• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

  • DC Guides
    • DC Events
    • DC New 52
    • DC Rebirth
    • Batman Guide
    • The Sandman Universe
  • Marvel Guides
    • Marvel Events
    • Spider-Man Guide (1963-2018)
    • X-Men Reading Order
  • Indie & Licensed Comics
    • Spawn
    • Star Wars Guide
      • Expanded Universe Comics (2015 – present)
      • Legends Comics (1977 – 2014)
    • Valiant Guides
  • Drag
    • Canada’s Drag Race
    • Drag Race Down Under
    • Drag Race France
    • Drag Race Philippines
    • Dragula
    • RuPaul’s Drag Race
    • RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars
  • Archive
  • Contact!

Vertigo

Guide to DC Comics Lucifer – now available to the public!

August 4, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m happy to announce that my Guide to Lucifer at DC Comics is now available to all CK readers to celebrate for The Morningstar’s appearance in Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman thanks to the ongoing support of the Mighty Patrons of Crushing Krisis.

Guide to Lucifer

Many viewers have wondered if Tom Ellis’s seductive version of Lucifer would appear in Netflix’s The Sandman, and were surprised to learn that the character would instead be an androgynous golden-haired version played by Gwendoline Christie.

If you read Gaiman’s introduction of the character with Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg in The Sandman (1988) #4 you’ll see yet another depiction – The Morningstar is drawn as an overt homage to a pre-Ziggy Stardust David Bowie!

My guide lists all of Lucifer’s appearances throughout The Sandman as well as how to collect the subsequent 75-issue Lucifer series by Mike Carey, on which the CW show is very loosely based.

Plus, don’t miss on Dan Watters’ excellent 2018 revival of the title and character for DC’s relaunched Sandman Universe!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: DC Comics, Lucifer, Mike Carey, Neil Gaiman, New Comic Book Guide, Sam Kieth, Sandman, Updated Comic Guide, Vertigo

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

Swamp Thing – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

To view this content, you must be a member of Peter's Patreon at $1.99 or more
Unlock with Patreon Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.

New for Patrons: The Definitive Guides to The Sandman Universe

October 30, 2018 by krisis

Today’s new guide Patrons of Crushing Krisis is actually three guides (or maybe four, by the time you read this), which seems like overkill for what is essentially a single title with an obvious ten-volume paperback line. But, it’s really so much more than that…

Sandman Universe – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

+

Books of Magic – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

+

Lucifer – The Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

I am fascinated by how Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (and, in fact, all of the extended Sandman Universe) bridges the gap between comic books and serious literature.

That fascination has lasted for over 25 years – almost as long as Gaiman’s reinvention of the Golden Age character has existed.

Even the most-knowledgable comic fan could be forgiven for not knowing that Morpheus the King of Dreams was merely an iteration on an already-rebooted Golden Age DC hero. The original Sandman, Wesley Dodds, was a minor character who ran for seven years in the Golden Age and then popped back up twenty years later in the Earth 2 Justice Society of America in the Silver Age.

Without Gaiman and Morpheus, Dodds would probably be that one JSA member whose name you could never recall. His Silver Age iteration certainly wouldn’t jog your memory – a Kirby/Simon creation meant to be Mr. Sandman who lasted just six issues and who was later retconned in Wonder Woman to be a professor lost in the world of dreams.

There was no harm in Neil Gaiman revamping such a character to a more adult version early in the Post-Crisis years in 1989. At the time, Gaiman was still a relative unknown, coming off of the slept-on Black Orchid mini-series – a similar act of excavation and reinvention. He was so used to tepid reception to his early work that he expected Sandman to run just eight issues, which is why the first eight form such a satisfying arc despite being a mix of one-shots and continuing stories. He though that would be the whole series!

