Fandom for you is a segment that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’m really excited for it to already start taking off and my hope is that it allows people to get a better insight on multiple different Fandoms. If you have anymore questions about the Fandom For You Initiative or any suggestions/requests then just follow this link and it’ll take you where you need to go : http://fandomcorrespondents.com/2018/02/01/fandom-for-you/
So our first one actually talks about one of my primary Fandoms : Comic Books. This comes to us from Alyssa who just said that she was interested in getting into comics in General. I’ve done a few articles titled Comics 101(if you want more those then just let me know) but most of those involve different events in Comic History and with this I want to make it more streamlined so it’s easier to access. Comics are a wonderful media but they can be daunting at first due to just how many there are out there. It basically splits into 4 major factions : Marvel, DC, Image and Independent. Now, Image is technically considered an Indie comic company because they’re away from the big two but they created Spawn and The Walking Dead so I don’t really consider that Independent and honestly I believe that’s a compliment to Image but we’ll get to that later.
Now Modernized comics have basically made it into seasons much like Television Series. The basic modern style has three types of Comics : Ongoings,(Which are typically broken up into 4-6 issue long stories that form a larger narrative inbetween different writers.) One-Shots,(These just signify that a single issue has a beginning, a middle and an end all in the same issue. These were more popular in the 60’s until they realized that people liked coming back for the next part month after month.) And Event Comics.(These are the big summer blockbusters of Comics. Civil War, Crisis On Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet, Dark Knights : Metal. They’re typically big, bold and most of the time they feature a bunch of your favorite characters teaming up to take down a threat and there’s typically something big that happens and affects the entire line of comics. These are Season Finales and some are really good and some are really, really bad.)
The other big thing to know is who is writing the comics. When a writer writes a comic for an extended period of time it’s called a “Run” So when Geoff Johns wrote Green Lantern for 8 years that period for the Green Lantern Comic became known as “The Geoff Johns Run.” There are multiple great runs out there and some are much shorter than Johns’ but it’s still important to know who’s writing what. My mother used to say that there were “No bad kids, just bad parents.” Well there’s no bad comic book characters either, just bad writers.
Now, you’re in luck for starting now because both Companies rebooted their comics less than 2 years ago which means that there’s a lot of good recent jumping on points. It can be difficult and a bit scary at times to start a new book but honestly the best thing to do is go and look for some of your favorite characters and then see when that most recent story began. Prime Example : You wanna read Captain America? Well that’s perfect because Mark Waid and Chris Samnee just started their run on the comic about 3 months ago so you need to buy 3 issues and then you can start buying them monthly. Or you can look and see that a big story is ending this month for a character you love? Well next month you can pick up that issue. Now sometimes you’ll start in the middle of a Writers Run on the comic but a lot of times they’ll be fairly easy to pick up on some things.
Honestly, the easiest way to read current comics is to just jump in. I know it sounds daunting but it’s the truth. You pick a character and just go and then that’s where the community standpoint comes in. Also, I can’t stress this enough, Wikipedia and Wikia’s are your friend. You wanna go down a rabbit hole? Just start looking up X-Men characters. They’re crazy. I love them, but they’re crazy. Also, this is where it’s good to have a community because you can read and discuss together. If you ever have any questions or if you just wanna talk about some great comics then just let me know! I’m always happy to help.
