I haven't posted anything to this blog in a long time. But its still here, and its a useful venue to share longform thoughts that don't fit into a Facebook post that I create while in social isolation, so...
My Experience (so far) reading all the Marvel Comics
OR
How 1993 was nearly the death of me
Some of you may not know this, but back in April 2013 I found the
Complete Marvel Reading Order. That seemed like a fun thing, so I started in on it, with Fantastic Four #1 from 1961. Since then, through a subscription to Marvel Digital Unlimited (a GREAT value, by the way, for anyone interested in reading old comics on the cheap) and some dark internet magic where necessary, I've now read over 12,000 stories. I've read nearly every Marvel super-hero comic from 1961 to mid-1994.
Because I am a data geek at heart, I want to share with you some things I've come across in the process. But here is the bottom line:
1993 was the worst.
Important note: I'm going to complain a lot in this article. Because lets face it, a lot of Marvel comics have been awful, and I have read nearly all of them prior to 1994. But as my friend Mark pointed out to me, "Hey, nobody is MAKING you do this." This is my voluntary obsession; take my complaints in that spirit. In the end, even with the sunk cost fallacy, this has been and continues to be a tremendous source of joy in my life. Someday I'll be able to say "by a reasonable definition, I've read every Marvel super-hero comic ever made"; that makes me a die-hard FOOM, true believer!
About the Order
The
Complete Marvel Reading Order (the Order, from here on out) is the result of a tremendous amount of labor on the part of Travis Starnes and others to put all of the comics Marvel has published into a
reading order. That is, you are not reading them as they were published, but in an order that makes narrative sense. If there was a six story arc in Incredible Hulk, for example, you would read those six Hulk books in order one after the other. Big cross title events, like Secret Wars or Civil War, are put into the order in a way that you can read it all as one big story all at once. Obviously this is not always easy to do, there are many moments in Marvel history (especially with all the mutant books) where there is just no way to make sense of things. Circa 1990 or so, for example, Wolverine is clearly able to be in multiple locations simultaneously, he is in so many books. But for the most part, Travis and Fragsel and many others do a great job of organizing the whole thing so that as much as possible it makes sense. Its like reading one very, VERY long continuing graphic novel.
One notable aspect of this is that the Order treats the story as the unit of measurement, not the book. So, if you have an annual with four stories in it, that will be four separate entries in the Order. The reason for this is that in reading order, those stories might not be connected at all. The main story might be part of a larger story-line (e.g. Atlantis Attacks) and the pieces of that story-line will all appear together in order.
Obviously, decisions have to be made as to what counts as "in" and what counts as "out". When I started reading things, the Order was only one order, what is now called the "Main" or "Marvel 616" order. But since that time, they have added in both more concise Core and Essential orders (for those who don't want to read those Transformers UK stories that had Death's Head in them, for example) and Expanded Orders (for those who really want to track down those Portuguese Spider-Man reprints with extra material that wasn't in the original). The Main 616 order does not include things like:
- Western books, like "Kid Colt", the old West "Ghost Rider", or "Rawhide Kid", even though many of those characters did make appearances in super-hero comics and are clearly in the same 616 universe.
- WW2 books, such as "Howling Commandos" and "Invaders".
- Conan and similar titles
- Star Comics, thank god, even though these characters actually do appear in some later Marvel titles in very different form.
- Romance and similar comics (e.g. "Patsy Walker")
- Golden/Silver age comics whose characters were later integrated into the 616 universe. The Order starts with FF #1.
The website also has the major advantage of being able to track things; what you have read, what you have missed, etc. It also has the capability for you to rate the stories. This is why I can tell you with complete confidence...
1993 is the worst.
What I have Read and What I have Missed
As of this writing, I have read 12,152 stories in the Order. This covers all of 1961 to 1993, and a chunk of 1994. I have only had to skip over 23 stories:
- 12 Marvel UK stories from the 1970s through to early 1990s. These just can't be had for love or money as far as I can tell.
- 3 short pieces that are hiding inside larger trade paperbacks
- 2 single page pieces hiding inside other comics
- Pro Action Magazine (1994) #2 (its an NFL tie-in seriously don't ask I'm sure it is awful)
- A weird 5 issue series that was packaged with Drake Snack Cakes. I told you it was the "Complete" order, right?
