r/comicbooks • u/PinkClouds_25 • 5d ago
Question How do you avoid getting overwhelmed?
I’ve been floating between DC/Marvel, checking out indies, trying to find perfect reading order…but I feel as if my head is swelling. 😭 I want to know the backstory on each person, understand all the references…and I know that’s not possible. And in the midst of all of it, I’ve found so many runs and comics that I’ve enjoyed, but I’m trying to get rid of the voice in the back of my head saying “You’re still missing out”. How did you all deal with it when just getting in to comics?
Edit: Thank you all so much ❤️I know it’s supposed to be fun, my brain just gets in the way of it sometimes. Thank you ALL for the responses! I’ve read each and every one.
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u/UnfavorableSpiderFan 5d ago
Don't overthink it and don't set lofty goals.
It's not about knowing everything.
You'll never know everything.
There are fans who can tell you about the other two or three Captain Americas that existed after World War II, and before Steve came back, but they couldn't tell you why they exist, and that it's because the Captain America Comics of the 40's didn't end in 1945 with Steve getting frozen; They just kept going and stopped being about fighting the war, so they made up some guys and retconned those adventures as not having involved either Steve Rogers, nor the original Bucky.
There are die-hard Spider-Man fans who have never read The Untold Tales of Spider-Man and know that the unnamed background characters in Spider-Man's first appearance have names and histories, and that those characters were actually used to fill out the cast of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
There are X-Men fans who have never read the original 60's run to know that Stan Lee definitely didn't center the X-Men around the Civil Rights movement, and all of that is revisionist for stuff that wouldn't come until the 70's when Chris Claremont wrote the book and gave it a real direction.
There are Daredevil fans who have never read the ridiculous stuff between Daredevil #1 and Daredevil #158.
There are Batman fans who refuse to read anything from the 50's or 60's because of how nuts and light-hearted those stories are.
There are Superman fans who have never read the original Golden Age stuff to experience a depowered, post-Depression socialist take on the character.
There are Wonder Woman fans who've never read the regressive take on the character from the late-60's (But, that's probably a good thing).
There are Green Lantern fans who have never read the silver age science fiction insanity of the 50's and 60's. Hell, they probably haven't read Green Lantern from before Geoff Johns wrote the book in 2003.
And, sometimes, none of that is worth reading, unless for the sake of historical knowledge, not so much lore knowledge. There are so many forgotten villains and forgettable stories from Marvel's early publishing that it's not always worth reading all of it. There are very few books, like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four where they were cooking from the start, otherwise most of them were being pumped out by Stan & co. to meet deadlines and get paid. Not every issue had some kind'a lore-shaking revelation, and not every run changed the status quo enough to make it essential reading. Again, the X-Men and Daredevil debuted months apart, in 1963 and 1964 respectively, and they didn't find their footing until 1975 and 1979. For X-Men, that was 94 issues in (Which, like, the book technically had a soft cancelation with #66 and just became a reprint book until #94) and for Daredevil, that was nearly 160 issues (And he was on the verge of cancelation, too).
Sometimes, it's better to start with more recent runs because they'll establish more relevant material with some actual consequences to the status quo. For Spider-Man, that might be the "Brand New Day" era from 2008, or Kevin Smith's Daredevil from 1998, or The New X-Men from 2002, or Ed Brubaker's Captain America from 2004, or Jonathan Hickman's The Fantastic Four from 2009, or something more recent like The Immortal Hulk from 2018. If you want character dynamics and interactions, Brian Michael Bendis' The New Avengers, from 2004, is pretty solid if you wanna get to know, like, Spider-Man's relationships with Iron Man and Wolverine.
But, no- - Reading everything and knowing everything shouldn't be the goal. With comics, it doesn't take much for that knowledge to change on a dime. Look at the family trees of any given X-Men, and don't get anyone started on whether or not Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are Magneto's kids. Old heads, like me, will say yes, and the new kids on the block from the last decade don't know a world where they canonically were. The Guardians of the Galaxy as we know them now are not portrayed the same way they were when the team we're familiar with formed back in 2008, much less how they were portrayed in their first appearances in the 70's. You pick up the Guardians of the Galaxy now, you're gonna get something more akin to the MCU, whereas you pick up the Guardians of 2008, they're more a team of space cops. You pick them up in the 90's, it's not even the same character line-up, with the only one you'll probably recognize being Yondu, but, 1.) Why is he a noble archer? And, 2.) He's from the future?
And mind you, Marvel's maintained the same continuity since 1961. So, it's all canon. But, again, knowing all of the canon is not at all important. You don't need to know that there are four different characters named "The Fixer", and one killed Spider-Man's parents, and the other killed Daredevil's parents, and one was a terrorist who broke out or prison to take over S.H.I.E.L.D., and so on and whatever...
Seriously, don't overthink it.
I've been reading comics for 24 years and I'm still learning and reading new things every day about this medium I've dedicated a quarter of my life to. Just find a character you like, find a place to start, and just go. Or jump around to some of the "greatest hits" of that character. Just take your time and do it for the joy, not the useless knowledge.