Batman as a TV show with defined modern seasons is a cool conceit that somehow hasn't translated well to TV. Batman The Animated Series, a series that freely bounced around the timeline was way more fun than Gotham, or really any of the live action DC shows so far.

What I've tried to do here is present whole season arcs that can either be watched from season one to ten, or you can just read a single season and get a satisfying story without needing to move on to the next one. Also, I'm not doing these chronologically by when they were published. I find more modern comics tend to be either much better or much worse reads. Sometimes an old story doesn't age well, so it's nice to see it in updated language and themes. Sometimes, the updates don't work, as they tack on weird continuity retcons that just seem forced. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the way I've set this season out.

Episode 1: New Frontier
(collected in DC: The New Frontier)
by Darwyn Cooke

We're not going to spend too much time with The Justice League, but we will see them a few times in continuity, and this is one of the best versions of a Justice League Origin Story. You'll have to exercise a little suspension of disbelief as this takes place in the 1960s when the rest of the chronology is set in a muddled late 20th/early 21st century. It's still a blast to see how Batman fits into the superpowered community as they tean up to take on an otherworldly enemy.

If it's ever available again for around cover price, I would put Nightwing: Year One here, as it's a fun look at Grayson's transition from Robin to Nightwing, and it gives a much briefer introduction to Jason Todd, who we should meet this season, even if he's not sticking around for long. Alas, it is currently out of print.

In it's place I offer:

Episode 2: Nightwing
(collected in Nightwing: A Knight In Blüdhaven)
by Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel

Having been fired by Batman, Dick Grayson takes off for Blüdhaven to restart his life as a new hero in a new city with a mostly new pantheon of villains.

Episode 3: A Death In The Family
(collected in Batman: A Death In The Family)
by Jim Starlin, Marv Wolfman, Jim Aporo, and George Perez

I'm trying to avoid putting historically important comic storylines that, in hindsight, kinda suck, on this list. But here we are. The actual buildup to and death of a semi-important character is a decent 1980s comic title. The aftermath, involving the Joker in the UN is absolutely bonkers in a truly terrible way. Were I able to edit this chronology to just the parts of the story I wanted, this volume would be ripped in half, and you wouldn't have to encounter the very stupid aftermath.

Episode 4: The Killing Joke
(collected in Batman: The Killing Joke)
by Alan Moore & Brian Bolland

​The Joker is on an absolute tear through Batman's life during this season, as he sets off to kill Jim Gordon, only to gravely wound Batgirl instead. This is a very short but intense book that rocked the Batman universe much harder than the death that preceded it.

There's also a really good J Michael Straczynski take on this episode in Team Ups Of The Brave & The Bold that's worth a readthrough, if not a purchase. 

Episode 5: Arkham Asylum
(collected in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth)
by Grant Morrison & Dave McKean

I like to imagine this book takes place just after The Joker's wave of destruction, as Batman goes to visit him in Arkham to try and prevent a mass escape. We see a ton of members of Batman's rogues' gallery, and we learn the history of Arkham Asylum. It's a cool mid- season episode that first pushes the boundaries of what the Batfamily is, and then ends up with The Joker tearing it apart.

I wanted to love the Sandman TV series as much as I loved the books. I wanted gorgeous visuals, the intricate storytelling from the books, and the sense of wonder I've had whenever I've reread the stories. Many of my friends found that in the TV series. People whose opinions I respect were so thrilled to see this universe on TV that they gushed about it and had very little criticism. 

It was not for me.

I thought Morpheus was miscast. I found him utterly dull to watch. While Amazon threw a nation's economy at the tepid Game Of Thrones prequel, it looked like they gave the Sandman director a hundred bucks to spend on CGI and said "Good luck."

The episode "24/7" was a perfect modernization of the storyarc it was based on, and I think you could teach a class on how well it was constructed. I had hoped that would be a turning point for me. Alas, the rest of the series bored me. When I posted about it on social media, friends who loved the books as much as I had berated me for having bad taste or too high expectations. But my friends who hadn't read the books tended to agree, it wasn't fun to watch. It had a very high bar to reach for and it ended up beyong beyond the sound of its wingspan.

I was so disappointed that I stopped reading the Vertigo books for over a year, completely deflated. And that's not fair to the books or the people who enjoyed the TV series that would like to read more of the universe. Maybe some day I'll go back and rewatch the show and find a similar joy to that of my peers but, until then, I'm happy to return to reading the books I loved and sharing how I wish I had experienced them (you know, just the good stuff).

1. Sandman Mystery Theater Book Two
(Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, Guy Davis, Vince Locke)

We open this first Gaimanless season by following the sordid adventures of Wesley Dodds, the golden age Sandman. Running concurrently with Gaiman's series, this look at the human sleuth whose gas mask resembles the one stolen from Morpheus at the beginning of the first episode, takes place just after the American Depression. Our point-of-view character is Dodds's love interest, Dian, the daughter of a police woman who likes to party and solve her father cimes. Think of her as a more sexually adventurous Batgirl. There are a few things in this volume that haven't aged particularly well, but when it was published it was a solid examination of misogyny, class warfare, and racism in the 1930s with a very slight occult bent.

2. Lucifer Book Three
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston, David Hahn)

An Asgardian ship of fingernails, a pool flowing with the thoughts of Yahweh, a garden of human souls sewn into lanterns, the rise of gods of chaos, and a brief glimpse back into The Dreaming. There's a lot to love in this volume. I've said it before but it bears repeating: every word in this book seems a necessary part to reach its climax. No plot point is wasted, nor does Carey waste time getting from point to point. Storyarcs that most writers might draw out for twelve issues, Carey condenses to three or four, and it never feels forced. 

3. Hellblazer All His Engines
(Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco)

Just after his long run on the Hellblzer books, Carey put out this side story where Constantine and Chas head to America to stop ... the usual Hellblazer thing ... a demon has taken a step too far and has impacted the life of someone tangentially related to Constantine. And then Constantine must work with other demons to double cross the original demon but he's also got to double cross them or else ... sigh. So, while it's the same old same old Hellblazer plot, it's done deftly here with fantastically spooky art by Manco.

4. Hellblazer The Gift
(Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco)

As much as I wanted to love Mike Carey's run on Hellblazer, much of it was a build up to an apocalypse that mostly sat in the background while John Constantine's life was ruined in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before. Until the next storyline where his life was ruined in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before while an apocalypse happened in the very background. There's a wilting Swamp Thing storyline, and he even manages to make a "main character forgets all the trauma in his life and has to start over while being pursued by powerful demons" story pretty boring. BUT. Near the end of that amnesiac storyline, a demon offers to return everything to him in exchange for his services for a day. And during that day, he lives three lifetimes and has three separate, terrible children with three of his exes. This volume has his three aged up children from his demon-induced lifespans getting their revenge by ... checks notes ... ruining his life in a bigger and more spectacular way than ever before while society recovers from the apocalypse in the background. But this story has more character building than the previous arcs, and a better payoff.

5. Lucifer Book Four
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Dean Ormston, David Hahn)

Yes, every Lucifer book is in this chronology. Rereading it was a joy and a relief that it held up my memories. Every character seems to make an appearance as this is essentially just setting up the final volume. It never feels like filler, though, it's all building to a spectacular climax.

6. Sandman Mystery Theater  The Blackhawk And The Return Of The Scarlet Ghost
(Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, Guy Davis, Matthew Smith, Richard Case, Daniel Torres)

This series has never been fully collected, which is a shame. Currently there's a compendium that contains the first half of the run but there's bee no release date for a second volume. Until then, this is the last set of issues that's been collected in trade form. Honestly, it's a perfectly fine ending. All of the Sandman Mystery Theater stories are wonderful 1930s noir with what one reviewer referred to as "Sergio Aragonés scribbles...without the silliness". It's art I usually wouldn't enjoy but is somehow perfect for this nostalgis based series. This volume, like the rest, has two excellent mysteries but it also features a brief journey through all of the different forms of Sandman, including Morpheus. It's a great callback, and it help leads to the final page of this volume which is a reveal. And if you're sad that there's no more Sandman Mystery Theater in this chronology given the reveal, don't worry. Wesley and Dian will be back next season in a completely different series.

7. Books Of Magic: Life During Wartime Book One
(Si Spencer, Dean Ormstrom)

This is the weakest episode of the season but it moves The Books Of Magic is a completely different direction that might come up later. Years have passed since we last saw Tim Hunter. In that time, he built a pocket dimension where he can be "a regular human". Apparently, this means swear, do drugs and fuck a lot. While he's off trying to be normal, John Constantine is overseeing a war between humans, demons, and faeries. I didn't love the series but I appreciated its evolution.

8. Lucifer Book Five
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Colleen Doran, Michael Wm Kaluta, John J Muth, Zander Cannon, Dean Ormstrom, Aaron Alexovich)

The Lucifer finale pulls no punches. There's no Game Of Thrones sped-up narrative racing to the conclusion, the pace is steady with logical twists spiraling throughout the journey. Every character gets their curtain call, and we even see some conversations with the previously absent Yahweh. It's impressive that this never feels overly preachy or too philosophical given its characters and subject matter.  It's a lovely way to end the season.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to dive into one of the more interesting long-form stories they've told in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: The Secret Invasion.

The comic book series took place throughout most of 2008, and was a sloppy, divisive mess with a lot of very cool moments and ideas buried under a pile of mediocre plot points and side stories. The main series was a bit of a turd, especially given how promising the build up to it had been. But the build up and then the fallout were some of the best bits of storytelling Marvel has done.

I'm going to present this story three ways. First, All Of The Trade Paperbacks That Have Secret Invasion Somewhere In The Name. There are twenty-seven of them, and I'm going to give you a brief run down of all of them in as close to a satisfying chronological order as is possible, given Marvel's complicated relationship with how time functions.

Next, I'm going to cut everything down to The Best Ten Books Of The Series. You might notice that the order is slightly different and that's because it doesn't have to track with a bunch of dull side-stories. I hope the upcoming series is similar to this core set of books.

Finally, are the books surrounding Secret Invasion that tell a Marvel-encompassing story. It's my own continuity. All but one of the books on the list I consider to be four or five stars and they do build up to The Secret Invasion, and then give you a cool epilogue.

2. Secret Invasion Infiltration

​This is a prelude anthology featuring several of the issues that lead up to the actual Secret Invasion. Shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer used to do pre-credit teasers to remind you of the important storybeats that led you to the current episode. And some series (I think "Lost" might have done this) do an entire full episode where they recap the series highlights just before the final episode. This is collection is like that. Here are four of the most important stories that set up Secret Invasion, stretching all the way back to the first appearance of The Skruls in the 1960s. It's a decent collection, and certainly does its job at setting up the event.

13. X-Factor Vol 6: Secret Invasion
This is the first part of a crossover with She-Hulk that I'm calling Secret Invasion: Detroit, it has a promising sense of story. There's a focus on recent X-Men character, Darwin, the return of Longshot, and an intriguing connection to the Skrull Invasion. Unfortunately, it's saddled with what may be the worst art in the history of Marvel Comics. Larry Stroman was talented. His work on David's 90s X-Factor run was very much of the era but with an interesting sense of style. His work here looks like he metaphorically and literally took a dump on a page and then ran his fingers idly through it. It's unreadable.

14. She-Hulk Vol 8: Secret Invasion
Part Two of Secret Invasion: Detroit, there's some overlap here, as we see She-Hulk's friend, a reformed Skrull warn her of the impending Secret Invasion before they end up caught up in X-Factor's madness. This is followed by The Good Skrull battling her father and her past. It has some real cheesy moments but the idea behind the story is interesting.​

27. Secret Invasion
In professional wrestling, there are all sorts of different type of matches. There are technical masterpieces, strong style sluggers, hardcore violent matches, and spotfests, to name a few. In comics, I'm usually a fan of technical masterpieces. Stories that build up to a complex confrontation with twists, and turns. Even when you can easily guess the outcome, it's fascinating to watch the journey.  Secret Invasion is Brian Michael Bendis's spotfest. It's less a story, and more of a bunch of cool reveals that bounce you to the next surprise plot point. It never really settles enough for you to get invested in the characters because it's always And This Person Is A Skrull And That Person Dies And This Person Is A Skrull And Look At All These Skrulls Who Is A Skrull Now Oh My God What Will Happen Now That We Know That Person Is A Skrull.

Here's a look at a few of the most important storylines of 21st century Marvel, with some preamble, a focus on The Secret Invasion, and an epilogue that ties up some loose ends that don't, necessarily, involve Skrulls.

1. Marvels
The ultimate classic retelling of the early days of the Marvel Universe from the Golden Age of the 1930s to the early Silver Age of the 1970s, Kurt Busiek gives an in-depth study of the world's initial reactions to superheroes, mutants, and the mid-twentieth century science boom through the eyes of photographer Phil Sheldon. This is densely packed primer on Marvel history by one of its best writers. It's also the series that introduced the world to Alex Ross. Long gone are the days when I was interested in his endlessly static and uninspiring covers, but in this book, you really get a sense for why he was such a big deal when the world was first exposed to his art.

2. West Coast Avengers Epic Coll Vol 3: Vision Quest
A spin-off of the Avengers series, the West Coast Avengers were a chance for writers to explore some of the less popular but equally interesting characters. So, no Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor but Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, Vision, and Scarlet Witch. There are several stories of varying quality in this collection, but for us, there's the problem of The Scarlet Witch's children. Where they came from, who they are. This book is the inspiration for WandaVision, as well as some later books on this list. It's a fascinating conceit.

3. The Death Of Captain Marvel
Marvel's first ever graphic novel, this is the story of how an early hero succumbs to cancer as a result of his superheroing career. It features a bunch of Avengers, and other hero cameos.

