After seeing the Iron Man movie, I kind of want to get back into the comics. I had some when I was a kid, but was more into the Punisher and my lame-ass G.I. Joe comics. I don’t remember any of the Iron Man storylines I read or anything like that, so I’m pretty much going in with the prior knowledge base that I gathered during the movie.
The Civil War series looks cool, but am I jumping in too late in the development of the characters if I start there?
100 views and no help? bump
Civil War sucked.
Try The Essential Avengers to get the history that (believe it or not) is still referenced pretty often. Then maybe the Avengers re-launch from 2005 and the Orson Scott Card Iron Man.
For Iron Man, you’ll want to look for Extremis, which redefined his powers and was the first arc of the current series. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but that’s probably the starting point. That’ll lead you into Execute Program and then into Civil War, which, yeah, is some pretty crappy stuff, but does set up the current, and kind of interesting, Iron Man: Director of Shield status quo. A new series, Invincible Iron Man, just started (issue 2 came out last week), which is closer to old school Iron Man super-heroics.
For Avengers, to get yourself up to speed on the current doings, you kinda have to start with Avengers: Disassembled, which leads into The New Avengers series. I believe there’s 7 volumes of New Avengers currently out. The current Secret Invasion storyline is an outgrowth of the early New Avengers storyline. Anything prior to Avengers Disassembled has almost no bearing on the current Avengers (which is a shame, but oh well).
That’ll get you to where you need to be when it comes to what’s going on right now. If you want recommendations for earlier storylines, let me know!
Thanks, guys. Awesome all-Valley-of-the-Sun thread we have going, too!
Depends if you want to catch up to where things are now or just have some good background reading.
If you want some background stuff in line with the movie feel/style, avoid Civil War like the plague. IMO that whole arc was a hacks job that tread, no scrap that, crapped all over years of established charactisations for some of Marvels biggest characters.
It was the travesty of Civil War, and One More Day(I think that was what the arc was called?) (over in Spidey) (Iron Man & Spidey being my favourite marvel characters) that has basically destroyed my interest in comics. I haven’t bought a comic in months now.
I would recommend trying to get hold of any of the “Essentials” volumes for both Iron Man and the Avengers for a good background.
I personally wasn’t fussed on the Extremis story line - it pumped Tony up to being superpowered in his right.
For Avengers, the relaunch around 2005 or so after the whole “heroes return deal” was really good, and I quite liked it up through Avengers Disassembled. After that though it all got caught up in the Civil War craptacular, and there was/is about 3-4 connected Avengers titles all running at the same time. So
I would say read it up to Avengers Disassembled and then drop it.
This is easy if you don’t mind reading off a computer screen. There are DVD’s that contain PDF’s of every single Avengers and Iron Man comics from GITcorp. If you get them then you can hop around a bit and skip over bad runs. The Avengers one goes up to just before Civil War IIRC while Iron Man is current up to about the start of this year.
I’m another one who has been unhappy with the current Avengers and Iron Man stuff (in fact Iron Man is a character I have rarely been able to enjoy except for in a handful of storylines). So I’d recommend avoiding New Avengers, The Mighty Avengers, and just about all of Iron Man; they’re poorly written attempts to be “realistic” (and they fail miserably in their attempts at “realism”).
The only two Iron Man trades that I’d recommend off the top of my head are Demon in a Bottle which is about Stark’s alcoholism and the recent Hypervelocity. Since Iron Man features a lot of tech it tends to grate on me when it’s done poorly but Hypervelocity worked for me because it was about post-human intelligences fighting on a scale that humans could only imagine.
As for Avengers it a very spotty history and there’s quite a bit that isn’t collected. First, I’d say just about everything up to Thomas’s run (starts about #55) stunk. I’m not a fan of Don Heck’s art which dominated the early days and the book felt like a dumping ground which might have been why Lee switched up the premise after a bit more than a year. It still took a long time to find its feet. If you’re looking for Essentials then I’d start with volume 4 which, IIRC, contains the first of the big Avengers story arcs: the Kree-Skrull war.
Then there’s a period up to around #140 when it was pretty good as Steve Englehart took over and they had one of the early big cross overs with the very entertaining Avengers-Defenders War. These are all collected in Essential volumes as well.
And then things run hot and cold every six months or so depending on who was there. George Perez had a nice run in there for a few months, for example, but for the most part things dropped in quality until Roger Stern took over around issue #220. He then had a five year run with the most notable storyline being the Assault on Avengers Mansion (collected as “Under Siege”).
After that things get about as ugly as they can for a long, long time. Then in the late 90’s (not 2005) Kurt Busiek and George Perez had a relaunch of the book that lead into my personal favorite set of issues. These are collected as Avengers Assemble and they have my favorite Ultron and Kang stories in there.
That’s the relaunch I was thinking of. How could I have thought it was 2005. :smack: I adored Busiek’s and Perez’s run on Avengers. Easily in the top 5 of my favourite arcs/runs in comics.
