So I only read two comics. Spiderman, and Batman.
The problem I’ve run into is with Spiderman, the comic has been running since the 1940s or whatever, as one continuous comic. I’m the type of person who gets obsessive over one thing, instead of casual about 10 things. So my natural instinct is to start reading at issue 1, and then go until current. Let’s see, how many issues are there? Ohhhh…oh that’s a lot of issues…
So obviously I’m not going to read them all, and not even in order. Even though that’s what my brain is telling me I should do. At some point I have to let the logical side of me take the wheel and say NO! You’re not going to go reading hundreds if not thousands of comics, just so you can stay current with monthly releases!
So my other option is Batman.
And Batman releases little arcs I guess you could call them. I’m currently reading a little 5 comic mini-series, which is like the perfect size for me. A nice complete comic I can read once per day, for 10 minutes, and at the end of the week I have a complete story. But the problem is, each complete story doesn’t carry over to the next. Batman assumes you know a few core things about Batman. He’s Bruce Wayne, his parents were murdered when he was a kid. He’s constantly fighting crime to deal with his own mental illness of not being able to cope with the concept of crime. You know…the basics.
But the individual stories don’t carry over. Batman could kill Catwoman in a story. Murders her completely dead. And that will carry over the following issues. Until they reboot the whole damn thing, and then Catwoman is back. Never murdered. That’s no longer canon. It mattered to the story you already read…but that’s done now. We’ve moved on.
So I guess the thing I don’t understand is, why can’t comic books find the balance between “Neverending story that’s literally lasted since before your grandpa was born, but somehow is still going today with the same people”, and “Basic characters and themes stay the same, but individual stories will eventually mean absolutely nothing for having had them happen”? Why can’t we get comics that can be 5-10 issue complete stories, but if a future story wants to mention it’s past, then this character died. And no bringing them back. No making a replacement. I still haven’t gotten in the comics how Miles Morales exists. I heard of him through the video game…no clue how he comes to be though, or why he replaces spiderman.
I guess I’m just having difficulty finding points in comics where I’ll say “I start here”. Because I would like end dates. The open ended date of spiderman is intimidating. Even though Batman offers conclusions to the story, it’s also disheartening to know that eventually what you’re reading won’t matter.
Well, the reboots, resets, and retcons tend to make it feasible to suspend disbelief at any given time along the publication history.
But, like you said, it tends to break once you try to read widely separated segments, or read different arcs in order.
Some of that, comic geeks develop head canon for. Some of it, the companies have in universe explanations for, like Marvel’s time elasticity where it allows Captain America to both have been in ww2 and awakened at any point in the past that’s useful, or how people age (or don’t age) even without super power reasons.
My personal way of maintaining immersion in the face of all the silliness is to take older issues as a synopsis, or as a kind of inner fiction behind the fiction. Like, all the older Spiderman stuff is where he told stories, or someone else wrote it about past events. It means that when there’s fuckery in ten years, those old issues aren’t contradictions, they’re more like a prequel that isn’t historically accurate.
Which, I get it, is a lot of damn work for someone coming into it at this point in time.
But there’s an advantage to that long (if jumbled and poorly managed) background. There’s a continuity between generations, and there’s the ability to see the old stuff as a part of its era of writing and art without having to just erase it up keep having new writing and art.
DC makes it both easier and harder than Marvel in that regard. Their semi regular “crises” do all that work. They say “hey, here’s the new backstory we’re working with, here’s what’s relevant, if it isn’t your thing, wait a decade and it’ll switch again”. So there’s always going to be an ease with jumping into DC as published. It does break some of the continuity though.
What’s really cool about the way DC handles their “multiverse” is that they’ve had elseworlds and other alternative frameworks for decades now. They’ve had multiple earths with similar but not the same histories. So you don’t need to know the entire backstory, regardless of what form of media it is. You can casually go between any of the animated animated, live action, comic books, comic strips, and just enjoy the ride because the other ones still exist as their own thing.
The era of 52, new 52, silver age, golden age, they all exist as their own thing. And they exist in shared continuities, and exist in updated versions.
The way that makes DC harder is that nothing ever feels finished. Yeah, some titles will get tied up before a reboot, but it isn’t an ending, just the last story arc in that version. The ones that don’t get a finale just float unfinished in any way. I can jump into any era of DC, read as much as I want, but it’s going to end without any real closure.
I’m echoing some of what you said here, I know. It’s so that there’s less gaps in the comment that I’m writing in between real life stuff.
That part about having no closure though, it doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. It does still have echoes in the next iterations. So the reading isn’t wasted, it just sometimes feels a little hollow.
As far as Miles goes, if you want to know that, I’ll give the basics. If you don’t, just stop reading here. Anyone else, spoilers ahead
Miles Morales started in an alternate universe to the default Marvel universe. They all have numbers, but the one Miles is from is typically referred to as the Ultimates universe because that was part of all the titles; Ultimate Avengers, Ultimate X-Men, and Ultimate Spider-Man.
In the Spider-Man comic in that universe, Peter Parker was the first Spidey. Stuff happened, he gets killed. But, during the “stuff”, Miles gets bitten by a spider too, and gets a slightly diffee set of powers. He then becomes the focus of the series.
The Ultimates universe ends with a big thing, and Miles crosses over to become part of the new unified core Marvelverse. There’s some fuckery after that, what with DOOM! being god emperor for while and whatnot that partially rewrote how Miles is in the core verse, but that’s details better read in their original form.