4. Skull Kill Krew
Two of the biggest writers of early 21st century comics, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, cut their Marvel teeth on this violent mini-series where the Skrulls who were turned into cows way back in Fantastic Four #2 are slaughtered and served as beef, infecting the human population who became heroes who hunted down Skrulls who were already, in the mid-90s, infiltrating the Marvel Universe.

5. Marvel Boy By Grant Morrison
A Kree warrior is on a quest to kill Skrulls when he gets caught on Earth, and loses all of his friends and loved ones and has to start his life over after being a prisoner of one corporation, only to be re-imprisoned by SHIELD. It's there that he declares war on Earth.

6. Avengers Disassembled
Brian Michael Bendis is the main architect of Secret Invasion, and this was the first huge Marvel event by him that caught my attention. The Avengers are in a flux period, their roster isn't exactly The Best Team Ever. At a pool party, someone inadvertantly mentions an event from the past that ends up completely destroying the team.

7 & 8. New Avengers Vol 1 & 2
Six months after Diassembled, a breakout at a supervillain prison called The Raft means that a new, all-star team of Avengers comes together, featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Spider-Woman, and The Sentry. And once the supervillains have been rounded up, the new team must figure out who exactly The Sentry is, and whether they can help him stay sane.

​9. & 10. House Of M Prelude: Exclaibur, House Of M
While discussing staying sane, Wanda is stil recovering from Disassembled, and her father, Magneto, wants to protect her from the rest of the world. Professor X and a small team of mutants joins him to try and keep Wanda from harming herself and the world.

Only they do a terrible job, and Wands creates an entire new universe where mutants rule, and humans are the oppressed minority. Every mutant essentially gets what they wanted. But a new character who "knows things" starts showing up and giving mutants and humans their memories of the previous universe. This temporary group of heroes must band together and restore the proper universe.

11. Young Avengers Ultimate Collection
This original run of Young Avengers by Jim Cheung features a new generation of Avengers assembled by Vision who believes the real Avengers team will never get back together (apparently, he isn't reading my chronology). These young versions of the classic heroes have their own problems, and a couple of them seem like they might be connected to the Disassembled event.

12. & 13. The Road To Civil War, Civil War
See the birth of the Marvel Universe's Illuminati. Check out how Iron Man is giving Spider-Man a new lease on crime fighting life. And, hey, The Fantastic Four battle (who else?) Dr. Doom when some Asgardian nonsense comes into play.

Then the actual Civil War. A group of young heroes makes a mistake, and a villain kills 600 people while they're filming a reality TV show. Ooof. So the United States decides to pass The Superhero Registration Act, which doesn't go over well with, let's say half the heroes. This is one of the best Event Comics in Marvel history, despite a ton of delays, and some inconsistent side stories.

14. The Death Of Captain America Complete Collection 
This came out during the Batman Is Dead (actually, he's just traveling through time somehow) era of comics. I remember my coworker reading the issue where Cap dies, and flinging the book across the room, calmly walking over, picking it up, and tearing it in half before hanging it up on our Variant Wall as "Captain America Torn Variant".

I think, as a piece of the larger Ed Brubaker run, it's fine. There's a lot of Winter Soldier in this volume, and once you get past the death of Cap and realize it's a comic book, and death is never permanent, you get a solid look at SHIELD and the Marvel Universe in a post-Civil War America. Brubaker is one of the best writers in comics, and he is at the top of his game here. The color scheme is a little dark for me, but this was during Marvel's muddy phase so there's not a lot to do about it.

17. X-Men Endangered Species
At the end of House Of M, The Scarlet Witch declared "No More Mutants", and the population of mutants in the Marvel Universe went from billions down to 198. While many of the other X-Men still act as superheroes, battling Apocalypse, and their usual cast of villains, Beast goes on a trek to restore the X-gene and see how to increase the number of mutants in the world.

18. Planet Hulk
The Illuminati that we met during The Road To Civil War have had to make difficult decisions throughout Marvel history. One of them is what to do about the constant stream of destruction that surrounds Bruce Banner/The Hulk. So they ask him to go to space to fix a satellite, only for him to discover that they're actually shipping him off to a planet without other life so he can live out his days peacefully, not harming anyone. He reacts by wrecking the ship, taking him to a planet with plenty of hostile life, where he becomes a gladiator during his attempt to find a ship and return home.

19. World War Hulk
Probably the weakest of any series in this chronology, we follow The Hulk and his surviving friends and family from the Planet Hulk saga as Banner returns to Earth for revenge on those who jettisoned him into space.

20. New Avengers The Trust
Our ultimate team of super Avengers are on an away mission to Japan to battle The Hand when they discover that one of their best frenemies has, at some point, been replaced by a Skrull, and they worry about the possibility that an invasion is underway. Perhaps, a Secret Invasion.

21-30. The Best Of Marvel's Secret Invasion ​(see above)
This is the Best Of Marvel's Secret Invasion in its entirety, except that I've removed the epilogue, Secret Invasion Frontline, as, instead of needing a wrapup, we're going to explore a little further into the aftermath of the invasion.

​31. Punisher Dark Reign
Norman Osborn rose to power during the Skrull Invasion, and has groups of Avengers and X-Men under his power. He's being treated as a new Iron Man figure called The Iron Patriot. Frank Castle decides that this can not stand, and sets out to destroy Osborn, as well as any surviving Skrulls.

32. Secret Warriors Complete Collection Vol 1
During the Secret Invasion, Nick Fury put together a new team to ferret out not only Skrulls but also Hydra members who infiltrated SHIELD. This is the story of how they operate during Norman Osborne's Dark Reign

33. Avengers Prime
Captain America (oh yea, he's alive again, don't ask how), Thor, and Iron Man must put apart their Civil War differences to save Asgard, after it seems to be destroyed as a consequence to Seige (the final portion of Dark Reign, which isn't worth the read). This is a story about repairing relationships, and it's pretty well told.

We're a couple of weeks away from Sandman finally coming to television. The previews for it look fantastic. Fingers crossed that this ends up more Good Omens than Neverwhere.

After about a year long break, I dove back into the Vertigo universe, revisiting old favorite stories and reading some for the first time.

The central theme of this season is Death. The member of The Endless. Yes, we have three Morpheus stories, two Lucifer stories, one Lucifer, one Madame Xanadu, and one focused exclusively on Death, but Death of The Endless appears in all but one of these "episodes", even if she just pops up briefly.

Also, if you're only really invested in Morpheus's story, this can be your final season. I have at least one or two more before I'm finished, but this brings an end to the Sandman proper stories.

1. Sandman World's End
(Neil Gaiman, Mike Allred, Gary Amaro, Mark Buckingham, David Giardano, Toy Harris, Steve Leialoha, Vince Locke)
Readily available from your local shop or you can order it from Bookshop.org

If you're here for the narrative tale of Morpheus, and the march towards the end of the series, you might not love this volume as much as I do. This is technically a House Of Mystery story (what's that, you ask? well, we'll be seeing more of that next season) that occasionally, but not always features Morpheus. A group of travelers find themselves stranded in an inn where you purchase your food and drinks with stories, so this serves as sort of an anthology of dreams. Each story has a different artist. It's a wonderful read.


2. Lucifer Book One
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Ryna Kelly, Dean Ormston, Scott Hampton, Chris Weston, James Hodgkins)
Readily available from your local shop or you can buy it at Bookshop.org

So, last season, Lucifer gave Morpheus the keys to Hell and told him to find someone else to run it. Well, now we catch up with Lucifer and Mazikeen as they have their own fully developed stories to tell. Lucifer is not by Neil Gaiman, but by Mike Carey. And while Sandman is a brilliant tapestry that tells the story of Morpheus from different angles and at different times, Lucifer is one of the best told narrative fantasy stories in comics. Every page leads directly to its conclusion. Every word feels important. It's one of my all-time favorites, and the Mike Carey run is not at all related to the TV shows that are supposedly based on the character. And while I don't remember Morpheus appearing here, Death drops in for a bit, and the events that occured in Sandman that led up to this series are referenced a few times.


3. Madame Xanadu Disenchanted
(Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder, Richard Friend)
currently available on Thriftbooks.org

I'm embarrassed to say I slept on this series when it came out. Madame Xanadu is, like Sandman, a golden age DC character that gets reimagined with her own Vertigo series. It also features Death for a bit, but as cool as that scene is, the series would have been great without it. This volume follows Madame Xanadu from Camelot era Europe to Kublai Khan's dynasty in the Mongolian empire to Revolutionary era France to (sigh) Jack The Ripper era London to the US. There's a lot of interesting class structure in the guise of fantasy here, and just a really well told story by Matt Wagner with Eisner nominated art from Amy Reeder.


4. Swamp Thing Bad Seed
​(Andy Diggle, Enrique Breccia, Martin Breccia)
It's only really affordable on EBay right now if you can't find it at your local store.

This is a mediocre Swamp Thing story that also happens to be a wonderful Hellblazer story. Following the events of the almost unreadably bad Brian K Vaughan run on Swamp Thing (even a brilliant writer like Vaughan has off-times), Diggle tries to piece the story back together by making a buddy/road trip story where John Constantine and the skeletal remains of Alec Holland join up to seek out Abby and then have to do battle with the Alec Holland-free Swamp Thing. Come for the Swamp Thing continuity, stay for the art and the humor.


5. Lucifer Book Two 
(Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Jon J Muth, Dean Ormston, Ryan Kelly)
Hopefully, this will be back in print again soon, but for now, if you can't find it at your local shop, check out Ebay for an affordable copy.

All of the characters and storylines from Book One of Lucifer come together in this volume, which would undoubtedly be a Season Finale for Lucifer. It's epic, emotional, and really well put together. Lucifer and John Constantine would make a hell of a great mythological procedural story. And, yea, Death pops in again.


6. Sandman The Kindly Ones
(Neil Gaiman, Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D'Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormstron) 
Readily available at your local shop or you can buy it from Bookshop.org

Like the previous book, a ton of seemingly unrelated Sandman storylines convene here for a steady march towards Morpheus's undoing. Everything changes for everyone involved at the end of this volume. The whole dreaming is altered. It's as intense as the previous Lucifer volume. What follows in the Sandman series is a coda, this is pretty much the climax/final boss fight/resolution of Morpheus's story.


7. Sandman The Wake
(Neil Gaiman, Jon J Muth, Charles Vess, Michael Zulli)
Readily available at your local shop or you can buy it from Bookshop.org

It's probably sacrileige, but this is, in my opinion, by a wide margin, my least favorite of the Sandman stories. It's kind of like how at the end of The Return Of The King movie when there are eight thousand "final" scenes, as every character gets a curtain call, and you realize that the story actually ended an hour ago, and it's just weeping hobbits and disaffected elves waving at the camera for a bit. I debated not including it but it is The End of Gaiman's Sandman run, and it's not terrible, it's just relatively dull compared to the previous volumes.


8. Death Complete Collection
(Neil Gaiman, Chris Bachalo, Marc Buckingham, Michael Dringenberg, P Craig Russell, Malcolm Jones III, Colleen Doran, Dave McKean)
Readily available at your local shop or readily available in hardcover form on Bookshop.org. Hopefully, the paperback edition will be back in circulation soon.

I didn't want to end this season with its weakest episode, so we close with Neil Gaiman's sagas of Death: "The High Cost Of Living" and "The Time Of Your Life", currently collected in one volume. This series is sort of a coda to Sandman: A Game Of You, and even as a standalone is an excellent story.

The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again
Rating: Spray It With A Water Bottle And Make It Sleep Outside
​
The conceit: a nervous office worker has a large cat butler working at her house who attends to all her needs (not like that) is cute. Unfortunately, the protagonist screeches every line. And she just wants to get married, guys, why can't she be like all her normal friends? If all you've ever wanted in life was a Cathy Lives With Garfield gag comic strip, except the characters are Much More Annoying, then run right out and buy this before....actually, take your time, any store that thought to stock this certainly has enough to last them a long while.

Creepy Cat
Rating: Not Allowed On The Couch But Can Get Pets
​
I'm not big on gag comics. And this was a webcomic where the joke is "Aren't cats weird." except the cat in question is a ghost cat who interacts with a Goth girl. Ehhh. It's ok. It's definitely targeting young adults. And while it wasn't for me, it didn't cause me physical pain to read it. The art is not nearly as good as any other book on this list, and despite being a humor book, I never laughed a single time reading it. Still, in comparison to the previous two books, this is The Watchmen of cat manga (note: I think The Watchmen is an imporant, overrated boook that appeals mostly to young readers and nostalgic fifty-somethings).

I Am A Cat (The Manga Edition)
Rating: A Good Cat That Mostly Hides Under The Bed
​
This is also a cool conceit. This is an early twentieth century Japanese story about classism viewed through the eyes of cats. The original short stories are taught in Japanese schools now, so it's a fascinating piece of culture to be translated into manga, and then English. It didn't really grip me, but it's so different from everything else on the list that I appreciated its narrative. It's not exactly Showa (an amazing manga series about Japanese history), but if you like historical manga about Japanese culture, this is probably amazing.

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​I Am A Cat Barista
Rating: Extra Treats And Snuggles
​
This is my favorite gag manga that I've ever read. In each chapter, a person leaves a stressful situation and discovers a bar. The bar is staffed by a single, talking cat who makes drinks (not necessarily alcoholic) that give the person a new clarity about their life situation. Every character's situation is different, and they all react differently to the cat. There are characters who recur, and you get to see their development. It's a really comforting book that I will definitely order future volumes of.

