American comic book series created by writer Jeff Lemire and artist Dean Ormston, Black Hammer is published by Dark Horse Comics and tell a rather different superhero story.
Everything started ten years ago when the famous Black Hammer and six other superheroes from Spiral City fought the deadly Anti-God in order to save the world.
They win, but they also disappeared after the fight. The world believes them dead, but they became trapped in Rockwood, a small city in the middle of nowhere. They just can’t leave. Black Hammer died trying. They must live mundane lives in this timeless rural city.
They don’t really know where or when they are and they lost almost all hope to leave one day or to discover the truth about what happened to them.
As the name suggests, Spider-Geddon is a Spider-Man event taking place in the Marvel comics universe. It’s a sequel to the massively popular event Spider-verse.
The Inheritors have escaped their radioactive prison planet and made their way to the Marvel Universe. As the villains draw first blood, a whole Spider-Army must reunite to keep them at bay!
Prepare to meet Web-Slinger, Spidey of the Wild West! May Parker: Spider-Ma’am! And more! But as the threat they face builds, things do not look good for our web-heads and wall-crawlers. The end of the Spider-Verse is here!
What to read before Spider-Man: Spider-Geddon?
The way comics are written, there is plenty of exposition, you will probably understand most of the event even if you didn’t read the Spider-verse event (go to the Reading Order), but I’m quite sure that reading is pretty much required to understand and to enjoy everything.
Spider-verse
Collects Amazing Spider-Man (2014) #7-15, Superior Spider-Man #32-33, Spider-Verse #1-2, Spider-Verse Team-Up #1-3, Scarlet Spiders #1-3, Spider-Woman (2014) #1-4, Spider-Man 2099 (2014) #6-8 And Material From Free Comic Book Day 2014 (Guardians Of The Galaxy) #1.
Also, you can check out our Spider-Man Reading Order that covers the adventures of Spidey from the start to today.
Introduced* as a big threat to the Marvel Universe by Donny Cates when he started writing Venom’s new continuing series (go to the Reading Order), Knull, god of the symbiotes, is finally coming to conquer Earth—with an army of thousands of symbiote dragons at his beck and call. Of course, Earth’s heroes will fight back.
Eddie Brock, AKA Venom, is obviously front and center. He has already seen firsthand the chaos that even one of Knull’s symbiotic monsters can wreak. But will he survive an encounter with the God of the Abyss himself?
Here is the official synopsis: Darkness reigns across the Marvel Universe! After a campaign of terror across the galaxy, Knull — ancient and malevolent god of symbiotes — reaches Earth, with an endless army of symbiote dragons at his command! The King in Black is a force unlike any ever faced by Venom and the rest of Earth’s heroes — but now Spider-Man, the Avengers, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the Sub-Mariner and many, many more must battle an endless wave of darkness! Outgunned and badly outnumbered, can anyone possibly survive Knull’s symbiotic onslaught? Or will they all be forced to bow to the King?
*Knull was really introduced in Thor: God of Thunder #6, but he was not named and he was just an idea that Cates took and developed.
What to read before King in Black?
As I said, the story began some time ago. Even if Knull played a big part in Donny Cates’ run on Venom (here is the reading order), he also appeared in other series. Here is a guide of what you’ll want to read to be up to date:
Knull: Marvel Tales
Collects Venom (2018) #3-4, Venom : Carnage Born, and Venom (2018) #25. It collects what is essential.
Absolute Carnage
Collects Absolute Carnage #1-5, Absolute Carnage Vs. Deadpool #1-3, Absolute Carnage: Captain Marvel #1, Absolute Carnage: Immortal Hulk #1, Absolute Carnage: Symbiote Spider-Man #1, Absolute Carnage: Symbiote Of Vengeance #1, Absolute Carnage: Lethal Protectors #1-3, Absolute Carnage: Avengers #1, Absolute Carnage: Miles Morales #1-3, Absolute Carnage: Weapon Plus #1, Absolute Carnage: Scream #1-3, Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety #1, Amazing Spider-Man #29-31, Venom #16-20, And Absolute Carnage Stinger Pages. For a more detailed look at this event, go to the Absolute Carnage Reading Order.
