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Lobo Reading Order (DC Comics)

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When he was first introduced by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen in Omega Men #3 (1983), Lobo was a villain from planet Velorpian, the last of his race, who partnered with Bedlam. You can forget about that. This was not DC Comics’ Main Man, the Lobo who gained fame during the 1990s.

Reintroduced by Giffen in Justice League International, then in L.E.G.I.O.N. (and R.E.B.E.L.S.), before getting his own miniseries famously written by Alan Grant (plotted by Giffen) and with art by Simon Bisley that retconned his origins, Lobo is an interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter from the utopian planet of Czarnia. He is brash, indestructible, and likes being violent.

Drenched in black humor, Lobo was deliberately outrageous as he was used to parody the violent excesses of the time. As Giffen said it, “I have no idea why Lobo took off.  I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine, badass hero prototype and somehow he caught on as the high-violence poster boy. Go figure.”

As a product of the 1990s, Lobo appeared less often during the following decades, but he still came by from time to time to collect a bounty and be chaotic.

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The Sixth Gun Reading Order (and Shadow Roads)

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The Sixth Gun is a comic book series created by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt that was published by Oni Press. The story is set in the Old West, shortly after the end of the Civil War. It’s a Western with fantasy elements (or sci-fi, I’m not quite sure how to define it).

The story of The Sixth Gun takes place in the Old West during the late 1880s and centers around a set of six magic pistols connected to each other by dark powers. They will be used to rewrite the World. Each one of the six guns is bound to the man who used it until his death.

The Sixth one ends up in the hand of Becky Montcrief and now people want to kill her in order to take it back. With the help of the mysterious Drake Sinclair, Becky goes hunting for the other guns, and she’s not the only one. During their quest, they must fight against General Hume and his four horsemen, the Knights of Solomon, the Sword of Abraham, and the Grey Witch.

The main Sixth Gun series is composed of 50 issues. During its original run, the publication of the series was punctuated by multiple spin-off miniseries. Once the main story was concluded, a new ongoing spin-off series titled Shadow Roads was launched.

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Batman ’66 Reading Order

In January 1966, the American TV Network ABC launched a live-action Batman show starring Adam West as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson/Robin. It soon became a massive hit which had a big impact on pop culture, influencing other TV Shows but also the comic book it was based on.

It was created by William Dozier, a man who, before starting work on the project, had never read a Batman comic in his life. Not knowing how to adapt the character, he tried multiple approaches and the one that worked was to make Batman a pop-art campy comedy. For the kids, it was a colorful action/adventure series. For the adults, it was a fun time.

This Batman show lasted for three seasons and a movie as ABC decided to milk this success to the max, ordering 60 episodes for the second season, emptying at a fast rate its creative juice. The public grew tired of Batman and Dozier tried to save the series by introducing Batgirl/Barbara Gordon (played by Yvonne Craig) and asking DC Comics to develop the character in the Batman comics. This was not enough to make the ratings go up–Dozier also flirted with surrealism at one point and tried to be more topical.

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The History and Legacy of Crisis on Infinite Earths

Imagine the whole universe is in peril. I mean Universes! An unprecedented menace is coming, worlds are being annihilated, and nothing and nobody can’t stop it, except maybe if all the superheroes and supervillains unite. No, it’s not the pitch for next week’s major comics crossover event at Marvel or DC, because it’s 1985 and nothing as ambitious and of that scale has ever happened before.

It was Crisis on Infinite Earths, the story that changed the DC Universe and the American comic book industry forever.

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Venom War Reading Order

As summer comes, Marvel Comics delivers a new Symbiotes event–one year after the Summer of Symbiotes. It’s time for the Venom War event from writer Al Ewing and artist Iban Coello. This time, it’s a family affair:

“The Venom symbiote has bonded with both Eddie Brock and his son Dylan at different points. Now, both Brocks are going head-to-head, determined to be the one true Venom! Father versus son in a showdown of showdowns that threatens to tear the world asunder!”

Of course, this being an event, it’s not just about Eddie and Dylan fighting over Venom. Agent Anti-Venom (aka Flash Thompson), Red Goblin (aka Normie Osborn), Widow (aka Natasha Romanov), Carnage (aka Cletus Kasady), Spider-Man (aka Peter Parker), and Meriduis (a future version of Eddie Brock) are taking part in this war.

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Doctor Octopus: Origin Story of Spider-Man’s “Superior” Enemy

Among Spider-Man‘s many iconic enemies, Doctor Octopus occupies a notable place–right after the infamous Green Goblin. Octopuses are not natural enemies to the spiders, so this is an exception. Introduced in 1963 in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #3, this supervillain was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Doc Ock’s real name is Otto Octavius. He is a mad scientist who is highly intelligent, myopic, and in control of four mechanical arms that he built himself. Those arms were the original idea of Steve Ditko. He suggested it to Stan Lee who came up with the rest, the name and the origin story.