Cat Massage Therapy
Rating: I'm Buying It A Cat Tower, A Fluffy Pillow, And The Most Expensive Food it Likes

I expected this to be another gag comic. Instead, it's a narrative story about a physical therapy business run by talking cats who get integrated into the Japanese business world. This is another comforting story that I want more of. And I only ordered it because one of our customers who mainly orders books with guns and boobs ordered it, and I thought "This is going to be terrible." I was so happy to be wrong.

1. Sandman: Dream Country
(Neil Gaiman, William Shakespeare, Kelley Jones, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran, Dave Mckean)
Available at your local shop or via Bookshop.org

We begin with four unrelated stories. No common theme, no recurring characters (aside from Morpheus, who is in the first three stories), not much of a connection to any of the previous volumes. But, of course these are building blocks for later on in the story. The Shakespeare story won a World Fantasy Award. There's also a story about cats, which is super popular, because it's a story about cats.


2. Sandman: Seasons Of Mist
(Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Mike Dringenberg, Matt Wagner)
Available at your local shop or via Bookshop.org


This is my favorite Sandman volume from a story perspective. I think it's visually disappointing compared to the other volumes, but the story, which sets the stage for the Lucifer series, and really sets Morpheus's long-game story in motion, is excellent. You could read this volume independently of any of the rest of Sandman, and Absolutely Love It.


3. Hellblazer: Fear And Loathing
(Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon)
If you can't get it locally, check Ebay for the most affordable versions.

From my favorite Sandman story, to my favorite Hellblazer. This is a more conversation-focused Hellblazer than much of Delano's run. But it's probably the best Garth Ennis has ever written, with the possible exception of his Battlefields series. He nails every character and their motivation, and makes you care more about John Constantine's exploits in this volume than in any of the previous ones.


4. Hellblazer: Damnation's Flame
(Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, William Simpson, Pete Snejbjerg)
Check out your local shop or Ebay.

Ennis's temporary farewell to all things Hellblazer, he gives every character from his run a curtain call, and gives us a weird pop culture history lesson via Papa Midnite during another of Constantine's treks through The United States.


5. Sandman: A Game Of You
(Neil Gaiman, Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, Bryan Talbot)
Readily available at your local shop or buy it from Bookshop.org

Barbie from "A Doll's House" takes center stage, as we are placed solidly in the middle of one person's connection to The Dreaming. The story also contains one of the best and most compassionate use of a trans character, with an understanding of that person's relationship to the non-binary that I've seen in comics. This came out, originally, in 1991.


6. Sandman: Fables & Reflections  
(Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Shawn Mcmanus, P Craig Russell, Jill Thompson, John Watkiss, Duncan Eagleson, Stan Woch, Kent Williams)
Readily available at your local shop or buy it from Bookshop.org

Another volume of short stories. These, even less connected than in "Dream Country". Apart from a spread of stories about emperors, each of the stories is more concerned with specific character traits that will come back to haunt Morpheus, rather than specific storybeats that progress the plot. We do get to see a focused telling of Orpheus's journey, and also check in with Johanna Constantine, who is somehow related to John.


7. Books Of Magic: Summonings
(John Ray  Rieber, Peter Gross, Pete Snjejberg, Gary Amaro, Dick Giardano)
can currently be found on Thriftbooks, after that EBay might be the way to go

Neil Gaiman created the Books Of Magic series about a young boy wizard who happens to look a lot like Harry Potter, and who has a message bearing owl, but who doesn't get to go to fancy wizard school. Instead, when he hits puberty, John Constantine and a bunch of DC Magic characters show up and are awful to him. It's not my favorite Neil Gaiman story. John Ray Rieber continued the universe, and his books aren't my favorite Vertigo titles, either. This is the second of Rieber's volumes and it involves young Tim Hunter (aka pre-Harry Potter Harry Potter) trying to figure out his parentage. That whole plot didn't interest me. What I liked about this, is that Hunter is almost a villain in his own story here, as several female characters, including a very well-conceived and thoughtfully written succubus do their best to help Tim, and any time he deviates from their help, his life gets worse. It's the most feminist succubus story I've ever read, as she comes off much more empathetic than the story's technical protagonist.

​
8. Sandman: Brief Lives
(Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson)
Readily available at your local shop or buy it from Bookshop.org

One of Morpheus's siblings, Destruction, has been mostly absent from the Sandman series. In this volume, the youngest Endless, Delirium, gets Morpheus to agree to help her track their missing brother down.  The story has a great Season Finale, and sets us up for the final stretch of Gaiman's Sandman.

With a cover date of January 1989 (meaning it probably hit comic book stores in November of 1988), Neil Gaiman's Sandman #1 began slowly changing a chunk of the DC Universe into its own corner that would eventually be called DC Vertigo. The Vertigo line would be more literature focused than its mainstream superhero counterpart, but would still share ... not continuity ... influence. There are some Justice League members who fall into the Vertigo chasm, but their ambitions seem different when they're in Vertigo titles. And, sure, Death from Sandman, and Swamp Thing and Animal Man cross back and forth between DC Vertigo and DC proper every decade or so, but the two universes were mostly separate. Until. Until Flashpoint and The New 52 in 2011, at which point the Vertigo imprint ceased having its historic value. In January of 2020 Vertigo was completely removed and replaced by DC's "Black Label", which I'm sure they will relaunch again as something else within the next five years.

But the books that inspired the creation of the label: Gaiman's Sandman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, and Jamie Delano's Hellblazer are still vital to DC mythology. While books like Y The Last Man, Fables, and Transmetropolitan are  important books that came out with the Vertigo label, they would also fit right in with current Image Comics titles or IDW. The early '90s Vertigo books had fun with characters and references crossing between titles, even as the books themselves didn't have Crossover Events. Dream would just show up in Hellblazer to chastise John Constantine. And Constantine, himself, first showed up in the pages of Swamp Thing. Variations on these characters and these stories went on for almost forty years before they were completely swept into DC proper.

I'm currently reading through as much as I can of the Sandman/Swamp Thing/Hellblazer/Books Of Magic/Dreaming universe in preparation for the upcoming Sandman/Locke & Key crossover.

You shouldn't have to do that. There's a lot of it. Like pretty much every ongoing comic series that lasts more than a couple of years, the quality varies wildly. So I've put together a reading list/order if you want to read Just The Best of these titles. I don't care for which stories are the most Historically Important, like the first appearances of so and so, or The Absolute Beginning of this universe. I care about what's fun to read, and what art is just bonkerstown great.

Most to all of these books should be in print and available from a local comic book store. And if they do dip temporarily out of print, I'm fairly confident they'll return quickly with new cover art and probably a heftier price point. Hope you enjoy!

1. Sandman: Overture
(Neil Gaiman, JH Williams III, Dave McKean)
Buy Sandman Overture on Bookshop.org

The universe is cyclical, and this is, as of when I'm writing this, the most recent collection in this continuity. It could absolutely serve as a coda, having several callbacks to the original Sandman universe that Gaiman laid down in the 80s and 90s. BUT. Why not start your journey with one of the most beautiful books in the series. JH Williams's art is phenomenal, and Gaiman has crafted a story that, yes, is enhanced a bit if you've read the full run of Sandman and are feeling nostalgic, but it also stands on its own and gives you an idea of how weird this universe is going to be. Also, it's a prequel story so it does actually set up the next time Dream comes into continuity. It's a much more fun and engaging beginning to the continuity than the true start of this universe: Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.


2. Swamp Thing: The Curse
(Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben)
currently collected as Saga Of The Swamp Thing Book Three

Alan Moore purists and classist comic completists will call this sacrilege that I'm not starting with the beginning of Moore's Swamp Thing run. That's ok. They can still read and enjoy it. I found it overwritten. Alan Moore told the same basic Swamp Thing story over and over and over again until it felt right to him. For me, this was the fist excellent portion of the story. It's all about love and identity and environmental politics. Which is exactly what a Swamp Thing story should be. We're also introduced to John Constantine, who will be the linchpin of this entire storytelling universe.

3. Swamp Thing: Reunion
(Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Stephen Bissette, Alfredo Alcala, John Totleben, Tom Yeates)
currently collected as Saga Of The Swamp Thing Book Six

The end of Moore's run on Swamp Thing is hugely satisfying if you've slogged through his entire run (or enjoyed his entire run). He ties up all the various threads and given his characters their Happily Ever After. That's fine. But it also has a really trippy art issue, which counterbalances its inclusion of the DC proper space universe with its Green Lanterns, Thanagarians, and such.  The prose is very purpley (as much of Moore's work is) but it's worth it for the artwork.

4. Hellblazer: The Fear Machine
(Jamie Delano, Mark Buckingham, RIchard Piers Rayner, Mike Hoffman, Alfredo Alcala)
Until the next printing, rooting around comic book stores or EBay is your best bet to find this.
You could also get it affordably via Kindle, if you prefer.

The first few volumes of Hellblazer try, unsuccessfully to balance, magic, demonology, mythology, interpersonal relationships, politics, and Vertigo's burgeoning continuity. Mostly, it fails at its humanity by pushing its very valid political stances too far into the story. Eyes will roll. Here, we get a healthy dose of governmental paranoia, as well as some cool side characters to latch on to. The ending is out of nowhere, but the journey there makes this volume worth reading.

5. Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes
(Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg)
Easily orderable from any bookstore or comic store, or grab it from Bookshop.org.

Picking up from the end of "Sandman Overture", a rich, shitty, American has designed a scheme to trap Death and change the world to fit his beliefs. Unfortunately, he accidentally traps Dream, who refuses to speak to him. While Dream is trapped, The Dreaming falls apart, sleep pandemics occur, and the world goes all wibbly-wobbly-shakey-wakey. When he escapes, he quests to find his most important magical belongings, and set the world and The Dreaming back to its status quo. We also get a team-up with John Constantine, and some cameos from some DC Proper heroes.

​6. Hellblazer: The Family Man
(Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Ton Tiner, Sean Phillips, Steve Pugh, Dean Motter, Dave Mckean)
Again, rummaging through stores and EBay is the most affordable way to go. 
​Or go the Kindle route.

A serial killer seriously messes with Constantine's  mojo. Also, his family deals with their own spiritual trauma. This volume is Delano's best interpersonal relationship story. While Morrison's contributions are true to Constantine's paranoia, they're fairly boring. Gaiman's one-shot paying tribute to a side character, on the other hand, is a moving and necessary part of Constantine's personal growth.

7. Sandman: The Doll's House
(Neil Gaiman, Chris Bachalo, Steve Parkhouse, Michael Zulli, Mike  Dringenberg,  Malcolm Jones III)
Should be on the shelves at any bookstore, or order via Bookshop.org

This was the volume that elevated Sandman (which was already great) to legendary status. The layouts are astounding, the art is crisp, the characters are interesting, the mythological backstory is well told and placed in the overall narrative, and we start to get a real sense for The Endless's powers and a hint at family dynamics. If you're only going to read one book on this list, I'd suggest Sandman Overture, but this is a close second.

8. Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits
(Jamie  Delano, Garth Ennis, William SImpson, Sean Phillips, Steve Pugh, Dave McKean)
You can get a previous printing which contains only the beginning of the Ennis run via Ebay at an affordable rate.

The end of Delano's run is, honestly wet fucken garbage. It's awful. It features an incredibly stupid retcon that I think, and hope, future writers ignore. It attempts at making things seem cyclical but falls way flat. Before that is a pretty decent family story featuring some characters and themes from "The Fear Machine", and that part works. Then ... ugh. The true highlight of this volume is the beginning of Ennis's run. In addition to Constantine's usual demon enemies (this triumvirate is straight out of Sandman "Preludes & Nocturnes"), he also must battle lung cancer. This is handled with surprising grace, given some of Ennis's other work.

"When I saw the solicit for this book: "When down-and-out Eddie stumbles upon the body of a murdered teenage runaway, he vows to bring her killers to justice. His investigation brings him into the darkest truths of his beachside town, where he finds he may be the only one who cares enough to solve this murder.", I thought "This is either going to be amazing or absolutely terrible."

I am happy to say, it's the former. This is a very human story about the non-battle between Corporate America and the homeless and disenfranchised. As well as a murder...not mystery...more of a...murder reveal. While both these elements are cool, and make for a fun read, the highlights are Ponticello's art, and the perspective point of the unreliable narrator.

This is both an incredible story that you will want to fly through, and a beautiful art book where you'll want to spend several minutes looking at every panel.

Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, is one of my all-time favorite comics to recommend to people. It's an unusual story that's told well, and is spectacular to look at. And while I've enjoyed some of Layman's work since, I've always felt there was something lacking. 

It turns out while I do like Layman's work, Guillory is why I loved Chew. He uses the same framing devices that Chew uses: a really cool plot point in the beginning, and then backing up and explaining how the story arrived there. He also packs each page with humorous background images. 

This story about family and medical technology  has been a blast so far. The only thing it's missing is Poyo, but since chogs have sort of shown up , it is clearly only a matter of time before the world's coolest rooster is, at least, mentioned.

​Once I use the phrase "humorous slice of life comics about a family of Death Metal musicians written by a Finnish creator", what else do you need to know before you buy it?

I'll wait here for your answer.

Do I need to mention this book is not going to be The Feel Good Book Of The Year? This is a recounting of what happened to the youngest prisoner at the United States's highly illegal, highly traumatizing, completely in violation of The Geneva Convention and simple human decency, prisons at Guantanamo Bay.

This is a fast read, given the heavy nature of the story, and might be the only way to absorb this experience without plunging into despair. Tubiana and Franc present El-Harani's story with such nuance, that you feel the excessive time El-Gharani spent wrongfully imprisoned, even though they are forced to speed through a lot of time to tell the story in just 150ish pages.