Symbiote Spider-Man: King in Black
Collects Symbiote Spider-Man: King in Black #1-5. This is and optional miniseries set just after the first “Secret Wars.”
The story of the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird is quite famous, not as much as the series itself. But if you don’t know, go watch the documentaries and read the books.
For now, we are here to talk about the giant fighting turtles named after Italian Renaissance artists that were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the Japanese martial art of ninjutsu. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo fought crimes from their home in the sewers of New York City and they quickly had to travel into other dimensions and to survive to other types of crazy adventures in comic book form, obviously, but also on TV and in the movies.
Published by Mirage Studios in 1984, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles helped start the Black & White revolution. But when other series disappeared, the turtles persisted. Well, publication stopped for a short period of time, but they came back, as strong as ever and they still fight the good fight in original stories published by IDW (Transformers, G.I. Joe).
When this new ongoing series started, with TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, and artist Dan Duncan taking charge of the creative work, it was a new beginning with rewritten origins and an ambitious mythology.
In almost all the universe, there’s a Spider-Man. In a 2014 Marvel Event named Spider-verse, all the Spider-Men were attacked by Morlun and his family, the Inheritors.
Written by Dan Slott, the storyline really began a few years ago during J. Michael Straczynski’s Coming Home story. When the evil Inheritors begin exterminating spider-characters throughout the multiverse in order to feed on their force, every single Spider-Man ever is needed to save the day!
An interdimensional spider-army gathers to fight Morlun and his deadly family, but as the Prophecy comes to fruition, none of them are safe! What will this brutal war for survival mean for Peter Parker…and the rest of the spiders? Starring hundreds of Spider-Men, from the beloved to the obscure!
What To Read before Spider-Man Spider-Verse?
The Spider-Verse brings back a lot of spider-men, A LOT. If you are a long-time reader of the series, you’ll probably remember some. If you are a hardcore fan, you’ll remember all of them. That said, not knowing the cartoon version or the Spider-Ham 2099 will not be an obstacle here, the story may be full of references, and even a neophyte can read it and understand all the important points.
All those big events always use old stories to build their mythology, Spider-Verse is no exception. Here is what you can read before. It’s not obligatory reading, but it helps to understand what is at stake from the beginning.
Spider-Man: Coming Home
Collects The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #30–35. This is the introduction of Ezekiel and Morlun, and the concept of the animal totems.
Spider-Man: The Life & Death of Spiders
Collects Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #46-50. The Spider-Totem story continues here with The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #47–48.
The life of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man is full of incredible situations and life-changing events. The most famous? Probably The Clone Saga. In fact, there are two sagas. The first one was a storyline published during the 1970s. The second one was more than two years of publications, an editorial nightmare that has affected all the regular Spider-Man series, several limited series, and one-shot issues published between 1994 and 1997.
Everything began after the death of Gwen Stacy, the girlfriend of Peter Parker. It was controversial, to say the least. The editorial team decided to bring back Gwen into Peter’s life in the following story arc. Writer Gerry Conway introduced a new villain called the Jackal, a cloning expert. It was not the real Gwen or the only person that was cloned. The Jackal cloned Peter and the story ends with a touch of doubt. Is it the original Spider-Man or his clone who had perished in the bomb explosion?
A few years later, Spider-Man encountered Carrion, who claimed to be a degenerated clone of Warren. Then, the clone of Gwen Stacy reappeared too—but it was not a clone or Gwen. The truth about Carrion was finally revealed.
