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Buffyverse Comics Reading Order, The Dark Horse and IDW Years

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Welcome to Sunnydale, a California city located on a Hellmouth, a mystical portal attracting supernatural evils, and the setting of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series. Vampires and other demons are omnipresent and they can prey easily on their victims in the many dark alleys, abandoned houses, factories, and such. Well, that is, if they don’t encounter a little blonde with a stake named Buffy! 

Buffy Summers is the Chosen One, granted powers to fight and kill vampires, demons, and other supernatural creatures. She was a cheerleader in high school when she learned about her destiny and accidentally burned down the school gym while fighting vampires before moving to Sunnydale with her mother for a new start in life. She has the surprise to discover that vampires are well established in her new little town, and she now must juggle between the challenge of her teenage life and her mission as a Slayer. She killed many vampires, saved many lives and lived many other dangerous, dark, funny adventures with her family and friends during the seven seasons comprising the series. 

However, Buffy’s story didn’t stop there! The vampire slayer also lived many adventures in the pages of several comic books! Publisher Dark Horse Comics released the first Buffy comic in 1998, as an extension to the television series, but not officially part of the canon. It will continue to do so until 2003, telling parallel adventures of Buffy and the Scooby Gang. 

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Age of Revelation Reading Order, The Marvel Universe 10 years into the future

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As Marvel Comics celebrates the 30th Anniversary of Age of Apocalypse, one of the most famous alternate timelines in the X-Universe, the publisher is revisiting the cataclysmic style of the ’90s with Age of Revelation.

Instead of an alternate reality, it is an alternate future that takes over the X-Men line. To be more specific, the Marvel Universe is going 10 years into the future “where the world has been reshaped by Apocalypse’s heir, Doug Ramsey AKA Revelation!”

Arising from current events happening in the X-Men main title from writer Jed MacKay and artist Ryan Stegman, Revelation has set out on the impossible task that Apocalypse entrusted him with: creating a world where only the fittest survived. Ten years later, Doug Ramsey commands Earth with his voice, creating the Revelation Territories, a new mutant utopia built on an insidious lie. Beneath the surface, rebellion brews and as a ragtag X-Men team strikes from the shadows, Revelation faces threats from within. 

Welcome to the Age of Revelation, a spiritual sequel to Age of Apocalypse that you can explore now with our reading order and checklist! 

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Star Trek Comics: Your Reading Guide to the Kelvin Timeline

Today is Star Trek Day! Since the first Star Trek comics were released over 50 years ago, many more comics have been published by various publishers. IDW Publishing became one of them in 2009 after securing the rights to Star Trek comics. They started with the release of Star Trek: Countdown, a comic prequel to the 2009 film, Star Trek.

It was the start of a series of comics set in the film continuity, officially named by CBS in 2016, the Kelvin Timeline. This alternate reality was created when the Romulan Nero traveled to 2233 and destroyed the Federation starship U.S.S. Kelvin. From then on, history became different from the Prime Universe, where Star Trek: The Original Series and the other TV series take place.

In comic book form, the Kelvin Timeline spans around 10 years of comic book stories, including two ongoing series and a few limited series. Following is our guide to the Star Trek’s Kelvin Universe Comics, to discover all the adventures of Captain Kirk and his crew, before, during, and after the movies! 

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Tomb Raider Reading Order, the Dark Horse Comics

Since the release of the original Tomb Raider in 1996, British archaeologist Lara Croft has become one of the most recognizable heroines in the video game industry. She has lived many adventures in video games, comic books, novels, theme parks, and films. 

But not all of her stories take place within the same continuity. The Tomb Raider franchise has been rebooted more than once since American developer Crystal Dynamics took over from Core Design. The most recent reboot happened in 2013, with the release of a new Tomb Raider game that serves as a start of what is known as the Survivor timeline. In this continuity, Lara Croft is a young British archaeologist graduate searching for meaning and direction in her life. She is the driven force behind an expedition to find the lost kingdom of Yamatai. Things go as planned and Lara found herself stranded on the island, forced to adapt in order to survive.

From there, she will go on to live other globetrotting adventures in video games, as well as in print! While the previous Tomb Raider comics were independent of the video games, the new stories published by Dark Horse are expanding the new timeline with tie-ins set between her video game adventures. 

Follow our guide to discover the latest adventures of Lara Croft at Dark Horse Comics, and where those stories fit within this particular chronology!

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Groot Reading Order

A well-known member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Groot didn’t start out as a hero, but as a villainous alien intent on capturing humans for experimentation. He first appeared in Tales to Astonish #13 (November 1960), created by writer Stan Lee, artist Jack Kirby and scripter Larry Lieber. Of course, this is not the Groot we know today.

In 2006, he was reimagined as a heroic character in Annihilation: Conquest – Star-Lord #1 (2007), written by Keith Giffen. Hailing from the planet X, a world characterised by sentient plant life, Groot belongs to the Flora Colossus species. Distinguished by his arboreal physiology and limited verbal expression, he primarily communicates through tone, inflection, and context, which is understood by those familiar with him, such as his friend Rocket Raccoon. Despite his linguistic limitations, Groot exhibits considerable emotional depth and intelligence, as well as formidable strength and regenerative capabilities. He often serves as both protector and moral anchor within his narrative contexts.

