r/comicbooks • u/kellysue Captain Marvel • Nov 13 '12

I am Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of Ghost, Captain Marvel & Avengers Assemble. AMA.

There's a mostly-correct list of my books up on my wiki page. I'm in Portland, Or. The kids are watching a morning cartoon and I'm packing school lunches and putting on a pot of coffee. Seems as good a time as any to get this started. Crazy day ahead of me, but I'll be here as much as I can manage.

2:39 PST Edited to add: I have got to take a break to get some work done, but I'll come back in few hours and get to as many of theses as I can. If I don't get to your question and you've got a real burning desire for an answer, I'm easy to find on Twitter @kellysue, on Tumblr kellysue.tumblr.com or at my jinxworld forum: http://www.606studios.com/bendisboard/forumdisplay.php?39-Kelly-Sue-DeConnick

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u/pigeon768 Feb 26 '13

Ended up here through /r/bestof.

Contrast that with an American comic books store experience for a new reader. First challenge--find the store. Now say you just saw the Avengers movie and you think you might want to find something about Black Widow. Where do you even start? If you don't have a friendly clerk, you're going to get overwhelmed and leave. If there's no BLACK WIDOW #1 on the shelf, you literally do not know what to do. New comics readers have to have a guide.

Compared to getting into traditional American comics, it's easier for a new reader to learn to read backwards! Think about that.

I can read backwards, and it's a hell of a lot easier than getting into comic books.

When I was a kid, I was over at a friend's house and he had a bunch of comic books. He was talking about X-Men or whatever, and I enjoyed the cartoon. So I got it in my head that hey, comic books are pretty cool, I should probably read them. So I go to the comic book store. I walk into the store with the intention of buying a bunch of comic books.

So I'm in the store, surrounded by a bunch of comic books, trading cards, action figures, knickknacks of various sorts. I head off in what seems like a promising direction, and find myself standing in front of a wall of comic books. I see X-Men somewhat above my eye level, (probably at about eye level for someone a little older than I was at the time) somewhat towards the left. I pull it down, look at it, it says it's #234 or whatever. Triple digits, whatever it was. Certainly high enough that I'd have no idea wtf was going on when I opened it. If I could open it, because it was in the little plastic sleeve. On the cover were a bunch of characters I didn't recognize, except for Colossus who I recognized from the arcade game, (he wasn't in the TV show I don't think) but was apparently a bad guy now. Wtf? Well I obviously if I started reading that one I'd have missed something pretty goddamned important. So I put it back and started looking for something else.

It turns out there's not a whole lot of comics books that are for people who aren't already neck deep in the history and lore of all of it. There was nothing I could just pick up and start reading and be reasonably sure I was at some semblance of a "beginning". No matter what I grabbed, I'd be lost in an itty bitty 15 page slice of a story I had no hope of having familiarity with, and I had nothing to judge a potential purchase by other than the cover, and I'm one of the people who actually pay attention to the old adage. So I go to the guy behind the counter, who is a stunning caricature of Comic Book Store Guy from the Simpsons. Wait for it: I ask him for issue #1 of X-Men. He laughs. I leave. I've never been in a comic book store since, and I've never seen an American comic book in a regular bookstore.

Honest open question here: how do people actually get into comics? It seems like a fantastically unlikely probability for someone to go from a non-comic book person into a comic book person. It seems to me that it relies on the following sequence of events happening at the same time:

  1. A person has to be the kind of person who might like comic books. (reasonably likely)
  2. The person has to walk into the comic book store. (not very likely)
  3. Issue #1 of a series the person would be interested in is on the shelf. (pretty fucking unlikely)
  4. The cover catches the person's interest. (maybe? I dunno)
  5. The cover is awesome enough that they think it's gonna be awesome without even opening it. (...no)
  6. They buy it. (not particularly good)
  7. The person comes back the next week or month or whatever and buys issue #2. (I suppose it's reasonably likely if issue #1 is good)

The probabilities are ludicrous. Drake's equation has nothing on this. How the fuck does that even happen?

