Explain comics (Marvel, DC etc.) and how to read them

For some time I’ve wanted to read some comics (of the Marvel/DC variety), but have no idea how to go about it or even what to look for.

I’ve always liked Spider-Man, so that seems a good place to start, although I’d also be tempted by Batman or Iron Man. The problem is that, if we take Spider-Man, for example, the list of titles is quite confusing. He, like many others, seems to first appear in some kind of anthology rather than his own title. Then there are many different titles. What’s the difference between “The Mediocre Spider-Man” and “The Tolerable Spider-Man”? Do superheroes keep rebooting? Is it possible to get reprints of old stories? You’d think there would be a lot of hardback collections so people can go back and read some “original versions”. Is the idea of “originals” itself misplaced with characters like Spider-Man?

I’m interested in both relevant knowledge and advice, recommendations or even debates on the subject.

More often than I’d like. Some sort of reboot seems to be done roughly every 10 to 20 years, allegedly to clear out the old baggage so new readers won’t get confused. But it usually makes things even more confusing than before.

It sure is. Marvel has the Masterworksseries (hardcovers, in color) and the cheaper Essentials(paperback, B&W) that reprint the early stories. DC’s equivalents are the Archivesseries and the Showcase Presents series, respectively.

It can be a little tricky these days. Marvel and DC both have alternate timelines to deal with, particularly DC.

If you’re just getting on board, avoid Marvel titles that include the word “Ultimate”. These are all set in a separate universe from the mainstream universe. Likewise the various Marvel Zombies titles.

DC, on the other hand, has had several re-boots to its universe over the years. First was the start of the Silver Age back in, I believe, the 50s. The Golden Age stories were still canon, but they were all shunted off to Earth 2. Then in the 80s, there was the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which combined all the major alternate Earths into one single earth, and everyone’s past was retconned to make them more current and to allow for their co-existence. Over the next few decades, there were a couple more minor reboots, and most recently there was Infinite Crisis, followed closely by Flashpoint, which rebooted everything again. The multiverse has returned, but not so that you’d notice.

The upside is that, since everything in DC is new again there aren’t any storylines that are all that long or on-going; a year or so at most. Some past histories are still in place, but anything pertinent to the storyline will probably have some exposition behind it to get new readers up to speed.

Meanwhile Marvel simply ignores that its characters should be much older than they are. Yes, Spider-Man first slung his web in 1962 at the age of 15, but he’s only in his early 30s, not pushing 80 like he should be. No explanation, it just is.

For any comic book, in my experience, there’s a few pillars of mythology that seem to define the character and everything else is basically just other writers composing love letters to their favorite story-lines.

Spider-Man, for example, has a few central arcs that get referenced over and over again: The Death of Gwen Stacy, Son of the Goblin, Kraven’s Last Hunt, The Death of Jean Dewolff, etc. Once you get the basics, it’s pretty easy to see the broad strokes, since it’s the intention of the comic book industry, while telling a serial story, to keep it relatively self contained so that new readers can jump in at any point.

I’d recommend the Ultimate Spider-Man run that started back in 2000 or 2001 with Brian Michael Bendis writing. It’s a complete reboot that’s well written, introduces all of the main Spider-man villains and supporting characters in creative ways and it has a definite ending.

BTW, there are a couple good wikis for Marvel and DC. Both will tell you most of the important facts relevant to any character or event that you may run into during your reading.

http://marvel.wikia.com/Main_Page

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

The best way is to choose a well-written title that isn’t tangled up with storylines in other titles. You can go to your local comic shop and ask the Comic Book Guys who will be there for suggestions. They will quizz you as to what you like and dislike, and give you quite a few suggestions. Probably, they will suggest an indie comic line; they won’t be bothered if you stick to your guns and want DC or Marvel only.

They will probably be able to tell you when a comic is at a good jumping-on point. Or they’ll have the backissues since the last jumping-on point they can sell you. Buy a few issues they recommend, and see how you like them.

Alternatively, ask some Comic Book Guys to recommend trade paperbacks (which collect multiple issues of a single story arc). You can read entire story arcs at a single setting, which is much easier to pick up on.

Once you have found a comic book that you like, you’ll naturally spead out into related titles. Both DC and Marvel run frequent cross-overs between books to encourage this. And as writers & artists move books, you may follow.

The (many) different Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman books each follow their own storyline. So the storyline in the Amazing Spider-Man is (mostly) contained to its own book, so you don’t need to read the umpteen other Spider-Man books. However, events in other books have a way of effecting events in related books – and crossovers are much more frequent between the same family of books. There is usually a “flagship” book for that character, and often one of the books will be relatively isolated in terms of fewer crossovers with related books. If you’re interested in one of those, best to ask someone at the comic book store. Believe me, they’ll know and only be too happy to tell you more than you really need to know.

Yes. Marvel and DC (and most other) put them out - trade paperbacks, chronological collections, omnibus collections, single (or double) issue reprints - all the damn time.

There are, but the collections are mostly paperbacks (the hardcovers are generally VERY expensive omnibuses, some of which can cost hundreds of dollars, or short runs/specific stories). Marvel’s Essentials line is black and white reprints of ~3 years worth of a title per volume. There are about 22 Essentials volumes of the various Spider-Man titles which had run up to the mid-80s. If you want colour, you’ll be forking out more for the Masterworks editions. (DC’s equivalent lines are Showcase Presents and Archive Editions.)

Of course, with characters who’ve been around for 50-80 years (as most of the big superheroes have), you don’t necessarily want to try to read them all, in order…because there’s so very much of it, and the timbre changes between the Golden Age, the interregnum, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the modern age (and even within them).

