Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

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The Best Ghost Rider Comics!

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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!

Asterix Reading Order!

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Every French person has heard these words at least once: “The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely… One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.”

Written at the beginning of every volume of the adventures of Asterix, these are some of the most well-known words in French comics — and French pop culture in general. They sum up an idea at the core of Asterix: the irrepressible resistance against oppression, something fundamental to a series that started publication barely 15 years after the end of World War II.

First published in 1959 in the French comics magazine, Pilote #1 , Asterix was created by writer René Goscinny and artist Albert Uderzo. Highly reliant on humor and wordplay, Asterix also lives and dies by Uderzo’s art style, which pushes the medium forward with its dynamism and expressiveness, taking the “big nose” style of the Marcinelle School and expanding upon it, strongly influencing the next generations of French and Belgian comic book artists.

So if you want to know more about the adventures of Asterix and Obelix, let’s talk about some Gaulish comics! [Read more…] about Asterix Reading Order!

The Infinity Crusade Omnibus Review!

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Infinity Crusade #1, written by Jim Starlin, art by Ron Lim, Al Milgrom, and Ian Laughlin, lettering by Jack Morelli

Infinity Crusade is the third installment of the Infinity series, which means that comic fans of the early ’90s had already had their wallets tried by two similarly themed events in short succession. Though it’s difficult to know how this series would have read if one were returning to the comic shop every week only to see all their favorite titles had been sucked into the event, in omnibus form, we’re allowed to read Infinity Crusade all the way through, uninterrupted, as a 1200-ish page complete story.

As someone who had only read the crossover in bits and pieces beforehand, I found that the story greatly benefits from the collection by saving its reader from having to run quite literally all across the Marvel Universe to find random, loosely-connected issues. What we’re left with is a crossover that delivers on all its promises by giving fans the high-impact moments they want, with no shortage of compelling character beats among its sprawling cast. [Read more…] about The Infinity Crusade Omnibus Review!

Best New Graphic Novel: The Department of Truth Vol. 1

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I’m sitting upright in bed, quietly crying, hoping my wife doesn’t notice.

For most of my adult life, I have 1 part joked, 3 parts bragged that I only cry when old wizards die (You know the ones), or when Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm are dramatically separated (Waid/Wieringo Fantastic Four or Hickman’s “Three”). In Junior High, the first date I ever went on was spent gulping a clearly empty giant-sized coke to stem back the tears of Gandalf’s apparent demise. She would go back to school and tell the cool 7th graders that the time was spent in all sorts of hot make out sessions, but I will remember that mostly I was trying to make out those rascally little Hobbits through the tears. Nonetheless, my reputation grows. My first conspiracy theory.

Here I am, nearly twenty years later, and the unassailable nerdiness of my stunted tearducts hasn’t changed much, but the content of The Department of Truth #3 is decidedly void of bearded magic makers. The comic by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds, Aditya Bidikar, and Steve Foxe continues one of the most captivating Image Comics premises in years with a dig inside the conspiracy universes of false flags and school shootings. In The Department of Truth, sufficient belief in a conspiracy can drive that fiction to manifest in reality, and the third issue focuses on a mother’s attempts to cope with the loss of her son in a school shooting. On the bottomless well of evil and inhuman agendas that insist her loss is a fiction. On the psychological and emotional trauma these conspiracies unleash. On the spiral of grief-stricken escape that could lead a woman to welcome this unreality over her own truth.

And while my wife is more than the ideal listener and confidant, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to explain myself. I just want to cry. [Read more…] about Best New Graphic Novel: The Department of Truth Vol. 1