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Reckoning War reading order, a Fantastic Four event

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After concluding his Iron Man run with the Iron Man 2020 event, Dan Slott also choose to wrap up his four-year run on the Fantastic Four with an event! But not any event as The Reckoning War (penciled by Marco Checchetto) was, as Marvel said it, fifteen years in the making! 

Here is the official synopsis: FIFTEEN YEARS IN THE MAKING – AND IT ALL KICKS OFF HERE! In a time before the Kree, Skrull or Shi’ar Empires. Before the emergence of Galactus. Before the birth of Asgard. There was the First War. The greatest war to ever rage across the Multiverse. Today, it is reignited. This is the Day of Reckoning. And all that stands between all of reality and revenge from the dawn of time are the heroes of Earth, the Fantastic Four and the mind of Mister Fantastic. Starring the FF, She-Hulk, Jack of Hearts, the Unseen, the Silver Surfer and everyone in the whole damn Marvel Universe.

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How old is Deadpool in the comics?

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Trying to guess the age of a comic book character can be considered a sport in itself, as the timeline is never completely fixed, and relaunches and retcons often disrupt the timeline. It becomes yet more complicated when your character is shrouded in a little bit of mystery.

It worsens when your character has a particular relationship with the truth, like Deadpool. It’s not completely his fault, though. Deadpool’s brain doesn’t function normally because of the regenerative nature of his cells and the bizarre experiments he was subjected to, with drugs, virtual simulations, death, and memory implants.

Some rumors on the web imply that Deadpool was born Wade Wilson in Regina Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1973, but that information has never been verified (and comes from the movie, anyway). He may have had an ordinary childhood. Or not. He may have killed his parents. Or maybe they’re alive.

Wade Wilson has a lot of pasts, making it difficult even for him to know the truth about himself. If we’re not sure when and where Wade Wilson was born, what do we know?

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DC Vs. Vampires Reading Order, a DC Vampire Apocalypse by James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg

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After the zombie apocalypse in DCeased, DC Comics explores another alternate universe where undead creatures have infected the world. This time, the vampires are the ones responsible for the Apocalypse in DC Vs. Vampires!

Written by James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg, with artwork by Otto Schmidt, Simone Di Meo, Daniele Di Nicuolo and Francesco Mortarino, DC Vs. Vampires depicts the epic fight placing the heroes of the DC Universe against the undead for the very survival of the human race!

To be more precise, as DC’s synopsis informs us: The Justice League has long protected Earth from all manner of foreign and alien invaders over the years, always keeping a vigilant eye on the skies for the next threat. But what if the threat was already walking the Earth…hiding in plain sight…watching…waiting for their moment to strike…

A mysterious new vampire lord has already put a plan in motion to conquer the Earth, and his horde are hunting on the streets of Gotham. Can Batman save his city—or will he succumb to the undead plague? Read More »DC Vs. Vampires Reading Order, a DC Vampire Apocalypse by James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg

Lazarus Planet Reading Order, a DC Magical Crisis

Barely one month after the conclusion of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DC Universe is affected by another crisis. Writer Mark Waid teams up with Riccardo Federici, Gene Luen Yang, Billy Tan, Nicole Maines, Skylar Patridge, Francis Manapul, Dan Watters, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Josie Campbell, and more, for the Lazarus Planet, a Magical Crisis where heroes are transformed, secrets are revealed and powers are unleashed. Here is the official synopsis:

Following the events of Mark Waid and Mahmud Asrar’s Batman vs. Robin #4 this December, the Lazarus Volcano has erupted—spewing dangerous and transformative chemicals into Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in chaos across the DC universe! As these Lazarus clouds rain down upon the planet, people across the globe begin to develop strange new abilities, watch their already-extraordinary abilities change, and witness a whole host of chaos, unlike anything the DCU has experienced before!

A lot of DC characters are involved in this event, from the obvious Batman and Robin (Damian Wayne), but also Martian Manhunter, Red Canary, Jon Kent, Poison Ivy, Power Girl, but also Monkey Prince, Shazam/Billy Batson, Mary Marvel, and Yara Flor.

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Reckless: Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Pulp Graphic Novel Series

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At this point, when it comes to crime comics, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s comics have eclipsed David Lapham’s (Stray Bullets). If you talk about the genre, you irremediably think about Criminal, then comes other favorites like The Fade Out, Kill or be Killed, Fatale… 

With the award-winning Pulp, the duo confirmed that they don’t even need to connect their work to Criminal anymore—like with My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies—or to another series to find their audiences in a different format. They became the brand. Everything they try is basically a winner.

Reckless doesn’t contradict that. It is a new crime series, for sure, but the creative team decided to try a different publication approach. Each story is self-contained and collected in one 144-page hardcover graphic novel.

It’s like reading a good old pulp novel, but with Brubaker’s writing, Sean Phillips’s pencils, and Jacob Phillips’s colors, the result could almost qualify as a reinvention of the genre by the form—published by Image Comics.

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Batman White Knight Reading Order, exploring the Murphyverse

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Launched in 2017 with the book Batman: White Knight, The Murphyverse is a universe created by Sean Gordon Murphy (Punk Rock Jesus, The Wake) and published under the DC Black Label imprint.