Instead, The Sandman became the springboard off of which Gaiman launched his multimedia fame in a miraculous three-year run from 1990-93 that saw him release Books of Magic at DC, the novel Good Omens (with Terry Prachett), win a World Fantasy Award in a category where Sandman wasn’t even eligible, essentially give birth to what we know as the modern American graphic novel market with the first two Sandman trade paperbacks, and top it off with the landmark Death: The High Cost of Living (the collection of which would be introduced by his friend and frequent name-checker, Tori Amos). [Read more…] about New for Patrons: The Definitive Guides to The Sandman Universe

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Books of Magic, DC Comics, Death, Lucifer, Mike Carey, Neil Gaiman, Peter Gross, Sandman, Sandman Universe, Vertigo

Vertigo’s Timothy Hunter and The Books of Magic – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

To view this content, you must be a member of Peter's Patreon at $1.99 or more
Unlock with Patreon Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar


Support Crushing Krisis on Patreon
Support CK
on Patreon


Follow me on Twitter Contact me Watch me on Youtube Subscribe to the CK RSS Feed

About CK

About Crushing Krisis
About My Music
About Your Author
Blog Archive
Comics Blogs Only
Contact Krisis
Terms & Conditions

Crushing Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Events Guide

Spider-Man Guide

DC Comics

  • Guide to Spider-Man comics from 2018 to present day – now available to the public!
    Peter Parker has had a massive 5 years in comics, from Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run to Zeb Wells spinning Dark Web and the Summer of Symbiotes. Find every issue from 2018 to present day in this new guide! […]
  • X-Men Vote 2023 - Polls Are Open NowElect your favorite mutant with Marvel’s annual X-Men Vote! #xmenvote
    It's time for the third annual X-Men Vote to determine one new permanent member of the flagship X-Men team. Let's meet the six candidates and discuss the pros and cons of each one. […]
  • Wasp, Janet van Dyne – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
    The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting […]
  • Marvel United Multiverse Secret Invasion Box KickstarterMarvel United: Multiverse adds a Secret Invasion expansion (plus, 20 events that could be expansion boxes!)
    CMON announced a surprising Marvel United Multiverse Secret Invasion expansion, which raises a question: What other events are still to come? I've got 20 suggestions for them. […]
  • New for Patrons: Guide to Wasp, Janet van Dyne
    This Guide to Wasp follows Janet van Dyne through her 60-year Marvel Comics history, from founding Avenger to finally getting own own series! […]
  • my weighted blanket is hungry
    Me getting 8hrs of fitful sleep doesn't seem to be enough to satiate the hunger of my new 10kg beast of a weighted blanket. […]
  • RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 5 – House of Fashion, Review & Power Ranking
    It's Drag Race Fashion Week in this unconventional materials design challenge with a twist: the queens are split into three groups and have to present cohesive runway collections. […]
  • Breaking News: D&D continues support of Open Gaming License (OGL 1.0), releases their core rules SRD under Creative Commons
    Breaking news! Dungeons & Dragons made the shocking announcement that they're keeping OGL v1.0 and releasing SRD 5.1 under Creative Commons! […]
  • Marvel United Multiverse Civil War Box KickstarterMarvel United: Multiverse has a Civil War in their new expansion box (and uses it to solve their Young Avengers problem)
    All out war breaks loose in CMON's Marvel United Multiverse Civil War expansion set, adding several classic Avengers and a new PVP play mode. […]
  • The Reading Order Guide to Excalibur - image from Excalibur (1988) #1Updated: Guide to Excalibur
    My updated Reading Order Guide to Excalibur adds several new collections, including big Epic Collection news! […]
  • X-Factor Math & Maps: Collected Issue Counting and Future Omnibus Mapping
    it's time for mathing and mapping X-Factor! How much of X-Factor been collected from its start in February 1986 to the team's most-recent appearance Dec 2021? And, how could it all fit into Omnibus? […]
  • The Guide to Unstoppable WaspUnstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order
    The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting […]
  • Marvel United Multiverse Age of Apocalypse - Kickstarter Exclusive BoxMarvel United: Multiverse enters the Age of Apocalypse! (plus, predicting the 10 most-likely expansion boxes)
    CMON's Marvel United: Multiverse - Age of Apocalypse brings more mutants to the game! What are the 10 next expansions we might see soon? […]
  • The Guide to Unstoppable WaspNew for Patrons: Guide to Unstoppable Wasp, Nadia van Dyne
    Who is The Unstoppable Wasp, and how did an elegant retcon from writer Mark Waid make her a different character than the MCU's Hope van Dyne? […]

Layout copyright © 2017 · Foodie Pro Theme by Shay Bocks · Built on the Genesis Framework · Powered by WordPress

Links from Crushing Krisis to retailer websites may be in the form of affiliate links. If you purchase through an affiliate link I will receive a minor credit as your referrer. My credit does not affect your purchase price. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to: Amazon Services LLC Associates Program (in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), eBay Partner Network, and iTunes Affiliate Program.