There was the Onslaught thing followed by Heroes Return in ~1998, and then the disassembled/New Avengers re-launch in ~2005. The Heroes Return was better, IMO.
There were also some really good (IMO) Avengers stories from the '80s like the Super Nova Saga and the Lava Men storyline.
Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle and Iron Man: Doomquest just came out in snazzy Premiere Hardcovers, and I’m a sucker for those…
I swear I posted yesterday to say Essential Avengers, but I guess the board ate it. (Mmmm, superheroes!) So I’ll second it.
Huge Iron Man fan here.
For early Iron Man stuff, you can’t really do better than…
Essential Iron Man vol. 1
Essential Iron Man vol. 2
Essential Iron Man vol. 3
That’ll take you from Iron Man’s first appearance through the late 60’s. First appearances of most of Tony’s important supporting cast, as well as the Mandarin, Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo, Spymaster, etc… Some fantastic artwork from Jack Kirby and Gene Colan. Not every story is a winner, but they’re all worth looking at for the price.
Aside from Stan & Jack, Iron Man’s most revered creative team is David Michelinie and Bob Layton. As others have noted, some of their best work is collected in a couple of new Marvel hardcovers:
Demon in a Bottle is more or less the definitive Iron Man storyline, and what will almost certainly be the basis of an upcoming Iron Man movie.
Doomquest is a collection of Iron Man vs. Dr. Doom stories. It’s actually the first two parts in a trilogy of stories that’s being completed right now; the third issue of the latest miniseries just came out on Wednesday.
The Iron Man movie was roughly based on Michelinie and Layons Armor Wars, which is another of the great Iron Man stories. Highly recommended.
As other posters have mentioned, Extremis is the starting point for the modern Iron Man series. From there, the trade paperbacks are easily numbered if you want to keep up with them.
I’m going to highly recommend a couple of modern Iron Man miniseries written by Joe Casey:
The Inevitable features gorgeous art by Frazier Irving, and a very smart, compelling story that revamps a few Iron Man adverseries. I think it’s the best Iron Man story in years, and can’t recommend it highly enough.
Enter the Mandarin is a retelling of Iron Man’s first meeting with his arch-enemy, the Mandarin. It has a cartoonier style than The Inevitable, and it’s not quite as good, but it’s still one of the best Iron Man stories in quite a while, and does a really nice job of highlighting just why the Mandarin is the perfect foe for Tony Stark.
Now, if you really wanted to go all-out, you could get The Complete Iron Man on DVD. Unfortunately, these DVDs were discontinued once Marvel began their online database of comics, and prices appear to have skyrocketed since the last time I looked.
Too bad, because the DVD is a great way to get some really nice Shellhead material that remains woefully unreprinted, like Kurt Busiek’s Heroes Return issues.
Cisco, wmulax93, out of curiosity, what’s your local comic shop of choice?
I’m going to agree with GreedySmurf–if you liked movie!Tony, don’t go with* Civil War*.
The stuff in Avengers, volume 3, issues 65-70 is great if you can find it. Iron Man #172 has the famous intervention scene, which is really well-done, and then Iron Man #182 has got a moving story (I won’t spoil it for you) that begins Tony’s redemption.
I’ll ask the boys at my local comic shop for more ideas.
Been pondering whether or not to ask you this for awhile, because just statistically, it’s fairly likely we shop at the same one.
I used to shop at the two Atomics in Phoenix but I’ve been loyal to All About for a couple years now.
I think wmulax93 lives in the east valley, so I’m guessing Chandler or Mesa Atomic.
What about you?
I’ve driven past Mesa Atomic, but haven’t been inside a comic shop since I was a teen. I mostly browse the comics whenever I’m at B&N.
I work at Central and Baseline, and have friends at 24th St and Thomas who I see frequently, so if you have a recommendation close to there, send it my way!
All About Books & Comics is on Central & Camelback. They have a huge inventory and really helpful staff. Tons of discount bundles and stuff like that.
The Phoenix Public Library (branches all over but main location on Central & McDowell) also carries comics, in case there are things you want to check out without any investment. You only have to live in Maricopa County - not necessarily Phoenix - for a card.
I’m up north - Stalking Moon at 59th and Greenway for me, but I stop in at the metro Atomic every couple of weeks or so. I used to go the All About at 43rd and Dunlap, but that closed years ago.
There’s also Samurai Comics at 7th St and Camelback for those central people. The owner there used to work for All About, if I remember correctly.
Ahh, that was my shop when I first moved here. I lived in those apartments on the SW corner of 59th and Greenway back in '03.
I’m actually north [east] of you. I just go down to All About because I like it there. I’ve tried on most of the shops in the valley and that one fits me the best. Huge inventory, friendly, super-knowledgeable staff, never full of smelly, Jones Soda-guzzling kids looking for rare Yu-Gi-Oh cards, etc :).
Yep. Mike, I believe. Samurai - like Stalking Moon, IIRC - doesn’t have much of a backlog. I don’t buy or read a ton of old stuff anymore but I like it to be there for when I get the itch.