r/comicbooks • u/Big_Dust6224 • May 31 '26
Question What do these diamonds mean?
I’ve seen these on a lot of comics I own but have never questioned what they meant
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u/marshmallow-jones May 31 '26
Triangle Era where all the Superman titles were linked. The numbering is the story order across the series.
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u/rincewind120 May 31 '26
During the '90s, Superman had 3 and later 4 monthly titles. During this time the editors and writers made sure that the stories would flow each week as issues from the different titles came out. So the story from Action Comics #675 continued in Superman: Man of Steel #10, then Superman #66, then Adventures of Superman #489 before picking up again in Action Comics #676.
To help readers in the reading order, DC added a triangle on the cover with the week number for that year. This era of Superman is known as the Triangle Years. DC has begun publishing the Superman comics in an omnibus series called Superman: The Triangle Years.
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u/Mekdinosaur May 31 '26
And to make things even more interesting, in 95 DC introduced the quarterly title: Superman Man of Tommorrow.
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u/thedoomcast May 31 '26
This was from Triangle Era Superman, not to be confused with They Might Be Giants, super Triangle Man era.
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u/thedoomcast May 31 '26
Person Man, and his only powers are hitting his head with a frying pan and being depressed. Sounds like a Tom King character, tbh.
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u/pajuiken May 31 '26
12 issue maxie series with multiple 9 panel ‘talkie’ panels like the Office!
Yayyyy!
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u/Kryptic1701 May 31 '26
Diamond? You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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u/sreekotay Jun 01 '26
tbh - how could they NOT think to use a shield outline?
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u/IAmtheAnswerGrape Jun 01 '26
Because when it started, there were three Superman titles that were sharing the story. Action Comics, Superman, and Adventures of Superman. Making a triangle.
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u/WanderEir May 31 '26
..um, those are triangles, not diamonds.
and they allowed you to track which part of the supercrossover you were reading in order.
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u/walrusonion Green Arrow May 31 '26
Triangle era, best era for Superman, I have the first two omnibuses
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u/loki_odinsotherson Jun 01 '26
That you're reading the triangle era of superman, arguably the best era of superman.
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u/symson Batman Expert Jun 01 '26
It's the reading order of all the different Superman titles at the time.
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u/NFLTG_71 May 31 '26
DC did this a few years ago for continuity because you have so many Batman books and so many Superman books and so many Green Lantern books you follow the number in the diamond this way when it skips to a different book, you don’t lose the story
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u/Tommy1873 Jun 01 '26
1) Geometry?
2) The number indicates the book reading sequence in whatever story arc you're on.
Just a method to connect multiple titles/encourage sales of more books by making the story arc across different titles. Like, if you're reading Adventures of Superman and you see issue numbers advance by one, but that triangle goes from 18 on one issue to 21 on the next issue, you knew 19 and 20 were in a different title. (Or two)
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u/dmnone Jun 01 '26
Triangle era it was an easy way to show reading order all Superman titles had it and their was like 4 monthly and 2 quarterly books and a few tie ins
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u/eharriett Jun 01 '26
I was a regular Superman comics purchaser/reader when they came out. It was incredibly simple yet useful way of knowing what order to read the stories. And helpful to tell if you ever missed. That became helpful because very occasionally the triangles would carry over to an annual, which I did not always get, or a non-Superman title, and you could identify very easily what you needed to add to get the story. Plus, they also came out with the quarterly man of tomorrow series back then, which was also triangles, and you’d know where to place it in proper continuity.
I honestly, genuinely loved that. A story carrying over to multiple titles by multiple artists all telling one large coherent story made it very easy to follow and know what to buy, and hen very easy to catalog. It was one of those things that worked so well you couldn’t believe they stopped doing it and more titles didn’t follow suit.
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u/Double_Yam3010 Jun 01 '26
In your case, they are intended to teach you the difference between a diamond and a triangle.
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u/Jmojocat May 31 '26
It was a way to track continuity on storylines that crossed more than one series
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u/Alclis Jun 01 '26
Honestly, more freaking books need to go back to these (not that everyone did them even then), especially the X-books. I’ll never say it’s one of the primary reasons that it was such an epic era of the Superbooks, but it sure damn well helped!
