A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
At last! We return to the HOX 4 data page, which, relative to the series’ other data pages, comes across as the least objective piece of interstitial documentation in the series—although not because the tallies of mutant dead and who’s responsible are wrong.
Grayson is a comic that, by all rights, should not have worked. It’s a follow up to a Grant Morrison concept done by people who aren’t Grant Morrison. A spin-off of a Geoff Johns comic. The first comic by a co-writer whose sole writing credits prior to this are a short story and a middling novel (who only got the gig because he’s ex-CIA), another co-writer whose superhero work has (largely) been more supportive of other visions than expressing his own, and an artist whose work has mostly been on covers rather than interiors. Worst of all, it has a central premise that is, to be quite blunt, a bit trite and obvious, especially in the context of the New 52. Yet another spy comic released by DC about some nebulous organization out to do dirty deeds while the superheroes look clean. SHADE, Blackhawks, ARGUS, and now Spyral. These are not the elements of a successful comic. And yet, Grayson
Get on your pleather pants and floral print tops, losers, we’re going back to 1996. Mainstream comics were undergoing a strange, tumultuous time in the aftermath of the creator-owned explosion of Image Comics. Trying to stay on top of the sales charts had led to some pretty cringeworthy stunts, and frankly, what’s one more among friends? The X-Men’s long-building threat, Onslaught, had just seen most of the publisher’s non-mutant hero populace transported to a pocket dimension created by Franklin, the occasionally terrifying child of Sue and Reed Richards. In this world, many stories that had once taken years to build and deliver were smooshed into a much smaller number of issues. After a quick introduction, plots were completely derailed, and within about a year, we were back to the 616 with a general “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” attitude about the whole event.
Heroes Reborn: Avengers undergoes at least three major creative lineup changes in twelve issues, which may give you a decent idea of how disjointed and weird this series is, even when completely divorced from the greater Heroes Reborn context. It might also go without saying that this series, which barely manages to eek out a single coherent plotline over the course of a year, doesn’t age great, but it still somehow isn’t the worst thing printed in 1996 (here’s looking at you, Amalgam Universe). [Read more…] about Heroes Reborn: Avengers (1996) Retrospective!
With Infinite Frontier in full swing, there is a new era at DC Comics, and no group of comics has seen its benefits more than the Batman line of stories. Each book has taken characters we’ve always loved in bold directions and put them in new places. From Nightwing’s new sister in Nightwing #81
Infinite Frontier has challenged the way Bat-Family stories work together. New 52 and Rebirth were periods that captured how Batman used to be. Both eras tried out variations on what had been done before. Characters maintained (or slowly returned to) the status quo without much character growth to show for it. For example, the most significant thing to happen to Bruce in his last story was that he still didn’t marry Catwoman. Fundamentally, the Gotham at the beginning of New 52 is the same Gotham that exists throughout Rebirth. Similarly, the Bat-Family failed to expand or change in any noticeable way, with the only major additions being Duke Thomas and Harper Row, two characters who only appear once in a blue moon. Compare that lack of expansion to Infinite Frontier, where the Bat-Family has already added Ghostmaker, Clownhunter, and the Gardener to the list of “heroic” characters. [Read more…] about Batman’s Infinite Frontier: The Bold New World of Gotham
Years ago, in 2018’s Venom #1, Eddie Brock was told “God was coming” for him. He — we — took the threat seriously. Here was the promise that an all-consuming threat, a unifying evil for all of Symbiote-kind and for the numerous heroes that had crossed paths with it, was coming with ramifications. Ramifications for one of Marvel’s most storied and beloved characters. Knull, one-dimensional as he is, was meant to be a catalyst for change in Eddie Brock’s life.
In many ways here in 2021, having introduced a new god, a secret history of the Symbiotes, and a son now poised to take the mantle of Venom, it’s fair to say that over the course of the 35 issues of the main title (not to mention numerous events, tie-ins, and spinoffs), Eddie’s life was changed. The problem is that by the end of the run– one of the longest in the character’s history — Eddie never became a man capable of accepting that change as his own.
Why? Because while Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman successfully reinvented the Symbiote, they failed to make a case for Eddie both inside of or outside of it. In fact, here at the end of all things, potentially Eddie’s own life, it is a series that is, as a whole, characterized by his reactions to things, rather than by actions. By growth in scale, but not by growth in impact. Successes and failures that are in direct opposition to each other, and ones that really only make sense with further investigation and interrogation.
