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So, when I was younger I was never that into comics, probably because I never had the means of getting or reading them. To fix that, I started reading comics about 3 years ago. I started with Star Wars mainly because that was the franchise I loved. I never cared for superheros that much because from what I've seen of most movies, they were mostly about action and very little about personal relationships. The Arrowverse TV shows and Tom Holland's Spiderman changed that for me, and they still remain my favorite versions of superheros in DC and Marvel. But my preconceptions of the comics still persisted. I'm also quite picky with the art styles that I like, so there's a lot of art styles that I don't find attractive in comics, and they are mostly the older comic styles; I like more realism and shading, not the flat shapes and noisiness that a lot of older comics have. I'm most picky about the coloring of comics. Neon does not go with pastel colors and black (looking at you, "Flashpoint - Secret Seven" colorists). In fact, don't do neon ever please!
So anyways, I decided this week that I was going to fix my lack of knowledge of Marvel and DC comics, but first, let us get some confusing terms out of the way:
Issues are about 20-30 pages and they are a single instance, like an episode, of an overarching series. They can be released weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Volumes is where we get into confusing territory, as the word is used in multiple ways:
The most confusing aspect is figuring out whether a volume number refers to the reboot/series-instance of a title, or if it refers to the volume of a tpb/compendium/omnibus. You have to use context clues, I guess. If a volume number occurs with TPB or the start year of the instance, then it's referring to a volume of a tpb/compendium/omnibus. If the volume number just occurs with a title and no date, then it's probably just referring to a series instance of a title.
To put it simply, The Flash volume 4 has 9 volumes of tpbs. TPB Volume 1 of The Flash Volume 4 is titled "Move Forward", from 2012. Whoever created the terminology for this should never title things ever again, because holy jeez, this is just stupid. Instead of calling series instances by volumes, I'd rather just name them by their dates. The Flash Volume 4 would be The Flash (2012) and The Flash Volume 3 would be The Flash (2010). There, simple... until you get two series instances that start in the same year...
One of the first things I started reading about 2 days ago were the very beginnings of Marvel: Human Torch, Sub-mariner, and The Angel, back in the 1940s. These were decent and alright, and it was interesting to see the beginnings of Marvel, but I didn't enjoy them that much. I also didn't realize Human Torch is the guy in the Fantastic Four until I looked it up.
Anyways, I read the first two issues of Marvel (Mystery) Comics and then I went to the first issue of Captain America. I noticed the origin stories are extremely brief in these issues.
I was then going to move to the Silver Age with the start of Fantastic Four, but I still don't care for the art style, so I decided to move to DC for now.
Before I moved on, I did end up reading my physical copy of The Guardians of the Galaxy #1 from 1990 that I got as a gift like 10 years ago or so, just because. I was never interested in it only because the movies seemed cheesy with all the jokes, but the comic turned out different from that, using the first iteration of the team rather than the second (which prompted for online research), so it was actually pretty cool. Although, the paper it was printed on was cheap as hell, and some of the ink was rubbing off onto the other page in a couple places, so the actual art was a bit hard to look at. The art style seemed a little too busy and dull-colored for my tastes too, but I'm not sure if that's just the result of the paper it was printed on.
I was planning on starting with the New 52, because that's the soft reboot, but I ended up wanting to read what led up to the New 52, so I decided to start with Flashpoint, but in order to do that, I had to know how Barry Allen came back, so then I went back to The Flash: Rebirth series. I could have went all the way back to when Barry Allen died originally, but I can always go back to that whenever.
The Flash: Rebirth was really good. It summarized a few details from The Flash's origin, and it shared some similarities with the Arrowverse's version of The Flash, which was cool to see. I do still prefer the overall story of the Flash in the Arrowverse only because the TV show did an excellent job of having Eobard be The Flash's mentor from the very beginning. I kinda wish the comics would have done that, tbh, because it's a much more compelling story, but hindsight's 20-20.
Anyways, then we get to Volume 3 of The Flash, and that introduced me to the Rogues and the Renegades of the 25th Century, which was a fun storyline. This reminded me of The Legends of Tomorrow, and so I ended up reading the wikis about what that was based on only to find out that Legends of Tomorrow is very loosely based on The Time Masters comics, but like, very very loosely based, and sharing very few characters, lol.
Anyways, now I'm on Flashpoint, which starts the end of this era and leads into the New 52. I did learn some things while reading some issues involved in the Flashpoint event, mainly in Time Masters: Vanishing Point.
So, the DC universe in the comics used to be an original Multiverse that had an infinite number of universes. This changed, however, with Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985 rebooted DC continuity to fix inconsistencies and resulted in a single unified DC Universe; five of the universes in the previous multiverse were merged into one universe after the destruction of the original Pre-Crisis Multiverse, resulting in a New Earth. Barry Allen, the Flash of the silver age, dies in this event. This New Earth universe, however, was unstable.
