Have you ever dated someone that had a lot of history? Someone who’s love relationships seemed like a web of confusion, shared loves, burned friendships and hurt feelings? Tom is dating Sally but it was after Jim and Sally broke up so we can’t invite Tom and Jim to the same party but Sally is also the cousin of your friend’s new love so it adds strain when you can’t mention the party around Sally’s aunt because she knows Jim. Imagine that confusion and history spanned out over 70 years. That’s pretty much what it’s like jumping into comic books for the first time.

Comic books are a staple in American pop culture. Their popularity enjoys waves of successes and failures, ups and downs. But one of the biggest problems the comic industry tends to face is attracting new readers. Being re-introduced into the comic book culture after a long hiatus, I can understand how you could be intimidated by the comic book mythos. So what’s the best way for a newbie to get his feet wet in the comic book world?

Well there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that both the major publishers (Marvel and DC) recognize that this can be a barrier to entry. We’ve identified the problem! Bad news is they’re not doing TOO much about it. Below are some tips that I found useful getting back into comic books without being overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know about the characters or the universe.

Tip #1 Buy Trade Paperbacks

Almost every story arc these days is being collected into a trade paperback for re-release at a later date. (The window seems to be getting smaller and smaller) As a newbie I highly recommend trade paperbacks. It provides you with a complete story arc in one book. (most of the time) The problem that a lot of newcomers seem to have is they pick up an issue of a book and it’s in the middle of a story arc. Frustrated and confused they abandon it with the intentions of coming back later. Trade paperbacks will eliminate most of your problems. There will still be some history to the characters that you may not fully get or follow, but it won’t prevent you from enjoying the story currently being told.

Tip #2 Find a reboot or a new series

Nothing quite helps you ease back into comics as finding either a reboot or retcon of an existing book or finding a new series that you can start in on issue #1. The main purpose of this is to get you into reading and buying comics. Once you start reading a comic book series your appetite becomes insatiable. If you find a good series to jump on with you’ll be wanting to know more about the characters and the universe they occupy. You’ll no longer be gun shy about just hopping into a series.

Tip #3 Accept the fact you can’t read everything

With many story arcs crossing over into a gajillion different books, it’s impossible to be able read AND afford all the books at the same time. Accept that fact and realize if you’re truly interested in a story arc, there are other ways to find out what happened, but trying to buy every issue of Secret Invasion will leave you bankrupt in no time. Unless your independently wealthy, in which case buy the whole damn comic shop.

Tip #4 Use Wikipedia

There is SO much history to learn about a character or story line. You can either spend your life savings to get caught up or you can harness the knowledge of bored dorks across the globe through Wikipedia. Just about anything you can imagine related to comics is available there. So if you hear The Flash making reference to a Cosmic Treadmill, just go over to Wikipedia and get caught up. (When you look up cosmic treadmill, try not to be drinking liquids as you read it. It’s hard cleaning soda from computer monitors)

Tip #5 Online comics can be your friend

Now of course there are those times where you absolutely have to read the historical stuff. Your mind just won’t be be able to rest until you’ve read the whole juicy story line. A cheap way to do this (at least with Marvel) is through their Digital Comics online application. It allows you to read their back issues on your computer. Granted it’s not quite the same experience as reading the actual book, but at $4.99 a month for unlimited access I doubt your wallet will call you a punk ass for going this route.

These 5 simple tips are a way for you to dip your foot into the giant pool that is the comic book genre. As you begin to get familiar with characters and their history, you’ll soon appreciate the breadth of drama from which writers can pull from. But until you know it, that same history can be your arch nemesis. Like any good super hero, don’t be afraid. Fear is the weapon of the enemy!

I’ll try to spotlight some good jumping on books on the blog for those who are curious and might want to hop in. Keep an eye out for those posts coming soon. Also we’ll talk about it briefly in our upcoming All Things Dork Podcast. Yeah…you read it right.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 8:38 am and is filed under Comic Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.