That's pretty good, I think. You wouldn't believe some of the obscure stuff I have found and read. Like comics published for the US government as anti-drug or anti-bullying pamphlets, or made for companies as advertisements. Or, Lord give me strength, Howard the Duck strips from Crazy Magazine.
My reading rate has spiked and fallen over the years since 2013. I've gone as high as 10-20 stories a day, and then gone periods where I wasn't able or willing to read anything at all. At the moment, my reading rate is such that it will take me 28 years to "catch up" and be reading currently published comic books, but that is directly related to...1993 being the worst. I actually think it will take me only another 7 years or so.
Phases of Enjoyment and Depression
The Order has a 5 star rating system, with a minimum of 1 star. I've interpreted this as follows: 5 stars = incredible, the best of the best; 4 stars = really good, memorable; 3 stars = at least enjoyable, but not memorable in any way; 2 stars = mediocre, unimpressive, meh; 1 star = hated it, it was awful.
Now some charts!
That chart shows the number of stories per publication month (the
cover date, this is important, see below), broken down by the number of stars I gave each story. At this scale the number of 5 star stories is very difficult to see, they are sort of sprinkled on the top. The majority of stories throughout the Order have been either 2 or 3 stars. I've marked three historical transitions that greatly changed the average story output per month...
- Mid '70s increase - from an average of about 12-13 stories prior to 1972 by 1975 Marvel had ramped up to at least 25 a month. This was mostly by adding new titles in a stream of introductions and cancellations, with few having any real life-span.
- Marvel Comics Presents - this started publication in Fall 1988. On a biweekly schedule at four stories per book, in and of itself this was adding 8-12 stories to the total every month and represents about a sixth of the total volume of stories from 1989 through 1992.
- 1993 - did I mention it was the worst? Quantity over quality became the rule at Marvel in 1993. You can read an interesting first-hand account of what it was like to be in the comic book business at this time here: Mile High Comics Blog.
There are also two spikes that seem worthy of comment:
- In 1979 and 1980, Hulk Comics UK began publication. This was a black and white news print title published weekly (in the way many UK comics such as 2000 AD were published) that contained new stories, not just reprints of American stuff. It included new Hulk, Nick Fury, Black Knight, and Captain Britain storylines. Since it was weekly, at up to four new stories per book, it adds in a lot of volume. But the stories themselves are heavily serialized, no more than 5 pages per.
- In November and December 1989 you can see clearly the effect of using cover date instead of release date in this chart, as Marvel attempted to sort out the radical differences that had crept in between these values. This is described well here: CBR article.
Other spikes are mostly related to annual publication windows (annuals might add 4 or 5 stories per book) or periods where a number of normal titles were printing two stories per for a while (e.g. Captain America and Thor in the late '80s).
Here is another chart!
That chart shows the exponential moving average of the number of stars I gave each story across the Order as I read it. As you can see, the average stays within the bounds of 2 and 3 stars. This is not surprising, the vast majority of stories are 2 or 3 stars. This chart also shows the year of each story in grey, this lets you see how the reading order causes stories to overlap as they are placed into narrative order, not publication order. From this chart, you can see that the mean rating across time was roughly 2.5 stars per story...until you get past story 10,000. You guessed it, that's when 1993 starts hitting the Order (the 2nd from the top grey patch, 1994 is right on the line at the top of the chart). It also shows how many more comics were published late in the period. The first third of the Order that I read goes from 1961 to mid 1980 (~20 years), the second third from 1980 to 1990 (~10 years) and the last third is only 1990 to 1994 (~4 years).
However, this chart doesn't really express the true
experience of reading the Order. It treats all stories as equal, but that's not really the case. Stories that I give 2 or 3 stars to are...fine. They don't stop me reading, but they don't keep me coming back for more. The experience of reading is dictated by 4 and 5 star stories on the good side and 1 star stories on the bad side. Therefore, I came up with something I call my Reading Enjoyment Measure (REM). This is simply a running count across the order, +1 if I read a 4 or 5 star story, -1 if I read a 1 star story.
Here is the chart!
