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New Comic Book Guide

New for Patrons: Jane Foster Guide – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

June 16, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m back with a new Marvel Guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that’s about to be very relevant in a few weeks with the release of Thor: Love & Thunder, for a run that I hold in very high regard…

Guide to Jane Foster – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

Jane Foster is one of a particular group of Marvel’s Silver and Bronze Age supporting characters who had a few hundred appearances without ever having a specific story of their own until relatively recently.

That recent story is a huge one. Jane Foster’s turn as The Mighty Thor during Jason Aaron’s run on Thor might be Marvel’s most-definitive modern classic of the 2010s! It’s big, it’s gorgeous, and it’s an incredibly emotional read. It is by far my top recommended reading from both Marvel and DC from the past decade!

It would’ve been easy to simply pull together a Jane Foster Guide to her as Thor and her subsequent transformation to Valkyrie. I’ve read every single issue of Marvel since that transformation and I have extensive notes on them all!

Yes, it has been recollected across many formats – Omnibus, deluxe hardcover, Complete Collection, and a pair of new “greatest hits” style paperbacks – but her story covers a finite set of issues across a number of specifically ordered series.

Yet, I had questions about Jane’s past. When did she stop being Thor’s love interest to get married to another man? When did she go from Nurse Foster to Doctor Foster? Had she ever been super-powered in the past? And, did any of her past stories have an influence on Aaron’s modern direction for her character?

Thor of you who have been following me for a while will not be surprised to hear that these questions lead me down a rabbit hole of inquiry, as I realized that no other Jane Foster Guide or wiki on the internet answered them the way I wanted them to be answered.

The solution? Read every single panel of Jane Foster from 1962 to 2012 and summarize it in my guide.

What did I learn? [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Jane Foster Guide – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Asgard, Jane Foster, Jason Aaron, Marvel Comics, New Comic Book Guide, Thor, Valkyrie

New for Patrons: Spider-Ham Guide!

June 2, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m so happy to be getting my Crushing Comics guides back on track, and to kick that off I have a brief guide for a sentimental favorite to offer to all CK Patrons!
The Definitive Spider-Ham Guide
Spider-Ham on the cover of Spider-Man Annual 2019 #1

Long before I was a regular comic reader, I had a meager stack of comics from newsstands and spinner racks that sat on a slim bookshelf in my closet.

One was an old Conan comic from my father. Another was a random issue of Captain America.

The third was Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham (1985) #6.

Peter Porker The Spectacular Spider-Ham (1983) #6

Possibly my first ever comic book?

I don’t know why I had it. I think people in my family assumed I would really love Spider-Man because I shared his name, but at the time (and, to this day) I was much more interested in Wonder Woman.

That one issue (which I still have!) meant I’ve always had a soft, nostalgic spot for Peter Porker. I never expected he would appear in a comic again other than as a one-off joke about the silly excesses of the 80s… until Spider-Verse.

Spider-Verse brought almost every iteration of every spider-character ever back into play for a brief, somewhat-bloody event, which included this Spider-turned-Super-Pig from Earth-8311.

Spider-Ham survived the carnage (not THE Carnage – lower-case carnage) of the event, befriended Spider-Gwen, Spider-Gwen become a hit, and the event inspired one of the most successful and awarded animated movies of all time.

The rest is (recent) history!

This might lead you to wonder: are there many Spider-Ham comic books to read? Are they anything like the zany version of the character who was cartoony even for a cartoon in Into The Spider-Verse.

Well… that depends.

[Read more…] about New for Patrons: Spider-Ham Guide!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Marvel, New Comic Book Guide, Patreon, Spider-Ham

New for Patrons: Guide to Doom Patrol

June 14, 2020 by krisis

I’m taking a brief break from the world of Lanterns to publish a team guide for Pledgeonaut-level Patrons and up that will be helpful to many readers (and TV viewers) later this month…

Doom Patrol – The Definitive Guide

Doom Patrol is sometimes referred to as DC’s analog for The X-Men, but really it’s a uniquely perfect example of DC’s peculiar revolving door of publishing continuity.

They began as a Silver Age team at the same time as the X-Men, introduced in the sci-fi pulp anthology My Greatest Adventure in 1963 before spinning off into their own title later that year.

While Doom Patrol’s “The Chief” was an Xavier-like figure, their members are much closer to a take on the Fantastic Four. Team anchor Robotman is as orange and inhuman as The Thing after losing his physical body in a car crash. The radioactive Negative Man shares his origin with the F4, and Elasti-Girl is like Mr. Fantastic’s powers in Sue Storm’s spot as the token female.

The original lineup was rounded out by Beast Boy, the wild young member analogous to Human Torch. He’d later be stole by Teen Titans and become a breakout star in his own right.

