Each subject has its own lexicon and specialized terminology, and the world of comic books is no exception. New readers can be confused when words such as “continuity,” “variant covers,” or “crossovers” pop up.
As a medium, comics have created a rich and distinct language over the years. Prominent creators and scholars like Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey, and Dylan Horrocks have worked to formalize and clarify comic-book language. To help you navigate the Comic Book World, we’ve put together a Glossary of comics terminology—a guide with the most popular terms and phrases you can encounter.
“Up, Up, and Away!” Superman is one of the most iconic comic book superheroes who dedicated his life to truth, justice, and the American way. The creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster made his first appearance in Action Comics #1 (May 1938). Sent to Earth from a distant planet as a baby, the child (now named Clark Kent) grew up and discovered he had super abilities. As an adult, he decided to become Superman, “champion of the oppressed” and “had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need!”
A page of history was written as the debut of Superman is now considered the beginning of the superhero genre. While Action Comics started as an anthology, the title would eventually become dedicated to Superman Stories. It didn’t take long for the Man of Steel to headline more than one title as he soon came to live adventures in newspaper strips as well as in the new Superman title! During the next decades, the Kryptonian would team up with Batman and other superheroes while living some wild tales in Metropolis as Clark Kent/Superman, working as a journalist for the Daily Planet with his love interest Lois Lane and photographer Jimmy Olsen, and facing enemies such as Lex Luthor, Brainiac, or General Zod.
From the 1940s to the mid-1980s, there have been many Superman adventures, and DC Comics has reprinted some of them in different collections (there are many more stories to be collected yet). This article is here to help you navigate all those collections (some only available second-hand, very pricey or not), and explore those old colorful times!
Panels from The Wicked and The Divine #2. This was in July 2014!
As of right now, you may have heard how Google is killing independent websites. If not, the short version of the story is the recent updates of the search engine wiped out the search traffic of many websites as Google pushes ads and AI Answers on the top of their results pages. Google Search has evolved to no longer be a proper search engine, as its primary focus is to retain users within its own ecosystem (and selling its own products).
Without surprise, Comic Book Treasury has been massively affected by those recent events. Compared to last year, we have lost more than 50% of our traffic and we are still decreasing — and to be fair, we are a small website! It could also be worse, as our sister site Howtoread.me (owned by Fabien) has been part of those who lost 95% of their traffic.
I also have to acknowledge that the timing couldn’t be worse, as the Superhero Comic Book Industry is not in great shape right now. The market is down and things are evolving. These are always turbulent times.
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.
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.
One of the first black comic book characters, Storm is also one of the most important female superheroes in the Marvel Universe. She is a member of the X-Men, a descendant of African witch-priestesses with the ability to control the weather and atmosphere, who uses her powers to fight for peace and equal rights.
Created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, she made her first appearance in the classic Giant-Size X-Men #1, the famous issue introducing several new X-Men such as Wolverine (who already made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk #181), Colossus, Thunderbird, and Nightcrawler.
Born Ororo Munroe, Storm is a powerful and strong superheroine with a love of nature. Noticeable for her striking blue eyes and silver-white hair, she is warm, generous, and protective of her friends and family but cold, frightening, and dangerous to her enemies. Recognized as an Omega Level Mutant, she has served multiple times as the leader of the X-Men. Storm has also been worshipped as a Goddess, was Queen of Wakanda, and briefly a member of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.
Discover now our Storm reading order, guiding you through the essential comics and story arcs featuring Marvel’s iconic weather-controlling mutant!
In the DC Universe, being an expert archer can lead you to live a life of many adventures. While this is mostly a choice for most of the members of the Green Arrow family, one archer in the DC Universe didn’t choose it but proved to be quite the heroine. We’re talking about the Young Arrowette, alias Cissie-King Jones.
Cissie is famously known today to be part of a strict minority of superheroes who chose to retire and stick with it. But before throwing away her bow and arrow, as she said it herself recently, she was trained by her mother Bonnie King to become one of the best archers and be skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Her mother tried her hands at heroism when she was younger under the name Miss Arrowette but had to stop it and push her daughter into a dangerous situation to live her dreams through her.
Cissie would prove to be more than capable of handling herself in dangerous situations and it’s because of her talent that we today know the name Arrowette! Her story is inherently linked to her mother’s and we today dive into the origins and history of Arrowette, from her introduction during the Silver Age to Cissie’s time in the Young Justice!
Not all manga are about facing demons, battling villains, or surviving the Apocalypse. For Eikichi Onizuka, it’s about becoming the world’s greatest teacher. Eikichi Onizuka is the main protagonist of Great Teacher Onizuka, sometimes simply referenced as GTO, a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa. While GTO is certainly the most famous manga featuring Onizuka, it is not the only one and it’s also part of a bigger media franchise.
Tooru Fujisawa started writing Eikichi’s story in the nineties, from his delinquent days as a middle schooler in Shonan to his work as a teacher at a private middle school, Holy Forest Academy and beyond. Many spin-off series were created, featuring supporting characters and other stories set in the same universe. The popularity of Great Teacher Onizuka led to several adaptations in anime and live-action.
So let’s go to class with Eikichi! As it is said, “his curriculum may not rely on the reading, writing and arithmetic but he has more than a few good lessons in personal development, fisticuffs and fun to teach a new generation of troubled teens.”
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.
Some may think that comics are all about superheroes, but even the mask vigilantes and other overpowered costume heroes are just fighting crimes. Batman was born in the pages of Detective Comics after all, next to Slam Bradley and others. In fact, he is still doing investigating work in the street of Gotham, when he doesn’t fight super-villains.
Anyways, there have always been crime fighters in the realm of comic books, from Will Eisner’s The Spirit, pulp heroes like The Shadow, to paranormal investigators like Hellboy or Scooby-doo & co. There also are simple private detectives, cops, local sheriffs, and amateur sleuths in the pages of the Big Two comics or independent publishers–we can’t forget anthologies like Crime Suspenstories by EC comics.
If you are a dedicated reader of crime stories, you know that they come in a lot of different flavors. The following list is an attempt at covering the spectrum of the crime genre in comics with what is among the best series published. You can add to it by leaving a comment!
