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Happy Birthday, Comic Book Treasury: 5 Years of Comic Book Reading Orders

Comic Book Treasury was launched five years ago today. On the web, where some institutions and cultural websites have existed for decades, it can seem like a short period of time. At the same time, the web has undergone significant transformations, driven by legislation, numerous Google updates, and the economic crisis of the past five years. So much that surviving it can feel like a lifetime! 

Many events have taken place in the Comic Book World, and I’m not talking about the usual character deaths and quick resurrections. Over the past five years, Marvel Comics has released many new Omnibus and Epic Collections, recently announced putting on hold the long-running Masterworks line, unleashed Knull’s invasion of Earth, brought the Krakoa Era to an end, and introduced a new Marvel Ultimate Universe. DC Comics has relaunched three times, launched the Absolute Universe imprint, found success with its Compact Comics line and DC Finest line, and rolled out a soft reboot on the big screen. Meanwhile, Geoff Johns and others launched Ghost Machine; Robert Kirkman acquired the Hasbro licenses and built the Energon Universe; Kyle Higgins created the Massive-Verse; and the Valiant Universe was rebooted once again. Manga and webtoons have grown in popularity, while digital comics have expanded, with Marvel Unlimited surpassing 3 million subscribers in December 2024. And then came the AI boom with the release of ChatGPT, and debates over copyright protections and the role of generative AI in creative industries started a battle that is ongoing.

I’m sure there is more that I forget. During these five years, Comic Book Treasury has published almost 700 articles, most being reading orders to help you read and collect your favorite characters, explore major (and small) events, and famous runs. We have explored many parts of the DC Universe, the Marvel Universe, and beyond during those years, navigated between series with the same titles, and discovered many comic book series! Some guides are simple, others are like a jigsaw puzzle. More and more, as those worlds continue to expand, we are refreshing and updating those guides to stay up to date, including the new releases and/or new collections. Doing all that while still waiting for The Unwritten: Compendium Two, DC Comics, if you read me!

We are thankful for you readers, your words of encouragement, and your help to improve our guides! We have forgotten titles and made mistakes, and as we strive to deliver the best we can do, we are glad for the comments that help us improve our guides and make this website a fun place to be! 

And to properly mark the occasion, here is a selection of 10 articles we published during that time, a little sample of our work, articles, and guides that we enjoyed creating, make us proud, and also really help us (and that we still consult) in our reading journey.

Thank you for reading us! 

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Thomas Wayne Reading Order (The Flashpoint Batman)

Today is Batman Day! Everybody knows the origin story of Batman. Thomas and Martha Wayne went out with their son Bruce for a family outing in town. In the infamous Crime Alley, they are murdered in a street mugging gone wrong. Only one of them survives and ultimately becomes Batman.

In the 2011 reality-shattering crossover event Flashpoint, written by Geoff Johns and pencilled by Andy Kubert, the one who survives is not young Bruce, but his father, the renowned Gotham City surgeon and philanthropist Thomas Wayne. 

Flashpoint begins when Barry Allen, the Flash, wakes up in an altered timeline where the world is on the brink of collapse. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are at war, Superman is missing, and the Justice League was never formed. At the heart of this reality is a changed Gotham City, where crime is rampant and hope is scarce. This is not the world Barry knows, and at its center is a very different Batman.

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Conan the Barbarian from Titan Comics, a Simple Reading Guide

There is no more iconic pulp hero than Conan the Barbarian. Born from the imaginary mind of writer Robert E. Howard, Conan made his debut in 1932 in the pages of the Weird Tales magazine.

His creator wrote 21 stories featuring Conan before his passing in 1936. However, Conan’s adventures didn’t stop there: fantasy writer Lyon Sprague de Camp obtained the rights, rewrote and expanded the tales, and the character went on to solidify his place in pop culture through comic book adventures.

Capitalizing on the sword-and-sorcery vogue of the 70s, Conan became a commercial success for Marvel in this decade, and the publisher released stories with the Barbarian until 1993 where he was often partnered with Red Sonja. Dark Comics acquired the rights for a time (2003-2018), before Conan returned to Marvel Comics in 2018. This run only lasted 25 issues, and stopped when Titan Comics acquired the license in 2022, in collaboration with Heroic Signatures.

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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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