Like The X-Men, Doom Patrol didn’t quite have the sales to make it out of the Silver Age and into the Bronze. Their ongoing title was canceled in 1969 with the seeming death of the entire team.

It took nearly a decade before Robotman was resurrected and paired with a new trio of teammates. They made only a handful of appearances, but Robotman (and the memory of the original team) was kept alive by Beast Boy as star of the massively popular Teen Titans.

Doom Patrol returned in Post-Crisis DC in 1987, as part of the trend of DC reviving forgotten Silver and Bronze age concepts (along with Animal Man and Suicide Squad).

While the initial run by Paul Kupperberg is often ignored, it’s delightfully solid mid-80s comics – as good as the many supporting X-books springing up around that same time.

Everything changed in 1989 when Grant Morrison took over, in the middle of an increasingly-bizarre run of Animal Man. If his Animal Man flirted with the fringes of DC’s heroic universe, Doom Patrol broke through those borders entirely. It became a lasting hallmark of the intellectual side of 90s comics, and one of the most popular works in Morrison’s lengthy bibliography.

(A following run by Rachel Pollack isn’t as well-known, but is much loved by longtime fans. It’s notable for being one of the first mainstream comics to include a transgender featured character – Coagula.)

It’s after the Vertigo run ends that things get interesting.

That’s because DC tries three different times to integrate Doom Patrol back into their mainstream heroic universe. All three iterations have their own successes and failures, and they all lasted almost exactly two years. Notably, in 2004 John Byrne tried to erase the entire past continuity of the team, which was then fixed by Infinite Crisis (which resolved many continuity tangles that had accumulated since Zero Hour).

A misguided Doom Patrol revival in New 52’s Justice League was much worse, restoring the Silver Age cast but again trying to wipe the slate clean of their continuity, more necessary than ever as Beast Boy was now considered a permanent fixture of the Titans franchise.

As with many titles outside of the tight core of Justice League and popular solo heroes, it felt like Doom Patrol’s rich Silver Age and Vertigo history would never again be acknowledged. While DC’s Rebirth relaunch in 2016 was wildly popular with fans, its slightly tweaked continuity still left out dozens upon dozens of major Post-Crisis heroes whose history was still in question after Flashpoint.

Then, Young Animal arrived.

Young Animal was an alternative imprint chaired by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who had become a popular indie comics author by way of his Umbrella Academy for Dark Horse. Way was tasked with finding a different wavelength for DC’s continuity in the midst of Rebirth. Way curated a team of authors to re-envision old heroes like Shade and Cave Carson, but he kept the jewel of the line for himself: Doom Patrol.

The ensuing series is something truly all-new, and all-different. It’s not just heroic, nor is it trying to recapture Vertigo’s magic. This Doom Patrol a vibrant tangle of familiar characters and new ideas. It’s not a continuation of Vertigo Doom Patrol – or any other prior version – but it is a worthy successor. And, it was positioned perfectly to take advantage of the altogether strange 2019 TV adaption of the team for DC Universe!

Current Exclusives For Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 20 Guides!

DC Guides: Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Omega Men

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Sabretooth, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 48 Guides!

DC Guides: Animal Man, Aquaman, Books of Magic, Catwoman, Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Doom Patrol, Flash, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Harley Quinn, Houses & Horrors, Justice League, Lucifer, Mister Miracle, Nightwing, Omega Men , Outsiders, Suicide Squad, Swamp Thing

Marvel Guides: Alpha Flight, Ant-Man & Giant-Man, Captain Britain, Champions, Darkhawk, Blade, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Falcon, Gwenpool, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Moon Boy / Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Ms. Marvel: Kamala Khan, Power Pack, Sabretooth, Scarlet Witch, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey

Indie & Licensed Comics: None right now

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: DC Comics, Doom Patrol, Grant Morrison, New Comic Book Guide, Patreon, Vertigo, Young Animal

New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Dazzler!

June 5, 2018 by krisis

Let’s be honest – while I have the excuse of creating this guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis to fill in one more missing link on the Fresh Start era page (for her new one-shot, out tomorrow!), we all knew I did it just because I love…

Dazzler – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

I’ve always loved Dazzler, purely because she was the Madonna of the Marvel Universe back when I was originally a reader (and a Madonna fan) back in the early 90s. However, her run on Uncanny X-Men by Claremont was much too expensive for me to buy as back issues (and, for some reason I never sought out her 1980 series as a lot at a convention).

As with all of my guides for individual heroes who have not anchored their own titles for long, putting this page together was punishing. It would be easy to simply link to Dazzler’s solo stories, or even to list all of her guest appearances in order.

Of course, I had to do more than that. I browsed nearly every Dazzler appearance outside of her solo series to figure out which were the most important! [Read more…] about New For Patrons: The Definitive Guide to Dazzler!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Dazzler, Marvel Comics, New Comic Book Guide, X-Men

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