Roy Thomas

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #40 to 36

June 8, 2016 by krisis

Omnibus on Shelf It’s time to announce and dissect the next five spots from the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus secret ballot by TigerEyes. I covered #45-41 in the last installment.

This range includes a healthy handful of debuts, plus two books that have drifted downward from last year – both due to coverage in other mediums.

Marvel has released these oversized omnibus editions for over a decade now, with a staggering amount of their most-popular material now covered in the format – from Silver Age debuts to modern classics. Is your favorite character or run of issues already in an Omnibus? My Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is the most comprehensive tool on the web for answering that question – it features every book, plus release dates, contents, and even breakdowns of $/page and what movies the books were released to support.

And now, onto entries 40 through 36! [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #40 to 36

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #45 to 41

June 7, 2016 by krisis

rsz_2016-06-06_095604 I’m back with the next five votes for most-wanted Omnibus volumes from major Marvel fans as collated via the Annual Secret Ballot by TigerEyes. I covered #50-46 in the last installment.

These next five low-ranked books are an interesting mix – flagging support for a pair of prior mid-list favorites, several debuts, and one book that’s held steadily in the 40s for three years.

If you have any extra intelligence to add about the probable runs or opinions about the comics therein, please leave a comment! I have read only a handful of issues from all five of these books combined, so most of my knowledge comes from reading about Marvel’s history and some good ol’ fashioned research.

Do want to learn more about the Marvel Omnibus editions that already exist and the issues they cover? My Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is the most comprehensive tool on the web for tracking Marvel’s hugest releases – it features every book, plus release dates, contents, and even breakdowns of $/page and what movies the books were released to support.

And now, onto entries 45 through 41! [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #45 to 41

The Avengers (1963) #1-402 (1963-1996) – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Sept 29 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Avengers comic books from 1963 to 1996, including Avengers (1963) #1-402 as written by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Roger Stern, John Byrne, Bob Harras, and more via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated September 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2026.

The Fantastic Four were Marvel’s “first family” and The Avengers were its first super-group.

In its 1963 debut, Avengers pulled together all but one of Marvel’s most-successful early Silver Age heroes from their disparate anthology titles – Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Ant-Man & Wasp. (The hero they omitted was Spider-Man.)

After just four issues the line-up was tweaked to drop Hulk and add Captain America, unfrozen after the Golden Age in a sly bit of retconning from Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, and the Avengers as we know and love them were born.

The Silver Age run of the book established many of the relationships we take for granted in modern day Marvel. Issue #16 found Cap leading the new “kooky quartet” of former villains Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver. A few years later the team would add characters like Black Widow and Black Panther to the cast and head into the famous storylines that debuted Vision and Ultron.

That original 1963 Avengers title lasted for 33 years until it was cancelled in the wake of the 1996 Onslaught crossover event. By the time the book ended it had seen dozens of heroes become members, eventually graduating from being anchored by its “holy trinity” of Iron Man, Thor, & Cap to feature a broad array of cast members like Carol Danvers as Ms. Marvel, Starfox, She-Hulk, Hercules, Crystal, Sersi, and more!

This guide addresses how read and collect every issue of this main Avengers title. If you’re looking for other Avengers titles from the same period, they have their own guides – including a Guide to Avengers West Coast. And, if you want to continue reading Avengers from this point forward, simply move on to the Guide to Avengers (1996 – 2005).

There are hundreds of different collections of this era of this initial thirty-year run of The Avengers. However, there are a few specific formats of books that cover large portions of this title, and I’ll cover those first – oversize Omnibuses, premium hardcover Masterworks, affordable digest Mighty Marvel Masterworks, chunky paperback Epic Collections, and the classic black-and-white Essentials.

Then, I’ll get into the issue-by-issue chronological breakdown of the 400+ issues of this title across the Silver, Bronze. and Copper AKA Modern Age – including where the run was intersected by major stories like Secret Wars, Inferno, Infinity Gauntlet, and Onslaught.

