Moon Girl

New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 19, 2023

April 16, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

It’s time to take a look at what’s out from Marvel Comics this week! This post covers Marvel Comics April 19 2023 releases.

This list includes every comic and digital comic out from Marvel this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. For each new release, I’ll point you to the right Crushing Comics guide.

Marvel Comics April 19 2023 Collected Editions

Guardians of the Galaxy by Al Ewing (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302949907 / digital)
See Guide to Guardians of the Galaxy. This is effectively a “Complete Collection,” though Marvel is starting to phase that brand out in favor of “Modern Epics.” This not only includes Ewing’s complete Guardians run (but none of the Last Annihilation tie-ins), but also his run on Rocket (2017) #1-6.

The Incredible Hulk Epic Collection Vol. 24: The Lone and Level Sands
See Guide to Hulk – Bruce Banner. This is ostensibly the last Hulk Epic Collection, as it complete the run of the Incredible Hulk (1968) series.

Iron Man Epic Collection: Doom (2018 paperback, ISBN 978-1302910136 / 2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950446 / digital)
See Guide to Iron Man, Tony Stark. This is a reprint of an existing 2018 Epic.

Marvel Masterworks: Daredevil Vol. 17 (2023 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302949259 / digital)
See Guide to Daredevil. This collection brings us to the end of the original Frank Miller run on Daredevil! Now we have it completely remastered to Masterworks quality. I’d expect it to finally hit Epic Collection in the next year or two.

Marvel-Verse: Rocket & Groot (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302950729 / digital)
See Guide to Rocket Raccoon. Collects a smattering of Rocket & Groot adventures from Incredible Hulk (1963) #271, Free Comic Book Day 2014 (Rocket), Rocket Raccoon (2014) #5, Rocket Raccoon and Groot (2016) #4, Groot (2015) #6 and material from A Year of Marvels: The Unbeatable

Planet of the Apes Adventures: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus (2023 hardcover, ISBN 978-1302950736 / digital)
This incredibly slim omnibus collects Adventures on the Planet of the Apes (1975) #1-11.

Predator by Ed Brisson, Vol. 1: Day of the Hunter (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302926199 / digital)
Collects Predator (2022) #1-6

Trials of X, Vol. 8 (2023 paperback, ISBN 978-1302948429 / digital)
See Guide to X-Men – The Age of Krakoa. These anthologies are still pretty far behind the present day – this is just cracking into Sabretooth’s series from the start of 2022!

Read on for a rundown of Marvel Comics April 19 2023 single-issue releases, including a link to their accompanying guide pages on Crushing Comics.

Marvel United: Multiverse enters its final three hours on Kickstarter!

February 8, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

We’re down to the final countdown to the end of the Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter from CMON! The campaign ends in exactly three hours at 9pm US Eastern Time on February 9th.

If you haven’t pledged yet for this massive amount of Marvel board-gaming goodness, this is your final chance to purchase many of these expansions and characters forever – as a number of them will not be offered at retail and there is no guarantee of a reprint.

However, this campaign is reprinting the sets of exclusive promotional stretch goal figures from both of the prior campaigns. I have both of these boxes, and they are HUGE and packed with dozens of extra heroes and villains to expand your gameplay. They can be pricey to hunt down on the aftermarket (especially with their bonus “all-in” figures included), so now is the time to grab them.

Also, I thought it was fun to see that one of the final Marvel United: Multiverse stretch goals were none other than the star of my newly-released Guide to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur!

I had no idea I’d be releasing the guide on the same day they would turn up in the campaign. Now that’s some terrific synergy!

The past few days have also brought us Lizard, Werewolf by Night, Mole Man, Agent Venom, Moonstone, White Widow, Stature, and KNULL!!! Right now we’re ticking toward unlocking Purple Man as a villain. Who will be next? It seems like the odds-on bet is Mephisto, but I am still pulling for Rictor, Magma, or Karma – our only missing mutants for a full set of 1980s X-book casts.

I’ll be back after the close of the campaign to recap all of the characters it contains, to make fantasy predictions for who should appear in a Season 4 campaign, and maybe even share some of my hundreds of homebrew heroes.

Guide to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – now available to the public!

February 8, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (& Moon Boy, too!) is now available to all readers to celebrate the launch of Moon Girl’s new Disney Channel and Disney+ series out this week!

Guide to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

This guide includes a Devil Dinosaur reading order for his 40 years of stories starting from his introduction by Jack Kirby in 1977, plus a complete Moon Girl reading order to all of her appearances in the Marvel-616 Universe starting from her debut in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2016) #1.

Lunella Lafayette is a rare young Marvel character who exists all on her own in the Marvel-616 universe without needing to be added to a team or aged up. Her entire concept is that she’s an amazing girl genius in an average grown-up world, who also happens to be an Inhuman with a psychic connection to one giant red Tyrannosaurus Rex! Lunella isn’t meant to be a full-time superhero, but a school kid navigating her frustrations with being super-smart while still having a lot of growing up to do.

This guide exists thanks to the ongoing support of the amazing Patrons of Crushing Krisis. They’ve had exclusive access to the guide for five years! Now, the guide is open to the public and updated through the present day.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (& Moon-Boy, too!) – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

Reading and Collecting Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
(& Moon-Boy, too!)

Moon Girl is an pint-sized pre-teen who is a potential Inhuman and who might be the smartest person in the world but who also sometimes shares a brain with a vicious red T-Rex.

And that’s not even the weirdest part of the history of Devil Dinosaur!

