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Carole

Co-founder and owner of Comic Book Treasury. The woman behind the Batfamily Guide (and the many Robins Guides), the Fables Universe and some of your favorite Spider-People among others!

The Avengers Reading Order, A Post Secret Wars Marvel World (2015-Present)

Avengers Assemble! To face threats too big for one hero to combat, the Avengers were created to form Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. As villains, danger, and destruction of worlds multiplied, the number of recruits for the Avengers expanded too, with spin-offs of the team to cover more threats and to deliver more stories!

The Marvel Universe was destroyed and recreated almost ten years ago in the 2015 Secret Wars. An All-New, All-Different Marvel emerged, combining the 616 Universe and the 1610 Ultimate Universe (the home of Miles Morales). Following this event, a new Marvel era started with a new team of Avengers formed by Iron Man, the first roster of many more to come in the following years as tradition would like. In Avengers and their many spin-offs, members come and go to protect the Earth.

Today, we are exploring the world of the Avengers in a Post Secret Wars, from 2015 to the present. If you want to dive into classic and older Avengers Comics, you can find the listing over here.

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X-Men Omnibus Reading Order!

From their first appearance in September 1963 to the present, The X-Men have lived countless adventures filled with action, tragedy, comedy, romance, and more. These adventures have spawned many teams such as New Mutants, X-Factor, Excalibur, and X-Force, as well as solo journeys for many characters in the form of miniseries and ongoing titles!

Naturally, the library of X-Men and X-Men-related comic book titles can look daunting for new readers and even older ones. Throughout the years, Marvel Comics has collected many runs and tens of thousands of X-Men issues in various formats, including classic trade paperbacks, Marvel Masterworks, in the popular Epic Collection, and, of course, the Omnibus line!

With more than 50 omnibuses dedicated to the X-Men and all associated titles—and the number is still growing—, we have decided to create a Specific X-Men Omnibus Reading Order. This guide can serve as a roadmap to the extraordinary adventures of the X-Men in this particular collection, helping new and old readers to find their ways in the vast world of the mutantkind!

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What is the Speed Force? Understanding the Origins of The Flash’s Powers

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It’s no secret that The Flash is the fastest man alive! But how can he be capable of such an amazing prowess? The Flash’s speed is derived from the Speed Force, which is defines as ‘a strange other-dimensional energy field that gives all speedsters their power‘ and ‘a mysterious ancient power that caused the extinction of the Mayans and sped up the evolution of a tribe of gorillas in East Africa‘ (DC Encyclopedia, 2021.) 

Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo created the Speed Force 30 years ago, in The Flash (Vol. 2) #91, after speedster Wally West attempted to travel faster using Johnny Quick’s super speed formula and began going so fast that he stopped time. At this moment, Wally’s mentor and Golden Age Speedster, Max Mercury, informs him of his link to the Speed Force. For Wally West, it was some « Zen Mumbo Jumbo », unaware that the Flash Mythology had just been drastically transformed.

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Cyborg Superman Reading Order (Hank Henshaw)

Since his creation, Superman has inspired many other characters including different versions of himself such as Bizarro, the “mirror image” of The Man of Steel. Among the alternative versions of the superhero is also Cyborg Superman, a character whose origin story is more of a dark homage to what happened to the Fantastic Four.

Created by Dan Jurgens, Hank Henshaw made his first appearance in The Adventures of Superman #465 (May 1990). The astronaut was on the LexCorp space shuttle Excalibur with his wife Terri and two other crew members when it crashed, supposedly at first from a solar flare created by Superman which also exposed the crew to a fatal dose of radiation. As Hank’s body deteriorated, he transferred his consciousness to LexCorp’s mainframe and transformed into a cyborg resembling Superman. His wife didn’t survive the whole ordeal and with time, Hank became delusional and paranoid, blaming Superman for Terri’s death — even though she herself established what happened was simply an accident.

From the rubble of this freakish accident was born Cyborg Superman, also called The Cyborg (not to be confused with Cyborg!). With the ability to control machines and computers, as well as physical strength similar to Superman’s, Cyborg Superman became one of the Man of Steel’s dangerous foes and a Green Lantern villain.

Now, learn more about Cyborg Superman with our reading order, guiding you through the essential comics and story arcs featuring DC Comics’s evil twisted version of Superman!

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Fullmetal Alchemist, a Classic Fantasy Manga

With a total of 108 chapters, Fullmetal Alchemist chronicles over nine years the epic, fun, and dangerous journey of the famous Elric Brothers.

Their story began in Japan in 2001 in Square Enix’s Monthly Shōnen Gangan. Readers were introduced to Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers living in a 20th-century-inspired world where alchemy is one of the most practiced sciences. Following a forbidden alchemical ritual gone wrong, Edward Elric lost his right arm and left leg while his younger brother Alphonse lost his entire physical body and now exists as a soul alchemically bound to a large suit of steel armor.