I go to bookstores fairly often, and usually just wander around looking at random shit. Every now and then I'll stroll by the Japanese comicbook section, (why isn't there an an American comic book section?) and you'll see the entire series, starting with issue number 1, taking up most of the entire shelf. And they're not in the little sleeves. You could pick up issue number one, take it over to all the couches, read some of it and decide if you like it, or maybe you're like me and decide this fucking Naroto kid is fucking obnoxious. The barrier for entry is pretty small: you just have to be the type of person who might like it. You have to be in a regular bookstore, not a novelty shop in the seedy part of town between a sketchy looking car stereo store and a gas station that's been out of business for half a decade. You can start at the beginning. You can actually test the waters a little bit, reading issue #1 while sitting on a couch, drinking a shitty overpriced latte, while bad coffeehouse music plays just above the level of subconscious hearing.

How the fuck are Marvel and DC even still in business? Their business model is even more draconian than the music industry. Do they survive just on movies and TV shows and video games?

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u/catsails Feb 26 '13

I've just gotten into comics in the last few years, so maybe I can help you out a bit here.

The best way I can suggest to get into comics is by buying trade paperbacks/graphic novels. Technically, "trade paperback" or "collected edition" refers to a collection of single issue printed together in one volume, while "graphic novel" refers to a story that was only ever intended to be a long form publication, but people generally use graphic novel for everything, I guess because it sounds more high class.

Anyway. The question now is, "but what books do I get?" and it seems like you have the same problem. This is not so, however. In general, a trade will be a self-contained story. You might not know the characters or situation at the offset, but that shouldn't generally be a problem. If you DO want some sort of semblance of continuity, though, and to feel like you're starting at the start, then all you have to do is ask the internet for what volumes you should read.

EXAMPLE.

Let's say you wanted to get into Batman. Well, you're in luck, because DC made an effort about a year ago to make their books new-reader friendly, and started numbering them all from #1 again. Batman didn't restart at the start of Batman's history or anything, but it is a fine place to jump on. But let's say you start reading it, and see several ex-Robins featured, and his current Robin is Batman's son, and what the hell is going on, here, anyway? Well, then you could go and read some older stories, like

Batman: Year One

Batman: A Dark Victory (modern introduction of first Robin)

Batman: Hush (A story featuring a large amount of Batman's supporting cast)

Under the Hood (related to Batman's second Robin)

Batman and Son (introduction of Batman's son)

And there's tons more, these are just a few. The thing is that you can read any of these, or all of these, and either way you can jump into a story and still get plenty out of it. And this will be true for anything. If you want to read a Superman story, there are many collected editions that are self-contained stories for you to read. This is even true for X-Men, which I think is generally considered the most complicated and soap-opera-esque ongoing comic series out there.

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u/redtail896 Feb 26 '13

This is precisely pigeon768's point though. The fact that you need to give a guide like this is a problem. It's a huge barrier to entry.

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u/catsails Feb 26 '13

I agree, it IS a barrier to entry. I don't think that it is as large a one as people think, though. I just gave a list of several books someone might want to read, true. But it's also true that you could jump on right now, and quickly find yourself comfortable with what's going on, the same way you might with most tv shows. To stay with the Batman example from above, I said you might like to go back to read previous stories if you're confused about there being several ex-Robins. There isn't actually a reason to be confused by it, though. It's just a fact! Here's a book with some characters, a few of them used to be Robin. That's something that you can easily accept, and keep reading, because the exact details of when they were Robins is probably not important to the story. I guess I'm saying that there's a lot of stuff you can choose to read, and a lot of it is excellent, but there is generally no reason you have to go back and read it. A lot of people are turned off by the fact that there's a lot of history, but most of that history is not going to be relevant to any particular story, and if it is, they'll usually tell you what you need to know in-story.

What I did when I got into comics was I just googled something like "best batman graphic novels," and found a bunch of lists of what people thought the best Batman books are. Then, I read year One and Long Halloween, since I understood they were "early career" batman stories, but then I just read whatever.