Devil Dinosaur was the final Big Two creation of comics legend Jack Kirby, who co-created most of Marvel’s pantheon of super-heroes (and all of its pantheon of Asgardian’s gods!) with Stan Lee before creating the entire Fourth World at DC, including Darkseid and Mister Miracle.

Kirby’s return to Marvel was a major coup, and while he was there he penned legendary runs on Captain America and Black Panther, and created The Eternals. His last work was much farther off the beaten path. Devil Dinosaur was a book completely devoid of gods and superheroes, but full of rough and tumble Mesozoic action for his giant red tyrannosaurus rex and his missing link ape-like friend Moon-Boy.

Devil Dinosaur was the sort of weird, one-off experiment that Marvel could have easily left alone, but other writers had an affinity for this Kirby creation and couldn’t help but include it in their own stories. The first to do so were Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe on the surprisingly strong licensed Godzilla series in 1979. Aside from keeping Devil Dinosaur’s story alive, Moench and Trimpe retconned him to be a part of Earth’s own history – though Marvel would continue to waffle on that for decades to come.

In those decades, Devil Dinosaur became a go-to “shocking splash page” reveal, but saw his first substantial use over a decade later in New Mutants spin-off Fallen Angels, which pulled him (along with Moon-Boy) into the present day Marvel Universe, where they would remain through Secret Wars in 2015.

In the wake of Secret Wars, Marvel used Devil Dinosaur for another major surprise – they were bringing him back in his own series alongside a brand new character in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

This new series seemed like it came from out of the blue, but it represented a combination of three prominent market factors for Marvel. First, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur created a new, young, black female superhero in Lunella Lafayette for Marvel to compile into graphic novels and sell outside of the Direct Market, an area where they had seen much success with Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Second, it helped them widen the scope of their Inhumans line and the overall arc of their story. Finally, it helped keep old intellectual property alive with the return of a certain red dinosaur!

The Definitive Inhumans Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Inhumans comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance of all of the Inhumans Royal Family – like Black Bolt and Medusa – plus newer characters like Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through January 2019.

The Inhumans were a creation of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run on Fantastic Four, yet another uncanny spin on a common sci-fi tropes. They’ve stuck around for over 50 years due to the power of love, a well-timed re-launch, and an unparalleled space epic all paving the way for them to become one of Marvel’s marquee franchises.

In their initial arc of Fantastic Four #45-48, the Inhuman Royal Family were presented as deposed rulers of a secret nation, currently resided in New York. That explained why their queen, Medusa, was a collaborator in The Frightful Four!

Inhumans_Vol_2_1_Textless The family’s true home was hidden in the depths of the Andes Mountains, where they had perfected the art of genetic engineering to grant superpowers to every member of their society. In contrast to this evolved race, their despotic current king Maximus employed a fleet of Alpha Primitives – a sort of devolved neanderthal – against the Royal Family.

That could have been the end of the Inhumans’ story – especially because the end of their arc happened to be the debut of Silver Surfer, a prohibitive Silver Age classic that could easily eclipse other solid stories.

Yet, the Inhumans hung on, largely due to their female cast members. Crystal became a love interest of Human Torch and a replacement member of the FF when Sue Storm was pregnant with Franklin. Medusa also continued to appear, as both friend and foe.

The Inhumans were a particular passion of Jack Kirby’s; he would return to both write and illustrate them in the anthology series Amazing Adventures in 1970. They even merited their own series in 1975, written by Doug Moench (of Moon Knight fame).

Past that, the Inhumans were relegated to guest star status – mostly with the Fantastic Four – through the 90s. Crystal became their breakout character, graduating from the FF and dating Human Torch to The Avengers and marrying Quicksilver.

The modern era of The Inhumans began in 1998 with a stellar 12-issue maxi-series from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. This series presaged the darker tone of early-2000s Marvel Knights titles, and focused on every aspect of the race’s embattled society. The series acted as a soft reboot of the Inhumans, who would star in a pair of additional mini-series through 2003. However, outside those series, their appearances were still scant.

That all changed in 2006 thanks to two developments.

First, Brian Bendis’s inclusion of Inhuman King Black Bolt in The Illuminati, would permanently raise the character’s profile and make him an essential tool for writer Jonathan Hickman in his run on Fantastic Four and Avengers from 2009-2015.

Second, the Inhumans’ Silent War during Civil War launched them onto a path that would intersect members of the X-Men and the Annihilation story that launched the modern Guardians of the Galaxy. The intersection, called War of Kings, is a seamlessly executed space epic that combines superheroes, palace intrigue, and massive space battles unlike anything else in Marvel’s history.

As a result of the combination of those eight years of developments, The Inhumans were perfectly poised as a new franchise for Marvel in the wake of their Infinity event. In 2014, they received their own mini-event, “Inhumanity,” as well as their first ongoing series, Inhuman, and their first standalone spinoff hero, the new Ms. Marvel – Kamala Khan. Plus, Inhumans were highlighted in TV’s Agents of SHIELD, culminating in a major arc in 2015.

In the wake of Hickman’s Secret Wars in 2015 their influence in the Marvel line expanded even further, with multiple books and a strong influence on major events in the Marvel Universe.

The tricky thing about the Inhumans is that from their introduction in 1965 through 1998 they only had their own ongoing title two times (both in the 70s) plus a handful of one-shots. Their mythology frequently moved forward during their various guest appearances, especially in Fantastic Four.

This guide tracks the appearances of the Inhuman Royal Family from their introduction in 1965 through the beginnings of War of Kings in 2007. From 2007 on, it continues to track all major limited and ongoing Inhumans titles.

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