Note: This guide is focused on collections that will allow you to collect a continuous run or key stories from The Avengers. This guide does not contain every collection that includes just a handful of issues of Avengers. For example, a modern Doctor Doom collection containing two issues of Avengers would be omitted.

Black Panther Reading Order & Collecting Guide

Updated Apr 10, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Black Panther in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2025.

Black Panther Original_Sin_Vol_1_2_Dell'Otto_Variant_Textless

T’Challa, The Black Panther. He was the marquee black hero of both Marvel and DC in the early 60s, invented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as Reed Richard’s equal and then adopted into the cast of The Avengers by Roy Thomas & John Buscema.

Even with that pedigree, and a later solo turn by Kirby himself, Black Panther was never a major solo character for Marvel. He disappeared for most of the 1980s only to return in the anthology Marvel Comics Presents (1988) and in a pair of mini-series.

T’Challa wouldn’t have his real breakout moment until he was launched into his own series in 1998 by Christopher Priest. The wordy, range-y, and often inane tale took Panther from American inner-city streets to Wakandan Palace intrigue. Along the way, Priest created the vast majority of Panther’s supporting cast and Wakanda’s mythology out of whole cloth.

After that, T’Challa had a streak of solid solo series penned by Reginald Hudlin, Jason Aaron, and Jonathan Maberry before Jonathan Hickman adopted him as a main player in his universe-altering New Avengers (2013) in the drive to his Secret Wars.

Panther returned from Secret Wars as perhaps Marvel’s highest-profile character. He not only had an MCU film incoming, but also had his series piloted for five years by internationally acclaimed journalist and non-fiction literary star Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates and a list of literary luminaries he pulled in as collaborators gave us the biggest explosion of additions to the world of Wakanda since Priest.

Panther’s path has been slightly rockier since Coates’s departure in 2020. A brief run from screenwriter John Ridley fizzled with little noise, and a Wakanda-centered run from Dr. Eve Ewing was cancelled just as it found its footing. With T’Challa out of the MCU due to the tragic untimely passing of actor Chadwick Boseman, Marvel seems content to keep Black Panther as an anchor on The Avengers.

Avengers West Coast – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Mar 25, 2025! The Avengers West Coast & Force Works definitive collecting guide and reading order for comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback format. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

The Avengers had the best kind of problem in the early 80s, whether your perspective was from within comic book continuity or behind the scenes: there were just too many darn Avengers!

The Avengers had gradually shifted its focus from Marvel’s major heroes who anchored their own books (like Iron Man and Captain America) to a roster of characters that needed a team book to thrive. That meant plenty of fan favorite characters would be left out during any given run.

The best solution was to follow a trend set by Spider-Man and just recently by Chris Claremont’s X-Men: launch a second Avengers book!

West Coast Avengers launched with Hawkeye as a central focus. He was chief amongst those team-based, fan-favorite characters, hot off of his own limited series. Hawkeye was initially joined by his wife, Mockingbird, Tigra, and West Coast natives Wonder Man and Rhodey Rhodes as Iron Man.

From a story perspective, the central conceit of the book was that America was a big country, and the NYC-based team couldn’t always be responsive to threats across the nation. In practice, it allowed writers like Steve Engelhart, John Byrne, and Roy Thomas to tell big stories that still focused on character history and personalities. Byrne, in particular, used it to dig deeply into the story of Scarlet Witch.

As comics became more entrenched in extreme, violent themes, the relative staid Avengers team was disassembled in favor of an Iron Man lead Force Works. (The in-continuity reason was the team’s standoff with the UN Security Council over happenings in Genosha in the “Blood Ties” crossover in the penultimate issue of the series.)

Despite a flashy launch with a pop-up cover, Force Works never caught fire like the similarly themed X-Force, and was cancelled as part of the line-wide removal of Avengers in 1996 as they headed off to the Heroes Reborn pocket universe in the wake of Onslaught.