You may not yet realize that you need to read an all-ages book about microaggressions and fitting into a culture that Others you, but you do.

This is a perfect Show Don't Tell story of being Other in a community that isn't trying to be prejudiced against you, but doesn't have the language or experience to treat you the way it treats other people.

While there are some Not Great actions in the book, there really aren't any villains, just people fucking up, including the protagonist, because everybody has someone they see as Other.

This book isn't just Important, though. It's also funny, well-crafted, and an absolute joy to read.

1. X-Men Endangered Species
(Mike Carey, Christos Gage, Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, Mark Bagley, Scott Eaton, Andrea DiVito, Mike Perkins)

Beast has been the X-Men's science guy for a while. He is racking his brains trying to figure out how to reverse the destruction The Scarlet Witch has wreaked on the mutant population. He teams up with his sketchy Age Of Apocalypse alternate, Dark Beast, and some other questionable allies to try and discover a way out of mutants going completely extinct. It's a nice, thinking X-book that completely sets up the next episodes non-stop action madness.

For more Beast-centric adventures, he and his green-haired special agent friend team up in X-Men SWORD: No Time To Breathe, which also features Special Agent Lockheed. Yea, Kitty Pryde's dragon.


2. X-Men Messiah Complex
(Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey,  Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Billy Tan, Marc Silvestri, Billy Tan, David Finch)

For the first time after The Decimation, Cerebra registers a new mutant. But this isn't a teenager getting their powers, it's a new baby. This story connects four different runs of X-books, most of them mediocre or awful, but apart from one story thread (Predator X is hella stupid), this is probably the best X-crossover of the 21st century.


3. Wolverine Origin Deadpool
(Daniel Way, Steve Dillon)

Since getting his memories back last season, all the Wolverine books became this super-serious and maudlin book about coming to terms with his past. His past in Japan. His past in Canada. His past in Weapon X. His past in the X-Men. His past in Des Moines. His past as the understudy to Jean Valjean in Les Mis. It's exhausting, and mostly awful. Meanwhile, he's also in the X-Force books exploiting other mutants and killing a bunch of dudes, so his future isn't looking much brighter. 

One of the main plot points in his ongoing series (which you should avoid) is that he has a son, and his son is a lot like him. And evil. And Wolverine wants to save him. It's also dire and maudlin. Except when Deadpool shows up. This whole volume is a Looney Tunes episode with Deadpool as Bugs Bunny and Wolverine as Elmer Fudd, and Dakken (Wolverine's son) ends up as a bit of  a Daffy Duck. It's fun and silly, while also progressing Wolverine and his son's story forward in a way that the more serious books were unable to do.

Deadpool titles are always a mixed bag, but the first volume of Daniel Way's Deadpool Secret Invasion is a fantastic read, and may inspire you to keep reading Way's run on Wade Wilson, which is inconsistent but way better than his run on the Wolverine family.


4. Astonishing X-Men Exogenetic
(Warren Ellis,  Phil Jiminez)

The Brood are back! The green haired director of SWORD, and Beast's sort of girlfriend is back! Are there...Krakoan Sentinels? The elite X-Men team is only slightly different from the Whedon run, but things have changed. Beast is wary of Cyclops, Storm is the aloof Queen of Wakanda, Armor refuses to take shit from Wolverine, and Emma Frost is...still pretty much Emma.

There's a later volume of Astonishing X-Men called Children Of The Brood that's also fun, filled with Brood and Brand, and even features a returned character!


5. Cable Waiting For The End Of The World
(Duane Swierczynski, Michael Lacombe)

At the end of Messiah Complex, Cable took the baby into the future, and Bishop followed. The concept is great. Unfortunatelty, the series became sort of one-note as it went on, but this is the peak of the series. 

There is a crossover series of Cable & X-Force Messiah War that's not the greatest story in the world, but it will give you a glimpse of X-Force, a check in with Deadpool, and the continued saga of time traveling Cable, Bishop, and  Hope.


6. Wolverine Dark Prince
(Daniel Way, Marjorie Liu, Giuseppe Camuncoli)

Wolverine's son Dakken is, in many ways, way more interesting than his dad. During this era of the Marvel Universe, SHIELD had been renamed HAMMER and was being run by Norman Osborne. He made evil versions of The Avengers, and The X-Men, and pretty much all the heroes. But Dakken, who is Osborne's Wolverine, isn't really evil, he's just self-interested, so watching him interact with actual villains makes for a fun story.

While not about any of the X-Men that I recall, one of the best titles to come out of  the ridiculous HAMMER-time Dark era of the Marvel Universe is Kelly Sue Deconnick's  Osborne: Evil Incarcerated.


7. X-Factor Time & A Half, and X-Factor Overtime
(Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Marco Santucci)
It's another mutant birth! As Madrox and Siryn's baby is born. Plus, Darwin, Longshot, and Shatterstar join the cast, and we get a glimpse into the non-Cable focused post-Messiah Complex future,  as the noir aspect of X-Factor becomes progressively more meta, and more progressive. 

I would keep reading the series, as X-Factor The Invisible Woman Has Vanished and X-Factor Second Coming continue to evolve the X-Factor stories in fascinating ways.


8. New Mutants Return Of Legion, and New Mutants Necrosha
(Zeb Wells, Diogenes Neves, Paul Davidson)

While the 1980s New Mutants run is a fan favorite for a lot of people, it wasn't a book that I loved. So I really enjoyed that Zeb Wells made these characters interesting to me. There are a ton of returning characters in these two volumes, as we re-establish the middle generation of mutants, as they are becoming one of the top tier X-teams. This volume skirts one of the worst crossovers of the new millenium, Necrosha, but Wells makes the New Mutants corner of the crossover impactful and fun.

I'm actually missing  a huge chunk of the New Mutants run, so I can't for sure speak to its quality. But these two volumes are good enough that I will hunt down the next couple of volumes and check them out myself.


9. X-Men Second Coming
(Mike Carey,  Zeb Wells, Matt Fraction, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Greg Land, David Finch, Mike Choi, Ibraim Roberson, Terry Dodson)

Guess who's back? Back again? Hope is back. Tell a friend. So is Cable, by the by. The return of the prodigal mutants ends up, much like Mesiah Complex, doing a fantastic job of weaving a bunch of mediocre or worse storylines from the Uncanny, Legacy, X-Force, Astonishing, Wolverine, and Cable runs, as well as the excellent New Mutants and X-Factor runs into one giant game-changing story. 


10. Uncanny X-Force The Apocalypse Solution
(Rick Remender, Jerome Opena)

Ending the season on a dark note. While the original X-Force was a muddily colored, X-treeem Darque Edgee Goth action book, this reimagining of the team comes across as brutal and necessary. This first volume shows how Angel has assembled this updated team to track down and kill Apocalypse. It's a typical Nothing Is As It Seems Nor Goes The Way You Expect It, but it's paced perfectly, and I'd be impressed if anyone actually saw how this story plays out in the end.

The next volume of Uncanny X-Force is pretty terrible, so skip it, and go check out Remender and Opena's  Fear Agent​ series.

Nearly a decade ago, a friend's significant other asked me how I would read Batman. I've done a bunch of "Netflixizations" of comics, where I recommend an order for binging the best of a comic run, but Batman was the first. It even predates this website. But I never transferred it here because I knew it needed to be thined out and reread. I just finished reading the New 52 era of Batman, which will be its own thing, I decided to revisit the pre-New 52 modern era, based on my previous idea of the canon. My ideas have changed a bit since then.

Season One is probably the most similar to my original concept of the seasons. It starts and the same, but due to some titles going out of print, and some more modern books looking back at this era are more fun than their predecessors.

Episode 1: A Bat, A Cat, And An Unlucky Lieutenant
(collected in Batman Year One...and if you want more throw in Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper)
by Frank Miler and David Mazzucchelli...and Mindy Newell and JJ Birch

Bruce Waye returns to Gotham after a long absence following his family's murder (this premise may seem familiar) at the same time a cop named Jim Gordon shows up in town. Cue corrupt cops, crime family shenanigans, a prostitute in a cat suit, and a District Attorney trying to do his best. This is the basis for the TV version of Gotham, the movie Batman Begins, and much more. It's one of the comics from the mid-80s that revolutionized comics, but it has managed to age much better than its peers.  If you want to see the Catwoman story from Year One fleshed out, check out Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper, it's not as good, but it's a more in-depth examination of Selina and Bruce's first few meetings from Year One.

Episode 1: Wolverine Ultimate Rucka
(Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson, Leandro Fernandez)

Wolverine is the most overyhyped at what he does, and what he does is feature in every X-team and spin-off, whilst also having two or three of his own titles, along with the occasional mini-series. Also, most of his work as a solo character is dreadful to read. Rucka puts him in a less-spandex scenario, as he tracks down human traffickers, while he's being pursued by an obsessed detective.  The first two storyarcs are excellent, and have some well-conceived Nightcrawler cameos. The third arc is Not Very Good, as Sabretooth and Yet Another Version Of Wolverine/Sabretooth/Feral/Wolfsbane/X-23/Wildchild/Lady Deathstrike/etc shows up, prompting a paint-by-numbers Weapon X story. It's a testament to how much I liked the first two stories that I am allowing the last third of the book to corrupt my list a bit.

If you enjoyed the first 2/3rds of this volume, check out Batwoman Elegy by  Rucka and JH Williams III. It's a beautiful standalone story in the Batman universe that I can safely recommend more than any book about Wolverine.


Episode 2: NYX Complete Collection
(Joe Quesada, Joshua Middleton, Rob Teranishi, Marjorie M. Liu, and Kalman Andrasofszky)

Last season we met X-23, a Wolverine clone who actually has an interesting backstory. In NYX, she, along with several other teenage mutants in District X, end up thrown into a series of unfortunate conflicts that would normally see The X-Men, Professor X, or one of the spin-off teams show up to help them out. But in this book, that never happens. A bunch of teenagers are left to their own devices, and, really, nothing ends up going their way.

Brian K Vaughan's Runaways also deals with super-powered teenagers not given the guidance of older superheroes, and it's a Must Read for fans of young adult superhero books.


Episode 3: X-Factor Madrox Multiple Choice
(Peter David, Pablo Raimondi)

A near-perfect noir tale following The Multiple Man, as he and some of his former X-Factor teammates (Siryn, Wolfsbane, and Strong Guy) are ensnared in a mafia love triangle by one of Madrox's rogue duplicates. Peter David's tweaking of Madrox's powers makes the character much more interesting than he was in any previous X-books, and David manages to mostly balance his Dad Joke humor with this complex character study.

The first twelve volumes of Peter David's X-Factor are pretty good. But you can stop reading there. Really. Stop. Don't do that to yourself.


Episode 4: Astonishing X-Men By Joss Whedon and John Cassaday Ultimate Collection Volume 1
(Joss Whedon, John Cassaday)

Marvel should use this book as a textbook for incoming X-writers. While the series eventually got bogged down a bit by overly-complex storylines, long-delayed issues, and editorial continuity problems, this first volume is a perfect quippy superhero book. It uses each of its characters with deliberation, it includes some backstory but mainly trusts its readers to figure out chracters' relationships, it reintroduces a dead character in a reasonable way, and it also introduces new villains who are challenging, but aren't The Most Powerful Villains The World Has Ever Seen. Whedon elevates one of the Academy X kids up to the main roster, and it works, which is not always the case. Also, Cassaday's art is cinematic and hypnotizing in the best way.

By all means, check out Ultimate Collection Volume 2. It's still good, it's just not *as* good as this volume.


Episode 5: Wolverine Enemy Of The State
(Mark Millar, John Romita Jr, Kaare Andrews)

This book seemed tailor-made for me to hate it. This is around the tipping point where Millar's work started to irritate me. I'm not a fan of Romita Jr.'s art, and, as stated earlier, Wolverine solo books rarely interest me. This book, however, has every creator working to their strength in a story about what happens when Wolverine is corrupted. And while he is certainly the center of this volume, Enemy Of The State is more about how the Marvel Universe (not just the mutants, either, SHIELD and The Avengers play a big part in this) deals with an evil Wolverine. Romita Jr. gets to draw a bunch of full spread action shots, and technology-filled backgrounds, and does so with  a precision I haven't seen in most of his other work.

New X-Men Academy X : X-Posed includes Wolverine's rampage through the Xavier school through the lens of the students. On the whole, the collection isn't superb, but the crossover issue in the middle is perfect, and it's an otherwise fun look at the soap-opera that is the teenage mutant squads of Academy X.


Episode 6: Astonishing X-Men: Mystique Vol 3: Unnatural
(Sean McKeever, Manuel Garcia)

Time to check in with Charles Xavier's espionage agent, as Mystique and Shortpack try to dismantle a corporation that's using mutants as guinea pigs for drug testing.

There is another volume of McKeever's run on Mystique, and it ties up everything he and Brian K Vaughan set forth in the series, but it's my least favorite of the four volumes.


Episode 7: House Of M
(Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel)

Starting with Avengers Dissasembled, and feeding into the background of several other books, including the second volume of Excalibur, a story has unfolded about The Scarlet Witch losing her ability to control her powers. A series of traumas cause her to create an entirely different set of traumas for herself and her Avengers teammates. Eventually, Charles Xavier and Magneto (who never came back, destroyed New York City and died again, in this continuity) try and help her, but they're not strong enough. House Of M gives you the essentials for what you need to know before it gives every mutant their fondest desire in an alternate reality where mutants are the majority, and Magneto is one of the most powerful kings in the world. It's a much condensed anti-Age Of Apocalypse, and its ending changed the Marvel Universe in an immense way.

Avengers Disassembled is where Bendis starts this storyline, and it's worth the read, even if you're not completely familiar with the Avengers of the early 2000s.


