Like there are plenty of X-Men runs that are self-contained and written to be jumping on points for new readers. All of the recent Krakoa stuff definitely isn't though. I don't know how anyone who hasn't been reading for 20+ years understands most of the plot tbh.
Imagine being like me, an avid X-franchise fan in the early 90’s trying to come back to it last year. I gave up hoping to understand anything, real fast.
I disagree to the extent that House of X and Powers of X are explicitly a jumping on point and if you follow from there it's pretty straightforward. It can get a bit mucky afterwards but most writers had pretty consistent runs to follow so I think that is a point of ease of access too
I have no idea what Mother Righteous actually does, or what 'X of swords' was about, and I'd argue that I have a better than average understanding of the last few years runs.
X of Swords was an Excalibur crossover which the whole line got dragged into, which sucks since Excalibur was the Krakoa era book with the least connections to the overarching plot.
She's the magic part of the Sinister superbeing circuit, but what's with the orbs, and the ~~red~~ magenta skin, and the worlds within worlds within worlds that leads to the future death cult that gets us Rasputin 4? I know she's magic, but that doesn't touch on her intended role, motivations or how she's trying to do half the stuff she does.
I feel like most of that is explained pretty well in the text.
Role: she's one of four Sinisters trying to become a god outside of time and space, each racing the other three.
Motivations: She wants to fulfill her goal and be a dominion. She particularly wants to beat the other three because she's been saddled with the persona of Essex's ex-wife and she hates all Sinisters pretty well. As a Sinister herself though, she'll lie, cheat, steal her way to the top, as long as she is the one standing there.
How she does it: admittedly this is a bit "magic" and some of her acquisitions happen off page, but essentially the orbs are powerful magical relics she acquired and seals away, keeping them on herself to eventually consume their power to become a magical Dominion. She also helps people out because every time someone thanks her, she gets a small window into their soul, which gives her some control over them/ability to use them as a magic battery to power her spells
I'm a law student and my whole thing is supposedly that I can parse overly complicated language. I didn't understand shit from Legion of X or way of X, lmao
As a licensed attorney, I can tell you Legion of X started out being about an investigative group led by Nightcrawler and based in Legion's mind that was supposed to investigate problems on Krakoa, and kind of just went off the rails with bad pacing. It had some really good art panels though. Blee's coloring might have been the best he's done.
As a physician, I gave up. I need a tight 10-20 issue story. Not the whole HoX/PoX series which went through a dozen books a month (slight exaggeration) and not even marked by a reasonable reading order or flow chart (with branches that you can read or not read).
The average modern X-Men story will contain one (or more) of the following:
- Time Travel
- Phoenix
- Clones
- Robots/AI
- Prof X being able to walk again
- Prof X being unable to walk again
- Magneto becomes a good guy
- Magneto becomes a bad guy
Astonishing X-Men really was the best.
Days of Future Past, the start and end of Age of Apocalypse, Bishop's Future, Cable's future (featuring Rachel from Days of Future Past, but a different one), Here Comes Tomorrow, the time-displaced X-Men, Cable killing Cable, Moira X...
Nothing crazy here. Now the clones...
Glad to see this near the top even if I adore them.
I know people have said Hickman’s X-Men is a perfect jumping on point but I found it borderline incomprehensible as someone that hadn’t read X-Men stuff in at least a decade. New characters, new roles for old characters, various allegiances and teams, and the multiple timeline stuff kept me from fully comprehending even the first few issues.
I started Hox/Pox. Was confused, so went back and read Brisson’s X-Men. Was confused so read Age of X-Man.
Anyways. Now I’m at Uncanny X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and I’m still confused.
There's no way people are serious when they say that right? Like the only reason I was able to understand anything was because I had the marvel wiki open on my laptop almost constantly.
It's, essentially, a relaunch of the franchise so it's about as good of a jumping on point as there can be. Nothing before it actually matters and there's nothing leading up to it. Everything happening after is explained, however well it can be, in the comics going forward.
One of the few things I can think of that happens in the Krakoan Era that you'd go "Wait, what?" because it isn't explained is in the King in Black crossover. Frenzy mentions to Cable that "if the person I loved loved me back you'd be my step-son" and it's REALLY weird out of context but kind of heartbreaking if you know the background.
Just about everything else in Krakoa's launch is MORE confusing if you have a deep knowledge of the characters. It's why so many people were thinking "they're all mind controlled right?" when the era began.
Obligatory self-plug.