In this chart, what matters is not the overall level but the slope of the line. A flat slope indicates that the rate of reading good and bad issues is roughly the same. An upward slope indicates that the good is outweighing the bad. A downward slope the opposite.
Here you can see at a glance my experience in the Order. I think there are there are six clear periods in this experience:
- The Classical Period: this is roughly from 1961 to 1975. This is where Marvel is figuring stuff out. It includes all the classic Lee/Kirby and Lee/Ditko work (e.g. Thor, FF, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange), some really fantastic comic books, but it also includes a lot of drek (early Daredevil, Tomb of Dracula, etc.) Overall, the average quality is consistent.
- The Disco Era: I love disco! But clearly the high life of mid-late '70s NYC was taking its toll on Marvel. The number of stories increased and the quality took a nose dive. This is also the era of the licensed titles, which were universally dreadful: Godzilla, Human Fly, Shogun Warriors, etc. This period ends roughly in 1981.
- High School Glory Days: I call this period that name because this is corresponds exactly with when I was in high school, and to some extent explains my love for Marvel Comics and its characters. This increase in quality is almost entirely attributable to three authors: Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, and Alan Moore. All of them wrote some of their best work for Marvel during this period. Claremont is the largest influence, as he was not only writing X-Men and New Mutants but also issues of Spider-Woman, Marvel Team-Up, Iron Fist, etc. Frank Miller is primarily responsible for Daredevil, but there are some other things in there you might not remember (like Doctor Strange!). Alan Moore wrote very little for Marvel, and I didn't have access to it at the time, but during this period he and Alan Davis wrote what is still one of the best serialized super-hero stories ever, their long run of Captain Britain that extended through several black and white Marvel UK titles. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It has a large effect on this period because the arc was broken down into smaller chunks of ~10 pages each and published frequently, so it represents a larger proportion of stories than might be expected.
- Status Quo: this is the 1985 or so to 1990. This was when I was really buying a lot of comics. Quality is consistent, good mixed in with the bad. Not particularly memorable.
- The 1991 surprise: with a bit of 1990 and 1992 thrown in. I really did not expect this, but 1991 was one of the best years so far in Marvel. This is driven primarily by some new American writers, like Peter David on Incredible Hulk, but also by an influx of more British writers and artists, like Abnett and Lanning on the Punisher (?!). Titles I barely remember were actually really good: Silver Surfer, Quasar, Foolkiller (probably the best thing Steve Gerber ever wrote). The real stand out here, though, is the first volume of Knights of Pendragon, which I think is probably the best comic you have never heard of.
- 1993 - what did I tell you? It was awful. So many 1 star stories with no pay off. A lot of this is due to Tom De Falco, I think, finally giving up on trying to make Marvel Comics Presents actually worth reading; there are stretches in the Order where it is just 1 star MCP story after another, sometimes 20 or 30 stories long. This is when I stopped buying comics; I think this was related to quality and ever-increasing cover price, but I also must admit it was tied to the increasing effect of Magic: the Gathering on my pocket book.
The Worst
Now the really interesting stuff. I did a
Bayesian Average score for the various titles to figure which ones I liked the most and which the least. In a nutshell, a Bayesian average (which is really a misleading name, but whatever) adjusts an mean value with some prior expectation. That is, you start with the assumption that all titles are the same and then add the actual data in. In this case, I've used what I will call the "Secret Wars" prior: 12 stories of 2.5 stars each. This means that shorter titles with fewer stories have to be much better than than longer titles with more stories, because they are all starting from the same place. With really long titles (e.g. Amazing Spider-Man), the Bayesian average and the actual average are very close to the same value.
Without further ado, here are the 20 worst titles in the Order, by my estimation (first value is the Bayesian average stars, second is the true average stars:
- Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (1985) 1.4/1.0 - thanks a lot, Spider-Verse
- Marvel Tales (1964) 1.4/1.2 - this is actually just more Peter Porker, oh my stars its awful
- Speedball (1988) 1.6/1.0 - the nadir of Steve Ditko
- Shogun Warriors (1979) 1.6/1.1 - licensed crap from the late '70s
- Tower of Shadows (1969) 1.7/1.1 - horror anthology title full of crap, I honestly can't say why it is even in the Order as much as it is. Maybe because the narrator character was later retconned to be Caretaker from the later Ghost Rider series?