Episode 8: House Of M World Of M Wolverine
(Daniel Way, Reginald Hudson, Brian Michael Bendis, and more)

Fleshing out the main story of House of M, this volume, like Enemy Of The State, focuses less on Wolverine, and more how heroes react when they believe Wolverine has gone rogue. The main character in the series is actually Mystique, Agent Of SHIELD, whose adventures line up quite a bit with the Mystique that works for Charles Xavier. It's got a few great twists, and shows you why Wolverine made a seemingly abrupt decision in the main House Of M book. The other stories in this volume are okay, but you can skip them for the purpose of this continuity.

Daniel Way is my favorite writer to ever work on Deadpool , and if you've ever been curious to read a book about the meta-assassin but didn't know where to begin, pick up Deadpool By Daniel Way Ultimate Collection Volume 1.


Episode 9: Decimation Generation M
(Paul Jenkins and Ramon Bachs)

Written from the perspective of a journalist who lost her mutant daughter to natural causes before the events of House Of M, this book seeks to discover why so many mutants were depowered, as the world at large has no memory of House Of M taking place. It's a much better way to check in with the depowered mutants than the main books which are Garbage Fire Bad. 

Decimation Mutopia X by  David Hine is also worth reading, as it first presents his District X story, in the context of House Of M, then has the cast dealing with the reprecussions when the world resets. 


Episode 10: New X-Men Childhood's End
(Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Mark Brooks, Paul Pelletier)

Won't anyone think of the children? The Academy X storyline tends to fall on the melodramatic side of the X-books. Pre-House Of M, and during House Of M, the stories didn't really earn their melodrama. But the Childhood's End storyline has no qualms about killing off characters in droves, and leaving the survivors to figure out the consequences. It's a shame the books about the adults weren't as bold as this series.

.If you enjoy this, you can go back and check out the New X-Men Academy X books to get some backstory for the non X-Men characters.

A few years ago, while working on the now defunct VeXed-Men website, I did a series of The X-Men in ten seasons, where I did some exhaustive reading, some skimming, some Wikipedia-ing, and some trips to the used book store that carries comics, and put together an exhaustive timeline of how to read the X-Men using pretty much all of the trade paperbacks that were then available.

Don't do that to yourself.

In the last couple of months, I've been reading nearly 100 X-Men and X-Men adjacent books including spin-off titles like  Cable, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Man, Generation X, Rogue, Wolverine, Wolverine & Gambit...if it has been collected into trade in the last fifteen years or so, I've read it and reviewed it on Goodreads, and it made me question why I ever even liked the X-Men.

For this project, I'm just going to condense it down to the books I enjoyed reading. There are going to be ten "episodes" per season, and it's going to lean heavily and more modern stories/collections because they're easier to access, and some of the writing techniques of the 60s, 70s, and 80s haven't aged well.  Season one took us from the original stories all the way through the Claremont run and beyond. This season focuses on the late 90s/early 21st century X-Men with a focus on the better spin-offs

Episode 1: X-Men Gold Homecoming
(written by Joe Kelly, Joe Casey, Jorge Gonzales, and Bill Rosemann, art by Carlos Pacheco, Jeff Johnson, German Garcia, and Mat Broome)

90s X-Men books were terrible. The comic boom at the beginning of the decade meant that Marvel continually introduced new characters, higher stakes, sillier villains, and massive crossovers, almost all of which were terrible. But in the midst of the garbage fire was a run of issues that gave some actual depth to the weird assemblage of X-Men, most of whom have since fallen out of continuity: Cecelia Reyes, Marrow, Maggot, and Joseph. There's no single threat against the team, most issues are one-and-dones that build relationships between the new characters and the classic ones, while giving some spotlight time to various villains. There are no cosmic consequences, it's just some very enjoyable superhero comicing.

If you like this volume, check out  X-Men Vs Apocalypse: The Twelve by everyone who worked at Marvel in the 90s. It's a mixed bag of art and storylines, but it encapsulates the high drama of prophecy, which was so prevelant in 90s/early 21st century X-books.


Episode 2: X-Men Dream's End
(written by Chris Claremont,  Joe Pruett, Robert E. Weinberg, Scott Lobdell, art by  Salvador Larroca), Leinil Francis Yu, Tom Derenick, and Michael Ryan)

While not my favorite X-storyline, this ties up a ton of 90s storylines that I saved you from having to read. The Legacy Virus, a metaphor for the AIDS crisis that removed the sexual stigma from the disease, and focused only on the prejudice that having the disease brought, was a major plot point in all of the X-books for years, and here, it's done away with after a character is martyred. This volume isn't focused on a single X-Team, rather it travels across the vast array of X-characters to show them all this pivotal time in their continuity. This collection also features the best art Rob Liefeld has ever done.

Fans of this book should check out X-Men Legends 4: Feared & Hated, which takes an anthology approach to showing the world that the mutants inhabit around the changeover from the Lobdell/Nicieza era to the Morrison  relaunch.


Episode 3: Exiles Complete Collection Volume 1
(written by Judd Winnick, art by Mike McKone and Jim Calafiore)

I avoided including the Age Of Apocalypse because it's a long trudge through an alternate universe that mostly doesn't matter at all to continuity. And it's exhausting. The Exiles is a book that takes a bunch of mutants from alternate dimensions and teams them up to stop a "massive ripple" that threatens the the destruction of all universes. This is a silly concept, but what it does is give us a team of lesser-known mutants and sends them to pivotal points in various timelines and allows us to see stories like The Dark Phoenix Saga, Wolverine's escape from Weapon Plus, and The Phalanx Covenant from different perspectives. It's mainly fun, although the misogynist Morph character is excruciating.

Exiles Complete Collection Volume 2 is not  quite as good, but is worth reading if you really like these characters.


Episode 4: New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 1
(written by Grant Morrison, art by Frank Quitely, Ethan Van Sciver, Leinil Francis Yu, Igor Kordey, and Tom Derenick)

This is the X-Men run that changed the entire direction of  how Marvel presented its mutant books. Morrison focuses on making the school a larger priority, inventing secondary mutations for long-time characters to keep them fresh, re-examining interpersonal relationships, and evolving the team from tights to leather. There is a lot of story packed into this volume, and it's all great.

Joe Casey was writing the other major title during this era and the collection X-Men X-Corps seeds some interesting ideas into the universe that, sadly, ended up not going anywhere. But the setups are all interesting enough to check out.


Episode 5: Mystique By Brian K Vaughan Ultimate Collection
(written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by  Jorge Lucas, Manuel García, and Michael Ryan)

Morrison's run really has changed the face of the entire franchise. Now that Professor X has gone public and corporate, he can't be seen doing controversial things. So he rescues Mystique from the consequences of her life of crime and sends her on missions the X-Men can't be seen being involved in. It's a fun espionage book by one of the better comic book writers of the modern era. 

Brian K Vaughan also did a Wolverine story called Logan, if you find yourself jonesing for more Vaughan X-titles, but I'm not a huge fan. Instead, I'd recommend his run on Runaways.


Episode 6: New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 2
(written by Grant Morrison, art by John Paul Leon, Igor Kordey, Phil Jimenez, Ethan Van Sciver, Keron Grant, and Frank Quitely)

While not as strong as the beginning of his run, this volume deals with the massive fallout from the first volume, introduces some more fantastic characters, and majorly develops the biggest and most important romantic shift in the history of the X-books.

I can't stop you from reading New X-Men By Grant Morrison Ultimate Collection Volume 3. Many fans love it. It does wrap up Morrison's run, and has earth-shattering plot reveals and a death that they didn't undo for well over a decade. But, personally, I hate it, and think it undoes all of Morrison's work on the first two volumes, exposing Marvel's editorial overreaches, and Morrison's flaws when it comes to completing his vision.


Episode 7: X-Force Famous, Mutant, And Mortal
(written by Peter Milligan, art by Mike Allred and Darwyn Cooke)

This is probably the weirdest book I'm going to include in continuity.It's a collection of characters who you don't ever really see again, who serve as the capitalist media front for the obsession with mutant superheroes that Professor X's public relations stunts thrust into the public. They're a team of fame hungry pseudo-heroes, and they die on a fairly regular basis, only to be replaced with other temporary heroes. The story is just okay. But Allred's art, as well as Cooke's fill-in issue are gorgeous. It also does work as satire of turn of the century media.

If you want to find out how things pan out for the characters that survive this volume, the title changes to X-Statix and includes art by other indie luminaries not often seen on mainstream books, including Paul Pope! But I actually think that if you like the art, you should take a vacation from the X-Men and check out any of Allred's superhero title: Madman.


Episode 8: Nightcrawler Guardian Devil
(written by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, art by Darick Roberston)

While Morrison changed the face of the X-Men for the better on his New X-Men run, Chris Claremont attempted a series of misguided side-stories called X-Treme X-Men, and Chuck Austen flung bags of wet diarrhea and flaming turds at readers under the guise of them being Uncanny X-Men issues (poor Austen gets a lot of flack for being The Worst Writer In X-Men History, but having read nearly 100 X-books in the past month, he has earned that title with his consistent inability to understand characters and the microphone feedback that he mistakes for dialogue composition). The Absolute Worst of Austen's run was called The Draco, and focused on Nightcrawler being fooled into believing he was a priest by a mutant hating church group that planned to make him The Pope and then...umm...well...then something was going to happen damn it. It's impressive how awful it is. This is a counterpoint to that storyline, as Nightcrawler and his faith are pitted against horror and mythology. It's sort of Nightcrawler as Hellboy.

If you're in the mood for more Nightcrawler, go back and check out the beginning of Claremont's  Excalibur run in  Excalibur Epic Collection: The Sword Is Drawn. I don't recommend the second volume of Aguirre-Sacasa's Nightcrawler run.


Episode 9: X-23 Innocence Lost
(written by Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, ar by Billy Tan)

A series about a Wolverine clone sounds boring. And by all rights, this book should be awful. But Kyle & Yost had an understanding about the X-Men universe that few 21st century X-scribes could achieve. Rather than just another Feral or Wolfsbane or Sabertooth or Wildchild or Wendigo or Dakken or Raze or Native or Romulus or...you get the idea, they build a soap opera revolving around a Weapon Plus scientist who decides the most efficient way to create a new Wolverine is to use his DNA but make a female version. The villain is pretty flat and predictable but everything else about this story works really well and has some satisfying consequences for the coming seasons.

Need more Weapon Plus mutants who like to stab things? Sabretooth Open Season is a surprisingly well-put together collection worth your investment.


Episode 10: Exiles Vol 6: Fantastic Voyage
(written by Judd Winnick, art by Jim Calafiore, Tom Mandrake, Clayton Henry, and Mizuki Sakakibara)

There were some absolute stinker stories of Exiles that I've left off the list, but this may be the most satisfying story of the entire Exiles run. We close the season to find Mimic has been put in charge of the team, and they are at odds with a team of Vampire Avengers. The first arc is a little hokey, but it propels the story in new directions as everyone gets separated during transit, and has their solo adventures in different realities which all feed into massive consequences once they're finally united. I think this was the last thing Winnick ever wrote for Marvel, and it serves as a cool swan song for the series (though the series went on and on and on and on after this volume until it was struck dead by the barbed pen of Chris Claremont).

If the lack of Blink on the team is getting you down, go back and check out her adventures in X-Men The Complete Age Of Apocalypse Volume 1​.

A few years ago, while working on the now defunct VeXed-Men website, I did a series of The X-Men in ten seasons, where I did some exhaustive reading, some skimming, some Wikipedia-ing, and some trips to the used book store that carries comics, and put together an exhaustive timeline of how to read the X-Men using pretty much all of the trade paperbacks that were then available.

Don't do that to yourself.

In the last few weeks, I've been reading every 90s X-Men and X-Men adjacent book (Cable, X-Factor, X-Force, X-Man, Generation X, Rogue, Wolverine, Wolverine & Gambit...if it has been collected into trade in the last fifteen years or so, I've read it and reviewed it on Goodreads.) and it made me question why I ever even liked the X-Men.

For this project, I'm just going to condense it down to the books I enjoyed reading. There are going to be ten "episodes" per season, and it's going to lean heavily and more modern stories/collections because they're easier to access, and some of the writing techniques of the 60s, 70s, and 80s haven't aged well.  Season One is going to take us from a condensed retelling of the first 60 issues of the series all the way up to the prelude to The Age Of Apocalypse, which won't be where season two begins.

Episode 1: X-Men Grand Design
(written by Ed Piskor based on Stan Lee, art by Ed Piskor based on Jack Kirby)

I'm so glad this exists and is widely available. I can't ever bring myself to slog through the Silver Age of the X-Men. There is so much exposition. So much tiresome dialog written in a "hip parlance" that only existed in the minds of the out-of-touch. It's fairly inscrutible for modern readers. But there were some good stories. Ed Piskor, using the same oversized and stylized format that he employed for Hip Hop Family Tree, retells the entirety of the X-Men Silver age in one book. Each issue being slimmed down to two pages. That it exists is kind of cool, that it works is nothing short of amazing.

If you like this volume, I recommend checking out Piskor's Grand Design: Second Genesis, which takes the same format to tackle the Claremont run. 


Episode 2: X-Men Epic Collection Second Genesis
(written by Chris Claremont, Len Wein, and Bill Mantlo; art by John Byrne, Dave Cockrum, Sal Buscema, Bob Brown, and Tony Dezuniga)

This collection starts out with some of the style that I find difficult to slog through, but it's a good introduction to the major X-Men characters of the 80s and 90s, as the X-Men becomes more of an international team. And though it's rife with stereotypical cliches at the beginning, they do get somewhat smoothed out as the collection goes along. I said in my Ten Seasons list that "Claremont isn't the father of the X-Men, but he's the mentor who guided them into adulthood." and I still believe that. This collection presents us with some familiar villains from Grand Design but also shows us what a new generation of X-Men would look like.

