Marvel Unlimited

[Yomo Kimyata]

Ok, I've gotten to the point in the pandemic where I've subscribed to Marvel Unlimited for (almost) unlimited browsing of comics on my tablet.  My question is, what has happened since the late 1980s (when I last spent time reading monthlies) and what should I be reading?  I've seen just about every Marvel-associated movie (including the Dolph Lungren Punisher, which was the best, fight me!) so I'm trying to catch up with the universe and catch the great stories that I've missed.  What do I like?  Well, I have to admit I started with everything Marvel Zombie, so there's that.  As far as what is my favorite style, I love Sandman and Neil Gaiman, so I've also read his Eternals series.  Outside of that, I'm kind of picking and choosing.  Any thoughts?

[America's Angel]

Gaiman wrote an marvels Elseworlds called "1602". Check that out first. Totally seems your deal.

 

Once you're done with that...

Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross is incredible.

Frank Miller's work in the 90s on Daredevil and Wolverine

Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men

Garth Ennis's run on Punisher

Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America

Ed Brubaker's run on Daredevil

Brian Michael Bendis's run on Daredevil

Brian Michael Bendis's run on Alias

Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and its sister series "FF"

Old Man Logan by Mark Millar

Runaways by Brian K Vaughan

Vision by Tom King

Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker

Moon Knight by Warren Ellis
The Superior Foes of Spider-Man by Nick Spencer

 

If you're into event books, The Infinity Gauntlet, Age of Apocalypse, and Civil War were all good.

 

[Luminara]

34 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

My question is, what has happened since the late 1980s

 

Oh, well... big hair went out of style.  Casual dress, jeans and t-shirts, became fashionable.  Grunge.  You missed grunge.  Several countries have had different heads of state.  Recycling became "a thing".  The educational system went into the toilet in the United States.  Pet rocks stopped being "a thing".  So did Chia Pets.  And The Clapper.  Oh, the Cold War ended, but another one sort of started relatively recently.  Japan got weirder.  China got angrier.  Poutine was moved from the "junk food" category to the "cuisine" category.  Some mountains grew, others shrank (erosion).  Gasoline prices went up.  So did inflation.  Wages didn't match either, but smart people still found ways to stretch their money.  The planet continued spinning, despite our best efforts.  Some wind blew, somewhere.  Top Gear happened.  Then it stopped happening.  Then The Grand Tour happened.  It's still kind of happening.

 

I think that about sums it up.  Welcome to the next century!  😄

[Dreamboat]

Friend:

 

Exiles, Vol. 1, 2001. Have at it!

EDIT: Oh, and:

 

 

Original run of the Thunderbolts, 1997. Go go go!

Edited November 25, 2020 by Dreamboat

[Mr. Vee]

I'd ditto marvels and the brubaker stuff. Earth X and its sequel series are fantastic. I like the Bendis era avengers/event stuff from disassembled through dark reign with Secret Invasion being the highlight. But it gets old with Siege and CW2. 

[Dreamboat]

Shameful of me to forget this, too:

 

READ X-STATIX PLEASE AND THANK YOU EVERYONE
The series starts in X-Force, Vol. 1, #116, then gets rebranded into X-Statix after #129. I imagine those will be under different listings on Marvel Unlimited. This comic rules.

[Mr. Vee]

It's not for everyone, but I could see folks really liking it.

[Hyperstrike]

If the entire industry hadn't been so hellbent on chasing me away from comics as a medium, I might go for this.

As it is now?  Wouldn't even use it if I got it for free.

[Apparition]

35 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

If the entire industry hadn't been so hellbent on chasing me away from comics as a medium, I might go for this.

As it is now?  Wouldn't even use it if I got it for free.

 

I hear you.  I stopped reading Marvel around 2013, and DC Comics even earlier than that.  However, Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite are still good for reading older material if you don't already have all of the issues or trade paperbacks, so there's that at least.

[Haijinx]

The original two runs of X23 were good.  Likewise the run on xforce that included x23 was good, if dark.   After that the character becomes flanderized.

 

The original run of Runaways was really good.  

 

She Hulk when they reintroduced her own title was good until she became a bounty hunter, then it got dumb.  

 

Moon Night getting his on title again in the early 2000s was great.  Though jarring if you preferred the 1980s take on the character. 

 

Ultimate Spider Man was excellent until around that flood event then it got dumb.

 

The first year or so of The Ultimates was really good, and shows where a lot of the ideas for the movie Avengers came from. 

[Dreamboat]

 

4-issue (non-canon) mini. Everyone should read this.

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, Dreamboat said:

 

 

 (non-canon) 

This is the thing that is throwing me off.  I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what is or is not canon anymore, or even if the whole concept of canon has been thrown out the window.

 

These are great suggestions, and I'm SUPER thankful for them all!

