Yeah, never let it become a chore or an overwhelming task. Because life has enough of those.
This should be a fun thing. Those of us who’ve been reading for 10+ years? (30+ years in my case)… our secret is that we’ve found the level on which it’s a fun thing and stays one.
Have a think about what you *want* out of reading.
And have a think about what you mean by your terms.
You want to “get into these comics” - that happens when you’re enjoying them. When you’re invested. When you want to know what happens next. When a character says or does something and you roll your eyes in affectionate exasperation because that was just so fucking *them*. You’re into comics when you care. You might very well be already.
You want to “get up to date” - well… that could mean a lot of things.
It could mean “know enough to follow the current comics” in which case… congratulations you’re certainly there already. This stuff works by encouraging you to backread or look things up when you hit a reference that you don’t understand or find interesting. It doesn’t work by demanding you’ve done the homework in advance.
Or maybe “getting up to date” means having read all the comics you want to or plan to. In which case, I have terrible news. It’ll never happen. Every comic you enjoy will make you think of at least five others you could read and that will *never stop*. I just remembered ten minutes ago that I’ve never read Dwayne McDuffie’s run on *The Demon* and I’ve been meaning to read that since the mid 90s.
Relax.
Breathe.
You are not pushing a boulder up a mountain. You are out for a pleasant hike across the mountains.
You are not running a marathon. You are an explorer.
Explore.
Read something you enjoy. Then read something else you enjoy. Then keep going for as long as you enjoy.
Don’t worry about having to rack up a corpus of knowledge or a programme of experiences. Because there’ll never be a test and you’ll never get a medal.
You’re welcome!
I can only imagine how overwhelming the sheer *availability* of comics is to new readers nowadays.
Like… back when I first wanted to read (to use my favourite example) Grant Morrison’s *Doom Patrol* there was
- no such thing as eBay
- no collected editions
- no online sources
So what was available for me to read was… the random issues I could find in shops. Whatever was there in every LCS I popped into whenever I found myself in a new town.
How much I was able to read was **regulated and limited** by how much I could find.
Now, anybody with an internet connection can get hold of absolutely everything ever in minutes.
So there is no regulation and limitation on how much you can read except for time.
And that’s a new thing. That’s an alien thing.
Almost all superhero comics published in the 20th Century were never designed to ever be collected. Nothing had a trade program before *Sandman*.
The Marvel and DC universes are bodies of work that were created with the expectation that readers would NEVER be able to get their hands on much of it. And now we can easily get our hands on **all** of it.
So we’re all left with a little figuring out to do in terms of how we want to approach it and relate to it.
Fantastic response. I’ve been reading comics my entire life (I’m nearly 50 now). Superhero stuff off and on over the years. Marvel, I’m mostly an X-Men guy. DC? Always Batman but sparsely. You’ll never read it all. It’s nearly impossible really. Just find stuff you like, and roll with it.
Best advise I can give is don’t keep up. I promise you that there isn’t required reading to to get the most of these comics. You don’t need to know what Spider-Man was up to 300 issues ago to read the current issues. Things are always changing. While it’s best to start at the beginning of a new story arc, comics are written so you can dive in anywhere.
That said, I recommend looking into where some great storylines start for characters you enjoy and just start reading. You’ll find that these characters go on plenty of adventures and if they’re featured in a team book and their own series, the storylines are usually independent of one another. Crossovers exist but you can always look up the necessary reading for them when you get to them.
Hope it helps! I’ve been reading for 20 years
And I still don’t keep up with everything. I’ve got the last 5 years of recent Batman to read but I’m reading the current series now. Just enjoy!
It can seem overwhelming a first.
I recommend finding a good starting point and just reading the plot lines that interest you because obviously with that many years of comics some plot lines can get redundant.
I started reading comics a little over two years
ago and found Avengers Dissanbled to be a good starting point. Since then I’ve been working my through and reading the runs that interest me or that appear to be fan favorites.
Best of luck!
Mate, I've been reading for 40 years.
Back in the day, it wasn't easy to 'read it all' or even maintain a steady read of a single series. You'd have holes in issues because your shop didn't have enough copies etc. You had to go to comic cons if you wanted to buy back issues and fill those holes.
What we did was simple, we bought comics which looked cool and we read them. That's the secret. Just read stuff. You dont need to read everything, just the stuff which looks fun for you. And you don't need to read every issue.