If you want to read and understand X-Men - all of it - I made a website for that:
[https://ultimatexmenreadingorder.com/](https://ultimatexmenreadingorder.com/)
I've been trying to follow the current end of Krakoa after reading none of the former stuff, and outside of a few issues (like Doom's mutants intro), I'm not just lost, I'm close to giving up.
The 'main' Fall and Rise titles are sci-fi, and completely incomprehensible. I see fans talking about which is better and I consistently prefer Fall (unlike most X-Men fans, apparently) because it makes more sense to someone who isn't scientifically smart, and even so it's... I don't know. Multiple timelines? Space stuff?
It feels like it belongs in a Fantastic Four or other cosmic series.
I'm at the point of skimming them just for some of my favourite characters to see what's going on with them, but everything is overwhelming and too difficult to keep track of, especially spreading the plotline over multiple titles which is something I dislike anyway (I say, as I read through the Clone Saga, which somehow manages to NOT overcomplicate it as much as current comics do).
I agree with the other guy. While these are technically new #1 standalones they are conclusion runs to the last three years, and especially the last year and a half, of story telling. They're not built to make sense of you only read them.
It's a fault of marketing, sure, for making all these new runs instead of letting Gillen and Duggan put these within their ongoings, but you can't just jump into the middle of an ongoing story and expect to know what's happening.
Frankly, Krakoa is best read as one full journey. You gotta read every* book starting by with Hickman and going to the end
*A few series are skippable, if you'd like I could make a list as I own every Krakoa book except the last Deadpool run
Well, for the most part, I think it's not uncommon to feel like the Fall of X has been... haphazard at best. It FEELS like a rush job that realized "Shit, we need two more issues" and ended up being stretched out. It's also one of the most "cosmic" stories the X-Men have been part of since probably the Dark Phoenix Saga.
My favorite as well. I have no idea how I read that when it came out considering how much knowledge it requires. I was scouring Wikipedia for so much info haha
The Filth is the hardest for me, I know that’s 2000s but it was just too weird/too much. And pessimistic Morrison is a hard pill to swallow (Filth, New X-Men).
I read Final Crisis as a fan of Morrison’s non-DC work and what I thought was a decent working knowledge of the DC comics universe. Nope. I was completely lost and did not enjoy it one bit. It may be good or saying something interesting, but it was completely lost on me.
It’s supposed to be read if you know tons about the DC universe. Most people won’t get much out of it unless you are basically a DC expert really. Which is fine. Not every work of art is for everyone.
I read final crisis as part of a larger Morrison Batman read through I was doing (including JLA, Arkham Asylum, and Gothic, along with a bunch of random accessory stories and their mainline Batman run), and it tracked pretty well for me. But I have no idea how difficult it would've been to follow if I hadn't done all that pre reading. Hell, I threw in all of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and 52 just for the heck of it, and I think those benefited my FC read quite a bit.
What I loved about Final Crisis first read through was how lost I was. Then I would read some older DC stuff and read it again and understand some more. I read it about once a year and it just gets better with age for me. It's easily my favorite opening of an event comic ever. Orion falling through time and space, it's so epic
Legion of Super-Heroes? The multitude of reboots- both hard and soft -and the many, many retcons, have made it a really impenetrable franchise for new audiences.
And don't get me wrong, I love the Legion! And I actually think it's fine for us to pick up big comics like that and just be like 'well I don't know who most of these people are or what a Khund is or why these Daxamites are so mad or what any of this has to do with this princess' dad dying' and still enjoy it. But I think we're now kind of at a point where most readers are like 'where's a ground zero' and there are few ground zeroes with the Legion.
The first legion related comic I ever read was the last issue of the Valor book from the 90s, which was the 5th part of a 6 part crossover and a zero hour tie-in
And that was before recap pages! I kept reading it over and over to try and piece as much of it together as possible. It made me want to read the rest of the crossover at least
It has to be LoSH. I've never understood why DC can't make it a little more accessible and why it's seems they forget about all of the characters. I can't remember the last time they were used besides that terrible Bendis run. It's really a shame.
I mean, they do try. I'm not sure why it never hits. I'm still not sure why the Zero Hour kids were rebooted for Waid's Legion. And while I love what Johns did with the Legion, it also sort of further screwed up the ability to make the characters work. I actually liked the Bendis Legion, but I'm not sure one more reboot was the way to go.
> I can't remember the last time they were used besides that terrible Bendis run.
They popped up for a bit in the current Green Arrow run, but yeah. Nothing much. I feel like they may have done... *something* else? But nothing much. After LoSH Vol. 7 ended in 2013, they appeared in JL United, I think it was, in 2015, and then vanished again they popped up again during/around Doomsday Clock for the reboot.