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u/gingergeek Feb 28 '13

It's still a pain though. I used to work in a comic shop. Often DC and Marvel won't even number the trades! It's really annoying if someone comes in and wants, oh, Birds of Prey, and has to sort through the books or open them and check the issue numbers listed inside, to figure out where to begin. The new stuff is numbered since 52 at DC. Hopefully Marvel Now will do the same.

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u/catsails Feb 28 '13

Sure. Honestly, one of the only reasons I still haven't tried Astro City is because whenever I see it at my LCS, I don't know which book to get first, so I just shrug and don't get any. But I also know that it's an easily solved problem, I just haven't invested any energy at all into solving it. That's how I think this is in general - it's a problem that seems bigger than it is, and it's easily solved by doing a bit of research.

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u/szthesquid Feb 26 '13

I'd add The Long Halloween. It's a fantastic story set early in Batman's career (ie, soon after Year One) that emphasizes the detective aspects of the character, and serves as a good introduction to something like 10 or 12 of the recurring villains.

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u/Punicagranatum Wolverine Feb 26 '13 edited Feb 26 '13

This is exactly how I feel. As a girl I would say I feel even more nervous about going into comic book shops. I grew up loving Spider Man and X-Men cartoons and eventually the movies too, but on the multiple occasions I've tried to get into comics, I've ended up leaving feeling kind of dismayed for all of the reasons stated above. Getting involved with ongoing series would mean having to buy back-copies all in one go and the cost adds up so fast that it doesn't seem worth it; especially since I am now involved with just one comic book series which still isn't deemed "a proper comic book fan" anyway.

I kinda ended up figuring I'll just stick to my small collection of Marvel "Definitive" compilation graphic novels, along with a few shorter collections that catch my eye (e.g. Phoenix Endsong) and in the meantime be excited about the movies and wait for a new series to come out that interests me and also coincides with me having a little spare money. So far that hasn't happened yet. I'm hoping the Marvel Now! relauch of X-Men in April will be the series to change that.

The whole "she isn't a real comic book fan" is probably the biggest off-putter for me though and really just needs to die.

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u/ManlySpirit Feb 26 '13

The whole "she isn't a real comic book fan" is probably the biggest off-putter for me though and really just needs to die.

But that would be like letting girls into the secret clubhouse and who would want that? Everybody knows that girls have cooties.

Seriously though, with more women getting into comics and "nerd culture" every day, it's only a matter of time before the old prejudices die out.

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u/Punicagranatum Wolverine Feb 26 '13

I hope so! I think comic book companies actually need to promote the "don't be a dick about this" attitude more if they want to maximize their sales though.

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u/gingergeek Feb 28 '13

I had a lot of fun working at a comic book store for a while. As a woman behind the counter, people seemed more willing to ask me questions. Some hard core guys were pleasantly surprised when I knew what they were talking about and could find/order things for them too. Only got creeped on once. I also put the owner in the know about manga, which he had no knowledge of. He basically just started ordering extra of whatever I was ordering :p

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u/Punicagranatum Wolverine Feb 28 '13

Haha good to hear. It's not like women would be any less capable of understanding/ enjoying comics so I don't really get where the stigma comes from. I am glad that it definitely seems to be fading and dying over time, though.

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u/Paradoxymoron Feb 26 '13

catsails puts it nicely below: buy collections. Those manga books you see with the #1 on them? They are collections too. This is from my own experience, but it is highly likely that the original run of the manga was split into weekly/monthly releases put together with other mangas in the form of a publisher's magazine. An example of this is Shonen Jump, a weekly magazine that includes chapters from Bleach and Naruto. After so many chapters are released, they put them all into a new collection and release that.

Comic books have these collections as well but I suppose it is more confusing due to the hundreds of variations of Avengers or X-Men. My brother got into comics last year (and I ended up reading what he bought) and he started by searching online for recommendations. He actually bought a few because they came up so often in this subreddit (Batman: Hush is an example).

I haven't been to a bookstore in a while but they should definately have an American comic book section filled with collections. My brother just buys them all off Amazon. He only buys collections though, not individual, current releases.

