A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
On my weekly livestream, Casual Krakoa Live, I review the week’s X-Men comics, and answer big questions about what’s going on with Marvel’s merry mutants! You can listen or watch below:
Spoilers for discussed comics may follow!
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[Read more…] about Casual Krakoa Meets Kirby: Eternals #7 (& MCU), Hellions #17, Excalibur #25!
Teased with a typically beautiful yet ominous Leinil Francis Yu cover, X-Men #7 set expectations high for raising the bar on internal Krakoan tensions—and the story delivered, along with many burning questions that mostly still haven’t been answered. We start with a literally iconoclastic image of a stained-glass version of the most famous Catholic mutant—Nightcrawler—shattered by Apocalypse wielding a sword (which seemed to both echo what we’d seen recently in flashbacks, of Apocalypse’s last stand on ancient Okkara, and call forward to the impending X of Swords event).
What’s most clear by issue’s end is that Kurt’s doubts and questions, even his spiritual vision of renewal, just don’t carry the day, at all. They certainly fueled readers’ hopes for more Kurt content, but it’s Apocalypse and the less humane elements on the Quiet Council—meaning, most of it, then—who win out here, thus allowing the Krakoan project to grow at a more rapid pace, driving up reader enthusiasm, as well. So, yeah, cynicism wins, as usual. At least Hickman’s being honest! 😉
Related:
The first thing we must address regarding Heroes in Crisis
But, as with all ruins, what doesn’t work, what caused the ruin, is often the least interesting part. What’s more interesting, however, is what a ruin can show us. What we can find within the ruin that shows us what it could have been. Not that it was secretly good (though I’m quite aware that some are invested in that project), but rather what hidden depths can be found by taking what’s there seriously. [Read more…] about You Can (Not) Parallax: A Case for Heroes in Crisis
It’s always exciting to see Marvel try to embrace new non-legacy characters (yes, there was a Miss America in the 40s, but the two characters have nothing in common outside of the name). It’s even more exciting when those characters bring new representation to the Marvel universe, as the House of Ideas is in desperate need of more queer and non-white characters. This all makes America Chavez, Marvel’s first LGBTQIA+ Latine character to ever get her own ongoing series, one of the most interesting new characters to have come out (no pun intended) of Marvel Comics in recent years.
From dimension-hopping teen hero to Avenger and Ultimate, Ms. America has quickly become a mainstay in the Marvel universe; soon both on the page and on the big screen, with Xochitl Gomez set to play the character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. [Read more…] about America Chavez (Miss America) Reading Order!
Written by James Tynion IV, (issue #5 by Matthew Rosenberg)
Pencils by Guillem March, (issue #5 by Francesco Francavilla)
Colors by Arif Prianto
Collects: The Joker #1-6
When James Tynion IV revealed he was working on a second Batman title, I was excited to see what it would be; when I found out the comic was Joker, I got nervous. It’s no secret that the Joker has been heavily overused over the past two years, from Stjepan Sejic’s Harleen to Geoff Johns’s Three Jokers to the Joker Movie and Lemire’s Joker: Killer Smile. Even in the last couple of months, we’ve gotten The Joker Presents: A Puzzlebox
Fortunately, Tyion has a creative solution to the Joker burnout problem. Tynion’s Joker