Near Mint Condition

LIVE SHOW: Marvel Collected Editions, Thursday March 2 @ 1pm ET with Near Mint Condition

March 1, 2023 by krisis

It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights! It’s time to stream with Omar @ Near Mint Condition Thursday March 2 @ 1pm ET!

Omar and I will be reviewing Marvel’s upcoming slate of collected editions from their June solicits. That’s not just collections out in June – it’s several months’ worth of Omnibuses, Masterworks, Epics, and trade paperbacks. Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted some of these books pop up on Amazon or in my recent guide updates, but for many of these books this will be the first official word from Marvel about their content.

Omar has sworn me to absolute secrecy when it comes to what’s included in our slate of announcements. Don’t try combing through this post for any hints, because there’s nary a one! All I’m allowed to say is that I’ve been doing A LOT of reading to prepare for the discussion. If I reveal anything more, I hear Marvel will dispatch Namor and a team of Atlanteans to cut New Zealand’s undersea internet cable, and we certainly don’t want that. NZ has had enough natural disasters lately without getting Namor involved.

(I’m hoping that if I behave myself this time Omar might convince the Marvel overlords to let me trickle out teeny teaser or two if I’m invited back for another round in the future.)

I am buzzing with excitement for the chance to join in another set of Marvel announcements with Omar. I always love chatting with Omar & his incredibly kind community of Minties. Catch us Thursday March 2 @ 1pm ET (which is Friday March 3 @ 7am NZT, which means I’ll be visiting the hair and make-up team bright and early tomorrow morning).

(The hair and make-up team is me.)

Vote in the The Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll 2023 (plus, my next LIVE appearance on Near Mint Condition)

February 24, 2023 by krisis

Calling all Marvel Omnibus fans! Near Mint Condition just announced that it’s time to cast your vote in the Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll 2023!

(Watch on YouTube)

While this is an unofficial fan poll, it’s “unofficial” with an extremely strong correlation to what Marvel actually winds up reprinting. Out of the Top 20 books from the 2022 poll, Marvel has already announced reprints of 15 of them!

Is that correlation or causation? It’s hard to say for certain, but I think that number is way too high to simply be a coincidence of prediction. Marvel has gotten better at keeping their fingers on the pulse of what the collector community is demanding over the past few years, and I think paying attention to the Near Mint Condition reprint poll is a significant part of that pulse-taking. (as well as the Tigereyes Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, coming up in a few months).

And, of course, Omar of Near Mint Condition maintains and open and ongoing relationship with David Gabriel and the Marvel Collected Editions office (which is how he gets to announce so much breaking news), so there’s no doubt they’ll see the poll results.

You don’t have to watch the video to vote on the poll – just click through to the Marvel Omnibus Reprint Poll 2023 and pick your top five! However, I recommend the video because Omar tries to talk about every single out-of-print Marvel Omnibus for seventeen minutes straight as their titles scroll past on the screen like the end credits of Whose Line Is It Anyway.

That is exactly the sort of absurdity that I like to undertake on my own, which is just one more reason why I love being both colleagues and friends with Omar. There couldn’t be a better person to share all of this collected edition news with the world.

This isn’t the only Near Mint Condition breaking news of the day! I’ll be making my return to the Near Mint Condition channel to review every collected edition in Marvel’s June solicitations next week on Thursday, March 2 at 1pm Eastern Time (which is Friday March 3 at 7am NZT).

This time, I’ll be 1-on-1 with Omar to talk through all of these books. That means I have a lot of reading to do in the next seven days, since a slew of our announcements will be for trade paperbacks of Marvel books from 2022 – the first year I haven’t read any new Marvel comics since 2009!

That’s in addition to working on the next new guide for CK Patrons, DM-ing my D&D campaign this weekend, completing the next X-Guide update, plus something… special for the month of March.