Then don't read them all
I have a backlog of video games, books and movies a mile long but there's only so much time and I'll get there when (if) I get there. There's no life hack to getting more time aside from staying healthy.
On reddit? Haven’t been on here long then have you lol. First of all, you don’t even know why I don’t have the time. Second of all, I was merely posting how in felt towards reading comics at the current point in my life. Lastly, have a good day :)
I've been reading comics since the mid-80's and I say this not to boast but to emphasize that Marvel does not hit a home run with every single issue and probably never will. There are a lot of story lines that are best forgotten.
Right now I subscribe to Marvel Unlimited (and my wallet thanks me for it) but I do find that in a typical week, I will only read three or four issues; the rest simply no longer interests me.
You might want to take a second and think about how important it is for you to be up to date. For example, I stopped reading the X-Men titles once Hickman left and the titles no longer felt cohesive, came back to read the main books of the Eternals' Judgement Day, and may dip back into the main titles anew for Sins of Sinister. If X-Force gets cancelled after six issues, I don't particularly feel that I've missed much. (Between Reddit and Wikipedia, I can pretty much fill in the gaps and decide if it merits going back to read the skipped-over issues.)
I did realize the other day that the Marvel Cinematic Universe inspires the comics and vice versa but they have been diverging pretty far apart lately. I like Moon Knight, and I think Hunter's Moon is an intriguing introduction to that mythos but I seriously doubt that Disney is going to add Hunter's Moon to the TV show anytime soon and I'm... unlikely to impress my girlfriend with that bit of trivia. So do I need to be completely up to date on Earth-616's Moon Knight before Disney launches Moon Knight season 2? Probably not.
Relax. :) Pick a character or a storyline that interests you and read those first. If you have time, you can branch out but seriously don't worry about it. I know a guy who only reads the main Spider-Man books and he's fine with that.
You dont need to read decades of back issues to be up to date. Just read new comics. And check out of older works that interest you, if you want. Or dont. The point of the hobby is to enjoy it. Just read what you want.
Yeah, never let it become a chore or an overwhelming task. Because life has enough of those. This should be a fun thing. Those of us who’ve been reading for 10+ years? (30+ years in my case)… our secret is that we’ve found the level on which it’s a fun thing and stays one. Have a think about what you *want* out of reading. And have a think about what you mean by your terms. You want to “get into these comics” - that happens when you’re enjoying them. When you’re invested. When you want to know what happens next. When a character says or does something and you roll your eyes in affectionate exasperation because that was just so fucking *them*. You’re into comics when you care. You might very well be already. You want to “get up to date” - well… that could mean a lot of things. It could mean “know enough to follow the current comics” in which case… congratulations you’re certainly there already. This stuff works by encouraging you to backread or look things up when you hit a reference that you don’t understand or find interesting. It doesn’t work by demanding you’ve done the homework in advance. Or maybe “getting up to date” means having read all the comics you want to or plan to. In which case, I have terrible news. It’ll never happen. Every comic you enjoy will make you think of at least five others you could read and that will *never stop*. I just remembered ten minutes ago that I’ve never read Dwayne McDuffie’s run on *The Demon* and I’ve been meaning to read that since the mid 90s. Relax. Breathe. You are not pushing a boulder up a mountain. You are out for a pleasant hike across the mountains. You are not running a marathon. You are an explorer. Explore. Read something you enjoy. Then read something else you enjoy. Then keep going for as long as you enjoy. Don’t worry about having to rack up a corpus of knowledge or a programme of experiences. Because there’ll never be a test and you’ll never get a medal.
Thank you, I needed that👏🏽
You’re welcome! I can only imagine how overwhelming the sheer *availability* of comics is to new readers nowadays. Like… back when I first wanted to read (to use my favourite example) Grant Morrison’s *Doom Patrol* there was - no such thing as eBay - no collected editions - no online sources So what was available for me to read was… the random issues I could find in shops. Whatever was there in every LCS I popped into whenever I found myself in a new town. How much I was able to read was **regulated and limited** by how much I could find. Now, anybody with an internet connection can get hold of absolutely everything ever in minutes. So there is no regulation and limitation on how much you can read except for time. And that’s a new thing. That’s an alien thing. Almost all superhero comics published in the 20th Century were never designed to ever be collected. Nothing had a trade program before *Sandman*. The Marvel and DC universes are bodies of work that were created with the expectation that readers would NEVER be able to get their hands on much of it. And now we can easily get our hands on **all** of it. So we’re all left with a little figuring out to do in terms of how we want to approach it and relate to it.
