Marvel/DC Intimidation

I'm getting really annoyed listening to friends TALK about good starting points to read comics. They love the characters, the movies, the cartoons, the games, but they just can't pull the trigger on the original source material. I theorize that Marvel & DC's endless "Universe" formula just doesn't mesh well with completionist mindsets. Any advice for these pussies? I have a friend has been trying to get into comics since before CIVIL WAR (2006) and still to this day, hasn't taken the dive. DRIVES ME INSANE.

>I have a friend has been trying to get into comics since before CIVIL WAR (2006) and still to this day, hasn't taken the dive

Do you mean he hasn't read anything yet? That's a failing on the part of your friend, not on the part of comics companies.

Seconding this.
If your friend doesn't want to make the effort by now, he's just saying he's interested in order not to disappoint you.

It's not hard at all though, especially with stuff like Rebirth and New 52 providing starting points on the DC side of things

He hasn't read anything yet. He loves Spider-Man and Cyclops but has spent over a decade just asking questions, teasing that he'll start reading soon and just never does. It bothers me because he can enjoy the characters in any medium besides the actual comics. I think it just scares him because he's always trying to ORGANIZE everything and keeps asking shit like how many spider characters are currently in the universe. He gets upset when I list too many.

You can put the books unto their hands and they still won't bother. It's not worth it.

>I think it just scares him because he's always trying to ORGANIZE everything

Your friend has autism. The big two are easy as fuck to get into. Read a starting arc, do a 10 minute wiki research at most if you're more interested and done. Even more easy if you have prior knowledge off of other mediums like cartoons, movies/tv shows.

People who don't read for pleasure are not magically going to start.

People just aren't interested in reading, even if they're only funnybooks.

Just start them on something fun. I gave a friend the first trade of Busiek's Avengers which is supposed to be some kind of deep-dive fanboy thing, but they liked it and came away thinking that D-Man was a much more important character in the Marvel Universe than he turned out to be.

The point is not that they'll like everything they pick up but just that most comics really aren't hard to get into. The stuff you don't understand you will eventually pick up by reading more issues, just like in any soap opera.

Why read comics when manga exists and is free?

> fucking secondaries
kill all of them be it comic books, video games or anime
kill them all

That first arc is so fun and uncharacteristic of the nightmare monochrome retcon flashback grind to follow, I forget about it.
D-Man would have made a much better addition to Busick's roster than Justice, lol.

>completionist mindsets
Them wanted a good starting point has nothing to do with a completionist mindset.

When you want to read the book a movie is adapted from, you just pick it up. And if it's a serie of books, you pick the first one. Nobody asks which Lord of the rings novel they should read first.
Same with a movie adapted from manga. And even independant comics. You want to read Sin city, you start with the oldest one. You want to read Kickass, you start with the first one.

Long running cape comics are an anomaly. You know if you pick the first story of Batman or Superman, it won't be what you're looking for because the characters have changed and the movies aren't derived from that.

Telling someone to start reading about a character from its very first story would even be a bad idea, because beyond the old fashion/archaic aspect of old comics (which some people like), the amount of bad/mediocre/boring runs far excess the amount of good runs.

tl;dr: capes comics are a mess which is quite unique and explains why people need a good starting point.

Nah. Intersted people just pick them up and read them, uninterested people don't. It's that simple.

Yeah, but most of the time good starting points don't actually exist. Even new #1s or the beginning of writer runs tie into the overall knowledge, history and evolution of the characters. The real answer people seek is to simply dive in and start absorbing the current story they can get a hold of, and keep going until their knowledge of the characters/world they enjoy grow and they continue to expand to exploring more comics and never truly feel a satisfied. It's an infinite hobby and it's a unique and cool experience. I would compare it to learning a new language. You learn words, and you can speak more but even when you become advanced, there are always new words and grammar to learn.

BASED people read. LAZY people don't. There are more lazy people in the world. It's simple as that.

Sure, I've got advice, tell him to stop reading Marvel, and read DC.

nigga sounds retarded

If people don't want to read comics then fuck them

let them be entertained by their police procedural "ZOOM AND ENHANCE" primetime television bullshit or their fucking sports or whatever crap they prefer to entertain themselves.

People don't like starting things in media res, especially when there's no guarantee that they'll get background info.

It's honestly not more complicated than that.

The real answer is any starting point is as good as any other....

I've literally never gotten into a comic with a "good starting point", I found something interesting so I checked it out, got sucked in, and then kept reading, sometimes working backwards in the process

The idea that comics are too complex for beginners to jump into is stupid, yes comic storylines are often convoluted, but they're still reading material fit for most 15 year olds, if you're an adult you have no excuse

Yeah, who the fuck loves cyclops.

Better than overrated Wolverine.

Wrong

Here's the problem with championing one character while dismissing another based on the basis of "one is overrated and one is underrated"

Eventually, the former becomes the latter and vice versa, Wolverine is now underrated because of autists like you

>Wolverine is now underrated

Yeah, Harley Quinn isn't getting enough love over at DC either.

Are you fucking dumb?

Does that question make you feel superior? Go back to fucking your mother.

You realize Wolverine has been dead for years, right?

>your mother jokes
You're a fucking moron.

Being dead does not equal being underrated. The fact that there's an ongoing Old Man Logan book while he is dead just proves how overrated he is. They can't even let him die without Old Man Logan filling in the void because pussies like you miss him too much. It's probably why you keep sucking your mom's cunt.

K

As someone who just started reading recently, it's mainly the history and decades of material that's daunting, especially when you don't even know if you're gonna like any of it to begin with.

Get them a one-off that doesn't require any prior reading and see if they're even interesting in reading the books, first. If they are, they'll probably want more to read. If not, then comics just probably aren't for them.

Are you retarded? You can get comics for free by just googling it.

Start with Action Comics #1.

Yeah, get them something like Invincible.

This is the best answer.

The more you know, the more there is to dive backwards into.

I agree that there aren't really good starting point.
It sure is unique but cool? I don't know. For one good run, how many bad/mediocre ones will you read?

And when you start with a shit/average run, either you really liked the movie/cartoon which introduced you to the character and you continue reading, or you just stop and read something else (like a book which has a beginning and an end).

This has nothing to do with being lazy. Nobody wants to read something bad.

You're scenario is accurate, but obvious, and leaves out the literally millions people on this earth, fuck on this continent, that don't read anything AT ALL for pleasure- by choice.
Discounting laziness seems a bit premature.

I really like Churchill's art desu

They have had Weapon X, Wolverine, Old Man Logan, and Wolverine-esque X-Force titles published monthly since he died. Wolverine ain't dead.

Bump

Honestly, the best way to get into any given comic book character is to get a quick summary of their origin story and then dive into one or more of the "definitive" storylines instead of worrying over how convoluted comic book continuity can get. It's generally better to treat western comics as more of a mythos than something with a definitive continuity.