If you enjoy this, consider checking out X-Men Proteus to see what a terrible parent one of the X-Men is. This is a theme that will be revisited late in the season, and every other season.

Episode 3: X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga
(written by Chris Claremont and Jo Duffy; art by John Byrne, John Buscema, Mike Collins, and Jerry Bingham)

THE classic X-Men story. Space. Aliens. Possession. Cyclops being a bit of a dweeb. A female character being so powerful that her power overwhelms her. This is very tropey. But while we did see a death in the Second Genesis episode, this death is the first Major Death in X-Men history. Or, it would have been, had any X-men team member actually ever been permanently killed.

If you enjoy this, Days Of Future Past is another story from this era that is viewed as a classic. And while it does introduce some new characters, and is sort of fun, it didn't quite make the cut for this list.


Episode 4: X-Men From The Ashes
(written by Chris Claremont; art by John Romita JR and Paul Smith)

Professor Xavier is a jerk! Jean Grey is dead! Cyclops's rebound relationship is Hella Creepy! Storm gets an epic haircut! Morlocks! Japan! A wedding doesn't turn out as planned! For all the techniques that didn't age well, Claremont is a master at weaving short form stories into a long-form narrative. He wrote big crossover events but he didn't rely on them the way later writers would. This is one of his best examples of small chunks of stories and character development fitting together really well into one, focused story.

If you like it, check out Claremont & Brent Anderson's God Love, Man Kills another classic, this one with a religious bent, that didn't quite make the cut.


Episode 5:  X-Men: Mutant Massacre
(written by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, and Ann Nocenti; art by John Romita, Alan Davis, Bret Blevins, and Rick Leonardi)

The first major crossover on our list. We met the Morlocks, an underground dwelling group of mutants who "aren't pretty enough" to live above the surface, in the last episode. In this one, we focus on them, as Daredevil, Thor, the New Mutants (the young X-Men team), X-Factor (the original flavor X-Men team), and the current X-Men team contend with a group of mutant assassins called The Marauders who end up doing Major Damage to pretty much everyone in this story.

If the New Mutants team interests you, definitely check out New Mutant: Demon Bear, which has some next level Bill Sienkiewicz art)


Episode 6: Fantastic Four Vs. The X-Men
(written by Chris Claremont; art by John Bogdanove)

I've written about/talked about this every time I've ever discussed essential X-Men books. This is the first comic book I ever read, and I can't believe how well it's held up. It's the aftermath of the Mutant Massacre, and the X-Men have contacted the Fantastic Four to help save Kitty Pride, whose power to phase is out of control (see, once again the powerful female character's powers threaten to be her undoing).  

If you like this, I'd backtrack a bit to X-Men Epic Collection: Ghosts to see The Trial Of Magneto, which gets referenced here.


Episode 7: X-Men X-Tinction Agenda
(written by Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson; art by Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, John Bogdanove, and Guang Yap)

The third teamup story in a row. This time it's just three X-Teams converging on a nation where mutants are bred and enslaved. The island of Genosha becomes a hugely important locale in X-Men mythology, and this appearance is a big part of why. For an 80s superhero comic, it does a surprisingly good job of handling issues of race and oppression. 

Around this time in comics, there are some weird developements for various X-Men, particularly Storm. I would check out Epic Collection: Dissolution & Rebirth to follow her adventures, meet everyone's favorite Cajun mutant, and spend a great deal of time with Forge as he attempts to put The X-Men back together after a major catastrophe.


Episode 8: X-Men Epic Collection: Mutant Genesis
(written by Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, and Tom Raney)

The end of the Claremont era! Also, yet another multi-team adventure. This collects the best selling X-Men comics of all time, as the various X-Teams must first overcome The Shadow King and then defeat their oldest foe...in space! This is the series that launched the X-Men Animated Series (though it did some backtracking to include events like X-Tinction Agenda). If you were born between 1975 and 1990 and only ever read one X-Men book, it was probably this one. I was excited that they finally collected the Muir Island Saga that led up to X-Men #1 in the same collection as the first few issues of X-Men (the main series having been referred to as Uncanny X-Men). While Fantastic Four Vs. X-Men was my first comic, this was the series that got me back into comics as a kid. I was completely confused by virtually everything I picked up between these two series.

I can't in good conscious recommend any of the X-Men comics written by Scott Lobdell, who wrote the X-Men for an absurd amount of time after Claremont left the title. But there is a collection called X-Men The Skinning Of Souls that, of all the ridiculous 90s continuity comics,  is the one I find most enjoyable.


Episode 9: Magneto Testament
(written by Greg Pak; art by  Carmine Di Giandomenico)

No character ever truly dies in X-Men comics, but the last volume was meant to be the final Magneto story for a while. It wasn't. He came back nearly instantly. But this book would have been a good coda to a Last Ever Magneto Story. It's one of the many origin stories for the purple bucket helmeted magnet villain. But it's the best from both a storytelling and an art perspective.

For more Magneto storytelling that's relevant to this season, check out X-Men/Avengers: Blood Ties.


Episode 10: X-Men Prelude To The Age Of Apocalypse
(written by Mark Waid, Jeph Loeb, Scott Lobdell, and John Francis; art by Andy Kubert, Steve Epting, Terry Dodson, and Roger Cruz)

There is no bigger mess of an event in Marvel comics history than The Age Of Apocalypse. They took An Entire Year to reimagine every X-title. Villains became heroes, heroes became dead, the dead became villains, etc. I don't recommend it. BUT. The story of how The Age Of Apocalypse came to exist was done really well. So we close the first season with an expose on how Charles Xavier's terrible parenting led to the complete destruction of the timeline, and the death of everyone and everything he ever loved. Nice job, Chuck.

If you're a masochist, you can check out The Age Of Apocalypse. Some of it is really good but there is A Lot Of It, and much of it is trash.

Episode 1: Panther Protocols
(collected in Black Panther: Deadliest Of The Species)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by Ken Lashley

A cabal of nefarious world leaders offers T'Challa and Wakanda a place in their upper echelons. They don't take it to well when he refuses. And by "don't take it too well", I mean they kill him and his royal guard, but not before the guard sets him on a plane and sends his corpse to Wakanda. While Storm and the Wakandan elders search for a way to being TChalla back from the dead, a new Panther is chosen. T'Challa's older sister, Shuri. And while her previous life didn't seem to Panther like, she proves to be an absolute badass, completely worthy of the her new title.

Serial 1: Doomwar
(collected in Black Panther: Doomwar)
written by Reginald Hudlin and Jonathan Maberry, art by Ken Lashley, Scott Eaton, Gianluca Gugliotta,‎ Pepe Larraz , and‎ Shawn Moll

Doctor Doom's lust for power, Storm's unwavering faith, Wakanda shutting its borders to foreigners, The Fantastic Four, the X-Men, mind controlling nannites, Doombots, Deadpool. There are a ton of elements at play in this event, plus both Shuri and T'Challa are Black Panthers.  There are a ton of really cool beats to this story, and unlike last season's X-Men crossover, the whole event is fun and well-written.

Doomwar. 4 episodes

Serial 2: Urban Jungle
(collected in Black Panther: The Man Without Fear)
written by David Liss, art by Francesco Francavilla and Jefte Palo

Now that Wakanda is bereft of vibranium, and T'Challa has overcome the elventy billionth coup in the series, he's decided to let Shuri remain the official Black Panther title, while he goes to New York to rediscover himself. Daredevil has recently taken over The Hand during the worst Daredevil comic run in the last thirty years. Disgraced Matt Murdock needs to take some time to find himself, so his associate, Foggy Nelson, falsifies some documents so that T'Challa can play superhero in Hell's Kitchen with an entirely new identity. His first foe: the new Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen, Vlad The Impaler, who ends up being a worthy opponent, but probably won't win Father Of The Year any time soon. Luke Cage and Spider-Man put in some memorable appearances in this episode.

Urban Jungle . 2 episodes

Episode 8: The Great Hunt
(collected in Black Panther: The Man Without Fear)
written by David Liss and Jonathan Maberry, art by Jefte Palo and  Gianluca Gugliotta

Kraven The Hunter has his sites set on Storm, who has come to New York to be with her husband. But she's not the only one in New York, Shuri (still the Black Panther of Wakanda) has tracked down classic villain, Klaw, through The Savage Land and Madripoor before ending up in The Big Apple where she, Spider-Man, and The Black Widow battle a villain who has ascended into being made purely of sound.

Episode 9: Fear & Loathing In Hell's Kitchen
(collected in Black Panther:The Man Without Fear)
written by David Liss, art by Francesco Francavilla and Jefte Palo

Three stories from The Black Panther's time in New York: the unfortunately still timely story of The Hatemonger's brief rise to power in Hell's Kitchen, White Wolf pays T'Challa a visit, and then T'Challa gets caught up in the loopy Spider-Island event. 

Episode 10: The Most Dangerous Man Alive
(collected in Black Panther: The Man Without Fear)
written by David Liss, art by Shawn Martinbrough and Michael Avon Oeming

The real Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, is in charge of The Hand now, and it's up to both Black Panthers, Luke Cage, and Falcon to take him down.

Serial 3: Phoenix Landing
(collected in AvX: Avengers Vs. X-Men)
written by, and with art by a bunch of talented creators who should have known better

I hate this crossover. It's horrifically paced, badly plotted, and stupid. But. We see the reasons behind why T'Challa has his marriage to Storm annulled. 

Phoenix Landing . 3 episodes

Season Four is thirteen episodes with a disappointing season finale.

Episode 1: Rogue Nation
(collected in Black Panther By Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by John Romita JR and Klaus Janson

Sorry, sugah, no appearances by everyone's favorite Bonnie Raitt impersonating mutant. This story focuses on the origin of The Black Panther, as well as how a US Government might act if they learned a technologically advanced African nation existed, and wasn't interested in any real diplomatic relationship. 

Episode 2: Wild Kingdom
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Peter Milligan and Reginald Hudlin, art by Salvador Larocca and David Yardin)

After a brief foray into House Of M (a mutant creates an alternate reality where mutants are in charge, and non-mutated humans  are the hunted minority, etc.), we return to the real world where a reporter is eaten live on TV. The X-Men (wait, NOW Rogue is involved? That last title feels wasted) journey to Africa to investigate, as does T'Challa. Things...escalate.

Serial 1: The Oncoming Storm
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by Gary Frank and Scott Eaton

After a team up with Luke Cage, T'Challa realizes he needs to get married, and debates a series of the Marvel Universe's most powerful women. Try not to let the title of this episode spoil the ending for you. 

2 episodes.

Serial 2: World Tour
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by Scot Eaton and Manuel Garcia

The honeymoon is over quickly for T'Challa and Storm. An international mission of diplomacy brings the involvement of Dr. Doom, The Inhumans, and Namor building up to their involvement in Civil War. Hudlin does a really good job at having multi-dimensional characters, particularly  Doom being kind an inviting to the new couple but also institutionally racist. While there is quite a bit of time spent explaining the minutiae of the events leading up to Civil War, they're told really well.

2 episodes

Serial 3: Civil War
(collected in Civil War and Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
written by Mark Millar and Reginald Hudlin, art by Steve Mcniven, Koi Turnbull, and Marcus To

The huge Marvel war over registration between Iron Man and Captain America pulls Black Panther and Storm into a brief membership with The Secret Avengers as they are decidedly anti-registration. This is followed by how Storm, Black Panther, and Sue Storm deal with the deaths and fallouts from Civil War. There's a balance of politics, grief, and relationship issues that holds this ugly portion of the book (Turnball's art is atrocious) together.


Serial 4: Fantastic
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
wrtieen by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela, Andrea diVito, Cafu, Larry Stroman, and Ken Lashley

Storm and T'Challa team up with The Human Torch and The Thing to form an all new Fantastic Four team! There's Negative Zone bugs, Skrulls, Marvel Friggen Zombies, and even the possibility that all four of them die and are in the afterlife. This is a fun little sorbet after the Civil War stories.

Episode 11: Back To Africa
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 3)
written by Reginald Hudland, art by Francis Portela

Storm and T'Challa return to Wakanda where T'Challa must fight to regain his place int he kingdom. We've seen this happen in both of the previous seasons, but I enjoy Hudlin's version more than the previous two.

Serial 5: Secret Invasion
(collected in Secret Invasion, and in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 3)
written by Jason Aaron and Brian Michael Bendis, art by Jefte Palo and Leinil Francis Yu

Skrulls!  Skrulls! So many Skrulls have been pretending to be marvel heroes. See heores die! See heroes you thought were dead turn out to have been impostors, which means the real heroes were alive the whole time! Watch T'Challa and the Wakandan military really take it to the green bastards.

2 episodes

Season 3 is thirteen episodes of universe expanding fun told in a completely simple-to-follow and engaging way.

If Black Panther isn't the Marvel movie you're most amped up to see, you're probably either a bigot or you have terrible taste in movies. The trailers are amazeballs. And, finally, after years of there not being very many Black Panther collections available, now most of his solo adventures are in circulation. So I'm cobbling together a five season Netflixization of a Black Panther chronology.

