Guide to Emma Frost, The White Queen (Early Access for ALL Patrons) (Patreon)

Hello, my precious diamond Patrons! I'm back with your Patron's Choice guide vote from September, which covers 40+ years of one of the most-complex characters in the X-Men line! I certainly have a whole new appreciation for her after reviewing every one of her appearances.

NEW: Emma Frost, The White Queen (launch essay)

Plus, powered-by-Patrons but available for all readers:

Open to the Public: Guide to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Announcement)

Updated: Guide to Silver Age X-Men (Announcement)

Updated: Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men (Announcement)

Quick Updates: Avengers Flagships (2018 - Present Day), Blade, Captain America, Legion, Moon Knight, Spider-Man - Miles Morales 

Mapping Post: Cable Math & Maps 

Video: New Trade Announcements on Near Mint Condition 

Comic News: Marvel’s newest trade paperbacks & 40 upcoming 2023 Marvel omnibuses! 

Gaming: Marvel United: Multiverse adds Maximum Carnage to the campaign! (Plus, the High Evolutionary!) and Marvel United: Multiverse wages World War Hulk as their final expansion! (Plus: a BIG all-in pledge reward) 

And, for Crushing Cadet patrons who didn't see the last Pledgeonaut update - open to the public: Guide to Spider-Man, Peter Parker (2018 - Present) (Announcement Post)

As you can see, it has been a big week at CK! It's actually been more like 10 days, since I didn't want to inundate you with multiple messages too close together after the Indie Guide Patron's Choice earlier this week.

The Guide to Emma Frost - The White Queen was another mega-guide that includes more than 1,000 appearances. Luckily, unlike for the Janet van Dyne as Wasp guide, I've read the vast majority of these - many of them in the past five years! That sped things up considerably.

The Guide to Silver Age X-Men is now tidied up and includes recent reprints, the Mighty Marvel Masterworks paperback line, and the newly-announced X-Men: The Hidden Years omnibus.

The Guide to New Mutants & Young X-Men has been rebuilt from the ground up with an all new organization - both chronological by title and by class of incoming mutants. The guide finally makes sense to me as a single page, rather than as a catch-all for a number of small series that don't fit elsewhere.

And, I was very lucky to be invited by my friend Omar of Near Mint Condition to make an exclusive announcement of brand new Marvel trade paperbacks, plus recap the 40 new and reprinted Marvel omnibuses due between now and the end of the year. I had so much fun with Omar and Kurtis from The Epic Marvel Podcast. Hopefully I'll join them again sometime soon.

To see new guides and guide updates announced as they happen, keep an eye on the CK homepage.

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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Behind-the-Scenes Krisis

I've been busy with Crushing Krisis as well as traditional actual work this week, plus watching the final hours of the Marvel United: Multiverse Kickstarter campaign tick down.

I've tried something new this week - "Quick Updates."

We could also call them "Stealth Updates." I looked through solicits at new collections out last week and took an hour to fill in the newest series and collections on each of those pages.

That doesn't mean the page has been updated with every new collection or appearance, so the pages don't get an official new "updated at" date on the page or in my database. But it brings their history of titles current with the present day, lessens my load on future updates, and hopefully makes them a little more useful to you all!

(If you have opinions on that, please let me know. You can compare the Guide to Cap, which really only got the newest series and collections added to its table of contents, to the Guide to Moon Knight, which effectively got a full update with every new collection but no revisions to the guide format or appearance checking.)

I have launched 21 Guides to you in the past 365 days - 17 Marvel and 4 DC! Plus, I've also made 17 significant updates to existing guides. The median guide update date has improved from November 2018 to December 2018! That's not a guarantee with every guide update, but I tackled two of the oldest guides this week. (Current goal: May 2022).

For now, what's on deck? I'm torn about the next new guide, but either way it will be a character who has died multiple times across multiple eras. And then, back to DC after some time away for a character with a confusing publishing history. And, the next guide update is the #1-most-requested update.

Any guesses?

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No "Question Time" in this update - just make sure you vote in the indie Patron's Choice poll!

Of course, I always want to know which guides you want the most - new or updated. It might be a while until revised X-Men Reading Orders, GI Joe, or Superman, but they're all on my radar. If you want something else, send me a ping.

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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 30 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 (24): Alpha Flight, Angela, Beta Ray Bill, Black Cat, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Emma Frost - The White Queen, Heroes for Hire, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Sabretooth, Spider-Ham, Thunderstrike, Unstoppable Wasp, Valkyrie, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey, X-Men - Age of Krakoa 

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 30 Guides!

All of the 30 guides above, plus 30 more guides…

DC Guides (16): Animal Man, Aquaman, Books of Magic, Catwoman, Doctor Fate, Flash, Harley Quinn, Houses & Horrors, Infinity Inc., Justice League, Justice Society of America, Mister Miracle, Nightwing, Outsiders, Suicide Squad, Swamp Thing

Marvel Guides (14): Darkhawk, Falcon, Gwenpool, Hellcat - Patsy Walker, Loki, Power Pack, Red She-Hulk, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom, Wasp - Janet van Dyne, Werewolf by Night

Indie & Licensed Comics: None right now