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Guides to Miracleman & Howard the Duck (Early Access for Pledgeonauts & Up)
🕑 Added 2024-01-23 12:00:11 +0000 UTCHello, my patient Pledgeonauts! You've been incredible supporters of this campaign while I've knocked out a lot of guides for all supporters over the course of the past year, but in 2024 I want to get back to getting you some exclusives in exchange for chipping in $2 or more every month. Today, I've got a pair of guides that required two very different kinds of intense research on my part.
- NEW: Guide to Miracleman & Marvelman (Launch Essay)
- NEW: Guide to Howard the Duck (Launch Essay)
- Quick Updates for Patrons: Captain Britain, Magneto, Power Pack
Plus, powered-by-Patrons but available for all readers:
- New Releases: Marvel Comics - January 17, 2024
- Quick Updates: Avengers (1963-1996), Black Widow, Excalibur, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ms. Marvel - Kamala Khan, New Mutants & Young X-Men, Spider-Man - Peter Parker (1963-2018), Scarlet Witch, Thor the Odinson, X-Factor, X-Men - The Age of Krakoa, X-Treme X-Men
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I've been tinkering with the Guide to Miracleman for a long while now. I wasn't quite sure how to address how the Marvel era of the title begins as a reprint of a reprint, or how to explain the character in general as he transformed from a Captain Marvel knockoff to a cherished favorite of UK kids in the 1950s to Alan Moore's much-beloved superhero deconstruction to Neil Gaiman's lesser known superhero dissection.
It turned out I needed to read more of the issues, pick up the Epic Collection, and take a much deeper look at the title's publishing history at Quality Communications and Eclipse Comics to be able to explain it all.
I'm really happy with this guide, because for me it makes sense of the history of a character who truly defied explanation for me over the past 10 years, no matter how many thinkpieces I read on the topic. I hope it does the same for you! I really enjoy creating this style of guide that's more of an "explainer" - as I have for the Guide to Watchmen and for the Guide to X-Men - The Age of Krakoa (both with your support).
I finished the new guide just in time! Last Wednesday was the release of the last issue of Neil Gaiman & Mark Buckingham's "Silver Age" arc on the Miracleman - continued from the early 90s! And, if you have no idea what that means, this guide is for you.
Then, on Monday I launched a Guide to Howard the Duck! Howard is part of my march through a number of Marvel 1970s characters who still elude guide coverage, which also includes his buddy Man-Thing and several others in this month's Patron's Choice poll (have you voted?!).
Howard has been quite the king of cameos since the 90s, so this guide involved skimming a lot of digital issues to figure out if he had a significant role or just popped up on a TV screen or as a poster on the wall. I did the hard work so you'll never have to - the guide covers every one of his Marvel Comics appearances, big or small.
I also made my third Marvel New Releases post of the year, and also caught up every Marvel guide on every 2024 release solicited so far. That means I actually hit even more guides with quick updates than what I listed above, but those were the guides that received multiple new titles or a significantly revised section.
The biggest quick update was to Spider-Man - Peter Parker (1963-2018). While there are still an intimidating amount of formatting improvements to make to that guide before I'd consider it fully updated, it now is updated with FIVE YEARS of missing collections. That took an all-nighter, but it was well worth it.
(Quick Updates are only announced here on Patreon. They include current and future series and collected editions, but not and update to guest appearances or page structure- both of which I save for when I make full guide updates that are announced on the CK main page.)
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 have launched 37 Guides to you in the past 365 days - 15 Marvel, 2 DC, & 18 Indie! Plus, I've updated 118 of my 200+ guides.
I know I'm not supposed to launch two guides in one week. I should be saving them up like a squirrel with nuts for the winter. But, well... I just think once a guide is done you ought to benefit from it. Plus, I finished Miracleman on a Wednesday but I wanted to keep up my streak of new Monday guides, too. I'm odd like that, as I'm sure you've figured out by now.
I did manage to find some time for activities other than work this past week. The kid is now going on a full 5k bike ride up and down the intense hills of our neighborhood on her new young adult bike with me jogging to keep up. And, I completely caught up to present on my X-Men reading - including all of Fall of X! And I (mostly) really liked it! Ask me anything!
I'll be making two YouTube streaming appearances this week. One on Tuesday evening with my dear friend Omnidog to talk X-Men collected editions, and another on Thursday evening as a co-host on Near Mint Condition to argue over Marvel evergreen omnibuses
Since my last Patreon post the median guide freshness date remained January 2021 while the current median freshness goal remains May 2023. The break-out by publisher hasn't changed since last week. A reminder: Quick Updates no longer count toward my freshness goals. I need to do a real, substantive formatting update and clean-up if I want to improve a freshness date. (More on that, soon!)
- Marvel: median guide freshness is July 2021, median freshness goal is May 2023 (one very old X-Guide is dragging this down)
- DC: median guide freshness is still September 2018 (π±), median freshness goal is January 2023 (I'll be working on this in 2024, but Marvel comes first!)
- Image: median guide freshness is March 2023, median freshness goal is June 2023
- Indie/Licensed: median guide freshness is May 2017(π±), median freshness goal is July 2023 (all because of Star Wars guides, although I got a good start on them over the weekend)
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What's up next on Crushing Comics?
What do YOU want to see me work on next? Leave me a comment on this post on Patreon to let me know!
Here's what I have in mind:
- The Patron's Choice Poll wraps up this week, which will yield a February Guide.
- You'll be seeing another one or two indie guides coming up that are not already teased on the Crushing Comics indie home page
- It's finally time for that big DC guide, my first in a long while!
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Current Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 50 Guides!
DC Guides (7): Batman β Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Birds of Prey, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Omega Men
Marvel Guides (30): Alpha Flight, Angela, Beta Ray Bill, Black Cat, Blade, Captain Britain, Dazzler, Domino, Dracula, Echo, Elsa Bloodstone, Emma Frost - The White Queen, Heroes for Hire, Legion, Marvel 2099, Marvel Era: Marvel Legacy, Mister Sinister, Monica Rambeau - Photon, Rocket Raccoon, Sabretooth, Silk, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man 2099, Thunderstrike, Valkyrie, Vision, Weapon X, Werewolf by Night, What If?, X-Man β Nate Grey
Indie & Licensed Comics (13): Aliens, 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): 82 Guides!
All of the 50 guides above, plus 32 more guidesβ¦
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, Howard the Duck, Kang the Conqueror, Loki, Power Pack, Red She-Hulk, Sentry, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Venom
Indie & Licensed Comics (3): Miracleman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - IDW Continuity, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Mirage Studios Continuity
