Marvel Truly is Unlimited

Marvel. It's like a giant delicious looking burger. It's got all the things you love. The Avengers are that flame-broiled angus beef patty. The X-Men are those fresh, crisp garden veggies. The Fantastic 4 are those four strips of mouth-watering bacon. Spice it up with your choice of condiments. Spider-Man, Gwen, Ham, Silk, 2099, Noir, Boy, Woman, Girl, or Miles Morales? Oh and by the way did you want your Avengers Uncanny, Secret, Dark, or Mighty? There's a hundreds of different cheeses in the world; which would you like? Deadpool, Darkpool, Zombie-Headpool, Pandapool, Female Deadpool? Take your pick. Now put the whole thing inbetween two soft buttery buns which the previous event (AvX) and the next event (Secret Wars).

Ok, I think I've made my point. Marvel comes across as a delicious looking burger that is just way to big to take a bite. It's intimidating. I want to dive in, but there's just so much that I don't know. Unfortunately, I'm not a long time fan of any of the characters. I only watched a little bit of the X-Men animated series, and I only played a couple Spider-Man games. I just never truly got into the Marvel characters. I enjoyed what Marvel morsels I tasted, but I never established a tether to this universe like I did with DC.

You see, with DC, I had Batman. I got really into Batman (like really into him). I loved the character and his Dark Knight persona, ever since Batman: The Animated Series. Oh yes, you know the one. It was a great intro to the character for my young mind, and it serves as my anchor for all that I've ever come to love about comics. 

However, that show alone would not have given me the intro to DC I needed to jump right in after the New 52 started. Luckily, there was also The Justice League series. Crossing over from Batman: TAS, The Justice League took my love for Batman and used it to introduce me to an entire pantheon of caped crusaders. Without these two shows acting as my Dc Universe anchor, my love of DC Comics may have taken quite a bit longer to develop. 

My love for Marvel, however, has not been established. I have no anchor and no point through which to breach the shell of such a vast and varied universe. And even though the next big Marvel event, Secret Wars, is supposedly rebooting the universe, it would seem that it's to the extent of DC's Flashpoint event, after which much of the previous continuity was left intact. So I've gone to the internet in search of where to start my journey. It didn't take me long to find a mountain of suggestions, but one site provided more useful than any of the others: Comic Book Herald. 

This site has not only the most in-depth and detailed explanation of where to begin (and more importantly why), it also has fast track trade lists that can launch you into current events. However, what I love most about this "Reading Order" list is that the author takes into account that some of the most essential information is buried in the most atrocious comics, and he lets you know all about it before you go diving in. 

Yet, as good as this site and it's fast track lists are, I know myself too well. I'm going to want not only the essentials, but all of the soup that surrounds them. So, I've decided to start the complete 2000-Current guide with Part 1 (1999-2004), picking, choosing, and generally trimming off the fat of what I want to read based on the authors welcomed input. Now I know this means getting a lot of trades, and money will fly from my pockets if I try to get my hands on all of the material physically. Which leads me to Marvel Unlimited.

Marvel Unlimited, for those who don't know, is a platform on which Marvel uploads a large amount of their old material for users to read with a monthly subscription fee. It looks like a great service, and I honestly don't know why DC doesn't have something similar. Well, my plan is to subscribe to this service and read all of the Marvel stuff I want for just $10 per month. Not a bad price considering the rate at which I will likely read the stuff. Of course, this service does not include current issues; so this will be only a temporary subscription. I hope to be subscribed for no more than 3 months max. Then it's back to the drawing board for the 'ole pull list, but that's another day.
(Honestly I'm mostly drawn to the Marvel Cosmic corner of the universe. So I think my additions will end up being mostly Cosmic related titles. If I were to add Marvel titles right now I would go over my 15 main title limit by adding: Superior Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, The Avengers, New Avengers, and whatever Deadpool is out currently.)

My hope is to be caught up in the Marvel Universe by the end of Secret Wars, which, from what I've found online, will last until the end of 2015. Whether or not this will be a good point to catch up to and jump on, I'll just have to wait and see.