Who needs sleep when there’s comics to read and blogging to do! Make sure to mark your calendars for next Thursday (or, Friday, if you’re on my half of the world).

Near Mint Condition: Marvel announces THREE new Volume 3 omnibuses out in late 2023

February 19, 2023 by krisis

As I was in the final pass of editing on that Drag Race Belgique post I got a notification about a new video on the Near Mint Condition channel, so I decided to take quick break from drag to catch up on Omar’s newest comics news.

OMG, I am so glad that I did! Omar’s Sunday morning Near Mint Condition video announces not one, not two, but THREE brand new Marvel omnibuses coming out later this year. Two of them are X-books, and all three of them are third volumes in their omnibus lines!

I’d never steal Omar’s thunder by spoiling his announcements within an hour of them being made, but here’s a hint: If you know what my favorite X-series of all time is, and if you have been following my recent guide updates and announcements about some young and new heroes, then you’ll know why I am so excited about these announcements.

I’ll react more to all three of them, including their delightful mapping, a little later in the week. It’s 2am here in New Zealand right now, and I have a comic guide to finish tomorrow (well, today, but you get my drift)!

Watch me announce new Marvel collections with Near Mint Condition LIVE on February 9, 2023 @ 1pm ET

February 8, 2023 by krisis

In exactly 24hrs I will be broadcasting LIVE from New Zealand on the Near Mint Condition YouTube channel with my colleague and dear friend Omar and the incredible Kurtis from the Epic Marvel Podcast. We’re joining forces to announce some upcoming Marvel trade paperbacks, plus recap the astounding slate of 36 Marvel omnibuses planned from now through the end of 2023.

Watch Krisis on Near Mint Condition on Thursday, February 9, 2023 @ 1pm ET

Near Mint Condition has become the #1 source of collected edition news on the entire internet, which includes being an official source of Marvel collections announcements long before they hit solicitations. If you are an omnibus collector you absolutely need to subscribe to the channel, because Omar announces every new Marvel Omnibus and Omnibus reprint! Plus, he does awesome stuff like holding a monthly budgeting meeting to help folks manage their spending on new comics and collections.

I have known Omar online for nearly a decade – long before I started making guest appearances on his channel for our special “Map My X” series of collected edition mapping videos. You might even remember him from his guest spot on The HiX-Men Report back in 2019 talking about Powers of X (2019) #3. Past being a font of comics news and knowledge, he is a truly kind and thoughtful person. He cares about cultivating an open and accepting community of fans at Near Mint Condition and across the wider comics internet.

Tomorrow will be the first time I get to join in making an exclusive announcement of brand new Marvel material! Omar and Marvel would send a special forces team to my house in New Zealand to cut my connect to CK if I revealed a single thing ahead of time… but, I think I can safely say that one of the collections is for a series I very unexpectedly loved given the combination of writer and creator.

That’s all I can say until tomorrow, so please tune in! And, of course, if you miss seeing us live, you can replay the video any time.

Updated: Guide to Excalibur

January 27, 2023 by krisis

I’m excited to share this X-Guide update, not only because it contains my favorite comic of all time, but because it’s my first ever “normal” guide update! Updated today, it’s my Guide to Excalibur – including a complete Excalibur Reading Order and links to read every physical and digital collection of Excalibur ever released!

Guide to Excalibur

The Guide to Excalibur was the first 2010s guide that I rebuilt to my new style and standard in 2021, which means this is the first routine maintenance update I’ve done so far this decade.

Over the past year, Excalibur wrapped up its collection of the 2019 Tini Howard & Marcus To run in both trade paperback and oversize hardcover. Howard continued some characters and themes of that title into Knights of X (2022) with artist Bob Quinn, which was just five issues and collected in a single trade paperback.

(Howard is still writing Betsy Braddock, but now she has graduated to her own Captain Britain title!)

When it comes to past Excalibur collections, the two years since my last update brought us two major releases – plus some big news in the last month. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Excalibur