The Quest to Absorb the Marvel Universe[s] - Part 1

I've never been a Marvel fan. I've seen all the movies, but none of the tv shows, and not really any of the books. I didn't really discover comic books until my late teens, but even then I was drawn towards DC, Image, and some smaller indie comics. I fell slowly into the DC universe, but only really to the point of a general knowledge of the universe as a whole. I read a few stories here and there, Scott Snyder's work on Detective Comics, Severed, Lil Depressed Boy, Invincible, etc. and then stopped reading them entirely. Some years went by. Then last week, for some reason I don't really understand, I thought, "I'm going to absorb everything Marvel right now!" The quest began.

What I have absorbed in the last week is as follows:

Daredevil Season 1 & 2

Civil War 1-7 and about 30 of the tie in issues

Mark Waid's Daredevil (2011) 1-11

Infinity Gauntlet 1-3

Garth Ennis' Punisher 1-4

Lee & Kirby's X-Men 1

Jessica Jones Ep. 1-2

and started Ed Brubaker's Death of Captain America

I might have forgotten a few but I believe that is the vast majority of it. I Don't have many thought's to add right now, but aside from finishing what I haven't yet of the above, Secret Wars and Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men are still on the docket.

To any Marvel fans out there, I'd love suggestions on where to go since there is an unreasonable amount of options. I'm reading on Marvel Unlimited and watching on Netflix. Peace.

X-Men has some great selections. The Phoenix Saga, God Loves Man Kills, Days of Future Past, The Mutant Massacre (really the whole run for Chris Claremont and John Byrne is great followed by John Romita Jr) but thats a lot of reading so just select what looks interesting.

Avengers - Under Siege, Ultron Unlimited

The New Avengers - Breakout

Daredevil - the Frank Miller run is good

Spider-Man - The Death of Gwen Stacy, Kraven's Last Hunt, The Death of Jean DeWolf

Secret Wars (the 1980's version)

Captain America - Scourge, Winter Soldier

The Immortal Iron Fist

The Ultimates Vol 1 and 2

Marvels - the coming of the super hero age from the viewpoint of a photographer. Amazing art.

Annihilation - its a series of books. I found it to be much more satisfying than Civil War that ran at the same time. Civil war was just on earth, Annihilation was the galaxy.

The Squadron Supreme - the writer wanted to work on Justice League so he made his own.

Just a small sample. I usually am partial to the X-Men books. Hope you find something you like.

I am one of the few of this mindset, but I really love the entire House of M/Decimation/Messiah Complex arc from the mid-2000s. Some really great cross universe stuff. Also, Daredevil End of Days

@toosweet: Glanced thru a few of those just now, can't wait to get into them. Thanks for the suggestions!

@thdemn: I'm a sucker for big crossover blockbuster books, no matter their quality. Im going through some events now trying to get a bearing for the state of the world, thanks for the suggestions!

In terms of some starter Spider-Man stuff:

• Steve Ditko's Spider-Man run is pretty great.
• The Superior Foes of Spider-Man is excellent
• Spider-Man Blue is a pretty good run and very short too but it helps to know something about Gwen Stacy.

If you want to really insane about it then checkout this link (here) for an attempt at the impossible task of ordering the entire universe.

Aside from that jump on Marvel Unlimited and read to your hearts content.

And in closing here is a completely random and out of context panel from an early Spider-Man issue.

I definitely endorse Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny Xmen.

I didn't see anyone else bring it up so I wanted to recommend Matt Fraction's Hawkeye series. Great art and a nice read especially if you like more street-level stories.

If you can get into the Cosmic side of the Marvel universe the whole saga that begins with Annihilation and ends with Thanos Imperative is excellent. It also doesn't require much background knowledge beside some basic Marvel Universe stuff like who the Kree/Skrull/Shi'ar are, for the most part it is fairly isolated. Covers a few different events that either occur because of the previous one or because of events happening in the main Earth stuff, for example War of Kings is motivated by Secret Invasion. Unlike many of the main Marvel events of the time it really carries a nice momentum from arc to arc and does a great job making a cohesive story line in such a convoluted setting. It builds some really nice character arcs over the key characters, Nova (Richard Rider, the older one), Star-Lord before he became just the same as the movie, Drax and a bunch of the other Guardians of the Galaxy (it is responsible for creating the modern version of the Guardians). It's largely written and managed by Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett, who I believe are both credited in the Guardians movie. Aside from the actual event series's, the story is also told through mainly Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy.

In more down to earth character stuff I would recommend Fraction's Hawkeye (especially now that it is all out and you don't have to wait like 2 months between issues), pretty much Daredevil all the way back to 1999 (there are a few rough arcs but it is mostly great), Rucka's The Punisher is a good take on the character, Brubaker's Captain America is quite good and so is Remender's. I also love Remender's work on Uncanny X-Force and Uncanny Avengers.

