Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

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Eternals: To Defy the Apocalypse

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The Eternals is easily one of Marvel’s most neglected properties, which is why when announcements for a film version of the comic began circulating, they were usually accompanied by comments like “who the heck are they?” Yet there’s no denying that many of the biggest names in the industry have worked on Eternals stories, from Jack Kirby all the way to Neil Gaiman and beyond. In fact, Kirby created the Eternals after his Fourth World properties were prematurely canceled due to poor sales, which left countless unresolved plotlines for future writers to go wild with. Sadly, this formula was repeated almost to the letter with the likewise canceled Eternals, but, as with Fourth World, the legacy continues on. [Read more…] about Eternals: To Defy the Apocalypse

Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra Reading Order!

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Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the adventures of Avatars Aang and Korra were told in two amazing animated shows. And in 2020, when the world needed them most, they arrived on Netflix and became more popular than ever.

However, rare is the fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra who has followed the story’s official continuation at Dark Horse. And who could blame them? Both television series have clear, satisfying endings that don’t demand being revisited in a new, different form (looking at you, live-action remake). So what could comic books possibly have to add that the two shows didn’t already do during their run on television? [Read more…] about Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra Reading Order!

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!