This Blog's Purport... Conclusion

A strange thing started happening in the mid-1990s/early 2000s whilst I was away from comics. Older series from the Big Two began spawning progeny all over the place...

...and some of the longest running mags from Marvel began rebooting (and rebooting again) with new Number 1s each time.

The progeny posed no problem for completing my now grandiosely-titled Masterlist (nee Reading Order), but my efforts were "complicated" by Marvel's annoying re-numbering trend.

How should I distinguish 1996's Captain America #1 from 2002's Captain America #1 on my list? Should I identify them by Volume number?

Captain America (v.2) #1 

Or should I add the volume date in parentheses (like comiXology does for series on their site)?

Captain America (1996-1998) #1

The examples of how this dilemma has been handled online are plentiful but inconsistent and therefore not helpful.

My biggest problem arose, however, because I vacillated back and forth between strategies.

I started adding volume numbers to the half-completed list (and thus had to go back and change all the previous entries to align with this strategy).

Then I decided that adding the volume numbers was making the entries too bulky and ugly (yes, ugly). I wanted to streamline the entries, so I went back again and deleted all the volume numbers I had just added.

(This, unfortunately, is emblematic of the approach I have employed throughout this project.)

It did not occur to me during this lengthy revision process that I was creating a reading list based on CHRONOLOGICAL order and therefore there was ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to identify either the volume number or the volume date on my reading list.

(I swear to God, I used to be a smart person.)


Luckily, some good things came out of the two decades I had missed in comics.

DC and Marvel started new imprints (Vertigo in 1993 and ICON in 2004) for more mature subject matter that the industry's own Comics Code would not allow in their regular mags...










...and new publishers such as IMAGE entered the fray offering creators the chance to own the rights to the characters and stories they would create.

All of which has left me with plenty of comics I'd still like to collect...

So, though I may claim here that I have finally finished my Reading Order (and thus am ready to begin writing my blog), I know it will never truly be finished.

Now, how to begin...?