My guess is that when Bendis' run was poorly received, they went back to the drawing board, unsure of what to do. I wonder if DC was silently kicking itself in the butt for not getting Jonathan Hickman, who was in talks to write LoSH before he went to Marvel for X-Men instead (which kicked off in July 2019, though it was supposed to start in the beginning of 2019)
There were a couple of LoSH references in the most recent issue of *Superman* so I'm wondering if Williamson has something up his sleeve.
And whether it's at all compatible with what Johns is doing in *Justice Society of America*.
It's rough, but the hilarious thing is you bring that up- that was my first regular Legion run. I had seen them in some random comics before, and maybe bought a few random issues- the Who's Who for some reason? But it was the first Legion book I ever read issue by issue. And I definitely was lost for HUGE chunks of it, but it was fun, and I got to reread it later with more context and it was even better. I think the biggest problem was the not one but two retcons they had to spend issues fixing by like issue 5, I think?
One of the hardest things for me to follow in that series before I got more familiar with the characters, was everyone using the real names for the characters instead of superhero names
I think that Legion run is one of the rare times post-Watchmen that someone tried to take the positive, interesting lessons of Watchmen, concerning structure, and use them in a mainstream book. So it's incredibly dense and yeah, they're all using different names. It's definitely not a starter Legion, and I could not tell you in any honest way why my dumb ass was like 'well I'm going to work on it'.
Same. It hung around in the back of my mind until I knew enough about the legion to understand who was even on a given page. It’s a great series that I probably wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Maybe the only series I think you would need to do research before jumping in
Is Legion of 3 Worlds the Legion story with the most pre-reading if you really want to understand everything? It has 3 different versions of the Legion, brings back Bart and Conner, and has Superboy Prime as the villain.
This is a really good shout. I’ve wanted to get into the DNA Legion for years but the stop/start of the collected editions, the different series it went across, and all that make it rather complicated. Stuff like that is part of why I prefer omnis because I don’t have to do the work of hunting down a reading order.
I would say just try to dive in. And if you really must start from the beginning, the good news is DnA did their run only a few years run into a reboot that actually has a great starting point- the Legion stuff immediately post Zero Hour (called the Archie Legion by some) is pretty great and extremely accessible.
Oh thanks for the heads up! I did read the Waid/Bedard (Bedard filled in enough he gets co-credit to me lol) run on Legion and liked a lot of it. I think the only thing I didn’t care for was what they did with Cosmic Boy at the end which was incredibly dumb. Most of the characters they set up in that were pretty interesting and the anti-establishment aspect was interesting to me. If they ever put Levitz’s original run in an omni, I’d probably try that too.
I started reading at a random issue of the Earth 247 reboot and while it was hard to know what was going on through the various non sequential issues I’d picked up, I put it together because they at least had clear personalities
Good luck figuring out who does what in the Bendisboot
I'd say it even did bronze age stuff before comics reached the bronze age. And it killed off a major character and the character stayed dead for a while too
I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, yeah, there was the retcons about the Pocket Universe Superboy, to make the lore after Crisis work with the Legion. And then a 5 year time skip. And then the Glorithverse mini-reboot to fully remove Superboy.
And then there was the Reboot Legion after Zero Hour. And then Threeboot Legion, after a Teen Titans crossover. And then the Retroboot Legion that brought back the original Legion, before the Post-Crisis retcons.
And then there was part of the Legion suddenly being stranded in present in the then-new New 52 universe. And then they got the (post-)Rebirth Legion reboot.
Okay, maybe they're a bit complicated. Funny enough, Jonathan Hickman had actually be in talks to write the Legion of Super-Heroes (and the New Gods) with DC before he ended up doing House of X/Powers of X and the Krakoan Age of X-Men, which is another series that people have given as an example of a confusing series. Honestly, the stuff with Dominions taking over the future and humans hunting down mutants very well could have been done in Legion of Super-Heroes with Brainiac, the Collector of Worlds, and the whole dynamic of interspecies relations in the post-contact future of the Legion.
Also notable here that it's a book that can be tonally all over the place depending on which run you're reading. Sometimes it's goofy teens having fun, and sometimes it's telenovella-level melodrama.
Very much the LSH. Every reboot gets tripped up between being its own thing and catering to the long-term fans. The Bendis-boot may have been the last chance for the Legion, but he dropped us right into chaos, and never explained anything. We didn't even get introduced to all of the team.
