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Valkyrie
New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie
Today I’m back with another new guide for Patrons of Crushing Krisis that helps complete the coverage started with last week’s Guide to Jane Foster, Mighty Thor & Valkyrie…
One of the best aspects of the past decade of Marvel Comics is that it has made use of characters from every corner of the Marvel 616-Universe, moreso than any prior decade. That has included stalwart favorites, forgotten supporting characters, and a massive list of new stars who went from debut to title-anchoring characters in a span of years.
That is very, very impressive.
After creating over 100 comic guides, I know that some characters have a tendency to completely disappear after a major run tapers off due to low sales. Hey, if it happened to the X-Men it can happen to anyone! Just look at how many characters DC has completely erased in the same decade!
Jokes aside, many of Marvel’s Bronze Age mainstays didn’t survive the one-two punch of Jim Shooter’s linewide realignment in the mid-80s plus transition to a cooler, grittier, more extreme world of comics heading into the 90s.
This was especially true of the second-tier stars of the original 1972-1986 run of The Defenders. Hulk still had his ongoing title, Dr. Strange hopped from his 70s title to the brief Strange Tales to his lengthy 1988 ongoing, and Namor scored a new ongoing in 1990. The supporting cast – both of the original team and the “New Defenders” soft reboot – were not so lucky. Characters like Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, Devil-Slayer, Cloud, and Valkyrie went virtually unknown to most 90s readers.
This is the most surprising for Brunnhilde The Valkyrie, who occupied an existing role in the Marvel Universe as the head of Odin and Hela’s Valkyrior, those Norse warrior women on winged steeds who ferried souls of dead warriors to the afterlife. Yet, Valkyries in general appeared more in the late 80s than Valkyrie in specific thanks to Dani Moonstar’s ongoing connection to Asgard in New Mutants! [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Marvel’s Valkyrie
New for Patrons: Jane Foster Guide – The Mighty Thor & Valkyrie
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
Note: This guide is now available to ALL READERS!
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
The Defenders – Collecting Guide & Reading Order
Updated Mar 25, 2025! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Defenders comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.
Who are The Defenders? Or, perhaps the better question is, what are The Defenders?
The concept of this unofficial team of heroes originated with the cancellation of Dr. Strange’s 1968 series, itself an outgrowth of Strange Tales. When a multi-part story teaming up the Doctor with Namor and Hulk was slotted to begin in what turned out to be his final issue (#183), the remaining chapters wound up running in Sub-Mariner (1968) #22 and Incredible Hulk (1968) #126.
Later, the Namor/Hulk team-up added Silver Surfer to the mix in Sub-Mariner (1968) #34-35 as “Titans Three.” Then, the entire founding foursome of The Defnders assembled in Marvel Feature #1-3 before spinning off into their own title.
This quartet of characters worked so well together because they are all massively powerful loners. Each one of them could single-handedly battle a Silver Age Avengers line-up to a stand-still. Plus, they’d each bristle at trying to remain a member of a team in the long-term.
Together, they kept that curmudgeonly attitude, which made the main draw of The Defenders that it was a team that wasn’t a team – all while battling enemies from other dimensions and outer space. The original quartet was completed with a fifth member – Valkyrie – who debuted in the pages of issue #4.
The book later added other unlikely team members like Luke Cage, Moon Knight, Hellcat, and Daimon Hellstrom.
The original, 1972 Defenders volume has been collected in a variety of formats as a key part of Marvel’s transition from Silver to Bronze age. Over the years the original team has seen many revivals of its title and concepts (both of loners and of protecting our dimension).
In 2017 the title took a left turn as it was co-opted for Marvel’s Netflix team of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones – who could have easily been deemed Mighty Avengers based on those characters’ recent publication history.
[Read more…] about The Defenders – Collecting Guide & Reading Order