Time passed, then came the second clone saga. Spider-Man’s clone reappeared! He had survived and had lived his life under the name Ben Reilly (go here for the dedicated Ben Reilly Reading Order). He returned to New York City and became the Scarlet Spider. Peter and Ben must face a resurrected Jackal and Kaine, the unsuccessful first clone of Spider-Man, but also another clone of Spider-Man who became the villain Spidercide. And that’s not all. That’s just the beginning.
Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, Powers is a superhero noir comic. More precisely, it’s a noir crime drama set in a world with superheroes. It tells the story of two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, assigned to investigate crimes involving “powers”, people with superhuman abilities.
Turns out that Walker used to be one of them, but he lost everything and became a cop. And now, he is working with Deena Pilgrim. She kicks ass and takes names like almost nobody else in the comic universe, just so you know. They started to work together on the famous Retro Girl case, a murder case that will define their lives, even if they don’t know it yet.
The publishing history of Powers is almost chaotic (chic?). Everything started at Image Comics in 2000, but when Bendis’s role at Marvel began to grow, Powers followed him and became one of the first series published by Icon—the created owned imprint by Marvel for Marvel authors. The problem is that Bendis started to work on so many books that the publication of Powers slow down and became erratic. Then, he joined DC Comics where he created his own imprint, JinxWorld, dedicated to his created own work. Powers was reprinted, then a new and final graphic novel was published to end the series. And now, everything is moving again to Dark Horse Comics.
Straight from the world of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, here comes Lucifer Morningstar himself. Let me start by saying that, if you are here to read about the TV version of Lucifer, you’ll probably be disappointed. Even if the FOX/Netflix show was based on this character, the similitudes are quite limited. That said, those books are really good.
From The Sandman Universe, Lucifer Morningstar is a fallen rebel archangel who was cast out of Heaven as punishment for leading the revolt of the angels. Once upon a time, he rebelled against the Kingdom of Heaven and end up in what became Hell, until the day he decided to close shop. He retired to Earth and ran bar named Lux with his mistress Mazikeen at his side.
This Sandman comic is about Dream, one of the seven Endless. He is the all-powerful master of the Dreamworld. In simple terms, he is the personification of dreams.
The story began with the capture of Dream (aka Morpheus). During his 70 years of captivity, nobody controlled the dream world and, when Dream won back his liberty, he needed to rebuild his kingdom to get back his powers. It’s a journey in a metaphorical world that blends mythology and history.
From the success of The Sandman comics grew a whole universe of series, miniseries, and one-shots, from the successful Lucifer to the cult Death miniseries.
After the big success of the Dark Nights Metal event, writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo are back with Death Metal, the 2017–2018 massive follow-up with the help of James Tynion IV, Marguerite Bennett, Joshua Williamson, Peter J. Tomasi, Garth Ennis, Daniel Warren Johnson, Frank Tieri, Tony S. Daniel, Jamal Igle, Joëlle Jones, Daniel Warren Johnson, Riley Rossmo, Francesco Francavilla and more.
Here is the official synopsis: When the DC Universe is enveloped by the Dark Multiverse, the Justice League is at the mercy of the Batman Who Laughs (see the reading order dedicated to the character). Humanity struggles to survive in a hellish landscape twisted beyond recognition, while Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman have all been separated and must fight to survive.
Along the way, Wonder Woman roars across the horrifying Dark Multiverse landscape in the world’s most demented monster truck, with Swamp Thing riding shotgun! And when the Justice League launches its assault on New Apokolips, the team’s goal is to free Superman from his solar prison—but it all goes off the rails when they learn that the Man of Steel is gone for good thanks to the Anti-Life Equation.
What to read before Dark Nights: Death Metal?
When the Earth is enveloped by the Dark Multiverse, the Justice League is at the mercy of the Batman Who Laughs. But how did we end up in this situation? The following is a short guide through the Dark Multiverse to help you better understand the events taking place in Death Metal:
Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen – Conclusion of The Year of The Villain. Spinning out of the “Justice/Doom War” in Justice League and the epic “Infected” arc from Batman/Superman, DC’s two top villains face off in a battle royal.