As the imprint suggests, this is not a series set in the DC continuity—it could qualify as an Elseworlds series. The first book introduced us to a world where the Joker is cured of his insanity and homicidal tendencies. Now a politician under his real name of Jack Napier, The Joker sets about trying to right his wrongs. First, he plans to reconcile with Harley Quinn, and then he’ll try to save the city from the one person who he thinks is truly Gotham City’s greatest villain: Batman!

The success of Batman: White Knight was massive, and the trade paperback quickly became a best-seller (it since has been republished in multiple formats). A sequel was commissioned, Batman: Curse of the White Knight.

This time, the Joker recruits Azrael, a knight of the Order of St. Dumas, to help him expose a shocking secret from the Wayne family’s legacy. As Batman rushes to protect the city and his loved ones from danger, the mystery of his ancestry unravels, dealing a devastating blow to the Dark Knight.

This second limited series confirmed the popularity of this alternate version of Batman. This prompted DC Comics to give Sean Murphy his own line of books to be published under its Black Label imprint. The Murphyverse was born.

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Iron Fist Reading Order

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In 1972, Marvel tackled the growing popularity of Blaxploitation with the introduction of Luke Cage. During that period of time, martial arts also gained momentum, and Iron Fist was created in response to that—Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, was already launched.

Writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane created the powerful Iron Fist in the pages of Marvel Premiere #15 (May 1974). The story starts with Daniel Rand finding the path to K’un-Lun (a Shangri-La type of city up in the Himalayas). There he spent a decade training under its immortal inhabitants.

After years of tutelage, he became an unmatched master of martial arts and spiritual control; armed with the shattering power of the iron fist, he left immortality behind to set out into the Western world and avenge his parents’ death.

Iron Fist quickly got his own ongoing series but, as the martial arts craze faded, he was teamed up with Luke Cage in the pages of the new Power Man and Iron Fist series. After that, he was left for dead but came back during the 1990s. Once again, he worked with Luke Cage, but also Colleen Wing and Misty Knight!

In 2022, Danny Rand passed the mantle to a successor named Lin Lie, but that doesn’t mean he disappeared…

Like many other Marvel characters in the last decade, Iron Fist/Danny Rand has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he has been portrayed by Finn Jones in Iron Fist, The Defenders, and the second season of Luke Cage.

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Who Is Tom Strong? Exploring the World of Alan Moore’s Golden Age Superhero

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In 1999, Alan Moore launched America’s Best Comics, an imprint of WildStorm–still at Image Comics at that time. The idea was to develop a line of comics partly based on the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, partly animated by Alan Moore’s passion for magic. The most famous title of the imprint was obviously The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–the series was later published by Top Shelf and Knockabout Comics–, but Tom Strong became the more developed universe.

Created by Alan Moore and artist Chris Sprouse, Tom Strong is a “science hero” who, with his wife Dhalua, his daughter Tesla, the enhanced ape King Solomon and his robotic valet, Pneuman, fought science criminals and other supernatural/paranormal dangers for decades, but also at different times, worlds, and realms.

Tom Strong was born on the fictional West Indian island of Attabar Teru. There, his scientist parents put him in a high-gravity chamber and gave him an intensive education. Plus, he grew up eating a root used by the natives of the island for health and long life. When he got out, he was stronger, faster, more intelligent and healthy than the average human being. He became an adult and married Dhalua, the daughter of Attabar Teru’s Chief Omotu. Together they relocated to Millennium City and had a daughter named Tesla.

In the civilized world, Tom Strong became a science hero and fought masked “science villains” like Paul Saveen, the Nazi Ingrid Weiss, the mechanical-molecular megalomaniac Modular Man, Aztecs from an alternate Earth, and more.

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Animal Man Reading Order

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Buddy Baker aka Animal Man is a DC Comics superhero created by writer Dave Wood and artist Carmine Infantino in the pages of Strange Adventures #180 (September 1965) who has the ability to temporarily borrow the abilities of animals—he gained them after encountering a spaceship that blew up, infusing him with radiation.

For a long time, he was considered a second-rate superhero and didn’t really appear in a lot of books between the 1960s and the 1980s. Everything changed after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event when DC started to use British writers to revive old almost forgotten properties. That’s when Scottish writer Grant Morrison came on board. He reintroduced Buddy Baker in what was thought as a four-issue limited series, but its success led to a change and it became an ongoing series.

At that point, we met Buddy who is married to his high school sweetheart, Ellen, a storyboard artist. They have two children, Cliff and Maxine, and live in a suburban area outside of San Diego. As Animal Man, Buddy found his way by progressively becoming an animal rights activist, an environmentalist, and a vegetarian.

Animal Man profile was boosted by the success of the series and the character even briefly became a member of Justice League Europe. Once Morrison concluded his run, Peter Milligan took over, then Tom Veitch and Steve Dillon, and Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh, all exploring different aspects of the hero, from his stuntman past to the origin of his powers.

The story of Buddy changed when he was killed to be resurrected as the “Red” (like the “Green” of Swamp Thing, but for animals!) in the Vertigo Line for mature readers. After that, he occasionally made cameos in the regular DC Universe, including during the Infinite Crisis and 52.

After the New 52 relaunch, he made a comeback and later joined again with the JLA. During the Rebirth era, he also worked with the Justice League, but he never went on to become a major superhero.

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