War Machine

Iron Man by Michelinie & Layton – The #33 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 31, 2017 by krisis

Have you been anxiously waiting for me to tackle the top half of this year’s Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus poll? Well, the wait is over. Now that I’m totally settled in New Zealand (along with my massive comics collection) I’m finally able to focus on completing this monstrous series if posts. I’ll be posting them with their originally scheduled dates from this spring.

If you’ve been waiting for more of this series with bated breath, please consider chipping in to Crushing Krisis’s Patreon campaign. I don’t have the personal budget to keep CK alive with support from readers, and your contribution of even $1 a month accounts for about 1% of my hosting costs.

Iron Man by Michelinie & Layton is tied as the #33 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes and collect all of these issue right now as detailed in my Guide to Iron Man.

Past Ranking: Ranked #11 in 2016

Probable Contents: Iron Man #215-250 and material from Annuals 9 and 10.

Your eyes do not deceive you – this Iron Man run is actually not sequential to the Michelinie and Layton run that was already Omnibused ending with #157. Denny O’Neil writes the majority of the intervening issues before Michelinie and Layon return.

The cover of issue #250 bears the Acts of Vengeance banner, but it doesn’t continue directly to the next two issues with the banner, so the omnibus can safely end there (although, Layton did return for #254 and 256, and the next Epic Collection begins on #257, suggesting this could continue through #256).

Creators: Co-written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, Sr. Co-writing and art (including colors) by Barry Windsor-Smith on #232.

Bob Layton, Sr. provided a range of art through the run, from pencils to finishes to inks. Pencils and/or breakdowns were drawn by Mark “Doc” Bright through #231 and by Jackson ‘Butch’ Guice from #233 (with Denys Cowan on #241, Alan Kupperberg on #242, and Paul Smith on #245). Additional inks by Don Hudson (#239), Barry Windsor Smith (#243), Roy Richardson (#245), Herb Trimpe (#246), Tim Dzon (#247), and a massive team on #244.

Colors by Bob Sharen (#215-243) and Paul Becton (#245-250) with Julianna Ferriter (#217), Nelson ‘Nel’ Yomtov (#226), and a team on #244. Letters by Janice Chiang (with Bill Oakley on #232).

Can you read it right now? Mostly. Issues #215-232 & Annual 9 are collected in Iron Man Epic Collection: Stark Wars, but #233-248 remains an unreprinted gap. Plus, every single issue is on Marvel Unlimited!

The Details:

Co-writers David Michelinie and Bob Layton returned to Iron Man in 1987 after five years away writing (and, in Layton’s case, illustrating) other titles. [Read more…] about Iron Man by Michelinie & Layton – The #33 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Avengers West Coast by Thomas & Thomas – The #40 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

May 24, 2017 by krisis

Completionism is a a crazy impulse. There are hundreds of Avengers issues unrepresented by oversized volumes, but omnibus collectors are super-focused on getting the relatively unheralded back third of Avengers West Coast into an oversize volume to complete their bookshelves.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure all of the voters realize just how strong and cohesive this Roy & Dann Thomas run on Avengers really is.

The Avengers West Coast by Thomas and Thomas Omnibus is the #40 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes and head to the Guide to Avengers West Coast to see how you can read this run right now.

Past Ranking: This volume leaps up five spots from #45 in the 2016 survey.

Probable Contents: Avengers West Coast (1989) #63-100, 102, & Annual 5-8, Avengers Annual 19, Darkhawk Annual 1, and Iron Man Annual 13,

That’s 43 issues, which means the book could also include the full Bloodties crossover: Avengers West Coast (1989) #101, The Avengers (1963) #368-369, Uncanny X-Men (1963) #307, & X-Men (1991) #26.

However, that would leave behind 20 issues of five related miniseries – U.S. Agent #1-4 (after #95 & Annual 8), Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective #1-4 (after #97), Spider-Woman #1-4 (after #101), Scarlet Witch #1-4 (after #101), and Hawkeye #1-4 (after #102).

What to do? More on how to reconcile that, below.

Creators: Written by Roy Thomas and Dann Thomas with pencils by Paul Ryan and Dave Ross with Tom Morgan, George Freeman, Herb Trimpe, and Andrew Currie.

Can you read it right now? Mostly. Issue #76-79 and #83-88 remain uncollected (as is the U.S. Agent mini-series), but everything else has been captured. Visit Guide to Avengers West Coast for the full details. Unfortunately, most of this run is not on Marvel Unlimited.

The Details:

Avengers West Coast had gone for years as a forgotten era of Avengers as far as reprints were concerned until Marvel’s Cinematic Universe began focusing strongly on its core cast of Iron Man and Hawkeye, and later Scarlet Witch and Vision.

Suddenly, West Coast reprints were abounding – a set of Marvel Premier Classic hardcovers, corresponding paperback reprints, two omnibuses, half of an Avengers by John Byrne volume, and a handful of trades covering the latter run of the series. The only remaining gaps are #76-79 and #83-88, two stories split by the massive “Galactic Storm” crossover.

Comic books fans are nothing if not obsessive completists, so that makes a final omnibus edition of Avenger West Coast sorely tempting – especially since it’s all co-written by comic book royalty Roy Thomas along with his wife Dann (who was the first woman to ever script an issue of Wonder Woman!) mostly to illustration by a pair of strong pencillers – Paul Ryan through #69 and Dave Ross from #71 through the end of the series. [Read more…] about Avengers West Coast by Thomas & Thomas – The #40 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #12, 11, and 10

June 14, 2016 by krisis

Omnibus on Shelf I’m back with #12, 11, and 10 from the Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus secret ballot by TigerEyes. I covered #13-15 in the last installment.

Today we’ll examine a pair of late-80s classics by a single writer and one modern-day epic that was at both highly enjoyable and fundamentally broken.

Why just three books? Other than my fingers being a little exhausted, I wanted to have the time to dig a little deeper both into the content of the books and how they might be collected. This three-omnibus installment wound up being just as long as some of the posts with twice the books!

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.

Alright, there’s plenty more to read below, so let’s get going with the next three most-wanted oversized hardcover omnibuses! [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #12, 11, and 10

Iron Man, Tony Stark – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Iron Man comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2023 with titles scheduled for release through December 2023.

Collecting Iron Man: Tony Stark

Tony Stark wasn’t Marvel’s first super-scientist super-hero, but over the course of more than 55 years of publishing he has become their most famous.

That’s in no small part thanks to Iron Man leading the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, but even before he made it to the big screen Tony Stark was one of Marvel’s most-memorable flawed heroes.

Tony Stark was born to riches and gifted with a superior intellect. That lead him into the family business, which turned into making weapons of mass destruction before he became one himself – both to escape his captors and to keep shrapnel from digging more deeply into his heart.

Only a few months into his heroic career, Stark become a founding member of The Avengers alongside Thor and, shortly after, the legendary Captain America. His initial run with the team wouldn’t last long – he took his leave in issue #16 and wouldn’t be back for the better part of a decade.

Tony Stark’s most significant early character development would be his “Demon in a Bottle” story in 1979. In the midst of an armor malfunction and an accusation of murder, Stark turns to a bottle for comfort.

After spending years portrayed as a carefree playboy with endless resources, adding Tony Stark’s struggle with alcoholism to his physical wounds made him seem more human than ever.

Stark went on to rejoin the Avengers and become an anchoring member of the West Coast Avengers before branching out to a new franchise with Force Works in the mid-90s before he was swept out of continuity into the Heroes Reborn universe along with all of the rest of the core Avengers in the wake of Onslaught.

Tony Stark took on a new higher profile in the wake of Avengers Disassembled as the troubled soul of the Marvel Universe. First, Warren Ellis reinvented his armor in the classic “Extremis” arc. Then, Tony found himself opposed to his longtime brother Steve Rogers in Civil War, where he took the side of Supehero Registration (much to the consternation of many fans).

In the wake of Civil War, Stark founded the Mighty Avengers and became the face of “The Initiative,” a plan to put an Avengers team in every state. However, he lost the public’s trust in the wake of Secret Invasion, with Norman Osborn usurping his role. This lead to Tony Stark’s most-acclaimed run to date landing at the height of his new-found film fame – the Eisner-winning Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca. This period saw Tony losing Stark Industries, but reconciling with a revived Captain America, with the two of them returning to lead the Avengers.

Marvel Now and All-New, All-Different Marvel would bring more turbulence to Tony Stark’s life – reforming the Illuminati to destroy worlds in Hickman’s Avengers, learning he was adopted in Gillen’s Iron Man, becoming all the evil he had once sworn off in Taylor’s Superior Iron Man, and then being lead to his seeming death in Bendis’s Invincible Iron Man and Civil War II.

In 2018, Fresh Start finds Tony Stark reset back to status quo – anchoring the Avengers and heading up Stark Unlimited.

There are hundreds of different collections of Iron Man, especially his original run from 1963 to 1996. However, there are a few specific formats of books that cover large portions of this title, and I’ll cover those first – Essentials, Epics, Masterworks, and Omnibuses. [Read more…] about Iron Man, Tony Stark – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Avengers West Coast – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

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 May 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

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.