Guides to Valkyrie & Angela (Early Access for ALL PATRONS) (Patreon)

My multi-week march to fuller comic guide coverage of the glittering gates of Asgard continues with a pair of new of complete "every appearance" reading guides for a pair of leading ladies...

Guide to Marvel's Valkyrie & Guide to Angela 

As a reminder, you no longer need a special CK login to access guides! When you visit a Patreon guide you should be prompted to log in to CK using your Patreon login. If you aren't prompted when visiting a guide page, try visiting the CK login page directly.

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One of the best aspects of the past decade of Marvel Comics is that it has made use of characters from every corner of the Marvel 616-Universe, moreso than any prior decade. That has included stalwart favorites, forgotten supporting characters, and a massive list of new stars who went from debut to title-anchoring characters in a span of years.

That is very, very impressive.

After creating over 100 comic guides, I know that some characters have a tendency to completely disappear after a major run tapers off due to low sales. Hey, if it happened to the X-Men it can happen to anyone! Just look at how many characters DC has completely erased in the same decade!

Jokes aside, many of Marvel's Bronze Age mainstays didn't survive the one-two punch of Jim Shooter's linewide realignment in the mid-80s plus transition to a cooler, grittier, more extreme world of comics heading into the 90s.

This was especially true of the second-tier stars of the original 1972-1986 run of The Defenders. Hulk still had his ongoing title, Dr. Strange hopped from his 70s title to the brief Strange Tales to his lengthy 1988 ongoing, and Namor scored a new ongoing in 1990. The supporting cast - both of the original team and the "New Defenders" soft reboot - were not so lucky. Characters like Nighthawk, Hellcat, Gargoyle, Devil-Slayer, Cloud, and Valkyrie went virtually unknown to most 90s readers.

This is the most surprising for Brunnhilde The Valkyrie, who occupied an existing role in the Marvel Universe as the head of Odin and Hela's Valkyrior, those Norse warrior women on winged steeds who ferried souls of dead warriors to the afterlife. Yet, Valkyries in general appeared more in the late 80s than Valkyrie in specific thanks to Dani Moonstar's ongoing connection to Asgard in New Mutants!

I think part of Valkyrie's disappearance was that creators were plain old confused about how to use her. She appeared to be dead at the end of New Defenders, but that was quickly amended in Doctor Strange. Yet, some comics still treated her as if she was stuck in the afterlife. She ditched her former human body host back in The Defenders (1972) #109, but some writers seemed to be under the impression she required a human avatar. And, was she still the head of Asgard's Valkyrie's, or just another Asgardian roaming Earth? Opinions varied from appearance to appearance.

Plus, Valkyrie had never truly been part of the Thor editorial office the way Sif, Hela, or The Warriors Three had been. Between that and her continuity confusion you wind up with an intriguing character who spent over 20 years being criminally under-used!

That all began to change in the mid-00s, first with Dan Slott adopting Valkyrie as a buddy for his Jennifer Walters, then with Ed Brubaker, Rick Remender, and Cullen Bunn adopting her into the cast of several ongoing titles from 2010 to 2014. It really felt as though we needed creators who grew up with The Defenders to appreciate Valkyrie's story potential.

Then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe happened.

2017's Thor: Ragnarok, to be exact. With the introduction of Tessa Thompson's popular film version of Brunnhilde, using the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic version in the comics became slightly less tempting. She was a character with no media tie-in and an especially confusing history.

Luckily, Cullen Bunn returned to his beloved leading lady in Asgardians of the Galaxy and, along with Jason Aaron's War of the Realms climax to his Thor run, guided her into an appropriate legacy role while making way for new characters to carry the title of Valkyrie.

I have to admit, in reviewing every Valkyrie issue for this guide I was surprised to find just how little story Brunnhilde had despite hundreds of appearances. She rarely experienced any character development between the end of Defenders in 1986 and Bunn taking her over in 2011's Fear Itself: The Fearless.

I credit my surprise to the strength of Bunn's writing on The Fearless, which was my first encounter with her. He made her out to be a superstar with a compelling history when she was anything but.

This brings me to my other leading lady, who has a similar story of publishing neglect in her unique history: Neil Gaiman's (and, now, Marvel's) Angela.

One thing that DC Comics is very well known for that Marvel Comics is absolutely not known for is incorporating the characters from other publishers into their line.

Even before Crisis on Infinite Earths gave DC the infinite flexibility to subsume entire lines of characters like Wildstorm and Alan Moore's America's Best Comics, the DC juggernaut had absorbed entire universes of characters. They incorporated many Charlton Comics characters like Blue Beetle and Captain Atom (who also doubled as inspiration for Watchmen), and before them Fawcett Comics' Shazam! Not to mention their self-incorporation of the many properties that branched out into the Vertigo line back to DC continuity.

Plus, DC never hesitates to engage in cross-company crossovers, as long as it's not with Marvel. Even relatively recently we've seen Batman cross paths with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Gotham Academy with Lumberjanes!

The only time Marvel really came close to a wholesale import of characters was through their acquisition of Malibu Comics' Ultraverse, which they hastily shuttered.

We could speculate endlessly about why this is the case. Is it Marvel's self-reliance that borders on stinginess? The sacrosanct nature of their 616-Universe? That DC's characters are more iconic and stand up better to other media properties? That Marvel has less adventurous fans?

Regardless of the why, it is a very big deal when any kind of outside character makes their way into Marvel's Universe. It's an even bigger deal when that character was created by Neil Gaiman, was one of the original big draws during the launch of Image Comics, and has been involved in a somewhat nasty set of legal battles with her now-no-longer-officially-recognized co-creator Todd McFarlane.

I am, of course, talking about Neil Gaiman's Angela.