Hypertime was an interconnection of realities where time diverged at a certain point from the main universe, and occasionally merged back into each other. Events in the central timeline created diverging paths, branches, that resulted in separate timelines. It was first discovered by Rip Hunter of the Linear Men.
The Infinite Crisis sequel event then was followed by the 52 comic that reset the multiverse into 52 universes by revealing the secret creation of 52 identical parallel universes at the end of Infinite Crisis. The 52 universes have their history modified by Mister Mind, creating 52 uniquely different universes in the 'local' 52 Multiverse. The Multiversity reveals that the creation of this 52 Multiverse was done via Hypertime. Each of the 52 universes now also have within them alternate dimensions, as well as alternate timelines and microverses. Final Crisis then launches new series' based in this new multiverse.
This then leads into 2011's Flashpoint event, which changes the entire history of the 52 universes in New Earth Flash (Barry Allen)'s attempt to restore the timestream to its intended nature (pre-Crisis), and leads into the New 52 due to the interference of Pandora and Dr. Manhattan, who merged three realities into one and removed 10 years from the timeline, respectively. In this era, many earths have their history changed, but some earths retained their pre-Crisis history. This results in Prime Earth.
In 2014's The Multiversity, Multiverse-2, which is identified later in 2021's Infinite Fronteir as the remains of the pre-Crisis Multiverse, was destroyed by the Empty Hand. The Multiversity also reveals that the creation of the 52 Multiverse was merely creating new Hypertime branches, and showed that Hypertime still exists.
The Convergence event in 2015 then brings the pre-Crisis multiverse back by going back in time and preventing its destruction during Crisis on Infinite Earths. The pre-Crisis Multiverse then exists in an evolved state as a separate multiverse from the post-Flashpoint Multiverse. This multi-multiverse consists of all of the past multiverses coexisting alongside each other, including the original infinite multiverse pre-Crisis, the New 52 multiverse, Hypertime, the 52 Multiverse (before Flashpoint), and the "evolved" Pre-Crisis Multiverse.
This leads to 2016's DC Rebirth relaunch, which restored the DC Universe to its form prior to Flashpoint, but retaining the continuity of the New 52. The residents of the Multiverse now remember every past event. This relaunched all titles and seated the New 52 continuity back into the pre-52 continuity. Doomsday Clock was also launched as part of DC Rebirth. In 2017, DC removes the Rebirth branding to signify that Rebirth *is* the DC Universe.
Rebirth reveals that an outside force altered history to remove 10 years of history from the timeline resulting in the New 52 timeline with younger characters. This history change was *not* due to Barry Allen merging several alternate timelines, as was presented in Flashpoint. In 2017's Superman Reborn, Superman merges the "timelines" pre- and post-Flashpoint into a single fictional reality, becoming the current multiverse. This resulted in two different Superman being fused into one.
Dark Nights: Metal in 2017 revealed the concept of Dark Universes; that each reality of the multiverse has a negative counterpart created by the fears of the universe's people.
In a followup to DC Rebirth (2016-2017) and Dark Nights: Metal, 2018's New Justice was a relaunch of DC's entire line of comics.
In 2019, an issue of Doomsday Clock revealed that Pre-Crisis Earth-One and New 52's Prime Earth still exist as Earth-1985 and Earth-52 in the current multiverse, as a way of preserving every era of Superman.
Dark Nights: Death Metal in 2020 introduced the concept of an Omniverse that consists of multiple multiverses, each with their own universes.
In a followup to New Justice, 2021's Infinite Frontier was another relaunch of DC's entire line of comics that dealt with the repurcussions of the events of DC Rebirth and the expansion of the DC Multiverse into a larger Omniverse. It revealed that Multiverse-2, which was destroyed by the Empty Hand in The Multiversity, was the remains of the pre-Crisis Multiverse. In this universe, many superheros have multiple people that share the same title, including Batgirl, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin.
In 2022, Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, results in revivals of earths from the original pre-Crisis multiverse into the current/local multiverse, removing the 52-cap on the multiverse. The Justice League are also brought back from their supposed deaths.
The 2022 sequel to Flashpoint, called Flashpoint Beyond, has the Vigilante Batman, Thomas Wayne, wake up in the Flashpoint timeline to prevent the death of his son, Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne of the current/local multiverse steals the snowglobe that houses the Flashpoint timeline to prevent Thomas Wayne, his father, from being erased.
Flashpoint Beyond also reveals that the Omniverse and Hypertime exist alongside each other in a larger Divine Continuum. Hypertime consists of worlds that were created by divergences in the timestream. It is possible that every iteration of every world in the Omniverse has a counterpart in Hypertime.
2023's Dawn of DC succeeds Infinite Frontier as another initiative of DC's entire comic line, and it continues into 2024.