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Where to start reading Deadpool comics? A Guide for beginners

This summer, Deadpool is breaking the Fourth Wall on the big screen once again… This time with Wolverine! Before watching Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), why not read some good comics featuring Wade Wilson?

Born in Canada, Deadpool is known as the Merc With a Mouth. He’s a wise-cracking, insufferable lethal mercenary who just can’t shut up! Is he mad or a genius? A hero who commits regular felonies or a villain doing occasional good deeds?

Learn more about Marvel’s famous mercenary, The Man, The Myth, The Legend with our recommended reading list!

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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!

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

Berserk Manga Order

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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The Future of Comic Book Treasury (and other recent updates)

Panels from The Wicked and The Divine #2. This was in July 2014!

As of right now, you may have heard how Google is killing independent websites. If not, the short version of the story is the recent updates of the search engine wiped out the search traffic of many websites as Google pushes ads and AI Answers on the top of their results pages. Google Search has evolved to no longer be a proper search engine, as its primary focus is to retain users within its own ecosystem (and selling its own products).

Without surprise, Comic Book Treasury has been massively affected by those recent events. Compared to last year, we have lost more than 50% of our traffic and we are still decreasing — and to be fair, we are a small website! It could also be worse, as our sister site Howtoread.me (owned by Fabien) has been part of those who lost 95% of their traffic.

I also have to acknowledge that the timing couldn’t be worse, as the Superhero Comic Book Industry is not in great shape right now. The market is down and things are evolving. These are always turbulent times.

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Storm Reading Order, Your Ororo Munroe Comic Book Guide!

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One of the first black comic book characters, Storm is also one of the most important female superheroes in the Marvel Universe. She is a member of the X-Men, a descendant of African witch-priestesses with the ability to control the weather and atmosphere, who uses her powers to fight for peace and equal rights.

Created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, she made her first appearance in the classic Giant-Size X-Men #1, the famous issue introducing several new X-Men such as Wolverine (who already made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk #181), Colossus, Thunderbird, and Nightcrawler.

Born Ororo Munroe, Storm is a powerful and strong superheroine with a love of nature. Noticeable for her striking blue eyes and silver-white hair, she is warm, generous, and protective of her friends and family but cold, frightening, and dangerous to her enemies. Recognized as an Omega Level Mutant, she has served multiple times as the leader of the X-Men. Storm has also been worshipped as a Goddess, was Queen of Wakanda, and briefly a member of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

Discover now our Storm reading order, guiding you through the essential comics and story arcs featuring Marvel’s iconic weather-controlling mutant!

Read More »Storm Reading Order, Your Ororo Munroe Comic Book Guide!

Arrowette: A Brief History of Archery Legacy in DC Comics

In the DC Universe, being an expert archer can lead you to live a life of many adventures. While this is mostly a choice for most of the members of the Green Arrow family, one archer in the DC Universe didn’t choose it but proved to be quite the heroine. We’re talking about the Young Arrowette, alias Cissie-King Jones.

Cissie is famously known today to be part of a strict minority of superheroes who chose to retire and stick with it. But before throwing away her bow and arrow, as she said it herself recently, she was trained by her mother Bonnie King to become one of the best archers and be skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Her mother tried her hands at heroism when she was younger under the name Miss Arrowette but had to stop it and push her daughter into a dangerous situation to live her dreams through her.

Cissie would prove to be more than capable of handling herself in dangerous situations and it’s because of her talent that we today know the name Arrowette! Her story is inherently linked to her mother’s and we today dive into the origins and history of Arrowette, from her introduction during the Silver Age to Cissie’s time in the Young Justice! 

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GTO Reading Order (Great Teacher Onizuka Manga Universe)

Not all manga are about facing demons, battling villains, or surviving the Apocalypse. For Eikichi Onizuka, it’s about becoming the world’s greatest teacher. Eikichi Onizuka is the main protagonist of Great Teacher Onizuka, sometimes simply referenced as GTO, a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa. While GTO is certainly the most famous manga featuring Onizuka, it is not the only one and it’s also part of a bigger media franchise.

Tooru Fujisawa started writing Eikichi’s story in the nineties, from his delinquent days as a middle schooler in Shonan to his work as a teacher at a private middle school, Holy Forest Academy and beyond. Many spin-off series were created, featuring supporting characters and other stories set in the same universe. The popularity of Great Teacher Onizuka led to several adaptations in anime and live-action.

So let’s go to class with Eikichi! As it is said, “his curriculum may not rely on the reading, writing and arithmetic but he has more than a few good lessons in personal development, fisticuffs and fun to teach a new generation of troubled teens.”

Read More »GTO Reading Order (Great Teacher Onizuka Manga Universe)