Gaiman was one of the megastar writers who paid early Image a visit to help expand their artist-driven IP, alongside Chris Claremont and Alan Moore. Gaiman scripted Spawn (1992) #9, co-creating Angela, Medieval Spawn, and Cogliostro, as well as a considerable amount of Heavenly story hooks. He'd further expand on Angela in an electric 1994 mini-series with Greg Capullo on art. As he was steering Sandman to a close, Angela was Gaiman's most direct foray into super-heroism - and she was very compelling.

Angela would only make 23 appearances during the 90s before being shuffled offstage in Spawn (1992) #100. Afterward, Gaiman and McFarlane engaged in an extended feud over McFarlane's ongoing profits from Gaiman's co-creations - reaped both from new comics and collected editions. McFarlane claimed they never had a clear contract, and so Gaiman's co-creation had been work-for-hire. This was a bold and altogether ironic claim given the origins of Image Comics as a haven for artist rights.

After several acrimonious lawsuits, Gaiman gained full custody of the decade-dormant Angela in 2012 and immediately shipped her off to Marvel under the pen of Brian Bendis. At the time, it felt less like a creatively-driven decision and more like a massive middle-finger to the fiercely independent McFarlane.

Angela's story could have ended there as a petty punctuation mark on a decade of legal battles. However, Jason Aaron and Al Ewing had other plans.

The two writers were the architects of all-things-Asgard back in 2014, and they used Aaron's Original Sin event to write Angela deeply into the lore of Asgard (as well as into Thor & Loki's family history).

It was a risky retcon, but it really worked. It's hard to explain exactly why. Some of it is down to Odin simply being a bastard, so you can believe just about any underhanded scheme would be something he'd engage in. They also had the cover of the explosion of media coverage over Jane Foster's introduction as Thor. I think another aspect is how the Marvel Cinematic Universe treats Asgardians half as deities and half as snooty aliens, which made the bolt-on of Angela and her backstory an easy match.

Angela reaped the success to the tune of a trio of solo series in 2015 and 2016, plus a team-up with Valkyrie in Asgardians of the Galaxy in 2018, and anchoring Strikeforce in 2019.

While it feels like there is still much more to do with her character, Angela has already blossomed massively compared to her sparse Image material - including being made unequivocally queer in an ongoing relationship with Sera, one of the few visible trans characters in comics in the 2010s.

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What's up next for comic guides?

As with last week's Jane Foster Guide, this Valkyrie Guide will go live next week in support of the release of Thor: Love & Thunder. However, the Angela guide will remain exclusive for you for a while longer.

This marks my first full new month of guides for you since 2018! I'm so excited to see my process beginning to hum along like it used to before the many disruptions of the past few years.

If I'm being honest, when I first started putting together a production schedule I swore to myself that I would not deliver more than one guide at a time. "Bank those extra guides and get ahead," I told myself. Yet, here we are, four short weeks later, with a pair of guides.

Here's where I stand on that: there are so many guides I still want to publish and y'all have stuck with Crushing Krisis through so many wild changes in my life - not only in the past four years, but for some of you since long before this Patreon existed. I'm not going to sit on completed work just for the sake of having a steady drip of messages to hit your inbox, In fact, I want to move in the opposite direction to get more guides to you even faster (and maybe with fewer messages - don't know about you, but I don't love getting a lot of Patreon emails)!

I'm still giving myself one more week for guides to support Love & Thunder before I wrap up with a massive update of the Guide to Thor, The Odinson. I absolutely know what the next guide will be, it's just a question of if I squeeze in another one as well given the size of that update project.

Something these three Asgard guides had in common is a straightforward reading order and relatively few collections. For Valkyrie and Angela, they rarely appear in more than one comic at a time, so while I still had to read everything I didn't have to wrestle with too much modern read ordering. And, Valkyrie had just one unique collection for her page, and Angela just a handful. That means I didn't have to dig into my new solicits database too much to fuel these guides.

Even with those easy requirements, these guides still took a while to put together. On each of them I hit a midway point where I could've wrapped things up, but they didn't feel definitive yet.

I'm bracing myself for the experience of getting into older characters with more appearances - and, I have a huge one coming up on the DC side after a few more lighter-weight guides.

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Meanwhile, on Crushing Krisis...

I continued my new Dungeons & Dragons coverage with a guide to what makes for a good 5th Edition release. I'm hoping I can find enough time to continue this as a weekly feature!

I wrote about being hypnotized by Dua Lipa's "We're Good" while sitting in a dentist's chair. I mused on the elusive nature of sleep for parents. And, I discussed "Harbingers of Failure" - people predisposed to love products that will bomb. (Spoilers: I may be one.)

Plus, my Drag Race coverage continues with another episode of the All Winners season, plus the newly-debuted season of Drag Race France. Even if you're a non-view who is curious about Drag Race, I tackle every episode recap as if it might be your first rodeo, just like I do with comic guides.

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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 25 Guides!

DC Guides (6): 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 (19): Alpha Flight, Angela, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, The Eternals, Jane Foster - Thor & Valkyrie, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Sabretooth, Spider-Ham, Valkyrie, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man - Nate Grey

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 52 Guides!

All of the 25 guides above, plus...

DC Guides (15): Animal Man, Aquaman, Books of Magic, Catwoman, Flash, Harley Quinn, Houses & Horrors, Legion of Super-Heroes, Justice League, Lucifer, Mister Miracle, Nightwing, Outsiders, Suicide Squad, Swamp Thing

Marvel Guides (12): Ant-Man & Giant-Man, Champions, Darkhawk, Falcon, Gwenpool, Moon Boy / Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Power Pack, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom

Indie & Licensed Comics: None right now, but they're coming!