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Darkseid Reading Order

If Marvel’s Thanos is nowadays vastly known, he is not the only tyrannical ruler with a deadly agenda for the rest of the Universe. Before him, there was another one introduced in the DC Universe by none other than Jack Kirby. We are obviously talking about Darkseid, a New God and the tyrannical ruler of the planet Apokolips. 

Darkseid first appeared in a cameo Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 (1970) in what is known as the beginning of the Fourth World Saga–he made his first full appearance in Forever People #1.

Born Prince Uxas, Darkseid took control of the planet Apokolip, a nightmarish dystopia that is the complete opposite of its sister planet, New Genesis, a utopian world ruled by the wise and benevolent Highfather. The inhabitants of these planets possess incredible powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary mortals. Eventually, the two went to war against each other. But a peace was ultimately signed and required an exchange of “hostages” as Highfather’s son, Scott Free (Miracle Man), was traded for Darkseid’s son, Orion.

What Darkseid really wants is to eliminate all free will from the universe. To achieve that, he searched the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why he took an interest in Earth as he thought he could piece together the Equation by probing the minds of every human. But he also had to fight the heroes of Earth. He tried other approaches over the years to accomplish his desired goal. From antagonist in Jack Kirby’s saga, he became the greatest adversary of the Justice League.

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Kyle Rayner Reading Order (Green Lantern)

Following the 1993’s Reign of Supermen saga, Hal Jordan–the main Green Lantern of that era–is pushed on a downward spiral during the famous Emerald Twilight storyline that will have grave consequences for everybody. Hal lost his mind and destroyed what was the heart of the Green Lantern, killing most of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the process, before going away for a time. During his absence, one surviving Guardian, Ganthet, visited Earth to find a replacement Lantern. He found Kyle Rayner.

Editor Kevin Dooley was faced with dropping sales and decided to let go of Hal Jordan, now considered a hero from a bygone era but a lot of readers, and introduced a new Green Lantern for the 1990s. As it was the era of the Death of Superman and backbreaking Batman, the trend was destruction and Hal (and Coast City) had to be destroyed to let an All-New Green Lantern take his place.

In Green Lantern (vol. 3) #48, writer Ron Marz and artist Darryl Banks introduced Kyle Rayner, a freelance comic book artist working in Los Angeles. Unlike Hal Jordan, Kyle was not a fearless and somewhat perfect hero. In fact, he had his problems and knew fear, but it was his capacity to overcome it that led Ganthet to give him what was at the time the last working Green Lantern power ring.

Without the Green Lantern Corps to help him, Kyle had to learn the hard way how his ring works. When his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, was murdered by the supervillain Major Force (who infamously stuffed her body in a refrigerator), Kyle was forced to confront the seriousness of his new job as a Lantern. He moved to New York and decided to become the best Lantern he could be–this storyline was the origin of controversy, but the Green Lantern series survived and thrived with his new hero.

Since then, Kyle Rayner joined the Justice League, achieved godhood, helped create a new group of Guardians of the Galaxy, helped carry on the legacy of the Corps, and fought Parallax and a lot of powerful enemies.

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The Beta Ray Bill Origin Story – Who is this alien Thor?

Looking like he is Thor with the head of a horse, Beta Ray Bill is not a multiverse variant of the Asgardian superhero. He is from the same universe and he is more than a copy or a variant of the God of Thunder.

Introduced by Walt Simonson during his famous run on Thor in 1983 in a 4-issue adventure told in The Mighty Thor #337-340, Beta Ray Bill is a Korbinite, as he comes from the planet Korbin, “Burning Galaxy.” The inhabitants of this part of space don’t look like him as he was transformed into a cybernetic being.

For Walt Simonson, the idea was to use comic tropes to subvert expectations. As he said in an interview published in The Jack Kirby Collector #14, “I designed Bill deliberately as a monster, because I knew that people would look at it and go, ‘Oh, my God, it’s this evil guy.’ I deliberately wrote them so you weren’t sure in the beginning if he was a good guy or a bad guy. His face was designed around a horse’s skull, partly because horses are quite beautiful. I thought it’d be kind of cool to have the structure of a beautiful animal underneath the monster to give this dichotomy between the monstrous and the beautiful in the same face.”

One of the most surprising elements of Beta Ray Bill’s introduction is that he can pick up Mjolnir, the most powerful weapon of the Norse gods, the one that only Thor is supposed to be worthy of using. But Bill is also worthy and, beyond the initial shock of seeing a monster-like character using Mjolnir, it proves that he is a noble warrior on par with Thor.

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Marvel’s Black Cat Origin Story, Not Just Another Catwoman

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As Spider-Man wasn’t the first spider-themed superhero, Black Cat wasn’t the first comic book cat-themed cat burglar with an ambiguous relationship with a famous vigilante.

Master thief Felicia Hardy was created by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard, and Dave Cockrum and made her first official appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #194, in 1979. It wasn’t supposed to be her introduction as she was first drawn for the cover of Spider-Woman #9, before the story was even written. But Marv Wolfman left the book and brought his feline villain to another spider-titled series, the “amazing” one.

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