A less traditional super hero book from Marvel is Runaways, which sadly eventually ends in a cliffhanger. It is written by Brian K Vaughan mostly and is a little like Marvel meets Persona in that it follows a group of teenagers who discover their parent's a super villains and deals with a lot of teenage and social issues in a fairly well written way.

I also love Messiah Complex.

• Welcome Back Frank is also excellent as a great Punisher story.
• Anything that Brubaker did on Captain America is great as well.
• Most of the more recent galactic stuff (Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, War of Kings, Infinity, anything else that Abnett and Lanning are a part of) is excellent.
• Planet Hulk and World War Hulk are great Hulk stories that don't focus on Bruce Banner.
• Secret Warriors is an amazing self-contained story focusing on Nick Fury after the Secret Invasion event.
• Anything by Jason Aaron(especially Wolverine, Thor: God of Thunder and Ghost Rider) is definitely worth checking out.
• Thor by J. Michael Straczynski is amazing, especially the first arc
• X-Force and Uncanny X-Force are excellent if you want a more violent and dark X-Men story
• Ultimate Spiderman by Bendis is amazing
• Superior Spiderman is an excellent change of pace for Spiderman, especially if you also like Doctor Octopus
• Secret Wars(the new one) is also really great but you will need to do a lot of reading by Jonathan Hickman to fully understand it
• Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America is a 5 issue miniseries about the fallout from Civil War and specifically Cap's death.
• Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts run
• Astonishing X-Men is possibly the best run on X-Men that anyone has had
• Rick Remender's Punisher run is really good but Franken-Castle is a little out there

There's so much more but this includes some of my favorite Marvel runs.

I am not gonna lie to you, anyway you absorb it helps little by little. I first gotten into Super Heroes through Super Friends. There's an actual episode from the 70s where Lex Luthor was originally in Smallville eventually there's a science accident where he looses his long red hair and vows vengeance on Superboy. It's a weird little story that still adds up to some of the later stuff now. Like on the Bombcast they mention getting the Marvel trading cards of the 90s, those cards were excellent ways to learn about heroes you don't know about.

At this point, I'd say either fallow a blog or a podcast to help you fill in on other comics you can't afford to get a hold of. And also with the events comics..... I say this because I really didn't enjoy Civil War at the moment it was released because there were events happening in other comics and I felt confused as to what was going on without buying other comics. And don't get me started on 52, ugh. But yeah, pick a hero or an writer you like and fallow them, when in doubt go on wikipedia or any other database like Comicvine to help explain the bizarre origins of a hero.

You know what I find weird, they changed even Psylocks Origin..... I've been reading comics for over 30 years and that slipped by me. And Skip the 90s entirely..... everyone dies and cybernetic armors for everyone and hologram covers...... ugh, evil Invisible Woman was so embarrassing even when I was 15 at the time.

Wow thanks for all the suggestions! I'll see what I can get done and give another update next week.

Honestly, the X books are the ones that always tend to grab me the most, so most of what I recommend will be those. Nonetheless...

• Uncanny X-Force (Remender run, issues #1-35) - This is one of the best comic series Marvel has released in the last ten years, EASILY. It also has one of the greatest portrayals of Deadpool EVER. I typically hate that character, but I LOVED him in that series!
• 1 Month 2 Live (5-issue series) - Not exactly an X book, but this is still an excellent book. It's about a guy that gets toxic waste exposed to him, and he get superpowers...but he also gets cancer and has one month to live. The thing that really struck home to me was that even the greatest minds in the Marvel universe (Reed, Pym, Stark, etc) aren't able to cure the guy. It shows this futility and fragility within the Marvel universe that I really appreciated.
• Fatal Attractions (X-over event) - This was a pivotal event in the X world, as it had SOOO many things that mattered to the X-Men universe. It's my absolutely favorite Marvel comic series of all time. X-Men #25 and Wolverine #75 alone are worth it, but the entire 5-issue story is just masterfully told.
• SHIELD: Architects of Forever + SHIELD: Infinity (Hickman) - This was easily one of the coolest concepts for a Marvel book outside of Marvel 1602. The premise is that SHIELD has existed for a long...long...LONG time. The original SHIELD members? Da Vinci, Newton, Tesla, Nostradamus... Very high-concept, but it's an excellent adventure story.
• Peter David's Hulk run & Alan Davis' Excalibur run - These are two stellar runs by incredibly talented writers, but they are lengthy runs, so these may be something to look into in the more distant future.

@squidc00kie: If you're planning on reading Hickman's Secret Wars, I would greatly advise reading at least his Fantastic Four and Avengers runs, or just Avengers at the absolute minimum. Secret Wars is the climax of his Avengers run, and he also considers it his final Fantastic Four story. Without them, I just don't think it would have nearly as much of an impact. It's a lot, but it's worth it. He likes to do multiple book at once that constantly overlap each other, so here's a handy guide for the reading order.