Season one introduced us to T'Challa through the lens of The Fantastic Four, had us spend some time with him as an Avenger, had him dispensing royal justice in Wakanda, and even had him battle the KKK. I really enjoyed Season One. I can't, in good conscience, condone this Season Two. I recommend you maybe flip through Episode 1 of this season in a store, and see if its humor and narrative devices intrigue you. Personally, I hated it. And it's so tonally different from what precedes it, and what follows it that it feels like an entirely different book. And, uh, The Black Panther isn't actually the main character. So, again, I would skip it. But some of my friends whose opinions I usually agree with really like this run, so you should at least see if it sparks your interest. But if you do skip direct to Season Three, you won't miss any pertinent plot points.

Episode 1: Advocate For The Devil
(collected in Black Panther The Complete Collection By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Mark Texeira

Last season we got to meet T'Challa through the eyes of some of Marvel's most famous superheroes. This season, we meet him through the eyes of a wise-cracking, dated pop-culture spewing lawyer. Wooooo. Fun, amirite? Oh, and Mephisto is around, and he helps the protagonist (not T'Challa) procure a pair of pants. That sure does sound like a Black Panther story, right?


Episode 2: The Hunter And The Hunted
(collected in Black Panther Complete Collection By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Joe Jusko

Continuing the story of Annoying Attorney and, oh also The Black Panther, Kraven The Hunter crashes a White House party that Black Panther and Not-Friend are attending and creates such havoc that it catches the attention of The Avengers (of which The Black Panther is a member).


Episode 3: Enemy Of The State
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Joe Jusko, Mike Manley, Amanda Conner, Mark Bright

The Annoying Attorney, The Avengers, and Black Panther discover that the money behind Kraven The Hunter is Wakandan, so they head to Wakanda to help King T'Challa stop yet another coup (that's three attempts and we're barely into season two). Jokes abound. And abound. And abound.


Episode 4: Turbulence
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto

I actually don't mind this "episode". Hydro-Man joins in the Wakandan political strife, and we spend some time examining The Black Panther's love life from season one, and some missteps he's made so far this season. 


Episode 5: Back In Brooklyn
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto

Hulk. Luke Cage. Iron Fist. Falcon. Goliath. They're all...well..they're...they're all IN this comic, and they're fighting...somebody. At a club? Maybe? They're definitely at a club at some point. Ooof, this is painful.


Episode 6: Economic Downturn
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto, Kyle Hotz, Bob Almond, and Tom Coker

It's that story about how The Black Panther's actions affect the economy that you've been waiting for. Also featuring several fights with Killmonger who, at the end of the episode is...the...new...Black...Panther? Maybe?


Serial 1: Home Is Where The Hate Is
(2 episodes, collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest and J Calafiore, art by Sal Velluto, J Calafiore, and Bob Almond

Moon Knight and Brother Voodoo show up to help Black Panther something something astral plane something something spirituality...and then Black Panther and and Annoying Attorney are Batman & Robin, and the villain has a hand puppet, and Deadpool is...OF COURSE FUCKEN DEADPOOL IS IN THIS MADNESS. Plus The Avengers.


Episode 9: Malice
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest and M.D. Bright, art by Sal Velluto, Bob Almond, and Walden Wong

Killmonger is still The Black Panther...sort of...but he and T'Challa go back to New York...together for some reason. And the one of The Black Panther's exes kills Killmonger. Again. Maybe?


Episode 10: Storm Und Klaw
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

Yea, sure, let's get Storm in this story. And maybe Magneto. And Doctor Doom. And Namor. More characters means cooler story, right? Draw in a bigger audience. The plot? Oh, who knows? There is some threatening pointing and Storm is definitely in Wakanda, and we haven't seen Klaw since season one, so it's totally cool that he's...ugh, I can't wait to get through this.


Episode 11: Devil's Due
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

This has got to be it, right? Annoying Attorney is giving testimony about all the adventures of the season, and Mephisto is back, and they reference pants for the first time in a while. And Malice is involved. Oh, and a white gorilla. We haven't seen one of those in a while. This is over, right? The big conclusion? Wait, who's The Original Black Panther? God damn it.


Episode 12: The Once & Future Kings
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 3)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond, and Jon Bogdanove

So we're in the future. And hand puppet guy is back. And the children that you didn't know The Black Panther had, because this is the future, are killed. And Luke Cage is old. And something is wrong with T'Challa besides his dead kids. You should really really care about all of this because dead kids that you never knew about is sad. You can tell because The Black Panther is kneeling with arms outstretched and crying. It's. So. Emotional. Also a Wakandan is in love with The Hulk? Why not?


Episode 13: Return Of The Dragon
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 3)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

Girls in skimpy uniforms fight. The Defenders are involved for some reason. It looks like Annoying Attorney is now Mephisto, or at least he looks like Mephisto. There's some sort of body switch and more pop culture references, and a dragon who is maybe Mephisto or Immortal Iron Fist. Who cares? This season can not be stopped. It's like being on a shitty rollercoaster that keeps ramping up, but all the drops are four or five feet, and then it's flat forever. How did this not get canceled?


Episode 14: The Kitchen Fucken Sink
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 4)
written by Christopher Priest, art by people who deserved a better story

Look, Iron Man shows up. Wolverine, too. Thor. The whole fucken Avengers team. This goes on for about a dozen unreadably convoluted issues. If you keep reading, it will eventually stop, and you can get on with your life, reading Black Panther stories that actually focus on The Black Panther and have plots that make narrative sense. I think I find this so annoying because there are some good beats in this run, and the story wouldn't be awful if it wasn't told in constantly shifting fashion. It's referenced in the very first issue, but it really does seem like Christopher Priest was a middle schooler who saw Pulp Fiction, and thought "I wanna do that with super heroes!" but didn't have any outline or concept of how to make shifting time and points of view a necessary part of the story, instead of a distraction. I hope you either loved this "season" or didn't bother to read Priest's run. I promise, it's going to get better in Season Three.

Season Two is fourteen episodes that feel like fourteen thousand.

If Black Panther isn't the Marvel movie you're most amped up to see, you're probably either a bigot or you have terrible taste in movies. The trailers are amazeballs. And, finally, after years of there not being very many Black Panther collections available, now most of his solo adventures are in circulation. So I'm cobbling together a five season Netflixization of a Black Panther chronology.

The lists will seem shorter than some of my other "In Five Seasons" or "In Ten Seasons" because most of the Black Panther collections are three to four times the length of usual Marvel trades, and have the price point that reflects that difference. Also, unlike previous lists, this will contain Back Door Pilot episodes, the way DC television presented The Flash in an episode of "Arrow" before he got his own series, or the way Marvel/Netflix put The Punisher in "Daredevil" before he got his own series. 

Backdoor Pilot: Vibranium Frequency (an episode of The Fantastic Four)
(collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby

What I hope will be the most successful Marvel-based movie character debuts in the comic home of the least successful Marvel-based franchise. And it doesn't seem promising that mid-1960s Stan Lee is the creator of the character. There are pages that, unsurprisingly, don't age well. But it does seem that The Thing, who says the most problematic shit, is being shown as out-of-touch when he refers to The Black Panther (who he hasn't met yet) as "a refugee from a Tarzan movie". The fun part of the story is that The Black Panther totally annihilates The Fantastic Four using technology, strategy, and brilliant pre-meditation. But he's never treated as a villain. He makes it clear as soon as the fight is over that he was prepping for a bigger fight, and The Fantastic Four immediately ally with him. All in all, it's a fun story. I have a difficult time with silver age books in general, and Stan Lee's books, in particular, but this one repeatedly acknowledged when it was being "cornball", and T'Challa really shows up Reed Richards and his whole team.

Episode 1: Zemoted
(collected in Captain America Epic Collection: The Coming Of The Falcon)

The first really cool run of Black Panther as a solo book refers to the fact that T'Challa has been away from Wakanda for a while, so we're going to start the series with his appearances in other Marvel books. In this story, T'Challa is still in Wakanda but is under attack and sends one of his amazing ships to New York to request the help of Captain America. Well, it turns out the villain is Baron Von Zemo, one of those Nazi shitheads who helped get Cap's partner killed (or sent to Russia to become The Winter Soldier, if you're going to be all modern about it), and got Cap, himself, frozen into a giant ice cube. So cap gets his revenge with Panther's help, and then T'Challa moves into The Avengers mansion to become a member of Marvel's Grade A superhero team.

Serial 1: The Avenger
(3 episodes, collected in The Avengers Epic Collection: The Masters Of Evil, and The Avengers Epic Collection: Behold The Vision!)
written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and Gene Colan

T'Challah and the superbros fight crime around the world. It's utter madness with a ton of characters including pretty much all the Avengers from the movies, the classic X-Men lineup, Kang, The Masters Of Evil, The Sons Of The Serpent, even Ultron debuts in this series.  And The Black Panther, while not the central character is very important to the outcomes. 

If you are a continuity hound, you can check out Daredevil #69, which features The Black Panther helping Matt Murdock fight the first ever incarnation of The Thunderbolts, but it's problematic, and not a very long story, so you might want to skip it. He also shows up in Astonishing Tales to fight against Doctor Doom, but that's never been collected outside of the black and white Essential series.

Serial 2: Panther's Rage
(3 episodes collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Don McGregor, art by Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, Gil Kane, and Keith Pollard

While T'Challa was out in New York, one of the victims of Klaw's attack (from the backdoor pilot episode) has been sowing seeds of discord in Wakanda. Now The Black Panther must battle Killmonger and his many, many, many allies, including Venomm (a snake handler, not the Spider-Man villain), a white gorilla, a pack of wolves, and all sorts of others. This series is one of the earliest examples of epic storytelling in comics. It feels like the best of the dark 1980s superhero comics, but it came out in the mid-70s. 

Episode 8: The Panther Vs The Klan
(also collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Don McGregor, art by Billy Graham and Rich Buckler

Yea. That Klan. It's sad to think that this book would once again be considered controversial, but in the 70s, editorial didn't know if it was okay to have a black superhero battling the Ku Klux Klan. T'Challa goes back to America, along with his girlfriend (whom the Wakandans were happy to see leave) where he gets into a battle with some of America's biggest embarrassments.

Episode 9: The Collectors
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 1)
written by Jack Kirby, art by Jack Kirby

From a realistic fight against racists, to a Really Weird battle against a bizarre set of villains in a quest for...Solomon's Frog? This is almost too weird to describe, and The Black Panther isn't as fleshed out as he is in better books, but it's a wacky ride with really cool Kirby art.

​Episode 10: The Musketeers
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 2)
written by Jack Kirby, art by Jack Kirby

Every time T'Challa leaves Wakanda, somebody attempts a coup. This time, it's a family member, and we meet a great deal of T'Challa's family, some of whom will be major characters in the coming seasons. We also see, when T'Challa is otherwise engaged, a group of Wakandans who don their own costumes to protect the land in his absence.

Episode 11: Kiber The Cruel
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 2)
written by Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter, and Ed Hannigan, art by Jack Kirby and Jerry Bingham

One of T'Challa's cousins is kidnapped by a mutated scientist named Kiber The Cruel, who first takes her, then The Black Panther, himself, to Kiber Island (that's right, he has his own island, what?) where they, naturally, must battle his minions in order to survive, and escape (in that order). This episode gets less fun as it goes on, as Kirby abandoned the story before it was over, and it got picked up by Marvel's most notorious editor, and an artist who was talented, but was not Jack Kirby. 

Episode 12: Panther's  Prey
(not yet collected)
written by Don McGregor, art by Dwayne Turner

This is a strange episode to end the season on, but it's a sequel to Panther's Rage, and it is entirely unlike anything that's going to happen in previous seasons. It even has a bit of the Kirby Weird factor, as it involves a sometimes invisible pteranodon man. But there's also drugs, there's T'Challa's mother dealing with her time as a sex slave, and there's T'Challa thinking of proposing to his girlfriend (who Wakandans still aren't super into). I had to read this online because it hasn't been collected, and I don't own the issues. It's not nearly as good as Panther's Rage or Black Panther Vs. The KKK, and while it has some problematic aspects, it's not terrible.

​
Season One is thirteen episodes (including the backdoor pilot).

I read my first Hellboy comic about fifteen years ago. I bought a few of the early trades, enjoyed them, and made it a point to buy all new Mike Mignola collections whenever they came out.  But at some point, I stopped reading them.

I've had a few customers ask me about reading order. And mostly I just tell them to read the Hellboy books in order, then BPRD, then BPRD Hell On Earth, and then Hellboy in Hell. I'd always admit that I hadn't read Witchfinder, or Lobster Johnson, or any of the other spin-offs.

A year or so ago, I looked up what the proper chronological reading order was via several websites, and they mostly spat the same uninformed advice that I'd been giving. After a couple of discussions with Jeff Stumpo about the BPRD series, I decided it was finally time for me to a deeper dive into The Mignolaverse (the unofficial name for  Hellboy, BPRD, and their spin-offs.

The Internet was once again, mostly unhelpful. The choices were: Just Read Them In The Order Of The Numbers On The Spine You Nerd, or lists that were so focused on chronology that they recommend putting a book down mid-story, and picking up another volume for a few pages, before returning to the original one. That's no way to read comics. And since the stories weren't written chronologically, nevermind collected chronologically, I decided  it was time to do some reading and research of my own.

So, here's another conceptual TV Series chronology.  It's four seasons long because there are four large arcs to the series so far, with a fifth one just beginning, and probably taking years before it's wrapped up.

As you can tell from the last post, we don't really know how Season 1 ends. SOMETHING happens that causes Hellboy to leave the BPRD. But we haven't seen what yet. For Season 2 we'll start following an entirely new BPRD team. Unlike the volumes in Season 1, most Mike Mignola books are all over the place, chronologically. They're not necessarily linked by themes, or in any sort of chronological order. They usually contain a couple to a few short stories and then one larger scale story linked to other volumes. So this should be....fun.

