I essentially work for a comic book store. Yet aside from a couple of issues of Spawn I bought when I was about 11, I’ve never really been in to comics.
I got into some Marvel titles with the Civil War event a few years ago when I discovered that you could ahem find ahem comics on the internet. But I always found the whole thing daunting, since unless you were prepared to read through 10 years worth of back store, you invariably started in the middle.
It’s actually worse than that, a combination of changing writers, editors, and the industry practice of rewriting history tends to make comics very confusing – especially if you’re trying to take it all in at once.
With the advent of the iPad (I have one for development) I’m getting into some comics again, but mostly paying for them now. While there are always newer, less convoluted comics around, the same generally holds true of the classics, you always feel like you’re missing something when you jump into a series part way through.
This is were DC have played a winning card from the point of view of those of us getting into comics off the back of the digital distribution which is rapidly coming in to place. They have just re-launched their entire base universe.
Starting from the 31st of August, DC are bring out 52 brand new issue #1s, not baggage, no back existing back story to keep track of, just like if you picked up the comic when it was first released – at least that’s the promise.
I’ve grabbed a couple from Comixology and read them, and it’s nice to know that you’re as up to date as anyone, at least with respect to this current iteration. For the time being at least, I think I may be getting into some DC comics.