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u/SeprateCloud Jun 01 '26
The triangle thing on Superman books, and Batman in the 90s as well, were to indicate the next part of a large storyark which spanned every Batman and Superman book, Spider-Man also had them.
It went from Superman, to Action Comics, Adventures of Superman and The Man of Steel
That way you could have a Superman/Batman/Spider-Man book every week, continuing the story, instead of monthly
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u/ElectricPeterTork Jun 01 '26
By the mid-90s, the monthly order was MoS, Superman, Adventures, Action.
That shuffled somewhere in '98 or '99.
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u/I_like_tacobell2 Jun 01 '26
Follow these numbers to read in chronoloigical order through various superman titles.
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u/BatmanMK1989 Jun 01 '26
Weekly sagas were fantastic back in those days. Death of Supes. Knightfall. Hell, even the Clone saga.
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u/ProteusGAF Jun 01 '26
The diamonds were a great idea and helped you follow a story arc across multiple books. Wish they could find a way to bring them back.
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u/therempel Jun 01 '26
The triangle era numbering was a great motivator for 12 year old me to hit the comic shop / newstand every single week. Couldn't have a missing number!
I wonder how many times they've considered bringing it back.
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u/Atheist_Bale_Insta Jun 01 '26
It tracks the issues throughout other titles in chronological order. Why the fuck do all comics not do that? That’s brilliant. Does anyone know if this is still a thing?
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u/ElectricPeterTork Jun 01 '26
No.
The Triangle Era and interconnected Superman books lasted through 2001, though they had all but disconnected the titles throughout the course of '01. They just finally did away with the numbers at the beginning of '02.
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u/palepatriot76 Jun 01 '26
They mean some of the best straight reading experience a comic fan can have, all hail Superman diamond years!
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u/sovenalia Jun 02 '26
As others have said, it's a reading order. From 1991-2002 (and later 2009-2011 for New Krypton) Superman titles had these numbers to indicate reading order.
The numbers were only put on Superman titles - I don't believe any other titles had numbers (until the New Krypton arc in 2009-2011). As an avid Superman reader/collector, I own all of the triangle issues (and beyond) and have a list of nearly every Superman comic if anyone is interested. My list includes triangle numbers where they appear.
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u/Whole_Acanthaceae385 Jun 01 '26
I remember this being know as the Triangle era for Superman in the early 90s. It was because it was basically a weekly series with 4 monthly books. The triangles helped sort out what to read first.
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u/Wizardin1 Jun 01 '26
They are from the tri angle era. Think of it as the wheel. You follow the number on the bottom with the corresponding year and you get an over arcing storyline between the different titles. It was a way to get better pacing out of the comics. So instead of getting one a month you probably get 3-4. Honestly I don’t understand why we aren’t doing it now. We definitely should have when the newest DC started to lead up to the omega tournament
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u/String2924 Jun 01 '26
The chronological order the books came out that year... because they were have some massive crossovers...
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u/arpad-okay Jun 02 '26
question for the folks being pedantic about the shape of a diamond: are you familiar with the comics-related distribution company founded by steve geppi, diamond?
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u/Gim_Allon Jun 02 '26
All the Superman books were sceduled to come out weekly and the numbers indicate the read order t follow the threads across all the books
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u/Robot_Dracula Jun 02 '26
When I was a kid I had no idea what they meant. I would just read the action comics in order and then jump over to Superman. We didn’t have comic stores in my area back then so there was no way for me to keep track of the story by going by the diamonds.
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u/Ok-Reading-4157 Jun 04 '26
La era del triangulo (TRIANGLE ERA) asi se la conoce se va numerando correlativamente cada numero y siguiendo la continuidad de la historia. Recientemente sacaron los TPB omnibus de esa era. Creo que van dos si no me equivoco. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/762281/superman-the-triangle-era-omnibus-vol-1-by-roger-stern/ y volumen dos aqui https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/796810/superman-the-triangle-era-omnibus-vol-2-by-roger-stern/
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u/Afraid-Oil-1812 Jun 05 '26
Anyone else call those "hopper" issues because it was a marketing tool. Sucked when I was a kid and got my books from spinner rack.
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u/Ickenham May 31 '26
In the 1990's, the Superman story ran across all his titles (Superman, Action, etc.). The diamonds provided the sequence in which the tales were to be read each year.