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Comment by Discordian93 | Hacker News Reader

More like a narrative multiple train wreck. There have been so many retcons, resurrections, inter-series crossovers and changes of characterization that it's pretty much impossible to understand what's going on with marvel comics if you haven't read the comics since the 80's. Even they line they started to avoid that problem, ultimate marvel, recently got crossed over with the main universe, after it had prevously dropped sharply in quality with the ultimatum event. I never could get into the main continuity, and stopped reading ultimate comics after ultimatum, honestly the only marvel narrative I care about now is the cinematic universe, they've completely ruined comics as a medium to tell marvel superhero stories, which is pretty sad.

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I don't see why it matters. Read the individual stories, or story arches, and see them as different facets of myth or fairy tales.

From my childhood, in advance of one of the Superman reboots in the 80's, I remember a particular issue where they'd rounded up several artists to each do their take on the "end" of the previous continuity, or the a version of the origin story. It didn't matter that they did not fit into a single coherent canon.

If anything causes it to be a trainwreck, it is that they try to maintain the idea that there's any kind of coherence.

I like that there's different takes on the characters.

I'm pretty sure that any narrative that is shared by a substantial number of authors inevitable goes down that road, though Marven may well be the one that went furthest.

Just look at what happened to the Star Wars extended universe - and that with a much tighter creative control.

What's 'substantial'? The Wild Cards novels have had a couple of dozen authors, I think (though one editor) for several decades, and maintained continuity rather well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards

Agreed. I've found that as a casual comics aficionado, the sanest route is to just stick to omnibus/one shots. I'd recommend that for anyone curious to get deeper in the story lines but who doesn't want to enter the giant rabbit hole that is the Marvel universe.

Agreed, and as a comic enthusiast I avoid all mainstream DC and Marvel. It's just one big marketing scam. Stick to Image, Dark Horse, IDW, some Vertigo stuff and you'll be much more rewarded.

Personally, I recommend escaping the world of American comics and finding some of them other countries to read books from. Historical accident might have made it so all comics produced here are over-drawn cosmic nonsense about superpowers and people wearing underwear outside their clothes, but obviously you can imagine writing a story about something else, right?

I recommend comics about competitive wine tasting.

http://www.vertical-inc.com/dropsofgod/

That's a ridiculous generalization, there are many varieties of comics created in the U.S., not just superhero comics.

Absolutely. Try something like "Air" or "Scalped", for instance. That said, you will also find some fantastic European comics outside of Lucky Luke/Spirou/Tintin, like the French classics "Les sept vies de l'Épervier" (3) (historical fiction with real character development) or "Les passagers du vent" (4) (more historical fiction, well-researched and beautifully drawn).

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_(comics)

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalped_(comics)

3: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Sept_Vies_de_l%27%C3%89perv...

4: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Passagers_du_vent

Oh, there's still great stories being produced, and the best writers manage to work within the Marvel continuity while not assuming their readers have prior knowledge of it.

Unfortunately, you can't see any of that from the cover of the comics, and the best writers share shelf space with a whole lot of dreck, as well as a bunch of not-dreck that assumes you've already been reading the series for ten years.

My advice is to buy collected story arcs rather than individual issues, avoid crossovers, favor single-character rather than ensemble books, favor series relaunches or miniseries, and once you've found a writer you like, buy for the writer and not the character.

For me the spiderman(specifically 90's spiderman and spectacular spiderman) cartoons are a pretty good abbreviation/retelling of the comics without as many crossovers and with a more coherent stories. Probably some of the other cartoons work similarly for other heroes/lines.

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