[Mr. Vee]

It hasn't been thrown out the window but it's so convoluted by retcons and writers just not remembering things correctly and things just being ignored and things just being done for lulz that it might as well have been. Marvel's sliding timeline makes things even more complicated than just canon or non-. Oh and even the non-canon stuff is canon-ish because of the multiverse, so there's that. The example I always use is Deadpool's daughter. She's decidedly in continuity in recent years but she was conceived in one of the wacky Deadpool retcon stories where he hangs out with 70's Luke Cage and Iron Fist. And it could be argued "but that's Deadpool" but in that case I'd direct you to the wiki on Wolverine or Cable or Psylocke or Moonstar or Apocalypse or, hell, nearly anyone in an X-book. There's canon, but the canon is crazy and fluid and often looks nothing like what you'd normally think of as canonical. 

So if you're the type who can just read stuff you want to read and not worry too much about canon or big picture you're golden. If you're the obsessive type trying to make everything fit in nicely I feel for you, but repeat to yourself it's just a show comic, I should really just relax.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Part of it also is the "did this happen or didn't it?" memory/reality wipes like House of M and the Sentry.  Part of it is that everything is a Secret.

[Mr. Vee]

House of M happened - Layla Miller showed up in the 'real' world after it, and it showed up in Secret Wars as well. Sentry happened as much as any sweeping retcon of the entire history who's also crazy and an unreliable narrator can happen. Blue Marvel too, minus the crazy/unreliable bit 😄

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

This is the thing that is throwing me off.  I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what is or is not canon anymore, or even if the whole concept of canon has been thrown out the window.

 

These are great suggestions, and I'm SUPER thankful for them all!

Don't think canon means anything at this point. 

[Locsmith]

To the OP, use the browse function by publish date (range) and set it to a few months around when you stopped reading.  Add everything to your library and then set the library to sort by publish date (oldest first).  This will group everything in order it was originally released and you can start reading.  When you finish a comic, remove it from your library and just add the next comic in the series to your library and the new once will get automatically moved to the bottom in the proper order.  This way you get every thing regardless of canon or not (you will also pick up all the excellent suggestions above).

 

You will want to check a few date ranges a year as you go to pick up limited series.

 

Also, while you are catching up, be sure to add all the new stuff they post on the home page each week.  Eventually you will catch up and it will be nice to have those already in your library.  As long as you continue to sort by original publish date, the new ones will stay at the bottom out of your way until you are ready for them.  And don't worry about volume, i have had over 1000 in my library more than once.

 

I have tagged this thread so let me know if you have any questions.

Edited December 31, 2020 by Locsmith
quick clarification

[Greycat]

Eh. I still don't "follow comics." On occasion there'll be "oh, there's this neat series," and I'll read that for its 5-6-10 issues, then let the universe go on.

 

Honestly, I think I get most of my comics from seeing something interesting pop up in the humble bundles...

[DougGraves]

I got Marvel Unlimited for awhile and enjoyed the comics, but my old ipad2 stopped working with it.

 

I read Avengers, Spiderman, FF, and some others from the 60's to the 70's. 

 

I stopped reading comics at the end of the 80's, and trying the new ones I generally don't like them.  I might just have picked bad ones, but I found the ones I tried had a painfully slow pacing.  They felt like the Marvel Netflix shows where very little happened dragged out over a long period of time.  I prefer the older style like the CW shows where a lot happens every episode.

 

I would get Marvel Unlimited again because there are a ton of old comics I want to read, but new comics seem to have no appeal to me.

[Techwright]

On 11/25/2020 at 4:22 PM, Luminara said:

 

 You missed grunge. 

 

😄

I'm not sure anybody misses grunge.

 

 

As to comics, I was only collecting while grunge was a...ahem, in the 1990's.  So I was one step from when you quit, which nowadays would be "old school".  From what I remember of the time, I enjoyed the Age of Apocalypse story arc (nothing like the movie), and I got a kick out of the various 2099 comics, sort of a next-gen concept on several popular characters, set in the year 2099.  Spider-man 2099 was surprisingly dark for the time (cannibalistic Vulture), and Miguel, the future Spider-man was pretty cool.  Doom 2099 I found surprising.  I'd never been much of a fan of Dr. Doom, thinking him too over the top, but the Doom of 2099 is shrouded in a mystery, even to himself, and that created an edge that drew me in.  X-men 2099 I thought had some interesting characters (the leader had an intriguing power set and was not Charles Xavier, not by a long shot), but I fear they ended that title before it could really get a good foothold.

[DougGraves]

On 3/2/2021 at 5:02 PM, Techwright said:

I'm not sure anybody misses grunge.

 

I live in Seattle.  Grunge is not dead here.  The rest of the country just stopped dressing like us and listening to our music.

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

 

I live in Seattle.  Grunge is not dead here.  The rest of the country just stopped dressing like us and listening to our music.

I find this hilarious for some reason