For now, Marvel will have to wait as I'm still catching up on the New 52. I've read all of the Bat titles up until their either conclusion or intermission during the Convergence event, but there are still others that I'm behind on. Namely: Justice League, Justice League Dark, Justice League United, Constantine, Teen Titans, and Trinity of Sin. I'm more than halfway through on almost all of these (the exception is Teen Titans), and the Convergence event should give me time to catch up on all of these before my pull list starts pulling new issues. 

With all of this comic reading to do, I just don't know how I'll have time for anything else...

Creating a Pull List

The hardest part of getting into current comics, I've learned, is creating the Pull List. Which titles do you want to pay money for? Which ones could you do without? Which ones are you going to kick yourself for missing? Can you wait until the trade comes out, or are you collecting individual issues?

Honestly, it's all a shot in the dark. You can never know which titles are going to be good. Even when you know that a title has been good, there is no guarantee that it will continue to be good. So you don't know if something is worth your money until it's spent.

With this fact in mind, I have created two limits for myself. One is Quantity based, the other is Monetary based. I will refrain from exceeding either limit, or suffer the consequences of getting carried away in the long run. ("Death by a thousand cuts" was the perfect analogy that somebody recently threw my way.)

Quantity Limit: This is mostly setting a framework of what I should aim for. Honestly, I believe this limit should be more strict. However, I know that I'll end up wanting more leeway in the end. Undoubtably, this limit will end up being tweaked (reasonably, not on a "I really want one more book, so I'm changing my limit" basis), but for now, this is a good middle of the road goal to shoot for.

15 Main Titles

1 Event Series

1 Maxi-Series

1 Trade per month

(When applicable and always adhering to the Monetary Limit.)

Monetary Limit: This is the more reasonable of the two limits, and as noted above, this is what it comes down to in the end. If I got 10 titles, an event, and a maxi that I want all on the same day, I best hope they come out to be within my Monetary Limit. My cap is set at this amount, because it comes from outside of my paycheck. My bank card will not be used for this hobby; to do so would be signing my self up for dangerous circumstances. The prepaid card I will use is funded by going to the plasma center one a week. This will keep myself from cheating. Of course, there is the matter of rollover funds, but I'll try to stay away from that by taking most of the leftover money off the card at the grocery store.

< $30 per Week

Ok. So I've set my limits, and they may be high to some or low to others, but I'm being completely honest here: I have no clue what I'm doing! Haha, that about sums it up. The biggest point of reference that I have is the shop owner who said he, in his prime, was reading 70+ titles at once. I'm nowhere near that, and I think I'd like to keep it that way. All I know, is that I'm itching to read all the titles on my list, and from what I've been told, that's the overall goal. Only get what you have to, and only take chances when you can.

With all that said, my Pull List is located in the side bar. Clicking on the titles takes you all my posts on that title. (So only the Convergence link works right now.)

And yes, I know there isn't any Marvel on my list. I'll get to why that is in my next post.

Becoming A Proper Nerd...

Ever since I started reading comics a few years ago, I've been behind the times. I started out with the essential Batman trades (Year One, Long Halloween, Man Who Laughs, etc.) and The Walking Dead Compendium. Eventually I decided to check out what ole Bats was up to currently on Comixology's digital collection. Well this was in 2012, a year after the New52 had begun. I had some catching up to do, but Snyder and Capullo with the Court of Owls made for some feverish rushing though the first year of the new Bats. I loved it so much I signed up for a mail order subscription to the main Batman title. Eventually, I got interested in Justice League and from there I branched out throughout the New52. Well, now I've been branching out even farther and have been really enjoying X-O Manowar. All in all, I'm into comics now. So today, with DC's launch of their universal (sorry, MULTIVERSAL) event and soft-reboot, I decided to start buying more than just trades at the store. However, G2K didn't have the Manowar I wanted... So I find myself at Atomik Comiks. They didn't have the Manowar I wanted either, but they ordered it for me on the spot, set me up with subscriptions (the real kind, go into the store, pull-list style), suggested some trades for previous stuff, and generally talked with me about comic stuff. (Apparently, I was right to think Arrow was extremely lack-luster, but The Flash is a show I need to be putting my time into.) So anyway, officially my first true, single comic purchase was Convergence #0, and now I can't wait till next Wednesday. 

tl;dr
Today I finally became a proper comic nerd, and I couldn't have chosen a better shop to do it at. #PullListActivate