I Heart Skull-Crusher! #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeI Heart Skull-Crusher! #5 (July 17, 2024) serves as the finale of the opening arc of what began as a five-issue miniseries under BOOM! Studios' BOOM! Box imprint — a YA-targeted, queer-centered sports-action story that deliberately blended shōnen manga energy with post-apocalyptic world-building in a way rarely attempted in American comics aimed at that age group. The issue closes Trini's first Screaming Pain Ball tournament with a structurally bittersweet twist: victory arrives at the cost of team unity, a resolution that rejects the clean triumph common to the genre and instead interrogates the systems that exploit athletes. That narrative gamble, combined with the series' audience response, prompted BOOM! Studios to publicly convert the planned miniseries into a continuing ongoing title, making #5 retroactively the hinge point between a closed story and an expanding universe. As the concluding chapter of an arc that writer Josie Campbell described as a deeply personal work — her self-described 'love letter' to her younger queer self — the issue also carries cultural weight as part of a short list of mainstream comics that center a queer teenage girl protagonist in genre-action storytelling without framing her identity as the conflict.
Find on ebay
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was conceived by writer Josie Campbell — whose prior credits span DC's Amazons Attack event and head-writer duties on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power — as her first wholly original comics creation, one she stated she had been developing for years before finding the right collaborator. Campbell partnered with Turin-based artist Alessio Zonno, a graduate and current instructor at the International School of Comics whose earlier European sports-comics work (including Frères de Foot for Soleil) made him a natural fit for the kinetic athletic sequences the story required. Editor Dafna Pleban shepherded the original miniseries at BOOM! Box, with Elizabeth Brei joining as co-editor and serving as the editorial lead on the ongoing continuation announced during the Road to San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024 — the same week issue #5 reached stands. The creative team, rounded out by colorist Angel De Santiago and letterer Jim Campbell, remained intact from issue #1 through the ongoing, providing unusual continuity of voice across the transition from limited series to open-ended run.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Released July 17, 2024, by BOOM! Studios under the BOOM! Box imprint; written by Josie Campbell, art by Alessio Zonno, colors by Angel De Santiago, letters by Jim Campbell.
- Serves as the conclusion of the first five-issue story arc, in which protagonist Trini Wastelander and her misfit team compete in Queen Mob's Screaming Pain Ball tournament in a post-apocalyptic America.
- The issue's ending reveals that winning the tournament splits the team apart rather than unifying them — Queen Mob restructures the reward so former teammates must compete against one another in new arrangements, setting up the ongoing series' second arc.
- Issue #5 carries cover variants by series artist Alessio Zonno (main cover and a 1:10 virgin incentive variant) and a variant cover by Toni Infante (known for We Only Find Them When They're Dead).
- BOOM! Studios announced the series' conversion from miniseries to ongoing on July 3, 2024 — two weeks before #5 shipped — as part of their annual 'Road to SDCC' slate, with issue #6 launching in October 2024.
- The complete five-issue arc (issues #1–5) was collected in a trade paperback released in comic shops December 25, 2024, and in general bookstores December 31, 2024.
- The series was conceived with intentionally queer characters and anime-influenced aesthetics; Campbell cited shōnen titles and the 'effortlessly gay' sensibility of She-Ra as explicit reference points, and publicly described the story as a personal love letter to her own experience as a young bisexual teenager.
- Earlier issues in the run — #1 and #2 — both required second printings after selling out at the distributor level, establishing strong market momentum heading into the finale.
Full credits
Variants (4)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.