Comic Book Learning Curve

Reading a comic book for the first time can be a tricky thing. They are filled with history and knowledge that has been in the works for years. To know it all and embrace it all is a doubtless task. But don’t be afraid of it. Embrace the fact that there is a lot to learn, after all, you don’t go into a brand new story knowing exactly everything.

When I first got into reading comics I was about 10 year old. My favorite character was and still is Batman. But my first comic book was not really a comic book at all. For this I think I was a bit fortunate. The book was a Wizard 30^th Anniversary X-Men issue. It let me in on all the characters of the X-Men that appeared over the 30 year history of the X-Men. It was quite a chore taking it all in.

At the time the ‘90s X-Men cartoon was coming on and everyone was into it. With the book I had not only a small guide as to what to expect with the cartoon but also the rich history of the Marvel Universe. The first thing I noticed was the X-Men have been around 30 years and they where teens when they where first introduced in the ‘60s.

With the characters appearing to be in their early 20s to early 30s I found myself struggling with a simple concept of the “time slide”. This is how characters stay young in serialized fiction. Even though the X-Men made their debut 30 years ago for us, but for them only about 10 years have passed, give or take a few years at the time.

The comic book that brought this to realization for me was Spider-Man: Maximum Clonage. This was during the Clone Saga for Spider-Man. At the time Amazing Spider-Man was in the four hundreds in terms of issue numbers. And the story referenced an issue that happened in an issue that numbered in the two hundreds. Even though that issue came out in the ‘70s, only about 5 years had passed in the comic itself. It was a fun thing to realize.

The concept of the time slide is only the first step into knowing how comic books work. The second is to realize that not everything stays the same. No mater what company you read, Marvel, DC, Image; whoever, you have to realize change is always possible. Sometimes for good, some time for ill. But most importantly are you getting a good story out of it? You may not like the change itself, but don’t let that stand in the way of the story.

When you start reading comic book regularly you will start to get familiar with a particular term: Retcon. Short for Retro-Active continuity, it usually means something within the story has changed and no longer what you remember it to be. These changes can be anything as small as minor dialog changes to as big as universe altering mechanics.

The most obvious retcons are used when a character dies. Many characters in comics and other serialized fiction such as soap operas have died only to have been “thought to have been killed” or even a long lost twin shows up. Magneto of Marvel’s X-Men had died and come back many times. And sometime with little to no explanation as to how he survived.

Occasionally you will here people say things like DC Comics does not care about its own history. In my opinion it takes great care in its history. With the mega event of 1985 called Crisis on Infinite Earths there was a massive reboot, but it was something that was woven in the fabric of the story itself. It took its old history and said it is here in this special place to be remembered.