How to Get Into Comic Book Reading
Don't be Stupid and Lazy
Does this seem familiar to you? Judging by the sheer amount of responses I get when the question "Why don't you read comics?" is posited, there's a good chance you have made these faces before when contemplating getting into comic books.
Most comic books (particularly of the superhero variety) are beyond packed with an extremely extensive history which may extend back as far as 60 years or more in some cases. Now if you're Marvel, you count everything which isn't stated to be retconned. If you're other comic universes, you reset every once in the while and sometimes keep the old continuity in line when wanted in completely confusing ways. What problems does this create? Shit tons of problems, because now newer readers have no freaking clue where to start. I hear this often. While the whole "where to start" can be solved with, "Pretty much any arc," it's hard to justify when you say 12's a great jumping point for Blue Beetle because it deals with Jaime's discovering he's part of an alien conspiracy and his source of power is an alien source. New readers will wonder just what the hell's been going on, why he's the third Blue Beetle and just figured this out, and maybe why the second Blue Beetle didn't have this power. See, long histories create snarls of continuity which become extremely hard to follow.
Don't fret. Because while continuity is important, it's not exactly all -that- important. Why? Simple. Continuity is subject to prevailing sales of story lines. For instance, let's say Iron Man originally had his origins in the Vietnam War, but that dates him. Simple solution, retcon it to a more recent or even just simply vague conflict. That's a soft retcon. A hard retcon would be like resetting an entire universe after Tony was manipulated by Immortus to be a bad guy, was replaced by an alternate universe teenage version, shunted to an alternate dimension after a conflict, and then brought back as good ol' Tony Stark from a series of storylines nobody has to remember. If you were a brand new comic reader, would you think that's extremely important to anything which has been going on recently? (I'll give you Onslaught given AXIS, but none of the rest before or after matters). The answer is no, because it doesn't. What about when Spidey doubled his strength, got stingers and organic web shooters as part of The Other storyline? Retconned out with Brand New Day. And that's just the retcons you can forget about. What about Stark Solutions? One of the failed companies Stark started? Remember his rehab armor from one of his several stints of questioning whether or not he should be Iron Man? How about when his armor was so poorly shielded it tried to kill him? None of these were retconned, and yet none of them matter. Some of their plot points might matter, such as Stark's alcoholism, his Armor Wars, the Ultron Iron Man, etc., but for the most part nothing really does after a while. Remember when Rhodey was Iron Man, or when Rhodey was a big ol' cyborg, or when Rhodey wore the Eidolon War Wear which was lost in time? Remember when Guy Gardner lost his ability to use a Green Lantern ring, but it turned out he was half alien and could make weapons all Random style, but lost that power? Nobody else really does, nor really wanted to remember. Anybody remember when Cyborg when full robot and blah blah blah? That sort of stuff doesn't matter, and worrying about knowing all of that gets in the way.
"Mak, if what you're telling me is true then I don't need to know anything about the characters?" Yes and no.
It's helpful to know their origins, because origins have a tendency to come up time and again with revelations and the like. The important thing is to just know the basics, because the rest will come and go as needed. Just pick up in any old story line, especially one that is marked "Bold new direction!" or a new #1 that comic companies are just oh so happy to slap on comics because they like fucking with and confusing fans. The thing is, as you read these comics you'll realize they're supposed to be unfolding new tales for the character, and when something is referential you can either look it up online or then go and specifically search for stories concerning this event. Such as the character of Hush. If Hush comes up and everybody is all "Oh no! It's Hush! Batman's long lost friend, blah blah blah!" If you're so interested, you'd go look up Batman: Hush and just enjoy it that way.
Comics don't necessarily need to be all read at once, and I find this mindset is common with new fans and particularly with manga fans who sometimes feel a whole series needs to be read. I'm not joking, in some of my "travels" I've witnessed veteran manga readers not wish to start ongoing series because they have like 800 chapters in the story to read. And while mangas tend to have a slightly more integrated and needed story, most of it doesn't matter. I'd almost hazard none of it really does. In fact, Bleach is more enjoyable when you read it arc by arc and assume they're all stand alone as opposed to one story Aeon Flux style. One Piece sort of matters, but not so much you'd feel stymied picking it up after the timeskip if you simply knew Luffy lost his brother and everybody got their asses kicked. The story does well with catching people back up. Naruto completely betrays it's earlier stuff and you can easily not care what the first half was about beyond the basics. That's just how comics in general are (manga are comics, just Japanese comics).
So here's the bottom line for new comic reading: Just pick a character you think you might enjoy. Like light hearted fare? Pick up Superman. Like Batman? Self explanatory. And if you get confused along the way, consult the internet and look for back issues when that comes up. Don't pull your hair out thinking you'll need to know everything.
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| You can have all of these, and still have nowhere near enough X-Men to know everything about the X-Men |
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