As to the multiple titles, there’s several reasons that happens.

The most common is that the really big characters - Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men - will usually carry more than one title at a time (not always with their names in the title - Superman always headlines Action Comics, even when it’s an anthology, and Detective has been a Batman solo for decades) - usually 2 or 3, but Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man have all gotten to 4, and Batman currently has 5 (though one’s a limited series, and another’s ending soon). In cases where the extra titles aren’t in alternate universes (like the Ultimate line, Marvel Adventures, one of DC’s cartoon-based comic books, etc), the books are usually more or less independent, but sometimes they’re tightly plotted, essentially becoming a single title that happened to come out multiple times a month. When the latter is the case, collections will follow the storyline, not the originating title, and the individual issues will be marked with the reading order. (Usually.)

Sometimes the companies change the title of an ongoing series for various reasons, such as a change in direction, adding a secondary star, the backmatter taking over, etc. (Marvel has done this more than DC.)

Sometimes a title is cancelled, then immediately restarted, sometimes with a new title, to get a new #1 issue. (USUALLY this is a good jumping on point, but it’s not always a reboot of the character.)

Sometimes it’s a case of a new character with the same name (as was the case with The Superior Spider-Man), but usually, that’ll just involve a renumbering, rather than a new sub-/super-title.

Now is probably a good time to get into Spider-Man, as the Superior Spider-Man (which was a big change to the status quo) has just ended. I can’t really tell you anything beyond that.

Go to your local library and peruse the section dedicated to graphic novels and comic collections.

One more thing to mention, then I’ll shut up. Probably.

The nature of a long running publication is that it’s always trying to attract new readers, not scare them off. The reality is that you can just about jump in any title at any point and learn everything you need to know to enjoy it within a couple issues at most. There’s really nothing to worry about.

Thanks for all your replies. I see there’s some conflicting advice on Ultimate Spider-Man, but I think I’ll just see what I find (that looks worth the money) and go from there. I used to enjoy various cartoons and am shamelessly into all the Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff, Spider-Man films, etc. but I’d like to experience some of the stories and characters in something closer to their original forms. I mean, if I had only seen the film The Amazing Spider-Man I would be under the impression that Peter Parker was bitten by some kind of GM spider. I would hate to get something like that wrong!

Some time ago I was given a Spider-Man comic, which at the time I thought was a reprint of the first one, as it was an origin story. Perhaps it was Amazing Fantasy #15, but I don’t remember its title. As I remember it, it was quite short and began with someone, perhaps Flash, speculating that Peter Parker doesn’t know a waltz from a cha-cha. He was bitten by the traditional radioactive spider, which I believe was irradiated by a laser or something like that. I vaguely recall some sort of narration-in-a-box about the dying spider biting Peter Parker. After he got super powers, I think Peter Parker did the wrestler thing, got disgruntled and let a robber go who, of course, killed Uncle Ben. I think it might have ended at around that point, with the “With great power comes great responsibility” line. However, there’s a chance I’m mixing up various Spider-Man-related memories here.

Any idea what I read?

I’d be interested in some advice too. Here’s my situation…

I live in a small country town, so there’s no comic shop. However there’s no problem getting orders through Amazon.

I read some Fantastic Four comics in the 70’s (why yes, I am getting on a bit :wink: ) and enjoyed them.

I’ve liked the (Jessica Alba) Fantastic Four films, the (Tobey Maguire) Spiderman trilogy and most of the films leading up to (and including) Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’.

I relish dialogue like ‘with great power comes great responsibility’

I’d prefere to focus on one Superhero or Superhero team to start with.

Thanks in advance!

If you’re looking to get into comics, you should check out some digital distributors. I get almost all of my comics these days through Comixology.com. It’s particularly great if you have a tablet. Very easy to pick up individual issues, even ones that are years old, and may not have been collected yet in a trade paperback. You can check out page previews before you buy, browse by genre, publisher, writer, or artist, and see reviews from other readers. Possibly the best feature, though, especially if you’re getting into Marvel or DC comics, is that at the end of each issue, there’s a link to the next comic in the story, which isn’t always in the same title when they’re doing big crossover events. Plus, environment friendly, and it doesn’t eat up space on your bookshelf! There is the slight concern that, if the company goes belly up, you’ll lose your entire comic collection - but they just got bought out by Amazon, so they should be pretty safe for the foreseeable future.

They currently have a sale going on Marvel collections right now, so it’s a good time to check it out.

Interesting, thanks Miller. Unfortunately, I don’t have a tablet, but I’ll see how readable digital versions are on my computer (a “landscape” screen probably isn’t ideal).

ETA: On the subject of comics, I’m really going to have to read Buffy Season 8 soon. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that, too.

This is what I do now. I filled up my tablet with comics before I realized that they’re all “in the cloud.”

Unless someone is holding a gun to your head, no you don’t.

It’s a stake, actually.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. :wink:

Although there is one sub-arc I really liked, I’ll admit.

The problem is that comic books are ongoing works of fiction. You can’t put the characters in a realistic timeline.

Peter Parker, for example, was a teenager who got bitten by a spider and turned into Spider-Man. But that originally happened back in 1962. In a realistic setting, Parker was a baby boomer and he’d be approaching his seventieth birthday in current issues. But if you read a current issue, you’ll see that Parker is portrayed as a man in his mid-twenties, who’s been Spider-Man for about ten years. And if you went back and read an issue from 2004, you’d see Parker being portrayed as a man in his mid-twenties, who’s been Spider-Man for about ten years. It’s not an official reboot - more like past events just sort of fading into a moving history.

Marvel Time