- Crazy Magazine (1973) 1.7/1.0 - all Howard the Duck pieces, a page or two each. Ugh.
- Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain (1977) 1.7/1.1 - Non-Alan Moore/Alan Davis Captain Britain, serialized in dreary volume.
- Godzilla (1977) 1.7/1.3 - poor Godzilla and Dum-Dum Dugan deserved better
- US 1 (1983) 1.8/1.0 - "Hey trucking was popular, lets make a comic about it a couple of years too late!"
- Human Fly (1977) 1.8/1.3 - this was a real guy. I can't say whether he deserved better, but his comic was the pits.
- Howard the Duck (1979) 1.8/1.2 - I simply cannot understand why anyone would consider this title to be worthy of attention. I mean, ok, I get it, Gerber was trying to break boundaries and all that. But he was doing it in a ham-fisted, poorly written, and frequently misogynistic manner.
- Transformers UK (1984) 1.8/1.3 - the only reason this is in the Order is because Death's Head is in it. Its just as bad as you think it is.
- NFL Superpro (1991) 1.8/1.1 - arrrrrggggggghhhhhh
- Spider-Man Annual UK (1980) 1.8/1.2 - original Spider-Man material, seemingly written on cocktail napkins down at the pub then sent to the printers
- Saga of Crystar (1983) 1.8/1.1 - failed toy marketing as comic book
- Chamber of Darkness (1969) 1.8/1.2 - another crappy horror anthology right on the edge of the grey area as to what counts as in the Order or not.
- Micronauts (1984) 1.8/1.5 - this is the 2nd series, not the first. The art is atrocious.
- Ghost Rider (1973) 1.9/1.8 - the first of the modern series, with Johnny Blaze. Its awful, but it did give us the Orb, one of my guilty pleasure super-villains, so that's one thing in its favor.
- Team America (1982) 1.9/1.3 - more toy marketing as comic-books
- Nightstalkers (1992) 1.9/1.5 - "wait, DC is making edgy comics, we need to make edgy comics quick, make with the edge..." is not a good reason to make a comic book.
The Best
After all my complaining above, you might be thinking "is Hans a closet masochist? why is he doing this to himself?" Well here is the answer, the 20 best titles in the Order so far (Bayesian average/true average)...
- The Knights of Pendragon (1990) 3.7/4.6 - seriously, this is the best thing you have probably never read. The art was excellent, the story intriguing and scary, the integration with the rest of the Marvel universe pretty seamless.
- Doctor Strange (1974) 3.5/3.6 - the 3rd Doctor Strange title. Some of the best artists at Marvel worked on this title from 1974 to 1987: Frank Brunner, Steve Leialoha, Paul Smith, Marshall Rogers, Michael Golden, etc.
- The Daredevils (1983) 3.4/4.0 - this is one of two Marvel UK titles where the Moore/Davis Captain Marvel stories first appeared. As I've already mentioned, some of the best super-hero work ever created.
- Master of Kung Fu (1974) 3.4/3.5 - I'd call Master of Kung Fu a guilty pleasure, except I do not feel guilty about it at all. MoKF is simply one of the best spy thriller comics I have ever read. Its connected to the Marvel universe, yes, but ultimately it does its own thing. Doug Moench was not the most consistent of writers but he excels at every turn on MoKF, and of course there is the distinctive and eye-catching art by Paul Gulacy for much of the run, and later by Gene Day (who died far too young). Where these artists excelled was in their story telling, not in their individual illustrations. The action sequences in MoKF are universally inventive and intriguing, spilling outside the borders, transitioning back and forth, framed in fascinating ways.
- Uncanny X-Men (1981) 3.3/3.3 - Due to vagaries of publication names, this title only starts in 1981, and therefore doesn't even include some of the classic Claremont X-men stories, including the entirety of the Dark Phoenix story line. Those stories are stuck in X-Men (1963) and therefore get averaged in with all of the awful early X-Men stories pre-Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975. However, this title is not just Claremont; in fact just before he left he was clearly in a rut. Uncanny X-Men is just one of the most consistently good titles so far. It has its low points, but its reliable in producing a four star story at least once every few months.
