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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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Where to start reading Deadpool comics? A Guide for beginners

This summer, Deadpool is breaking the Fourth Wall on the big screen once again… This time with Wolverine! Before watching Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), why not read some good comics featuring Wade Wilson?

Born in Canada, Deadpool is known as the Merc With a Mouth. He’s a wise-cracking, insufferable lethal mercenary who just can’t shut up! Is he mad or a genius? A hero who commits regular felonies or a villain doing occasional good deeds?

Learn more about Marvel’s famous mercenary, The Man, The Myth, The Legend with our recommended reading list!

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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 Best of Magik Comics, Our Illyana Rasputin Recommended Reading Order (X-Men)!

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While it’s obvious to think about Scarlet Witch or Clea and Stephen Strange when talking about magic users in the Marvel Universe, it would be a great mistake to disregard Magik, also known as Illyana Rasputina.

Created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, Illyana made her first appearance in the comic book Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975), like many other X-Men characters such as Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird, and her brother Colossus! For a long time, she was only known as Colossus’ little sister until Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema sent her to the magical realm of Limbo. In her time there, Illyana aged seven years,  developed her teleportation abilities and became a sorceress later known as Magik.

Since her debut, Illyana has been abused by demons during her formative years, de-aged, exploited by her government, killed by a Virus, resurrected, turned on the Dark Side and more! With those many traumatic experiences, Magik became one of the most fascinating and ambiguous X-Men and well deserving of her own reading order! 

So today, let’s explore Magik’s history with her best comics to understand her character and motivations, learn more about her place among the X-Men, her relationship with her brother, Shadowcat and more!

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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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Berserk Manga Order

Berserk is undoubtedly one of the most popular manga series in the United States. When the manga returned in 2023 with a new volume, it topped the charts, outselling One Piece and Demon Slayer in the process. It is also an influential work that affected not just many mangakas but also the worlds of games, film, animation, and literature. 

Written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura (1966-2021), Berserk is a Dark Fantasy manga set in a medieval-Europe-inspired world. The story follows Guts, a lone swordsman, on his quest for vengeance against Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band that betrayed him. Starting in 1989, Berserk was published in the manga magazine Monthly Animal House, which was replaced in 1992 by the semimonthly magazine Young Animal.

Berserk was a life’s work for Miura, who died from acute aortic dissection in May 2021. Manga artist Kouji Mori, the only person who knows how Miura intended to finish Berserk, has agreed to continue the manga and see it through to the end using plans and thoughts relayed to Mori by Miura himself, as well as memorandums and character designs that Miura left behind.

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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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Secret Six Reading Order

DC Comics is full of teams and organizations, some more famous than others. Everybody knows the Justice League and Suicide Squad, but you can’t say the same about the underused Secret Six.

Created at the end of the 1960s by E. Nelson Bridwell and Frank Springer, The Secret Six is the name given to a succession of clandestine, non-governmental special ops teams. The team, to put it simply, was at the time of its creation, DC’s version of Mission: Impossible (which was launched on television in 1966!).

The team features generally six members who all possess special skill sets but also some dark secrets that, if revealed or exploited, would result in imprisonment, disgrace, or death. They are led by the faceless Mockingbird, often with each character assuming that the leader must be one of the other five members. 

Each team can be read independently from the other, so let’s explore the several versions of Secret Six that exist in the main continuity with this Secret Six reading order!

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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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