Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Luka Nieto Garay

Omnibussin: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Mapping

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Doctor Strange (1974) #4’s iconic cover by Frank Brunner.

Whether you enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe or not, in one respect at least it has turned out to be of indisputable benefit to comic readers: if a character’s showing up in a movie, you can bet your bottom dollar Marvel Comics is gonna give them a title even if they haven’t had a regular one since 1983 (as was the case with Shang-Chi). And Marvel’s collections arm is also gonna devote the entire year their movie comes out to cranking out new or reprinted collections of their old material. Now, that’s the kind of comics-to-movies-back-to-comics synergy I can get behind! Thankfully, that was the case with one of my favorite characters in this universe: the top wizard; the chief magicman; the Sorcerer Supreme himself, Doctor Stephen Strange (M.D.). [Read more…] about Omnibussin: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Mapping

Omnibussin: Mapping The Next X-Men Omnibus (Vol. 5)

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Mapping Next X-Men Omnibus Feature Image Trial of Magneto Uncanny X-Men 200

As an omnibus collector (and as someone with a bit of an obsessive streak, but let’s ignore that for now), there are few things more frustrating than a conspicuous gap between volumes of a collected line of comics. This is particularly vexing when it’s a matter of “orphaned” issues; that is, stories that were missed between existing compilations, which means they’ll likely never be collected in this oversized hardcover format. Other times, it’s just a matter of a line that’s yet to be finished, which isn’t so bad if one is patient. Unfortunately, “one” —that’s me— isn’t patient (see aforementioned “obsessive streak”), so I decided to inaugurate this column about mapping hypothetical omnibus volumes with The Big One: the next Uncanny X-Men omnibus… which I wouldn’t title Uncanny X-Men Vol. 5, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 4 was released in 2021, taking us up to Uncanny X-Men #193 in the middle of Chris Claremont’s excellent run with John Romita Jr. This was, for me, when it became clear Claremont’s long run was something truly special: Rachel Summers; the Morlocks; Rogue; Selene and the Hellfire Club; and much more. This numbered volume almost took the X-Men from the Bronze Age to the first Dark Age self-titled collection in the line: X-Men: Mutant Massacre, which kicks off with Uncanny X-Men #210. There is, however, a gap to bridge between these two eras. [Read more…] about Omnibussin: Mapping The Next X-Men Omnibus (Vol. 5)

What’s Going On with Marvel’s Avengers Continuity?

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A Hypothetical Case Study of How Not to Handle Continuity

Let’s say you’re writing a largely self-contained ongoing comic book title within a much larger shared universe. Let’s call your book… Sergeant USA! During most of your long-running story, Sarge’s lost his superhero identity and his place in the… Revengers. How do you mesh that with the universe’s continuity? Cleverly, at the start of your run you don’t allude to anything else going on in this comic universe, so that you can go on with your long-running story for as long as you like, and when you DO have to link back to the universe’s continuity you get to choose when all of it fits, start to finish. You can have your thirty-part, two-and-a-half years-running self-contained story while justifying Sarge’s absence from the Revengers in-between any two Revengers issues of your choosing, in retrospect. Damn you’re clever!

And then someone else comes along and messes with your simple but genius plan.

*Some spoilers for Sarge… Captain America and Avengers follow*

[Read more…] about What’s Going On with Marvel’s Avengers Continuity?

Pietro Maximoff: The Twin I Hate to Love and Love to Hate

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*Some WandaVision discussion & possible spoilers through episode six follows!*

Most people’s only exposure to Pietro Maximoff, better known as the speedster Quicksilver and brother to the Scarlet Witch, is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s depiction in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and of course the much quirkier (and popular) “Peter” version from FOX’s later X-Men films. In fact, X-Men actor Evan Peters can now be seen now on Disney+’s WandaVision playing a warped version of the MCU’s Maximoff twin, somehow (what’s up with that, anyway?). These portrayals of Pietro have very little in common with each other, and yet they’re all miles apart from the original comic book character that inspired them. And isn’t that fascinating? Whatever changes the MCU makes in the characters’ origins, they usually maintain the personalities of major characters relatively intact in the process of adaptation. Why didn’t they with Pietro?

So. Let’s talk about Pietro Maximoff. That slippery bastard. [Read more…] about Pietro Maximoff: The Twin I Hate to Love and Love to Hate

The Great Pretenders: The Complications of Wanda’s Marvel Continuity!

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In the Marvel Universe, everything is supposed to be “canon” – everything that’s happened did happen and is supposed to count. And yet — and yet — some events have much more staying power than others, as if their gravitational pull on the fabric of the Marvel Universe cancelled out or diminished the effects of any later story that was supposed to amend their course. Brian Michael Bendis’s “Avengers: Disassembled” and “House of M” are such stories for Wanda Maximoff, whose blame for those events has never been absolved despite many attempts.

But before we get to that, let’s travel back to 1989: In John Byrne’s West Coast Avengers, the twin children of Wanda and Vision were revealed to have been purely magical creations of Wanda, brought to life with pieces of Mephisto’s soul yet maintained in existence solely by Wanda’s will — so much so that, whenever Wanda wasn’t thinking about them, they vanished from reality. (Incidentally, this happened just after Scarlet Witch had essentially lost her husband Vision, who’d been disassembled by the AI-fearful governments of the world and reassembled into an unfeeling machine.)

At the end of this sad turn of events, Mephisto gets his soul fragments back and little Tommy and Billy cease to exist. Wanda’s trauma is such that Agatha Harkness, her mentor in witchcraft, decides to erase all knowledge of the boys from her mind. Even at the time, it’s clear this is probably not the best idea this old Salem witch ever had. [Read more…] about The Great Pretenders: The Complications of Wanda’s Marvel Continuity!