How would you read every Marvel comic?

[Lego Mike]

Well, I should clarify that I'm planning to read probably most of Marvel's superhero comic books from the Silver Age (Fantastic Four #1) onward. There are probably some titles I'll skip, but there are still 20,000+ issues within scope. I'll likely not finish them, but I'm definitely going to start.

But since there are a lot of really detail-oriented, highly organized people in the Lego community, I wanted to ask: How would you organize all these issues and titles? I have a few options and may just end up jumbling them.

1. Strictly chronological. I have images of all the issues, and they've all been titled with the year, month, title, issue number, and page numbers (like "1961-11 - Fantastic Four - 001"), so it's easy to just pull a batch of 200+ issues into a folder, sort them numerically, and proceed come what may.

However, that really only works until some characters (Spider-Man, the X-Men, &c.) start getting multiple titles, crossovers span multiple titles (Maximum Carnage, X-Cutioner's Song), and there are numerous limited series to wade through, so:

2. Silo characters and franchises (Avengers titles, all X-titles, Wolverine), and read each title until there's a crossover/event, then go back and get caught up on all the other issues until I'm ready to read the crossover/event by shifting back and forth among the various titles.

3. ???

Two things I want to be sure of are to be fairly thorough (especially reading things I've never had the chance to read) and to keep pace across all the title (that is, not reading Amazing Spider-Man up to 1980, then going back and starting Daredevil in 1964). For the latter, I just want to experience the slow unfolding of the Marvel universe rather than bounce back and forth.

Anyway, just wanted to ask for some suggestions before I get underway. I ordered a tablet specifically for this project, and I'm going to arrange all the issues in PDFs and read them that way. Hopefully I can get something started before I leave for my 14-hour flight to Rome in mid-September!

[Fitz10024]

I would find it more submersive (why is that word flagged by the dictionary?) to read a title one quarter at a time. For example, read all Spider-Man 1964Q1 and then all Fantastic 4 1964Q1. I think it would make a good compromise between strict monthly reading and reading year by year. That's my 2 cents.

[Lego Mike]

On 9/18/2024 at 5:07 PM, Fitz10024 said:

I would find it more submersive (why is that word flagged by the dictionary?) to read a title one quarter at a time. For example, read all Spider-Man 1964Q1 and then all Fantastic 4 1964Q1. I think it would make a good compromise between strict monthly reading and reading year by year. That's my 2 cents.

I'm organizing the various titles from 1961 to circa 1983 by year, and this helps break things down into 12-issue chunks, maximum. Then I can freely switch from title to title when I'd like a change of pace but without leaving anything too far behind. And fortunately, until the mid-1980s, Marvel was very good about keeping the various titles (or family of titles) siloed, so someone in my position wouldn't have to go back a year or more to get a crucial Fantastic Four reference in an Avengers title.

That said, starting with the '80s, Marvel got progressively into massive multi-issue tie-in events, and it got worse and worse from the '90s onward. That will entail a different way of thinking, but I have two-plus decades of issues to get through before that!