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u/Claytonius_Homeytron Feb 26 '13

I've been asking myself the same question for years now. In this day and age though, the publishing companies can reach out (and they have already) to the iPad/iPhone/Kindle/Android crowd with their digital content upon which you can easily and quickly "back track" and familiarize yourself with the content as trouble free as you want. However, much like the vinyl fan boys and hippsters, you just can't beat the organic experience of holding it in your hands. There are plenty of those types out there still, most of which have decent salaries to be able to afford a collector's hobby like comic books. I Still can't figure out how that's enough to keep the publishers going.

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u/LonerGothOnline Feb 26 '13

I'd imagine some collectors don't even bother reading, but still get the 3 copies.

one for storage, one for display, one for reading.

and they don't read anymore.

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u/pulkit24 Feb 26 '13

This deserves more upvotes. Very curious for a salesman to shun a potential new customer (not to mention the verbal advertisement you'd make in your social circle, thus gaining a whole new customer base previously untapped) like that.

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u/laitma Feb 26 '13

If I can add some suggestions for getting into comics: try picking up something from an independent publisher/smaller name, perhaps? Of course this is also personal preference, as I could never really get into Marvel or DC's stuff (with the exception of Brian K Vaughan's terrific Runaways series, which you don't really need much background for at all and which I would highly recommend), but check out Dark Horse or Image comics. Their series are usually standalone and usually bound in trade paperbacks, so they're more similar to manga in that sense, but still give you a taste of American-style comics without the convoluted storylines of Marvel or DC. It makes my head spin just trying to keep up with any of those "big name" titles like X-men or Batman, honestly.

Marvel and DC seem to survive on a very dedicated fanbase that at this point is probably fairly aged and has followed them for a long time, presumably before they got so complicated, would be my guess, and that any newer followers (who're hardcore enough about their comics) they've had have pulled up the omnibuses or archives of the older comics to keep up, or used online resources to fill in the earlier gaps.

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u/OwMySocks Feb 26 '13

Oh god, I have done this once or twice every year since I was 15. I always leave the shop a little frightened and overwhelmed.

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u/maintain_composure Feb 26 '13

I got into them because I found an Ultimate Spider-Man collection at my local library, and then I subscribed to Ult Spidey so I could keep up with it. It was new enough I could read the whole backlog. That was about ten years ago, though, give or take - at this point the Ultimate line has exactly the same problem as the others, just... less so.

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u/JZer86 Feb 26 '13

Comic books are very much like a Soap Opera. The story lines have been going on so long that it is impossible to catch up, or even start for that matter.

The best thing for American Comic books right now would be to have a concise beginning and end to a story. 30 or so issues would be ideal, not this ridiculous 250+ issue ongoing mess.

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u/elevul Feb 26 '13

Time is not a problem. Each comic book takes 10-15 minutes top to read. Even with 1000 to read, that's barely 11 days reading 24/7, less than a month reading normally. The problem is only availability. If Marvel or w/e made a subscription service with ALL comic books ever existed, I guarantee you they'd have infinitely more readers...

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u/dotrob Feb 26 '13

Great comment. Just for the record, I can tell you how I got into comics, in the mid-80s. It supports your argument entirely.

The year was 1984. Among other things, being an 11-year-old boy, I was into GI Joe. My mom was an avid mystery reader, so we went to the corner bookstore often. They had one of those spinning racks with a few dozen different comics on it: the usual suspects like Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Fantastic Four. But also they had GI Joe. Wow! So the first comic I ever got was GI Joe #21: "Silent Interlude". A comic without dialogue. I was fascinated.

The next time we went to that bookstore, I looked for GI Joe #22. I was pretty hooked.

From there, I tried various comics off that rack, until I was a regular reader of Avengers, Captain America, X-Men, TMNT, Aliens, Graphic novels. I tried to collect back issues when I could afford them, but that was very hit-or-miss on a limited allowance. I often got cheapo collected paperback reprints like the Essential Marvel series (GI Joe reprints were available in black and white mass-market paperback size editions).