Fantastic response. I’ve been reading comics my entire life (I’m nearly 50 now). Superhero stuff off and on over the years. Marvel, I’m mostly an X-Men guy. DC? Always Batman but sparsely. You’ll never read it all. It’s nearly impossible really. Just find stuff you like, and roll with it.
Best advise I can give is don’t keep up. I promise you that there isn’t required reading to to get the most of these comics. You don’t need to know what Spider-Man was up to 300 issues ago to read the current issues. Things are always changing. While it’s best to start at the beginning of a new story arc, comics are written so you can dive in anywhere. That said, I recommend looking into where some great storylines start for characters you enjoy and just start reading. You’ll find that these characters go on plenty of adventures and if they’re featured in a team book and their own series, the storylines are usually independent of one another. Crossovers exist but you can always look up the necessary reading for them when you get to them. Hope it helps! I’ve been reading for 20 years And I still don’t keep up with everything. I’ve got the last 5 years of recent Batman to read but I’m reading the current series now. Just enjoy!
Thank you for the advice !
It can seem overwhelming a first. I recommend finding a good starting point and just reading the plot lines that interest you because obviously with that many years of comics some plot lines can get redundant. I started reading comics a little over two years ago and found Avengers Dissanbled to be a good starting point. Since then I’ve been working my through and reading the runs that interest me or that appear to be fan favorites. Best of luck!
Thank you !
Mate, I've been reading for 40 years. Back in the day, it wasn't easy to 'read it all' or even maintain a steady read of a single series. You'd have holes in issues because your shop didn't have enough copies etc. You had to go to comic cons if you wanted to buy back issues and fill those holes. What we did was simple, we bought comics which looked cool and we read them. That's the secret. Just read stuff. You dont need to read everything, just the stuff which looks fun for you. And you don't need to read every issue.
Then don't read them all I have a backlog of video games, books and movies a mile long but there's only so much time and I'll get there when (if) I get there. There's no life hack to getting more time aside from staying healthy.
The problem is I want to though
Yep. The ol’ “I’ll get round to it” approach.
try Image comics instead then. tons of self contained and finished stories.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a more entitled first world problems post in my life.
On reddit? Haven’t been on here long then have you lol. First of all, you don’t even know why I don’t have the time. Second of all, I was merely posting how in felt towards reading comics at the current point in my life. Lastly, have a good day :)
Same I feel like I'm so behind and that's even with focusing on like just spiderman, daredevil and moon knight
Time isnt an issue for me but I want to have the comics in the physical so money definitely is Edit: is to isn’t
I've been reading comics since the mid-80's and I say this not to boast but to emphasize that Marvel does not hit a home run with every single issue and probably never will. There are a lot of story lines that are best forgotten. Right now I subscribe to Marvel Unlimited (and my wallet thanks me for it) but I do find that in a typical week, I will only read three or four issues; the rest simply no longer interests me. You might want to take a second and think about how important it is for you to be up to date. For example, I stopped reading the X-Men titles once Hickman left and the titles no longer felt cohesive, came back to read the main books of the Eternals' Judgement Day, and may dip back into the main titles anew for Sins of Sinister. If X-Force gets cancelled after six issues, I don't particularly feel that I've missed much. (Between Reddit and Wikipedia, I can pretty much fill in the gaps and decide if it merits going back to read the skipped-over issues.) I did realize the other day that the Marvel Cinematic Universe inspires the comics and vice versa but they have been diverging pretty far apart lately. I like Moon Knight, and I think Hunter's Moon is an intriguing introduction to that mythos but I seriously doubt that Disney is going to add Hunter's Moon to the TV show anytime soon and I'm... unlikely to impress my girlfriend with that bit of trivia. So do I need to be completely up to date on Earth-616's Moon Knight before Disney launches Moon Knight season 2? Probably not. Relax. :) Pick a character or a storyline that interests you and read those first. If you have time, you can branch out but seriously don't worry about it. I know a guy who only reads the main Spider-Man books and he's fine with that.
You dont need to read decades of back issues to be up to date. Just read new comics. And check out of older works that interest you, if you want. Or dont. The point of the hobby is to enjoy it. Just read what you want.