Step 1: I have just read some interesting things about recent DC continuity and would like to check it out.
Step 2: Let’s try Infinite Crisis.
Step 3: Ah, there’s a Countdown to Infinite Crisis. I should read that first.
Step 4: Hmm… Apparently this ties into a bunch of mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis. Some googling reveals The OMAC Project, Rann-Thanagar War, Days of Vengeance, Villains United, and The Return of Donna Troy.
Step 5: And some more googling tells me what order I should read them in. Also, I seem to have missed a Prelude to Infinite Crisis…
Step 6: … and these mini-series wrap-up in several specials. When should I read those?
Step 7: Oh. Intermixed semi-randomly between the seven issues of Infinite Crisis.
Step 8: Okay, now I can start reading.
Step 9: Three issues into The OMAC Project and apparently the “story continues” with Superman: Sacrifice. Can I just skip that and keep reading this series? … Nope. Nothing makes sense. (In fact, it turns out that Superman: Sacrifice contains the event which arguably triggers the entire Infinite Crisis.)
Step 10: … and Superman: Sacrifice is split across three different Superman comics and a random issue of Wonder Woman.
Step 11: Okay. Tracked those down. I’ll continue reading…
Step 12: And then Infinite Crisis sucked.
(Some of the mini-series were pretty decent, though.)
Why is DC Comics asking me to do this much homework in order to simply read their books?
Admittedly, only some of this material was actually crucial for understanding and appreciating Infinite Crisis (insofar as that drek could appreciated on any level). But that doesn’t actually help, because I had absolutely no way of figuring out which bits weren’t essential until after I’d read them. (And it’s not as if I tried to seek out every issue of DC that crossed over with Infinite Crisis. These are just the major backbones of the event.)
If Marvel and DC really feel it’s important to create this kind of convoluted, multi-title, overlapping continuity, I say more power to them. But, if so, then it would really behoove them to put together reading lists so that readers who are interested in their comics can trivially figure out what they need to read.
Having cleared Infinite Crisis, I proceeded to 52 — which was delightfully straight-forward, except for the bit where you read issues #1 thru #50, then stop and read World War III #1-4, before finishing with 52 #51-52. (This problem, at least, is cleared up in the collections.)
But now I’m trying to figure out Countdown to Final Crisis and, as far as I can tell, it is literally impossible to put together a reading order for its penumbra of narrative. (In fact, all I can find online are people saying, “I dunno.”)
Below the “Read More” barrier, however, I have included my reading order for the first chunk of the modern crisis era at DC Comics (for anyone who might find it useful). I have included my personal grades for each story in parentheses after each title.
IDENTITY CRISIS (D-)
COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS
Countdown to Infinite Crisis
The OMAC Project #1-3
Superman: Sacrifice (C)
The OMAC Project #4-6 (C)
Rann-Thanagar War (C+)
Day of Vengeance (C-)
Villains United (C)
Return of Donna Troy (C+)
Prelude to Infinite Crisis
INFINITE CRISIS (F)
Infinite Crisis #1-3
Special: Day of Vengeance
Infinite Crisis #4
Special: Rann/Thanagar War
Infinite Crisis #5-6
Special: OMAC Project
Special: Villains United
Infinite Crisis #7
52 (B-)
I know just how you feel. I recently slogged my way through Blackest Night. It takes place over 26 different titles, including mini’s and the actual Blackest Night comics themselves. Did I like the series? Yeah, kind of. Based on your letter grades, I probably would have given it a C+ (but I would have given 52 a B, so YMMV), but I didn’t like it anywhere near enough to consider it worth the trouble.
I always wanted to read a comic or two back in the 90s, but it was just this sort of nonsense that put me off of them forever. Now I’m hoping for a sequel to The Incredibles. : )
@Revil Fox: Funny you should mention Blackest Night. I’m picking up a half dozen collections from my local library later today.
@DmL: It’s why I’ve been almost exclusively reading stand-alone collections over the past 10 years. These used to be fairly reliable in terms of collecting cohesive narratives, but recently DC and Marvel have been working to screw this up, too.
Naming some stuff off the top of my head: Jeff Smith’s Bone is great. So is Scott McCloud’s Zot!
If you liked The Incredibles, I suspect you would absolutely adore Zot! What you want is Zot: Book 1 and then Zot: Complete Black & White. Right now that’ll set you back about $15 on Amazon, and it’s totally worth it. In fact, I think I’m going to go pull out my Zot! comics for a re-read…
Whoops, got side-tracked. If you want some top-notch mainstream superheroes I’d currently recommend All-Star Superman, Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, and the first 50 issues of Amazing Spider-Man (available in Essential Spider-Man Volumes 1-3).
This was my exact same problem with the Crisis series, exacerbated by my reading public library copies of the collections, which weren’t always available when I wanted them. I loved most of the mini-series, then lost interest in the main series, and took six months to get around to reading them all. I still don’t know what was going on…
Yeah… I love superpower stuff, but just can’t read comics. When I was a kid, I used to save up, go to Circle K gas station, and get the one or two series I could follow. It fired my imagination as much with the flaws of the material as the strengths. I thought, “this is so cool! And I could do so much better!”
