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Deadpool Reading Order: The Ultimate Merc with a Mouth Guide

He is known as the Merc with a Mouth. He has also been called Jack Silvini, Johnny Cruz, Wade T. Wilson, Wildcard, Weapon XI, the Regenerating Degenerate, among others. Yes, we’re talking about Deadpool aka Wade Wilson, Marvel’s Deathstroke!

Now a movie superstar, Deadpool has come a long way since his beginnings. Created by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist/writer Rob Liefeld, his first appearance was in The New Mutants #98 and X-Force. But he wasn’t the Deadpool who would become famous as Marvel’s most iconic anti-hero. At the time, he was just a supervillain. Under Joe Kelly’s creative vision, things would change for Deadpool, pushing him into new territories and making him break the fourth wall and have conversations with his two internal monologues.

From there, Deadpool went on to have some wild, crazy and fun adventures, as well as some quite serious and intense ones. Nothing was off limits for Deadpool, Cable’s buddy and Spider-Man’s best friend!

Walking the line between criminal and hero, good friend and insufferable prick, Deadpool has made a name for himself in the pages of Marvel Comics and on the big screen, with solo adventures, team-ups, spin-offs, limited series and plenty of out-of-continuity escapades. Explore everything with our Deadpool comics guide!

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James Cameron’s Avatar Comics, The Stories Beyond the Movies

Not to be confused with Avatar: The Last Airbender, the ‘Avatar’ we are concerned with today was created by James Cameron for the big screen. This epic environmental tale transports us to the alien world of Pandora, a moon inhabited by tall, blue, cat-faced humanoids called the Na’vi, as well as myriad fauna and flora. The Na’vi come into conflict with the RDA (Resources Development Administration), a human organisation that has established a colony and employs both scientific and military means to extract resources.

Avatar was released in 2009 and became the highest-grossing film of all time. It was the beginning of a franchise that expanded over the next 15 years with sequels, video games, a theme park attraction, art books and several comic books!

In October 2015, publisher Dark Horse signed a 10-year partnership to publish Avatar comics, releasing their first one-shot comic set in the Avatar universe for Free Comic Book Day in 2017. This has been followed by several miniseries and a graphic novel series.

Today, we are taking a closer look at the Avatar comics published by Dark Horse that transport us to the world of Pandora through prequels, sequels and spin-offs.

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Super Sons Reading Order, Damian Wayne and Jon Kent team-up

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Jon Kent is the son of Superman. Damian Wayne is the son of Batman. Together, they are the Super Sons! This famous team-up was born during the Rebirth era, with the two heroes becoming the “best frenemies forever” who will save the world together “if they don’t kill each other first”. They make their first appearances together in Superman #10-11, from Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason.

At the time, Jon Kent was just a cute ten-year-old who grew up on a small-town farm, unaware that his father was a superhero. In contrast, Damian Wayne was a thirteen-year-old boy, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, who had been trained from birth to become an assassin and take over the world as an Al Ghul. On paper, the two children had almost nothing in common. And yet they came together to form the Super Sons, the odd couple of young heroes, and one of the best friendships in the DC Universe!

From their first adventures together to their more recent team-ups and occasional catching up with each other’s lives, follow our complete guide for the Super Sons comics.

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Cells at Work! Manga Order

There is a manga for everyone, even those who want to learn how the human body works and have a lot of fun doing so! If you are one of those, just read Cells at Work!, the series written and illustrated by Akane Shimizu. His idea was to anthropomorphize the cells of the human body, depicting them as workers assigned specific roles within a vast, bustling metropolis that represents a healthy adult human.

The concept originated as a short story titled The Story of Cells. Shimizu later developed the idea into a manga series, which began serialization in Kodansha’s Monthly Shōnen Sirius with the March 2015 issue. The original series follows Red Blood Cell AE3803, an inexperienced courier responsible for oxygen delivery, and White Blood Cell U-1146, a stoic neutrophil tasked with eliminating pathogens. Through their encounters with bacteria, viruses, allergens, and physical trauma, the series dramatizes fundamental concepts of human biology while maintaining scientific accuracy overseen by medical supervision.

The original Cells at Work!’s popularity led to the creation of numerous spin-off manga series, each focusing on different cell types, bodily systems, or physiological conditions, and published across various Kodansha magazines between 2017 and the mid-2020s. The main series and the spin-offs were licensed for English-language publication by Kodansha USA Publishing.

In parallel with the manga expansions, the franchise was adapted into anime, beginning in 2018, with later seasons and adaptations drawing from both the original manga and selected spin-offs. A live-action adaptation was also produced in 2024.

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Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers Reading Order

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After completing his acclaimed run on Fantastic Four and several years before becoming the mastermind behind the famous Krakoa era of The X-Men, Jonathan Hickman was the main writer of Marvel’s Avengers line during the Marvel NOW! initiative, following Brian Michael Bendis’s departure in 2012.

In Avengers (vol. 5), Hickman introduced a series of escalating threats while significantly expanding the team’s roster and operational scope, shifting the Avengers from a primarily Earth-based defense force to one operating on a global, cosmic, and interplanetary scale. This approach laid the groundwork for a reality- and cosmos-threatening conflict that would define his run.

In the companion series New Avengers (vol. 3), Hickman focused on the Illuminati—Black Panther, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Black Bolt, Mister Fantastic, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and Beast—depicting their clandestine efforts to confront the phenomenon of “Incursions,” in which parallel Earths collide across the multiverse. Armed with the Infinity Gems, the group attempts to prevent the collapse of all realities while grappling with profound moral and political consequences.

All of Hickman’s work on the two series ultimately culminated in Secret Wars (2015), the famous line-wide crossover event that depicted the collapse of the Marvel multiverse and its subsequent reconstruction. This miniseries concluded his long-running story by effectively redefining the structure and history of the Marvel Universe going forward.

