Guides to Spider-Man 2099 & Marvel 2099 (Early Access for ALL Patrons!) (Patreon)

Hello, my faithful Patrons! I've spent the past few weeks updating many CK guides, which means I have a big update for you today:

NEW: Guide to Spider-Man 2099 (Launch Essay)

NEW: Guide to Marvel 2099

Updated for Patrons: Silk [now available to all Patrons!]

Quick Updates for Patrons: Loki, Magneto, Spider-Gwen - Ghost-Spider, Venom

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

Quick Updates: Black Panther, Black Widow, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Hulk - Bruce Banner, Moon Knight, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk - Jennifer Walters, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man - Peter Parker (2018-Present), Star Wars: Expanded Universe Comics, Wolverine - Logan, X-Men - The Age of Krakoa

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If you watch the CK home page with an eagle eye, you'll know these 2099 guides have been available for a few months - but, they were originally available only to Pledgeonauts and up. Today I've made them available to everyone.

I originally had plans for a major Spider-Guide push in May, and even before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was out I had a suspicion that Spider-Man 2099 would be one of the break-out stars of the movie. Plus, Miguel has spent a fair amount of time in the present-day of Marvel-616, so making a guide for him filled in a big gap in my coverage of Marvel Now and All-New All-Different Marvel.

Of course, I can never leave well enough alone, so along with a new Guide to Spider-Man 2099, I also made a Guide to Marvel 2099 along with it! Having a Marvel 2099 guide has been on my wishlist for almost a decade - it's one of the few big sub-lines of Marvel continuity I've never ventured into before.

(The other two Marvel lines I'd love to dig into? Marvel UK and Malibu Ultraverse. I own every issue of Marvel UK, and I fear if I decided to work on an Ultraverse guide I'd be tempted to try to achieve the same feat - which would be a bit tricky from here in NZ!)

To help get me back on track with guide updates, I spent last week making many "Quick Updates" to popular guides. Quick Updates are only announced here on Patreon. They include updating collected editions and listing new series, but not updating guest appearances - which I save for a full guide update announced on the CK main page.

(In particular, Guide to Black Widow was the least fresh guide out of all of my 200+ guides. Now it's caught up on all of her many collections from the past five years.)

Along the way, I quick-updated a few Patron-exclusive guides while they are still exclusive rather than waiting for their public release to make one update.

I also made a full update to the Patrons-only Guide to Silk and made it available to all Patrons. Silk is one of my favorite Spider-People and I realized I'm more than a year behind on reading her comics, which is what spurred me into action on her guide! Beyond adding new collections, I improved her existing reading order and added recent guest appearances.

All of that, plus I returned to making my monthly appearance on Near Mint Condition's YouTube channel to discuss Marvel's December collected edition solicits!

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

Things are okay here in New Zealand, and at this point I'll take "okay"!

I appreciate everyone who sent me a message or comment checking in over the past four months of CK and Patreon silence. Even though I didn't have time to work on CK, I still made regular appearances on Twitter and with Omar on Near Mint Condition to provide proof of life.

I'm writing you this post on the one year anniversary of receiving some of the worst personal news of my life, which was followed by several awful months in my professional life. I wish I could say 2023 has been a breeze compared to that! Unfortunately, as I'm sure is true for many folks reading this, things didn't get much easier this year.

Heck, on top of the personal and professional challenges, the last time I wrote to you CK was enduring a sustain Denial of Service Attack! Luckily, that seems to be finally under control.

Even if things aren't easier right now, I don't think they're quite as bad as they were a year ago. At the very least, I'm happy to be back to working on guides to continue to update, modernize, and expand CK for all of you and for the general public.

Two weeks ago CK, celebrated its 23rd anniversary - which means Crushing Comics had its 13th birthday. The site would have never made it past its 18th birthday without your support. That's a whole half-decade of extra life thanks to Patreon. I cannot possibly express my appreciation for that in words, so I guess I'll just keep making more comic guides.

I have launched 31 Guides to you in the past 365 days - 12 Marvel, 1 DC, & 18 Indie! Plus, I've also updated 89 of my 207 guides.

Since my last Patreon post the median guide freshness date improved from June 2020 to October 2020 (4 months) while the current median freshness goal is January 2023.

That means I still have a lot more updating to do to catch up! Some of that will come from updating my original DC Guides launched early on in this Patreon campaign, which are now my oldest guides without updates.

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What's up next on Crushing Comics?

I didn't want to risk sending a single update and then stalling out, so I already have the next week of guide work complete and ready for final review!

Your next guide will be a DC team guide for all Patrons. The guide supports a new comic I was excited to read. That will be followed by a Marvel Guide for a hero who is long overdue for her own spotlight.

Also, I've finally gotten started with one of the biggest Patron requests of all time - but, that won't arrive until a few months from now, if all goes well.

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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 44 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): 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 2099, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Rocket Raccoon, Sabretooth, Silk, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man 2099, Thunderstrike, Valkyrie, Vision, Weapon X, X-Man – Nate Grey

Indie & Licensed Comics (12): The Authority, Black Hammer, Brigade, Codename Strykeforce, Cyberforce, Pitt, Princeless & Raven The Pirate Princess, Savage Dragon, ShadowHawk, Stormwatch, Supreme, WildStorm Events

Current Exclusives For Pledgeonauts ($1.99+/month): 74 Guides!

All of the 44 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 (12): Darkhawk, Falcon, Gwenpool, Hellcat - Patsy Walker, Kang the Conqueror, Loki, Power Pack, Red She-Hulk, Sentry, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom

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