The worst was when I would fall in love with an art/writing team, invest emotionally in the characters, then the creative team changes. And they do things to characters you love. BAD things. Helpless, you watch them twist unrecognizably. Your friends become alien to who you thought they were. The art makes your eyes sting.
And if it gets good again… like a battered spouse, you wonder if they mean it this time, and they’ve changed, really.
I could go on and on. But, in short, yes, Amen.
The Kraven’s Last Hunt trade paperback with that classic Spiderman story has commentary that includes discussion on this topic. For those of you who don’t know the way it was published, Kraven’s Last Hunt was spread over three Spiderman titles. The six issues thus hit the stands over a 2 month span, but buyers had to clue in on catching all three titles.
In hindsight, and here I’m trying to remember since I’m at work and my copy is at home, the editors came to the conclusion that this was a mistake. Not that it stopped the X-books from doing the same sort of thing for more than one later summer blockbuster extravaganza.
When it comes to this sort of behavior, I don’t mind sidetrek stories going on in other books. I think it helps tie things together into a comic universe whole, but I really want the main storyline contained in one title that covers enough introductory material for the story to make sense. But then, I may not be the primary target market for these stories. They’re designed for the hard core DC or Marvel nerd, who is already familiar with most of the stories involved and probably buys them.
Ultimately, any comic with any real attempt at continuity will run into similar problems. Do current events in Xmen make sense if you only started buying them a year ago? How about skipping 10 years in the middle? How much investment in other materials do you need to engage in to get the literacy needed to understand the interrelationships?
Oh, hehe. Yeah, I actually have read Bone. I didn’t think it counted. : )
Comics have always had a limited fan lifespan. You can only collect them for so long before you, not out-grow them, but just get sick of them. Nowadays though, the mainstream titles are so tied into each other, the continuity, and crossover events, that they’re impenetrable to outsiders. The best you can hope for for Marvel or DC superhero action is to collect stuff outside of the main titles and hope they don’t crossover too much, or get cancelled or rebooted.
I would like to recommend Atomic Robo. The artist is afriend of mine and he hates traditional comic books. His book is not traditional.
@Justin: Not to nitpick, because I agree that many of these series/events are diluted by the dozen mini-series and one-shots that tie in, but the reading lists for Final Crisis were pretty heavily printed in both the DC Comic issues of the time, and on the DC website. Marvel and DC usually have enough Marketing savvy to get that info out to the fans.
And the next big DC event – Flashpoint – takes place over 51 issues spread among 15 mini-series if I remember correctly!
@Tetsubo: Atomic Robo rocks! Reminds me of early Hellboy (which is a huge compliment)
I wasn’t into DC comics, but I certainly was a fan of the X-Men.
I particulary was interesting in reading the entirety of the Age of Apocalypse when it was being released – of course that was impossible for the same reason as this infinate crisis.
Because the entire coherant story was spread across numerous, numerous mini-arcs and being a child whose budget was a small portion of my grandmother’s grocery money, it make such a feat impossible.
Nowadays, when I have any inkling to read anything like a comic book, I go to a book store and grab graphic novels that have the beginning and end of the story in one or multiple volumes of the same arc.
Manga knows how to do this properly.
@Steven: Final Crisis itself was actually pretty easy to figure out. Particularly now, when it boils down to: “Pick up the Final Crisis collection and read it.”
Countdown to Final Crisis, on the other hand, may actually be insoluble. I gave up on reading any of it after getting about halfway through the first collection and discovering that it was godawful. Subsequent googling suggests that the entire event was a massive clusterfuck in which a series that was meant to setup Final Crisis instead got changed midway through and ended up actively contradicting the story it was supposedly introducing. (Which may explain why none of the other tie-in material can actually be situated — most likely, large chunks of it were being retconned before they even got published.)
The closest I’ve seen to a “reading order” for the event is a list of which comics were published each week. But, according to everything I can find online, this isn’t actually an accurate reading order. It’s also much larger in its scope than what I’m interested in (since it includes EVERYTHING, not just the primary tie-in mini-series) and, unfortunately, even more useless when you’re trying to read from the collected editions. 🙁
@Joshua: You make another good point. These massive cross-over events alienate readers who can only afford to follow one or two books a month. Or who may only WANT to follow one or two books a month. I remember being frequently frustrated when a book I was reading because I enjoyed the creative team was interrupted by a cross-over storyline that required me to read work by three or four other creative teams in order to understand what was going on. 90% of everything is crap, so the odds against me actually liking all of the other creative teams involved was pretty slim.
Another problem is when you get a graphic novel thinking it has everything, but where it jumps into the story in various books skips out on several issues that are really helpful to setting it up and understanding… the way they choose their graphic novel collections isn’t as complete as you hope it will be, many times.
*Cries in loss of Darren Watts* The Explain This! podcast (by now deceased Darren Watts) was a pretty fascinating way to catch up on the more inexplicable twists and turns of the comic universes by a couple of pretty serious comic fans.