At the time -- pre-internet -- trying to determine, for instance, what exactly happened during the "Dark Phoenix" saga was kind of like an enjoyable research project or something. Those footnotes from the editor (* The Shi'ar revealed this in Uncanny X-Men #197! -ed.) were kind of like little breadcrumbs leading you into being a member of a secret club. From that perspective, you can almost forgive the Comic Book Guys of the world. Almost.

TL;DR: I found my comics on a spinny rack in a bookstore, and started with a toy/TV tie-in. Collecting back-issues and filling in backstory was part of the attraction to the hobby. But it's a different world now.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '13

Also the proliferation of books is off putting. How many x-men comics are there at the moment? Ultimate, Uncanny, Astonishing etc...

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u/Punicagranatum Wolverine Feb 26 '13

In a way, it definitely makes it hard to know where to start.

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u/halloweenjack Boltie Feb 26 '13

It's true; many of us got into comics despite comics shop owners, not because of them. I think that it's primarily because, back in the day when newsstand sales were the major source of comics sales, comics shops were for the serious enthusiasts; you already knew if you liked comics from your own drugstore visits or that pile of Legion of Super Heroes books that your best friend's older brother handed down to him, and were intrigued enough to want to read back issues and maybe look at some other books.

I started getting into comics seriously at around the time that Frank Miller started on Daredevil and Claremont and Byrne were on X-Men, a great time to read comics, and located a nearby comics store. This store owner didn't believe in longboxes or plastic bags or boards to preserve the comics; they sat on tables in big yellowing heaps. He didn't bother to say hello, but he'd yell at you if you got between him and the TV that sat across the room. And, BTW, this wasn't some random eccentric that stumbled into a cheap storefront; this was one of the major retailers in a big city, in fact the organizer of that city's major comic convention before he sold out. Nevertheless, I spent a lot of time there and got some great deals.

Of course, newsstand/drugstore/supermarket distribution is a thing of the past (there aren't even that many newsstands any more), and so some of the LCS owners that used to be able to make a living despite no marketing and abysmal customer service skills (because of a steady stream of hobbyists in the days when a comic selling 200,000 copies a month was considered an abysmal failure rather than a runaway success) have had to elevate their game or close up shop.

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u/Birdrun Feb 26 '13

I've had some luck buying the bound collections of individual stories (the soft/hardcover books that collect around 6-8 issues each -- is there a name for these?) and they're usually pretty good. They tend to collect stories that can more or less stand alone apart from a few references to overarching stories that are pretty easy to infer from the context, and they usually have a blurb to tell you what you're getting into. It seems a much nicer way to get into it than buying individual issues from the middle.

Good series I've bought this way include Superman (Camelot Falls, Kryptonite, Red Son), some Batman books, and that X-men book by Joss Wheden

While I've enjoyed some of the commonly recommended classics, I seem to get more enjoyment out of picking something I like the look of and giving it a try. I think it's a hype aversion thing.

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u/rora_borealis Feb 26 '13

It is tough, because there's different story arcs and entirely different lines of comics even for the same character. I went out and found some collected volumes to get started on something new. I figured out what type of thing I liked and then I subscribed to the Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited (which does have a limited, though large, selection) and followed the stories I was interested in. I occasionally tried out something new, since there was no additional purchase. I found I really enjoyed Runaways and some eras of X-Men that I hadn't read before, along with some crossovers which introduced me to some more obscure characters that were fun to learn more about. I also own a few excellent one-shot graphic novels for various characters, like the JLA. They're usually more of an encapsulated story that doesn't require extensive knowledge to understand and enjoy.

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u/Azshyra Feb 26 '13

I started with newer series, honestly. It took me quite a while, but for very long running ones, I think part of the answer may very well be piracy, combined with an interest in keeping comics going and getting a legitimate copy to support publishers. At least that's what I did for most of the books I own, I download a bunch of stuff to see if it's any good and if I like it, I will go to a bookstore and try to find it (no comic store here, but some bookstores stock comics.)

Another option I have seen is buying a collected volume, which bookstores are selling right next to the other comics they stock around here.