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Today I’m excited to bring you a complete from-the-ground-up re-build and major update of one of the most-important guides to reading Marvel Comics from 2010 to present… Avengers flagship titles (2010 – present) – The Definitive Collecting Guide!
This massive update was made possible by Patrons of Crushing Krisis. It covers hundreds of issues across over 20 volumes of comics that have been collected in more than 250 different print editions, spanning four major eras of Avengers. Whether you want to buy collected editions, build a digital collection, or read as a Marvel Unlimited subscriber, this guide has you completely covered. [Read more…] about Updated: Guide to Avengers Flagship Titles, 2010 – Present
by krisis
Captain America (1968) Omnibus, Vol. 3 is the #49 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot.
See the Captain America Guide for more details on how to collect this run. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes.
What Is It? Captain America’s early-70s stories adventures in Captain America (1968) were shared with his partner Falcon and featured a backdrop of Steve Rogers butting heads with SHIELD and losing faith in the government he represents.
However, the real reason to read this run is Sal Buscema’s artwork!
This run begins in May 1972 and ends in December 1975.
Past Ranking: This year is the book’s debut placement in the ballot results.
I’m puzzled over how this edition got shut out of the 2016 survey when it’s one of the most obvious gaps in all of omnibus land!
Creators: Primarily written by Gerry Conway and Steve Englehart with pencils by Sal Buscema and inks by Vince Colletta.
Probable Contents: Collects Captain America (1968) #149-192 and material from Foom (1973) #8.
This is a perfect fit between two existing books – Captain America Volume 2 ends with Captain America (1969) #148 and Cap by Kirby picks up at #193.
Can you read it right now? Yes! This hypothetical omnibus covers Captain America Masterworks Volume 7, Volume 8, Volume 9 – the latter of which was released just last month.See the Captain America Guide for other collecting options.
Also, this entire run is covered by Marvel Unlimited!
The Details:
This early 70s run on Captain America is mostly memorable for the majority of it being drawn by Sal Buscema, who never turned in an unremarkable comic issue in this period, and for a pair of Captain America doubles that resolved a glitch in his history and introduced us to Nomad! [Read more…] about Captain America (1968), Vol. 3 – The #49 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017
by krisis
Should certain stories be off-limits?
Consider if you have ever watched a movie or read a book where you felt a certain story beat was in particularly poor taste. Perhaps it should have been avoided altogether.
Does that mean no author ought to attempt it again?
I find that to be a difficult question to answer. Personally, I loathe plots where someone who is abused comes to trust or love their abuser. I think that plot relies on outdated trope about the internalization of cruelty as a form of affection.
Creators ought to be wise enough to steer clear of that plot in most instances, but I don’t think it should be outlawed. I can imagine a time when you might want to steer into that curve – not to be divisive or subversive, but to say something about your flawed characters. But it’s not a curve that should be mistaken for terrific character development.
There are other plot points that result in me getting up and walking away from the book or TV show I had been consuming a moment prior, whether they be personally triggering, advocating harmful behavior, racist, sexist, homo- or trans- phobic, or just plain dumb.
I don’t think any of them ought to be off-limits. Writing a bad story is entirely up to you. I won’t stand in your way, nor should anyone else.
I do think some portrayals of plots ought to be off-limits – not by rule, but in practice – because they irresponsibly normalize dangerous behavior without context. People are now savvy enough to understand how to reject dangerous stories at face value, but not all consumers understand how to reject dangerous framing of concepts.
This can be insidious. I cannot watch a TV show or a movie that portrays sexual violence with a romanticized gaze. If you are going to make the choice to depict a sexual assault, it should be viscerally disturbing to the viewer. Their gut should twist. Not because you are editorializing about sexual assault, but because that’s what sexual assault is.
It is the difference between my ability to endlessly re-watch Watchmen despite it disturbing rape scene and my inability to make it through the sexual violence in the first season of Game of Thrones. One was viscerally disturbing. The other one kind of wanted to be sexy. Yet, many people causally watch both the former and the latter.
(You can substitute another topic for sexual violence, if you prefer.
This week, the depiction of death by suicide has become a hot topic due to its portrayal on 13 Reasons Why.
Romanticized portrayals of violence or self-harm erode a viewer’s ability to discern the objective truth of an event in reality. The fictionalized version takes over – whether that’s the seductive ease of ignoring informed consent or the glamorization of suicide.
It’s not that people object to suicide as thematic content. It’s the way it was framed.
Last week, news broke that a new BBC show depicting the UK Black Panther movement was centering a South Asian woman as it primary protagonist rather than a black woman. Regardless of the dubious historical accuracy of such a choice, choosing to cast non-black woman as central to a black civil rights movement erases black women from their own history. We saw a similar act of erasure of trans women of color in the movie Stonewall.
It’s not that people object to non-black characters appearing in historic civil rights narratives. Is the lack of portrayal of black woman.)
Having established my particular dichotomy of offensive story vs. irresponsible portrayal, now let me lay this one on you:
Last year, Marvel Comics and author Nick Spencer made Steve Rogers – the original Captain America – a Nazi.
(Let’s not split hairs – Hydra is a Nazi organization whose ideals have been slightly sanitized for comics. More on that in a moment.)
He isn’t pretending. He wasn’t brain-washed. Hydra used the Cosmic Cube to retroactively change Steve Rogers from American boy with a heart of gold to Nazi-sympathizing double-agent.
On one hand, I don’t think Cap being altered to be a truly vile villain should be off-limits as a story. I don’t think making him the symbol of everything he has fought against ought to be immediately rejected.
On the other hand, Nazis. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: Secret Empire #0 by Spencer, Acuna, Reis, & Lanham – On bad stories, responsible portrayals, and Holocaust etiquette
A comprehensive guide to line-wide Marvel Events – including story overviews, characters, issue lists, and how they can be read via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperbacks. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through February 2019.
Secret Wars. Inferno. Age of Apocalypse. Civil War. Secret Invasion. Avengers vs. X-Men. When it comes to epic-sized comic book events, Marvel Comics is the all-time champion.
These line-wide Marvel Events are overarching stories that can involve dozens of Marvel heroes – if not all of them, all at once! Events occur as either or both of direct crossovers between ongoing titles and special limited-series.
That can make them hard to keep track of, especially at the current rate of one or more events each year. It’s also hard to track down every issue or graphic novel. It’s easy to miss issues or buy the same comic in overlapping collections.
That’s why I created this page – it includes summaries, issue lists, and collection info for every major Marvel event, ever.
Click the links below to leap down the page to the corresponding section. I have omitted most line-specific crossovers with only one or two cross-line spinoffs, such as X-Men’s Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Hulks. [Read more…] about Collecting Marvel Universe Events as graphic novels