In a quest to restore their bodies (especially for his brother), Ed joined the military and became a State Alchemist. His research led him to search for the Philosopher’s Stone, a mystical object that could help him attain his goal. But now, war is on the horizon and the two brothers have no choice but to face the moral complexities of their actions, the harsh realities of war, and human suffering, as well as to deal with powerful and menacing adversaries with their own ambitions.

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The Best of Magik Comics, Our Illyana Rasputin Recommended Reading Order (X-Men)!

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While it’s obvious to think about Scarlet Witch or Clea and Stephen Strange when talking about magic users in the Marvel Universe, it would be a great mistake to disregard Magik, also known as Illyana Rasputina.

Created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, Illyana made her first appearance in the comic book Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975), like many other X-Men characters such as Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird, and her brother Colossus! For a long time, she was only known as Colossus’ little sister until Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema sent her to the magical realm of Limbo. In her time there, Illyana aged seven years,  developed her teleportation abilities and became a sorceress later known as Magik.

Since her debut, Illyana has been abused by demons during her formative years, de-aged, exploited by her government, killed by a Virus, resurrected, turned on the Dark Side and more! With those many traumatic experiences, Magik became one of the most fascinating and ambiguous X-Men and well deserving of her own reading order! 

So today, let’s explore Magik’s history with her best comics to understand her character and motivations, learn more about her place among the X-Men, her relationship with her brother, Shadowcat and more!

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Berserk Manga Order

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Berserk is undoubtedly one of the most popular manga series in the United States. When the manga returned in 2023 with a new volume, it topped the charts, outselling One Piece and Demon Slayer in the process. It is also an influential work that affected not just many mangakas but also the worlds of games, film, animation, and literature. 

Written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura (1966-2021), Berserk is a Dark Fantasy manga set in a medieval-Europe-inspired world. The story follows Guts, a lone swordsman, on his quest for vengeance against Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band that betrayed him. Starting in 1989, Berserk was published in the manga magazine Monthly Animal House, which was replaced in 1992 by the semimonthly magazine Young Animal.

Berserk was a life’s work for Miura, who died from acute aortic dissection in May 2021. Manga artist Kouji Mori, the only person who knows how Miura intended to finish Berserk, has agreed to continue the manga and see it through to the end using plans and thoughts relayed to Mori by Miura himself, as well as memorandums and character designs that Miura left behind.

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Secret Six Reading Order

DC Comics is full of teams and organizations, some more famous than others. Everybody knows the Justice League and Suicide Squad, but you can’t say the same about the underused Secret Six.

Created at the end of the 1960s by E. Nelson Bridwell and Frank Springer, The Secret Six is the name given to a succession of clandestine, non-governmental special ops teams. The team, to put it simply, was at the time of its creation, DC’s version of Mission: Impossible (which was launched on television in 1966!).

The team features generally six members who all possess special skill sets but also some dark secrets that, if revealed or exploited, would result in imprisonment, disgrace, or death. They are led by the faceless Mockingbird, often with each character assuming that the leader must be one of the other five members. 

Each team can be read independently from the other, so let’s explore the several versions of Secret Six that exist in the main continuity with this Secret Six reading order!

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The Essential Comic Book Vocabulary Guide

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Each subject has its own lexicon and specialized terminology, and the world of comic books is no exception. New readers can be confused when words such as “continuity,” “variant covers,” or “crossovers” pop up.

As a medium, comics have created a rich and distinct language over the years. Prominent creators and scholars like Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey, and Dylan Horrocks have worked to formalize and clarify comic-book language. To help you navigate the Comic Book World, we’ve put together a Glossary of comics terminology—a guide with the most popular terms and phrases you can encounter.

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Superman Comics, A Reading Guide for the Golden Age, Silver Age & Bronze Age!

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“Up, Up, and Away!” Superman is one of the most iconic comic book superheroes who dedicated his life to truth, justice, and the American way. The creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster made his first appearance in Action Comics #1 (May 1938). Sent to Earth from a distant planet as a baby, the child (now named Clark Kent) grew up and discovered he had super abilities. As an adult, he decided to become Superman, “champion of the oppressed” and “had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!”

A page of history was written as the debut of Superman is now considered the beginning of the superhero genre. While Action Comics started as an anthology, the title would eventually become dedicated to Superman Stories. It didn’t take long for the Man of Steel to headline more than one title as he soon came to live adventures in newspaper strips as well as in the new Superman title! During the next decades, the Kryptonian would team up with Batman and other superheroes while living some wild tales in Metropolis as Clark Kent/Superman, working as a journalist for the Daily Planet with his love interest Lois Lane and photographer Jimmy Olsen, and facing enemies such as Lex Luthor, Brainiac, or General Zod.

From the 1940s to the mid-1980s, there have been many Superman adventures, and DC Comics has reprinted some of them in different collections (there are many more stories to be collected yet). This article is here to help you navigate all those collections (some only available second-hand, very pricey or not), and explore those old colorful times!

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