Episode 1: Mexico
(Hellboy In Mexico, Frankenstein Underground)
written by Mike Mignola, art by Ben Steinbeck, Richard Corben, Mike McMahon, Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, and Mike Mignola

Do you like luchadores? Mummies? Frankenstein monsters? Well, then this season opens with an episode just for you. Following events from 1956, which still haven't been written yet, Hellboy goes on an epic bender in Mexico that ends up with him having a brief stint as a vampire fighting luchadore, getting married, and befriending a Frankenstein monster. The Frankenstein monster then has its own journey in Frankenstein Underground which you can read if you'd like, but isn't nearly as compelling or fun as Hellboy In Mexico.


Episode 2: The Pirate's Ghost
(Lobster Johnson 5: The Pirate's Ghost & Metal Monsters Of Midtown)
written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Tonci Zonjic

Back to the 1930's where Lobster Johnson battles some Zinco robots, which seems like a random aside from our Hellboy journey, but trust that Zinco will be making a return appearance this season. We also see Wald and Payne's adventures with the Lobster come to what seems to be a definitive close.


Episode 3: Honest Abe
(Abe Sapien 1: The Drowning, and Abe Sapien 2: The Devil Does Not Jest
​written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Jason Shawn Alexander, Patric Reynolds, Peter Snejbjerg, and James Harren

Hellboy isn't the only non-human agent at BPRD. Abe Sapien is a...well...a sort of fish guy. In "The Drowning", he gets sent to clean up a mess left long ago by Edward Grey during the first episode of last season. His mission doesn't go well. A bit later, he goes on his first few solo missions with a bit better luck, but an equal amount of having to go under water. Also, this makes back to back episodes featuring pirates, if that's your thing.


Episode 4:  The Crooked Man
(Hellboy 10: The Crooked Man And Others)
written by Mike Mignola, art by Richard Corben, Duncan Fegredo, Joshua Dysart and Jason Shawn Alexander

Witches and Satan are bad news, especially if you lived off the grid in the mid-twentieth century. Our main story is one of a man trying to redeem himself for the mistakes of his youth while Hellboy learns a bit about witchcraft. It's one of my favorite Hellboy stories. The volume also includes "In The Temple Of Moloch"  which is sort of flat, and "They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships" which allows us to spend more time with Abe Sapiens, and, yes, Another Pirate Story!


(If you are so compelled, this is where I would put Hellboy 7: The Troll Witch and Others, and Hellboy 12: The Bride Of Hell And Others, which are both, like "The Crooked Man",  stories from Hellboy's time wandering without the BPRD. They are completely skippable, though, and some of my least favorite of the Mignolaverse)


Episode 5: Seed Of Destruction
(Hellboy 1: Seed Of Destruction)
written by Mike Mignola and John Byrne, art by Mike Mignola

The original Hellboy story! This is the beginning of an actual arc featuring Rasputin from last season, and some of those residual Nazis. Plus, a sad goodbye to an old friend, and a hello to frogs, who will mostly be pestering our heros in season three. There's also my favorite comic panel of a dog in one of the backup stories.


Episode 6: Wake The Devil
(Hellboy 2: Wake The Devil, Hellboy 3: The Chained Coffin & Others)
written by, and art by Mike Mignola

Continuing the Rasputin & the residual Nazis arc, Hellboy also encounters the Thessaly women, and of course, vampires in Wake The Devil. The Chained Coffin & Others is largely skippable for now, except for the last story "Almost Colossus" which takes place during and immediately after Wake The Devil, why it's put all the way at the back of the volume, I couldn't tell you.


Episode 7: Being Human
(BPRD Being Human)

We're going to take a brief respite from the major storyline of the season to get a chance to better know the other BPRD characters. In this episode we get to learn more about Liz Shaw's origin, Abe Sapien learns to deal with the consequences of his actions, Hellboy and Roger The Homunculus work a case together, and we meet a medium named Johann Krauss.


Episode 8: Conqueror Worm
(Hellboy 5: Conqueror Worm)
written by, and art by Mike Mignola

Ok, back to Rasputin, Baba Yaga, and the residual Nazis storyline. We also get more time with Roger The Homunculus and his new friend...Lobster Johnson? Didn't think we were going to see him and Hellboy in the same episode.

 
Episode 9: Hollow Earth
(BPRD 1: Hollow Earth & Other Stories)
written by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski, and Brian McDonald, art by Ryan Sook, Matt Smith, Derek Thompson, Mike Mignola, and Curtis Arnold)

Hellboy has quit the BPRD, Liz Shaw has taken a leave of absence, and Abe Sapien and Roger The Homunculus are debating jumping ship as well.  But when Liz sends Abe an urgent message, he and Roger take the new recruit, Johann Kraus with them to rescue her. There are also some important side stories in this volume, and I would recommending reading it in reverse order. So, starting with "Drums Of The Dead", then "Abe Sapien Vs. Science", then "The Killer In My Skull" (hey, it's Lobster Johnson again!), and then ending with "Hollow Earth". It's a much more satisfying narrative experience. I have no idea why they chose to flip the order around.


Episode 10: Another Day At The Office
(BPRD 2: The Soul Of Venice & Other Stories)
written by Mike Mignola, Michael Avon Oeming, Miles Gunther, Brian Augustyn, Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, and Joe Harris, art by Michael Avon Oemin, Guy Davis, Scott Kolins, Adam Pollina, and Cameron Stewart

A bunch of short cases featuring Liz, Abe, Roger, and Johann. Not a ton of continuity, just some much needed character building time. Plus, art by Cameron Stewart who has colored pretty much, if not all of the episodes so far.


Episode 11: Three Wishes
(Hellboy 6: Strange Places)

We conclude the second season with Hellboy taking a trip to Africa. An ill-advised trip, as he ends up at the bottom of the sea for two years, arguing with Ursula about prophecy. When he finally gets back to the surface, well, lots of prophecy talk, including letting him know that while he was under water The Plague Of Frogs hit, and since Plague Of Frogs is the title of the third season, it's time to bow out for a bit.


Season Two is somewhere between 11 and 13 episodes, depending on whether you bothered with The Troll Witch, The Bride Of Hell, or the stories in The Chained Coffin that weren't "Almost Colossus"

I read my first Hellboy comic about fifteen years ago. I bought a few of the early trades, enjoyed them, and made it a point to buy all new Mike Mignola collections whenever they came out.  But at some point, I stopped reading them.

I've had a few customers ask me about reading order. And mostly I just tell them to read the Hellboy books in order, then BPRD, then BPRD Hell On Earth, and then Hellboy in Hell. I'd always admit that I hadn't read Witchfinder, or Lobster Johnson, or any of the other spin-offs.

A year or so ago, I looked up what the proper chronological reading order was via several websites, and they mostly spat the same uninformed advice that I'd been giving. After a couple of discussions with Jeff Stumpo about the BPRD series, I decided it was finally time for me to a deeper dive into The Mignolaverse (the unofficial name for  Hellboy, BPRD, and their spin-offs.

The Internet was once again, mostly unhelpful. The choices were: Just Read Them In The Order Of The Numbers On The Spine You Nerd, or lists that were so focused on chronology that they recommend putting a book down mid-story, and picking up another volume for a few pages, before returning to the original one. That's no way to read comics. And since the stories weren't written chronologically, nevermind collected chronologically, I decided  it was time to do some reading and research of my own.

So, here's another conceptual TV Series chronology.  It's four seasons long because there are four large arcs to the series so far, with a fifth one just beginning, and probably taking years before it's wrapped up.

Season One takes us from the 1800s into the 1950s. None of the show's major characters show up in the first few episodes. But the main characters of  each episodes will return during later seasons, and I've only included their most interesting and important adventures. You also get to see baby Hellboy grow into rebellious teen Hellboy during this season, which is an absolute blast. You may also note that there are a couple of episodes which just say "missing", this is because there are clearly stories that have to fill in a couple of tiny gaps that haven't been released yet. I'll update them  when they come out.

Episode 1: Witchfinder
(Witchfinder 1: In The Service Of Angels, Witchfinder 2: Long & Gone Forever)
written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Ben Stenbeck and John Severin

A nineteenth century English boy gets accidently involved with the occult when, during a search for lost children, he's bitten by a werewolf, who he then kills. He grows up to be an occult celebrity in England, eventually tracking a case down to Nevada. As you might guess by the title, there are witches involved in these stories, but it's more about dismantling folk tale tropes by changing their settings and giving some thought as to what the evil characters have to gain by giving them somewhat smaller scopes then Taking Over The World. There's also an interesting placement of how religion can interact with profane magic without going wildly-over-the-top in either direction. This is easily the best western witchcraft examination of privilege and Christianity that I've seen in a comic book.



Episode 2: Rise Of The Black Flame
(Rise Of The Black Flame, Lobster Johnson 2: The Burning Hand)
written by Mike Mignola John Arcudi and Chris Roberson, art by Christopher Mitten and Tonci Zonjic

Young girls start go missing in Siam. When some of those girls turn out to be British, your early 20th century racist cops go looking for them, and end up meeting some of the Witchfinder's associates. They combine their efforts​, and end up tragically contributing to the origin of the Black Flame. A few years later, a Batmannish vigilante named Lobster Johnson is trying to wipe out the mob. After losing some pivotal battles, the mob starts to work with some occult experts, and, lo must Lobster Johnson battle The Black Flame in order to save his city.



Episode 3: The Voice Of The Dragon
(Rasputin: The Voice Of The Dragon)
written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Christopher Mitten

As I'm compiling this chronology, this book isn't out yet, but it's shown up in Previews. This volume is intended to introduce us to future villain Rasputin, as well as the closest thing Season 1 has to a protagonist, Trevor Bruttenholm, future founder of the BPRD and eventual caretaker of Hellboy. 



Episode 4: Sledgehammer 44
(Lobster Johnson 1: The Iron Prometheus, Sledgehammer 44)
written by Mike Mignola and Jason Arcudi, art by Jason Armstrong and Jason Latour

Nazis, magic suits, dragons, and action fill these two stories. They're both fairly weak entries in the Mignolaverse but the stories resonate later in the series, and the art for The Iron Prometheus is fantastic. Imagine if the early Iron Man suit were in the hands of a well-intentioned but not scientifically trained wannabe hero, instead of an alcoholic millionaire.



Episode 5: Vampire Sturm
(BPRD 9: 1946)
written by Mike Mignola and Josh Dysart, art by Paul Azaceta

During 1944, Project Ragnarock resulted in the appearance of a demon child named Hellboy. He was adopted by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, who went on to found the Bureau For Paranormal Research and Development (BPRD). Now that the war is over Bruttenholm returns to Germany to try and learn more about Project Ragnarock and Hellboy. Unfortunately, some Russian soldiers, the remnants of a German army of Vampires and some other paranormal villains have other plans in mind.



Episode 6: A Game Of Catch
(BPRD 13: 1947)
written by Mike Mignola and Josh Dysart, art by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon

BPRD, now based out of a New Mexico airbase, sends some new recruits on a mission to France to learn about what a two hundred year old opera has to do with a train car load of dead former Nazis. Featuring a few familiar demony faces from Vampir Sturm, and introducing some new humans to Brutteholm's paranormal team. Also, adorable young Hellboy just wants to play a game of catch while Bruttenholm deals with the consequences of his latest mission.



Episode 7 : Enkalados
(BPRD 1948)
written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Max Fiumara

BPRD relocates yet again to Connecticut, but the new members we met in 1947 travel with Bruttenholm to Nevada, where they research the appearance of monsters who may or may not have a connection to tests of the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, Hellboy prepares to meet President Truman. There is some great conversation in this episode about the difference between theoretical physics and magic, and how one can be proved while the other can't.



Episode 8: The Midnight Circus and Other Tales
(BPRD Vampire, Hellboy Midnight Circus)
written by Mike Mignola, Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, art by Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, and Duncan Fegredo

The conclusion to Agent Anders's arc that started in "A Game Of Catch". This will surely be the last we hear of vampires for a while. Also, Hellboy runs away from the BPRD to a place that's just as weird and demonic as any place the BPRD ends up.


Episode 9 missing
there will be a story here which should give some sort of context for why Bruttenholm decides to allow Hellboy in the BPRD in the next episode



Episode 10: Anchunga
(Hellboy & The BPRD 1952)
written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, art by Alex Maleev

Hellboy's first case with the BPRD takes them to Brazil where a series of murders could either be connected to a haunted prison or a sound studio for propaganda films. Not both, obviously. 



Episode 11: Beyond The Fences
(Hellboy & The BPRD 1953)
written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Ben Stenbeck, Paolo Rivera, and Michael Walsh

More early adventures of Hellboy with the human BPRD.  The crux of the stories offering more information about the monsters who showed up in Enkalados. 



Episode 12: Black Sun, Ghost Moon
(Hellboy & The BPRD 1954)
written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Brian Churilla, Stephen Green, and Richard Corben

A slightly less noobish Hellboy travels the world with his human BPRD agents. We encounter even more damned dirty apes and the threat of the "occult Cold War" that's been foreshadowed in "Vampire Sturm" and "Beyond The Fences". As of this posting, the collection isn't yet available, but most of the issues are already out.


​
Episode 13: Occult Intelligence
(Hellboy & The BPRD 1955)
written by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Shawn Martinbrough

The story for this episode/collection hasn't quite started yet, but 1956 is the beginning of the second major arc for Hellboy, as well as the BPRD, so this should be a really important adventure that ends with a major shuffling of the staff of the BPRD.

​
Season One is probably 13 episodes, maybe 14 depending on whether Mignola explains the shuffle in Hellboy & The BPRD 1955, or if there will be a Hellboy & The BPRD 1956....which doesn't seem likely at this point.