Throughout his cosmic adventures, Groot has demonstrated several unique abilities, including regenerative healing, size manipulation, limited photokinesis, and the power to grow and control plant matter. He has died and regenerated multiple times, with each incarnation sometimes being treated as a rebirth or a new version of the character. The cinematic version, voiced by Vin Diesel, introduced in 2014 in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie directed by James Gunn, made that element quite popular with “Baby Groot” and later “Teen Groot.”

In solo or with his friends, Groot certainly went through epic adventures in space during the last two decades. So, let’s follow the guide!

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Justice League Dark Reading Order, Your Guide to DC Comics’ supernatural team

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Published by DC Comics, Justice League Dark was created by writer Peter Milligan and artist Mikel Janín and first debuted in September 2011, as part of DC’s The New 52 publishing initiative.

Conceived as the supernatural equivalent of the traditional Justice League, the series focuses on characters within the occult and mystical realms of the DC Universe who confront threats beyond the scope of conventional superhero teams.

As a team, the Justice League Dark is composed of a rotating cast of magical and paranormal figures who are called upon to combat arcane and metaphysical dangers, the type of crisis that the main Justice League is neither equipped nor qualified to handle. The original lineup included John Constantine, Zatanna Zatara, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and Shade, the Changing Man.

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Avengers Disassembled Reading Order, the beginning of Brian Michael Bendis’s era

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After having found success at Marvel Comics with Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Alias, Brian Michael Bendis took over The Avengers more than twenty years ago. The writer started his run with Avengers Disassembled, a story that concluded the previous era, before he relaunched the team with New Avengers — the start of the modern era for the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

More than that, it was the beginning, like it or not, of one of the most impactful runs in Marvel History. Because, soon enough, the arc became simply the first part in a trilogy of events orchestrated by Bendis that would continuously reshape the Marvel Universe for almost ten years. From one event to another, superheroes would die, lose their minds or their powers, or reveal they are not what they seemed to be. And it all started with Avengers Disassembled, called “The Worst Day in Avengers History.”

Avengers Disassembled is often presented as a perfect entry point in the world of Marvel, in particular the Avengers, as things are blown up before being completely rebuilt. To help you in your Marvel Journey, following is our reading guide to the Avengers Disassembled story, exploring the main event and all the tie-ins!

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Batman The Court of Owls Reading Order

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Created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, The Court of Owls first appeared in Batman (vol. 2) #2 in 2011, at the start of the New 52 era. Previously, the Owls were not part of the DC Universe, but Snyder provided hints about the organisation in his earlier Batman work, Batman: Gates of Gotham.

The shadowy Court of Owls is an organised crime group and secret society made up of wealthy Gothamites. It has existed in Gotham City since colonial times. For a very long time, the Court was just an urban legend, until Batman discovered one of their secret base of operations. There, he found a series of old photographs of the Court’s members with one of their assassins, the Talon (William Cobb), an undead, reanimated killer. The Court kidnaps child circus performers to train and transform them into assassins known as Talons.

The Court of Owls is composed of some of Gotham City’s oldest and wealthiest families. It has controlled Gotham City for centuries, wielding political influence throughout history through murder and money. They revealed themselves to Batman when they decided to send their killer after Bruce Wayne, who had announced plans to rebuild and reshape Gotham City for the future.

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Age of Apocalypse Reading Order, an X-Men crossover event

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The 1995 crossover storyline Age of Apocalypse was one of the most ambitious crossover events in X-Men history. Much like The Clone Saga in the Spider-Man titles, this story became an era-defining milestone within the broader Marvel Universe.

Unlike traditional crossover events, which build upon existing continuity, the Age of Apocalypse storyline temporarily replaced the main X-Men titles with entirely new series set in an alternate universe. These included X-Calibre, Gambit and the X-Ternals, Generation Next, Astonishing X-Men, Amazing X-Men, Weapon X, Factor X, X-Man and X-Universe. Each of these limited series explored different aspects of a dystopian timeline dominated by the ancient mutant Apocalypse, offering radically altered reimaginings of familiar characters and dynamics.

The story kicks off when Legion (David Haller), the mentally unstable son of Professor Charles Xavier, travels back in time intending to assassinate Magneto in the hope of preventing the ideological conflict that would later erupt between Magneto and Xavier. However, Legion’s mission ends in tragedy when he inadvertently kills Xavier instead. This assassination fractures the timeline, giving rise to an alternate reality in which Apocalypse begins his conquest of Earth a decade earlier than in the original continuity.

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Chew Comics, Your Reading Guide to the Cannibal detective Series

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Meet Tony Chu. He’s a cibopath, which means that whenever he eats food, he learns everything about that food, from how it was grown and the pesticides used, to how the animal was killed, and much more. The only food that does not give him these sensations is beets, so Tony eats a lot of them!

Tony Chu is the lead of Chew, a comic book written by John Layman and illustrated by Rob Guillory. It was published by Image Comics between 2009 and 2016. During this time, Tony Chu mostly worked as a cop for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, using his special skills to solve food-related crimes. 

Although Chew is now established as one of the most popular titles from Image Comics, it was not an easy sell to make for creator John Layman. He explained, “Nobody would give me the time of day on this Chew pitch.” Many people did not think it would sell, but Layman decided to go ahead anyway. he said he “did it as suicide.[…] It was almost my last gasp of comics.” (sktchd.com).

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