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

Hello, my indefatigable Patrons - and, a warm welcome to the many new folks who have joined the campaign this past week! I'm back with the final update full of Indie Comics Month guides - including your Patron's Choice.

PATRON'S CHOICE: Guide to Black Hammer (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to Supreme (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to Pitt by Dale Keown (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to Stormwatch (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to The Authority (Launch Essay)

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

Updated & Available to The Public:
Guide to X-Men - The Age of Krakoa (Announcement)

NEW: Guide to The Maxx by Sam Kieth (Launch Essay)

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It was fun to put together your February Patron's Choice, the Guide to Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire. Black Hammer is mega-popular, so there are a number of other guides already on the internet. I spent a lot of time examining those pages and re-reading the comics to figure out what I could do better. I think a big part of a guide to Black Hammer is explaining what is critical to read outside of the main saga and what order to read it in, so that was my main focus.

You might not know that Rob Liefeld's Superman pastiche Supreme was his longest-running Image title, or that it won an Eisner Award when Alan Moore took it over, or that it is the most optimistic of all of Moore's deconstructionist works. Well, now you do! Learn more in the Guide to Supreme.

Dale Keown almost had a hit on his hands with Pitt, which had a unique pitch and real heart to it. Now that I've paid closer attention to the title in my Guide to Pitt, I think he was undone by his release schedule moreso than any other early Image book. 

The Guide to Stormwatch covers what is often the most-overlooked of all the Image imprint flagship titles. That's partly because everyone assumes that WildCATs was the WildStorm flagship and skips right over Stormwatch. But, look at the name... WILD... STORM. Stormwatch was a huge part of WildStorm's core concept from the start, and it might be my favorite Image launch title... but, it was never the same after 1999.

The Authority is why Stormwatch was never the same after 1999! Technically, this book comes much later in my march through the Image Comics release schedule, but it didn't feel right to have a Stormwatch guide without a Guide to the Authority. (I love how this launch essay turned out, please check it out!)

Finally, we come to one of my most-beloved Image tiles: Sam Kieth's The Maxx. Having my Guide to The Maxx done in time to celebrate its 30th Anniversary in March was one of the major factors behind my ambitious Indie Comics Month plans. I released this guide directly to the public to celebrate the milestone! Read more about that (and my rough end of 2022) in my heartfelt launch essay. 

You'd think with six guide launches in one week there would be no bigger news to share, but the guide that graduated from Patron Access to Public Access is the biggest possible news: my Guide to X-Men - The Age of Krakoa is finally ready for the world! Folks on Twitter were incredibly kind in promoting the launch of this guide, which led to a huge spike in traffic - maybe bringing some of you to this campaign. I never could have built and improved this guide over the past few years without your ongoing support and encouragement.

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

This week was meant to be a much-needed recovery after launching so many guides last month. In March I was working on CK six hours a day on top of work, parenting, cooking, grocery shopping, getting some major dentistry done, and even occasionally some sleeping.

Then, as I was prepping the Black Hammer guide, I discovered that everything on CK was moving very slowly. I couldn't even upload new images, no matter how tiny I shrunk them.

Was the slowdown due to the spike in traffic from the Krakoa guide? It was big, but not that big.

I checked in with my hosting provider and discovered that CK is under a serious Denial of Service attack from IP addresses based in China!

I can't imagine why anyone would expend so much effort trying to take down my humble, elderly blog. Comic fans can be mean, but not that mean 😂. It's probably a random byproduct of some larger DDoS campaign causing other kinds of mischief across the internet.

Unfortunately, it led to hours of behind-the-scenes troubleshooting on my part, which even delayed me a bit in getting this update out. The attacks are continuing, but I've now got some new infrastructure in place to deal with that.

I think it's important to point out that YOU MAKE IT POSSIBLE for me to fix this kind of problem. This Patreon campaign pays for all of CK's hosting and it has allowed me to improve my hosting plan several times over since the campaign launched six years ago. CK was never on a "professional" plan suitable for its traffic before this campaign, and that traffic has nearly doubled since launch.

You are the reason I even have enough RAM on my server for CK to stay alive through the DoS attack. You are the reason I could request priority support responses multiple times. You are the reason I could add DoS protection to my hosting plan.

None of this could exist without you.

In other news, it's full-on Autumn here in New Zealand and it's also school break. The three non-Summer school breaks here are a full two weeks each, which means I'm about to kick off two whole weeks of hanging with the kid! That's another reason I wanted to wrap up a ton of guide launches and updates before April.

(Of course, if I had any sense of restraint or self-preservation I could have held some of these new guides to keep dripping out in April while we enjoy school break. But what would be the fun of that?!)

I have launched 44 Guides to you in the past 365 days - 21 Marvel, 5 DC, & 18 Indie! Plus, I've also made many significant updates to existing guides. Since my last Patreon post the median guide freshness date has improved from October 2019 to January 2020 while the current median freshness goal remains July 2022.

In the past 60 days I've gone from being 41 months behind my goal to 30 months behind. That's amazing progress, but there's still more work to do!

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What's up next on Crushing Comics?

April will be a much quieter month on CK than March. You'll still see regular bulletins from me with new comic guides and major updates, but this is the last post that will include six new guides 😅.

This month you'll see a final Guardians guide, a new Spider guide, and a guide related to Secret Invasion. Plus, I'll continue to update the final few X-Guides that aren't freshly revised.

(For newly-joined Krakoa fans, that means that I'll be updating the Patrons-only Sinister and Sabretooth guides to include collections of the Hellions and Sabretooth series, respectively!)

As always, I'm interested to know what YOU want to see next on CK. I know guides to GI Joe, Superman, and Doop are on your lists, as well as X-Men Reading Order updates. Whether the thing you want to see is big or small, brand new or an update, drop me a comment or DM to let me know.

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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 47 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 (27): Adam Warlock, Alpha Flight, Angela, Beta Ray Bill, Black Cat, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Drax the Destroyer, 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 (14): The Authority, Black Hammer, Brigade, Lumberjanes, Codename Strykeforce, Cyberforce, Pitt, Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess, Savage Dragon, ShadowHawk, Stormwatch, Supreme, WildCATs, WildStorm Events

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 78 Guides!

All of the 47 guides above, plus 31 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

Indie & Licensed Comics (2): Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - IDW Continuity, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Mirage Studios Continuity