Warren Ellis

Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings

April 17, 2023 by krisis 4 Comments

This morning I had the absolute pleasure of announcing the results of the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot with Near Mint Condition!

The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot is an annual poll conducted by a mysterious comic book forum user named Tigereyes. The rules are simple: anyone can email Tigereyes up to 10 picks for their most-wanted, never-before-printed omnibuses of material originally printed by Marvel, even if they may no longer own the licensing rights.

Each first vote gets 10 points, each second vote gets 9 points, all the way down to your tenth vote getting just 1 point. After the voting period, Tigereyes goes through the gargantuan effort of tallying up all the votes – which also involves figuring out what everyone meant by their sometimes inconsistently-named or cryptically-described votes.

For me, the reveal of the results of the Tigereyes Secret Ballot is an international comics-loving holiday. I used to be the primary person on the internet creating statistics from the results every year! However, when I attempted to cover the entire poll entry-by-entry in 2017 I stalled out at the halfway point as the results straddled our move to New Zealand.

That’s why it was worth waking up at 4am NZ time to be ready to share this year’s results with my good friends Omar and Jess on the Near Mint Condition channel, thanks to some last-minute planning with Omar over the weekend.

Our show was nearly three hours long as we dug into the potential contents of every book on the list and whether we’d read them or not. As always, I had just as much fun appearing on-camera as I did chatting with all of the wonderful Minties in the live chat!

Don’t have time for the full 3-hour tour? We actually run down the full 60-book list in just 15 minutes, starting just before the 12-minute mark. I’m sharing the full list below, but it’s more than just a list – every omnibus includes a full suggested omnibus mapping along with a link to the relevant collecting guide on Crushing Comics.

That’s right, y’all – this is a post with SIXTY omnibus mappings in it, mapping well over 2,000 issues of comics. (Actually, it’s even more than that – there’s one tie, and in several entries I get into mapping second volumes if they would complete a run). That makes that one of the longest blog posts in 23 years of CrushingKrisis history.

Are you ready to be rocked by the Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus vote? Strap in, true believers, and prepare to be mapped like you’ve never been mapped before.

The Authority – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

New for Patrons: Guide to The Authority

March 30, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

What?! A second new guide today for Patrons of CK? Indeed, it’s true – plus an essay on comics history for everyone. I’m once again breaking ranks from following the release schedule of the original launch books of Image Comics, because today’s Guide to Stormwatch requires a second guide to complete it. That’s right, it’s a guide to what came after the Storm, a comic which fundamentally altered the tone and style of the comics industry and which has been tapped as an potential feature film in the new DC Cinematic Universe. It’s my Guide to The Authority!

Guide to The Authority

If you don’t know your early 2000s comic history, buckle up for a brief crash course on how the comics on your current pull list are undeniably influenced by The Authority.

It all starts with a pair of British creators, Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. Both had made moderate names for themselves at Marvel – Ellis on Excalibur and Doom 2099, Hitch on Sensational She-Hulk and Marvel UK titles. Yet, neither had become a breakout star who could sell a book on their name alone.

Ellis took over the flagging WildStorm co-flagship Stormwatch in July 1996. It had just recently acquired an all-new cast and had a virtually non-existent fan-base. While Ellis had enjoyed some freedom working on the fringe of Marvel’s titles, here he truly could write whatever he wanted. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to The Authority

New for Patrons: Guide to Stormwatch

March 30, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

We’re in the final two days of my Indie Comics Month now, but I still have a few more guides up my sleeve for all Patrons of CK. While it might seem as though I’ve already created guides for the flagship titles of each of the six founding imprints of Image Comics, that’s not entirely accurate. That’s because Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint actually had two flagship team titles for the two halves of its camel-cased name. The “Wild” half is already covered in my Guide to WildCATs. Now it’s time for the “Storm” half, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month! Welcome my Guide to Stormwatch!

Guide to Stormwatch

To me, Stormwatch has always been the best of the Image Comics imprint flagship titles. That’s not just because I have forever been obsessed with the flash-forward gimmick of its “Images of Tomorrow” issue #25. It’s also because it was always the Image book with the most-obvious hook and clear stakes for me both as a young reader in the 90s and today.

Stormwatch was an answer to the question of “Who Watches the Watchmen,” a superhero book that could at time feel slightly akin to Avengers or Justice League but which had its own distinct tone. Stormwatch kept an eye on all of Earth and its many super-powered residents from its orbiting Skywatch station. Yet, this wasn’t a book purely about peace-keeping force. From the earliest issues it became clear that Stormwatch had as many internal threats as external ones, both from its captured foes to dissension within its ranks.

That came to a head in issue #25, telegraphed an entire year early, which revealed that everything about the title as we knew it would be torn to shreds.

It was one of the best-executed flash forwards in the history of comics. Seldom has a series so perfectly set up a dreaded inevitable future state and then carefully steered into it with no sleight-of-hand involved. Every bit of the tragedy unfolded exactly as promise, setting up a desperate climax.

I’m convinced it also set Stormwatch up to fail – or, at least, it set up future success but smothered any future nostalgia for the title. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Stormwatch

Crushing Comics S01E036 – When are you susceptible to change? + Absolute Planetary Volumes 1 & 2

December 11, 2017 by krisis

Do you know what you get coupons for new toothpaste when you move into a new home? It’s not just to welcome you – it’s because moving makes you more apt to change your habits!

It’s fitting that after chatting about changed habits that I pulled out one of the handful of comics that brought me back to collecting when I moved into my first house in 2010 – Warren Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.