giant monsters, recursive mean girls, backstabbing space pirates, and lucky retired boxers, I bet you’ll never guess what my favorites were!

This post contains reviews of the following six runs:

  • Barbarella (2017) #1-2
  • Black Sable (2017) #1-3
  • Giants (2018) #1-2
  • Grass Kings (2017) #1-6 (AKA Volume 1)
  • Shade, The Changing Girl (2016) #1-6
  • Slots (2017 #1-4

Keep reading for capsule reviews of all six runs. [Read more…] about Back Issue Review: Barbarella, Black Sable, Giants, Grass Kings, Shade The Changing Girl, and Slots

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 4: 2008 to 2015)

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This is the end, my friends! The last in a series of four posts covering how Marvel could cover every X-Men comic book in omnibus volumes.

This post covers every X-Men series from Messiah Complex to the end of Marvel Now in an effort to give you maximum ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Monday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991, Tuesday I reviewed 1991 to 2001, and yesterday I broke down 2001 to 2008.

With 21 more omnibuses from Messiah Complex to AvX and another 10 from Marvel Now, this edition brings our grand total of potential X-Men volumes to 113 possible omnibuses – which begs the question: How many of these could we possibly see in our lifetimes before books become completely obsolete and comics are downloaded directly into our brains?

At Marvel’s current rate of only a handful of X-Men omnibuses a year, it’s never going to happen.

Yet, with most Marvel omnibuses selling between 1,000 and 2,500 units in their first week, it makes me wonder how many of these books we could see if Marvel abandoned the outdated Direct Market model for determining their pre-order volume and sell-through.

Picture this – in October 2017 Marvel partners with Kickstarter plus one of the big online comic book sellers as a distributor to introduce the new “X-Men Omnibus Club: Year 1.” [Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 4: 2008 to 2015)