A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans
Curated, edited, and sometimes co-written by comics legend Kurt Busiek, Marvels Snapshots is an engaging set of flashbacks that fill in some gaps in the greater story of the Marvel Universe. Featuring a series of covers by Busiek’s frequent collaborator Alex Ross, these stories feel like a step back into the duo’s early work in Marvels
With the Morbius film due to make its debut in early 2022, one assumes that more people than ever are looking back to the early days of our dear Michael M. to see what makes him tick. Though Morbius would later go on to have a more complex arc that would bring many nuances to his strange morality, his early days portrayed him as bloodthirsty and ravenous, destroyed by the experiments that were meant to save his life but instead saw him cursed to be—you guessed it—a LIVING VAMPIRE!
Following his premiere in Amazing Spider-Man #101, Morbius quickly grew in popularity via the pages of Marvel’s various horror titles, enjoying brief stints in anthology titles like Fear and Vampire Tales. For fans of the bizarre horror/sci-fi/superhero stories coming out from both Marvel and DC during the early 1970s, Morbius’s early appearances will scratch a very specific itch, while newer fans might find enjoyment in the camp factor of juxtaposing superhero hijinks with the tortured self-loathing of vampires. [Read more…] about Introducing Michael Morbius in the Morbius Omnibus
The Legion of Super-Heroes can be a bit of an acquired taste, and the dozens upon dozens of trades collecting their stories offer an abundance of choices that might not necessarily make it easier to break into the series. As with the characters of the Legion, the trades are many, and a lot of them don’t have a ton of depth. There is plenty of content, but it takes a while for the essential stuff to start happening, and that has been retconned and re-retconned to the end of time.
Legion of Super-Heroes: Before the Darkness (collecting Legion of Super-Heroes #260-271 and Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #1-3) is not essential, but it builds a bridge between the departure of Superboy and the pending Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen run that would go on to define the team for many readers. The fact is that in spite of and often because of its density, The Legion of Super-Heroes is almost always at least a little bit fun to read. Case in point: Before The Darkness begins with a fight at a space circus and ends with more than one assassination attempt under its belt. So buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride. [Read more…] about Legion of Super-Heroes: Before The Darkness
What If…? comics began all the way back in 1977, and the title has seen two long-running series as well as several one-shots and mini-series in the interim. Generally narrated by our comically useless friend Uatu the Watcher, these stories imagine what might have happened if key moments in the Marvel heroes’ lives had gone differently.
The wild world of What If…?
Ghost Rider has long been one of Marvel’s more offbeat properties, and that’s what makes it great. Who knew a loose analog of Evel Knievel with a flaming skull head and demonic powers that elevate him to the living embodiment of vengeance was going to stick around? Not me! Yet stick around he did, and our Ghost Rider has been hopping about the Marvel Universe and beyond for decades: a skull-head kind of guy doing skull-head kinds of things. [Read more…] about The Best Ghost Rider Comics!