Warren Ellis

New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: DC Comics – January 8 2025

January 3, 2025 by krisis 1 Comment

Next week is the 2nd new comic book day of 2025! This post covers DC Comics January 8 2025 new releases. Missed this week’s releases? Check out last week’s post covering DC Comics January 1 2025 new releases.

This week in DC Comics: A shocking Aquaman collection, a hunk of Ellis Stormwatch, a new superstar run on Action Comics, creepy Dark Patterns for Batman, a Fractured Spectrum of Lanterns, and more!

The Krisis Pick of the Week: Batman: Dark Patterns (2024) #2! I cannot get the first issue of this Dan Watters & Hayden Sherman comic out of my head. Sherman’s page layouts were mind-blowing, as was the final page twist in both art and story. More about why I’m so excited below.

This post includes every comic out from DC this week, plus collected editions in omnibus, hardcover, paperback, and digest-sized formats. This isn’t the typical comic releases post you can find on other sites. Why? I explain each collection and review every in-continuity series with a new issue out this week. Plus, for most new releases, I’ll point you to a personally-curated guide within the Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics to find out how to collect that title in full! There’s no other website on the internet that can claim that.

And now, onto DC Comics January 8 2025 new releases!

DC Comics January 8 2025 Collected Editions

The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries Vol. 5
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1779528582 / digital)
Collects The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries (2024) #1-6. These stories are more or less standalone, so you don’t have to worry about picking up Volumes 1-4.

Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Worlds Without End
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1779528575 / digital)
See Guides to Birds of Prey. This is very much the epic conclusion to the set-up in Volume 1, so I would not recommend starting here! This is easily one of the most-binge-able books of the past year full of action, humor, and tremendous colors from Jordie Bellaire. You can read more of my thoughts on the run in last week’s DC New Releases post.

DC Finest – Aquaman: King of Atlantis (DC Finest, Silver Age Vol. 1)
(2025 paperback, ISBN 978-1779529893 / digital TBA)
See Guide to Aquaman. This is the most interesting DC Finest volume yet! Not only does it collect material in color for the first time, but it does something I don’t think anyone would have predicted!

Generally, DC has always treated Adventure Comics (1938) #260 from May 1959 as the beginning of Silver Age stories for Aquaman and their collections have reflected that. An old Showcase collection starts there. Issue #260 is collected with “origins” collections and Aquaman’s anniversary collections.

Yet, this book reaches back to begin with Adventure Comics (1938) #229-259, which began in October 1956 – the same month Barry Allen debuted as Flash in Showcase (1956) #4.

Generally, the beginning of the Silver Age at DC Comics isn’t treated as something that happened all at once. Flash got things started in an obvious way because he was a brand new character (as was Hal Jordan as Green Lantern), but the start of the Silver Age for the Trinity and Aquaman tends to have more to do with when their origins were redefined to their definitive Earth-1 pre-Crisis versions.

As DC Silver Age collections go, this is a pretty wild development! All of the other various breakpoints between Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Post-Crisis ages are well-defined down to the issue. I had to change elements of my guide to reflect this new break point.

I am SO EXCITED to own and read this material in color!!! This is one of the books that nudged me over the line to start picking up DC Finest Collections despite having a relatively slim collection of physical DC Comics outside of Wonder Woman. [Read more…] about New Comics & Collected Editions Releases: DC Comics – January 8 2025

Wildstorm Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Poll

May 10, 2024 by krisis

It’s time to dive into the WildStorm Universe – perhaps my favorite shared universe in all of comics! I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted DC omnibus volumes every day until May 19th! Then, on the 19th, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the first annual Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Annual Poll! This post covers omnibuses missing from DC’s WildStorm imprint, including WildCATs, Stormwatch, Gen13, Deathblow, Wetworks, and more!

This post explains potential WildStorm Omnibus Mapping for votes on the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Secret Ballot. I’m posting all of these maps before the poll begins to give people the time to consider their favorites, correct our mapping mistakes, and catch books I might have missed.

There are three comic properties where I own every issue from their inception through 2012. One is X-Men, obviously. Another is Wonder Woman, covered earlier this week. The third is WildStorm. I own every floppy comic book ever published by WildStorm and I have them all packaged for binding – basically, I have this entire omnibus mapping already-collected in shortboxes in my garage!

I have to give a special shoutout to two amazing fellow WildStorm fans: WildStorm4Life, who runs the main WildStorm Universe group on Facebook, and Bryan Jose, who runs the Weathering WildStorm reading order blog. WildStorm4Life was instrumental in aiding my collecting every WildStorm issue by sharing his own binding maps with me over a decade ago!

If you don’t know DC well enough to know what to vote for, stick around for my explanations! Learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including giving us feedback if we missed the mark.

If voting is now open, you can use this as your crib sheet! Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how DC could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of DC creating a book with that title or covering that period.

High-effort, heavily-researched, over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics.

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

April 17, 2023 by krisis

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

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