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Batman All In Reading Order

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During the Absolute Power event, Amanda Waller tried and ultimately failed to neutralize the superhero community and the wider metahuman population. In fact, this prompted the formation of a new and improved Justice League, featuring the largest roster ever. The heroes are All In the JL, while the Absolute Universe, a parallel reality shaped by Darkseid that redefines familiar characters and power structures across the DC multiverse, is created. 

With the Batman titles, the transition from the Dawn of DC era to All In is not marked by a big break. With delays in the publication of Hush 2, the direct sequel to the classic Hush story, written by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, Chip Zdarsky’s run on Batman was slightly extended, and, eventually, Matt Fraction took over Batman (Jorge Jiménez is still the artist on the book). Detective Comics is now written by Tom Taylor with art by Pete Woods. And while Batman is not dominating the DC Universe as he once did, Superman has been pushed forward recently, there are still a lot of Bat-Family adventures to read.

Of course, there is also the popular Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta, which reinvented Bruce Wayne’s life, creating a working-class version of the character who confronts crime with limited resources. This universe has a dedicated reading guide.

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The Question Reading Order (Vic Sage, Renee Montoya)

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Like the Peacemaker, the Question was not a DC Comics character as he originated at Charlton Comics, making his first appearance in Blue Beetle #1 (1967), in a backup feature. Created by writer-artist Steve Ditko, the Question is Vic Sage, a television investigative journalist who wages a private war on crime. He conceals his identity behind a featureless mask made of “Pseudoderm,” an artificial skin invented by his former professor, the scientist Aristotle Rodor. When applied, the mask renders Sage a man without a face. He possesses no superhuman abilities, relying instead on physical conditioning, investigative skills, and an absolute, black-and-white moral code.

The Question was closely related to Ditko’s independently created character “Mr. A,” who embodied the creator’s Objectivist moral philosophy. While Mr. A was an uncompromising, overtly ideological figure, the Question was conceived as a more accessible, if still unusually severe, superhero for a mainstream comics audience.

His first run was short. After a handful of appearances in Blue Beetle, he disappeared, only to reappear briefly in the anthology Charlton Bullseye years later, before joining DC Comics in the 1980s. He officially joined the DC Universe during Crisis on Infinite Earths, before joining the new Blue Beetle solo series. The Question gained a clear identity within DC continuity in 1987, when he received an ongoing solo title written by Dennis O’Neil and primarily illustrated by Denys Cowan. This series fundamentally redefined Vic Sage.

As it happened with other crimefighters in the world of comics, there will be more than one person wearing the costume of The Question. Notably, Gotham City cop Renee Montoya will eventually take on the role, and while Vic died and came back, she still fights crime, hidden under the faceless mask today. But let’s explore the long history of The Question, in order, naturally.

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Adventure Time Comics Reading Order

The world of Adventure Time is still expanding on television with the spin-off Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake on HBO Max, and more spin-offs to come. The popular franchise started with a short film created by Pendleton Ward that aired on Nicktoons in 2007, which led to the long-running series on Cartoon Network (10 seasons, 283 episodes).

Set in the Land of Ooo, a fantastical world shaped by the remnants of a long-past catastrophe known as the Mushroom War, the fantasy series follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his close companion Jake, a magical dog with the ability to stretch and change shape, as they navigate a landscape populated by candy people, wizards, monsters, and ancient entities.

Adventure Time‘s influence extends beyond television into comics (obviously), but also video games, and other media, expanding the world of Ooo through original stories, alternate continuities, and explorations of secondary characters. The first comic book series came from Boom! Studios and was launched with Ryan North as a writer, with art by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb. It was a success and led to its own spin-offs. 

Today, however, Boom! Studios have lost the license to produce new comics, and it’s Oni Press that publishes new ones. But there’s a lot to read for fans.

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Mockingbird Reading Order, Bobbi Morse’s Adventures from the Savage Land to the Avengers

Not all Avengers start with a cool codename. Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Morse was first introduced under her civilian identity in Astonishing Tales #6 (June 1971), created by writer Len Wein and artist Neal Adams.

Bobbi started as a brunette seeking Ka-Zar. By the time she reached the Savage Land (two issues later), she was blonde, and her first name was revealed. Her story is quickly entangled with Man Thing’s, but also with S.H.I.E.L.D., as she was recruited and trained to become one of their undercover agents because she’s a highly accomplished biologist.

Bobbi Morse stayed for a while with Ka-Zar. Eventually, she transitioned into her role as a costumed superheroine in Marvel Super Action #1 (1976), but only became known as Mockingbird in Marvel Team-Up #95 in 1980. She soon became associated with Hawkeye, joined the Avengers, became a founding member of the West Coast Avengers, died, came back to life, was abducted, got married, then divorced, teamed up with Spider-Man, fought invasions of all kinds, and so on.

As an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. or an Avenger, Mockingbird is a force to be reckoned with.

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The Unstoppable Wasp (Nadia van Dyne) Reading Order

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Janet van Dyne, also known as the Wasp, has been a part of the Marvel Universe for almost 60 years. Now, another Wasp is buzzing into the Marvel Universe: Nadia Van Dyne — and she’s unstoppable!

Created by writer Mark Waid, artist Alan Davis, and editor Tom Brevoort, Nadia originated as a nod to Hope van Dyne, the version that appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, played by Evangeline Lilly. She made her first appearance in Free Comic Book Day 2016, during the Civil War II event — like another legacy character, Riri Williams.

Nadia is the daughter of Hank and his first wife, Maria Trovaya. She was kidnapped at birth and raised in the Red Room in Moscow, where she studied science and received training as an assassin. Until she escaped, that is.

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