Guide to Gamora + New Indie Guides (Early Access for ALL Patrons!) (Patreon)

Hello, my patient Patrons - and welcome to the crowd of new folks who have joined us in the past week! It has been another major week of action on Crushing Comics that saw the addition of several new indie guides and a second Guardian of the Galaxy. Let's get right to it.

NEW: Guide to Gamora (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to Savage Dragon (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to WildCATs (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to WildStorm Events

NEW: Guide to Brigade (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to ShadowHawk (Launch Essay)

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

Updated: Guide to Grant Morrison's New X-Men & X-Men (1991) #157-207 (Announcement)

Available to the Public: Guide to Shazam (Announcement)

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After reading (or, re-reading) all of Gamora's appearances for the Guide to Gamora, I think it's fair to say she is the Guardian with the best movie version. More than that, I think Brian Bendis may have written her the best of all the Guardians during his run on the title.

I learned much, much more about Savage Dragon than I ever hoped to learn while working on the Guide to Savage Dragon, and came away with a new appreciation for Erik Larsen as an innovator (even if I'm not a fan of the juvenile sex-and-violence comic his creation has become).

I've wanted to launch a Guide to WildCATs to you ever since the very first day of this Patreon campaign! It seemed so easy to do now, but I know that's the result of the past six years of guide-making experience. For example, I knew I should make a Guide to WildStorm Events right away to simplify things!

My Guide to Brigade is probably the most attention anyone has devoted to this early Image book in years. I didn't love the comics, but I still found a positive spin on them in my launch essay.

Now that I've built a Guide to ShadowHawk, his bibliography finally makes sense to me! Jim Valentino has told two complete stories, with a bridge between them by Kurt Busiek.

And, finally, I didn't have to update the Guide to Shazam much to release it to the public since it's so fresh, but I did add a "Where to Start Reading" section. And, my Guide to New X-Men didn't gain many new collections, but it's now much tidier and includes links to read and purchase digitally.

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.

Behind-the-Scenes Krisis

After a massively-productive week last week, I hit a wall at the end of last weekend.

It wasn't the wall I was expecting! I thought I'd run out of time to keep creating new guides, but what I wound up running out of was the brain to keep creating new guides.

Luckily, the great thing about sticking with a daily editorial calendar for so many weeks in a row is that it gives me options when I am out of brain cells. I swapped the simple launch of Shazam to earlier in the week and skipped producing a new guide on a day with a Drag Race post to give myself an extended long weekend away from making new guides without missing a day of posting.

Surprising no one, I can't quite keep up the pace of launching a new guide every day for a month. That's just 4-12 hours a day of CK work, what could go wrong? 😂 However, so far I've launched 10 guides in 17 days, which I still think is an incredible pace for a special once-a-year event!

I think I might carry on with the idea of a "theme month" in the future, but with a plan for a slightly more-moderate pace that involves both new guides and guide updates. I can think of several thematic chunks of guide work that I'd like to have an excuse to knock out quickly.

I'll confess, I'm antsy to get back to doing those stealthy "quick updates" on guides in the background while also doing massive overhauls like I did on the New X-Men guide this week. Adding new pages to the site is fun, but it doesn't help you all if I let the old ones grow ancient in the process.

I have launched 33 Guides to you in the past 365 days - 20 Marvel, 5 DC, & 8 Indie! Plus, I've also made 24 significant updates to existing guides. With this week's new guides and update the median guide update date has improved from June 2019 to October 2019. (Current goal: July 2022 - we're closing the gap!)

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What's up next on Crushing Comics?

We're now far enough into this sprint that I feel comfortable revealing that my ambition for March has always been to get through the first 10 major Image titles so I can celebrate the 30th anniversary of the twin launches of Stormwatch & The Maxx in March 1993.

If you know your Image Comics history, you'll realize that means I'll have a few other guides to get through between here and there, including one especially hefty guide that I moved back to next week to give me more lead time.

However, I won't only be adding Image Comics guides over the next two weeks. In specific, I'll be launching a non-Image indie guide that will be exclusively for Pledgeonauts, because it is a big one - by far my biggest this month.

That's in addition to your upcoming Patron's Choice of Black Hammer, plus another solo Guardians guide next week.

Looking forward to April and May, in addition to padding out my coverage of Marvel Cinematic Universe characters I'm hoping to continue my indie coverage - just at a much more reasonable pace. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about DC! You'll see a couple of DC guides in Q2 if I stick to my editorial calendar, with more on the way later in the year.

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Tell me what you want!

I've loved getting a few DMs from folks in the past week with thoughts and requests - one of them even correctly guessed that impending big indie guide!

Please leave a comment or send me a DM to tell me the guides you're most looking forward to - which could include an update of an existing guide. Many of you have already named Superman, GI Joe, and an updated X-Men Reading Orders as items on your wishlists. If you have other wishes, lay them on me!

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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 39 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 (26): Adam Warlock, Alpha Flight, Angela, Beta Ray Bill, Black Cat, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Elsa Bloodstone, Emma Frost - The White Queen, Gamora, Heroes for Hire, Legion, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Sabretooth, Spider-Ham, Star-Lord, Thunderstrike, Valkyrie, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey, X-Men - Age of Krakoa

Indie & Licensed Comics (7): Brigade, Lumberjanes, Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess, Savage Dragon, ShadowHawk, WildCATs, WildStorm Events

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 68 Guides!

All of the 39 guides above, plus 29 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 (13): Darkhawk, Falcon, Gwenpool, Hellcat - Patsy Walker, Kang the Conqueror, Loki, Power Pack, Red She-Hulk, Sentry, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom