Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Spider-Man

Silk (Cindy Moon) Reading Order!

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Cindy Moon (aka “Silk”) first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (2014). Created by Dan Slott and Huberto Ramos, this Korean-American journalist is one of three members of the Spider-Women; she’s been a member of both the Protectors and Agents of Atlas; and is a co-founder of The Order of the Web.

In her recent appearances, Silk has really come into her own as a superhero by stepping out of Peter Parker’s shadow and learning to open up to others after ten years of isolation resulted in her developing anxiety and her family going missing.

Not only has Cindy Moon reunited with her family and saved the multiverse. All while finding time to  but she has also been:

  • An Agent of Atlas
  • A Protector
  • A co-founding member of The Order of The Web
  • In three solo series…
  • …And more than a few team-ups

Silk has woven her own excellent web of stories. Since it was recently announced that a Silk live-action television series is currently in development, Silk’s future seems very bright. [Read more…] about Silk (Cindy Moon) Reading Order!

Big Brawls and Brooding Babes in Acts of Vengeance: Spider-Man & The X-Men

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Web of Spider-Man #61, written by Gerry Conway, art by Alex Saviuk, Keith Williams, and Bob Sharen, lettering by Rick Parker

The early ’90s were a wild time for comics, and it’s no exaggeration to say that seismic shake-ups were happening all across the medium. Nowhere was that more true than at Marvel, where creative teams of many years were being ousted in favor of new directions brought in by “fresh new artists” like Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd MacFarlane, and a handful of others. Stylism over substance took the industry by storm, and the effects of that, both positive and negative, are still felt to this day.

Amid the changing creative teams and the industry-wide trends that would ultimately define the era, there is Marvel’s Acts of Vengeance crossover. A core group of elite supervillains including William Fisk, Magneto, the Red Skull, and the Wizard (among others) recruited dozens of villains to attack different superheroes than they normally would under the premise that fighting slightly changing up the heroes’ rogue galleries would leave them permanently defeated. This… didn’t… work, mostly because there was zero strategy behind it. This razor-thin plot is typical of the time period: highly disjointed, and still completely badass, because it allowed months of page space dedicated to big, pointless brawls that didn’t really have to adhere to any kind of a coherent overarching plot outside of the ongoing stories within each individual book.

Collects: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) #326-329, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN (1976) #158-160, WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (1985) #59-61 and #64-65, WOLVERINE (1988) #19-20, ALPHA FLIGHT (1983) #79-80, NEW MUTANTS (1983) #86, UNCANNY X-MEN (1981) #256-258 and material from X-FACTOR (1986) #50 [Read more…] about Big Brawls and Brooding Babes in Acts of Vengeance: Spider-Man & The X-Men

The Best Spider-Man (Peter Parker) Comics of All Time!

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With almost sixty years of publication history, comicdom’s friendliest of Friendly Neighborhood heroes has seen a staggering range of stories and interpretations—not all of them compatible. Indeed, Peter Parker has inspired some of the greatest superhero comics ever—and some of the absolute worst. There’s just so much content in Peter’s world that it can be difficult to know where to start.

But if I were to imagine a reader completely new to the Spider-Man of Marvel’s mainline universe, Earth-616, the ten story arcs and creator-run highlights listed below would be a most excellent entrée for beginners. Because there’s so much material to draw from, my criterion for this list is finding those moments where satisfying, entertaining storytelling endures not just on its own merits but through continued relevance to Spidey’s contemporary world and mythos.

And if you’re keeping up with Nick Spencer’s current Amazing run, you know that he’s been mining deep into seemingly all of Spidey’s endlessly layered history. His enthusiasm for the whole Spider-Man mythos is inspiring, proving that these classic stories have largely aged well, rich with material that continues to satisfy and provoke. [Read more…] about The Best Spider-Man (Peter Parker) Comics of All Time!

Spider-Man by Todd McFarlane: The Complete Collection Review!

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One of the big issues with everyone’s favorite scrappy neighborhood superhero (Spider-Man) is how to write him growing up. The comics that deal with an aging Spider-Man have to strike the balance between his youthful insouciance and more adult problems. In Todd McFarlane’s run of Spider-Man in 1990, he chose to up the stakes of the damage that could be inflicted on Peter as Spider-Man and made the general tone of Spider-Man a lot heavier and darker. Throughout his run in 1990, McFarlane introduced Spider-Man to more horror-inspired iterations of his foes. Many of these decisions about how to handle the Spider-Man character (and his relationship with Mary Jane Watson) in this run feel indicative of McFarlane’s later development of the standalone comics series Spawn.

[Read more…] about Spider-Man by Todd McFarlane: The Complete Collection Review!

The Nightmarish Tragedy of Kraven’s Last Hunt

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Writer J.M. DeMatteis, penciller Mike Zeck, and inker Bob McLeod crafted a nightmarish descent for Spider-Man and a harrowing journey into an insane mind with their six-part “Kraven’s Last Hunt” in 1987. From its shocking first issue to its unflinching portrait of fatal madness, this story of Spider-Man and Kraven’s dueling dark nights of the soul has stayed with fans for more than three decades, defining just how dark and psychologically tormented a story centered on your usually friendly neighborhood Spider-Man could become.

DeMatteis’ “Kraven’s Last Hunt” tracks long-time villain Sergei Kravenoff, also known as Kraven the Hunter, and his attempt to kill and replace Spider-Man to finally prove his own worth. But instead of being a long game of cat and mouse, Kraven shoots and buries the hero by the end of the first issue. What follows is, and spoilers from here on out, a feverish descent into Kraven’s disturbed mind and the nightmarish journey that one hero takes to return to the light. [Read more…] about The Nightmarish Tragedy of Kraven’s Last Hunt