- Excalibur (1988) 3.3/3.4 - if this was limited to only Alan Davis's period as artist, it would be further up the list. But because it includes all the stuff (much of it not great) that Alan Davis didn't work on, it ends up here, still in 6th place. Like Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur is a reliably solid book almost regardless of who is doing it.
- The Mighty World of Marvel (1984) 3.3/3.6 - the other place the Moore/Davis Captain Britain stories first appeared.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man (1988) 3.2/3.3 - the most reliable of the Spider-Man books. Mostly down to J. M. DeMatteis as writer for such a long time. Another example of a title that regularly delivers 4 star stories.
- Foolkiller (1990) 3.2/4.0 - a complete surprise to me. I barely remember this coming out. But Steve Gerber really does do interesting things in this. I don't agree with his politics, I'm not sure the message is remotely wholesome, and there is certainly some overlap with and desire to emulate "Watchmen". But really, 10 stories all at 4 stars each is an achievement.
- New Mutants (1983) 3.1/3.2 - my first comics love. If I could exclude the Rob Liefeld work at the end of this title, it would be much higher on the list, that's like a big ugly footless spider-legged anchor weighing it down.
- Hellstorm: Prince of Lies (1993) 3.1/3.6 - based entirely on the strength of Warren Ellis's creepy gruesome weirdness. Another surprise to me.
- Iron Fist (1975) 3.1/3.6 - one of my favorite characters, but also one of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's earliest collaborations. Only 15 stories but packs a lot of enjoyment in there.
- Captain Britain (1985) 3.1/3.4 - this is the continuation of Moore and Davis's work on Captain Britain, but with writing picked up by Jamie Delano. Still very very good.
- Wolverine (1988) 3.1/3.2 - I was a bit surprised to see this, because overall it is not the most memorable title. But I think it gets here because is so rarely bad. Given how rotten so much of the Order is, you can get into the top 20 list essentially by never having a 1 star story. (This is the later sole book, not the four issue Miller limited series. That barely misses the cut because it was only 4 issues so the Bayesian average penalizes it.)
- Silver Surfer (1987) - 3.1/3.1 - this one was a big surprise to me. Consistent fun so far, rarely a dud story. I'm not sure I had even heard of Ron Marz as a writer before this title, but he is quite good at the cosmic Marvel.
- Marvels (1994) 3.1/4.8 - we have finally gotten low enough that 4 issue limited series can start showing up if they were REALLY good, like almost all 5 stars. Marvels was that, its a brilliant retelling of early Marvel universe history, with Alex Ross showing off what has since become an inimitable style.
- The Adventures of Captain America (1991) 3.1/4.8 - another mini-series 3 out of 4 issues at 5 stars. Kevin Maguire, oh how I have always loved you. The only DC title I was ever really into was his work on Justice League. Sadly, this is one of the very few things he has ever done for Marvel. (Also, this completely violates the general rule of the Order of not including WW2 stories. I have no idea why that is.)
- Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (1993) 3.1/4.4 - Frank Miller has his down moments, but this isn't one of them. Not quite as good a re-telling of an origin story as Batman: Year One, but almost.
- Fantastic Four (1961) 3.0/3.1 - at 349 stories included in this rating, this is by far the longest running title to make this list.
FF obviously has its ups and downs, but its still an all-time favorite. Admittedly, I never get enough of "it's clobberin' time!"
- Doctor Strange (1968) 3.0/3.5 - this was only 14 stories long, pretty much the tail end of what had been Strange Tales. Story-wise, its fine, Roy Thomas is pretty solid at this point. Its the art by Colan, Palmer, and Atkins that makes it. I'm not normally a Gene Colan fan, but his panel layouts in this book are just wild. All kinds of crooked, angled borders between panels and linked action arcing across and up or down the page.
Conclusion and the Future
That's the Order so far. I'm past 1993, and 1994 seems to be looking up. The volume of stories drops precipitously in 1995 with the end of MCP and the beginnings of Marvel's bankruptcy troubles. I'm in for the long haul. I may update all this when I hit 15,000 stories or so.
While social isolation continues, I think I will try to make a series of the best and the worst of the Order. I had done this periodically on G+ before it died, it seems time to resurrect that series. We'll see.
I hope you enjoyed this. Ask me any questions, I love talking about comics.