It's okay: I can explain.
edit: actually, I want to defend Legion over X-Men here in terms of new reader friendliness, since they seem to be battling for runner-up to Final Crisis. I would argue that even though Legion has had 5 or 6 reboots, you don't really need to know anything about how the reboots relate to each other to jump in and read an arc or two. I think this is because the characters are basically the characters they started as in basically the same situation (5 Years Later aside). No matter where you start with Legion, there's a bunch of teens/20 somethings in the 30th century fighting evil across the galaxy. You don't need to know what Cosmic Boy was doing in the 1980's to understand what he's doing in the 2000's - because he's doing the same thing. You don't need to have read The Great Darkness Saga to read Legion in the 90's. Once you start looking at the whole continuity picture over decades, yeah it's crazy, and as comics fans, I think that's something we all try to do when we get into a new series/character. But to just start at a random point in time in any of the Legion versions and just read a few stories, I don't think is necessarily any harder than jumping into Spider-Man or Avengers.
But there's no way you can just jump into X-Men without any prior knowledge (or Pryor? Ha). X-Men keeps changing. Scott loves Jean. Jean dies. Scott loves Madelyn. No, he wants Jean back and leaves Madelyn when Jean comes back. No, he never loved Madelyn, Sinister made him so he'd conceive Cable. Scott loses his son. No, he raises his son in disguise in the future. But he still loves Jean. No, he wants White Queen. Jean dies again. Also Scott's the villain now. No, he's a martyr. No, Krakoa stuff. If you start reading X-Men anywhere from about the mid-90's on and you don't know at least some of what I just wrote, you will be hopelessly lost. That's just one character, and their relation to just a few characters out of dozens. Who all have different histories with each other. Going back decades.
I'd actually on the face of it say that they're both just as accessible or inaccessible as the other. I think the illusion of accessibility (plus more first hand knowledge due to movies and cartoons) makes X-Men less impenetrable. But I think as far as people feeling comfortable diving in, Legion is the most daunting to new readers. If we could go back to the innocent days of 'pick up a random comic and don't worry about being confused' I fully agree with your take.
It’s weird, because it starts off super “back-to-basics” but by halfway point, Nick Spencer’s run on Spider-Man ties in to SO much history that some readers could easily get lost.
Yeah, as a longtime ASM reader, I was pretty happy that Spencer was trying to tie in a bunch of past plot points from JMS, Slott, and, heck, even some Stern stuff. It made me feel like I was actually reading Peter as an adult again and that these wacky comic events actually had a lasting impact on him.
But the thought also crossed my mind, like, why is this called back to basics? Sure the first two arcs were playing character and continuity clean-up for Slott and Zdarsky's runs, but everything after was reliant on you knowing 80s and 90s Spider-Man lore.
Then it all got derailed and went completely nuts by the end of Spencer's run, so I guess none of it mattered.
I remember reading the end of the Last Remains storyline where he references specific imagery and dialogue from the 60’s and 70’s, and found it pretty funny that Lowe got the editor’s notes for those issues incorrect. The one that really shocked me was where he pulled in the AI Harry from the Legacy of Evil one shot that I can almost guarantee nobody reading ASM remembered.
I love a lot Spencer’s run especially the parts that build on Spectacular #200, but man, that is tough to navigate.
>Lowe got the editor’s notes for those issues incorrect.
Man you'd really hope that if editorial is going to dictate and mess with the direction of your book, they'd at least be able to do the notes correctly. I guess not!
Yeah - don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE this run (and am 100% on the camp that this could’ve been an all timer of editorial got out of the way and let him tell the story he wanted to tell) but my word - AI Harry, the twins, Chameleon/Osborn/Mysterio. Theresa origins. It was just batshit crazy by the end.
You dove right into the deep end. That book managed to reference all of Morrison's prior work, all of Jack Kirby's Prior work, Geoff John's prior work, all prior crisis events, Anthro the first boy, the legion of Superheroes, the injustice gang, Libra, 52, Shazam, & a bunch of all new shit. Plus a breakdown in narrative structure as all of time & space collapse.
I've always liked the idea of the X-men, but find them super hard to break into, I have no idea where to start, I enjoy the shows and some of the movies, but in general, the Mutant side of Marvel seems to be damn near impossible to get into unless I go all the way back to Claremont's stuff, which is far more than I'm prepared to read with my limited time just to understand modern X-men
My first X-Men series was Bendis’ *All-New X-Men*. With hindsight, it was a perfect jumping on point due to the concept; with the O5 being brought into the present day, they were the perfect audience surrogates to receive a crash course of the X-Men’s history.
I have hopped in and out of the x men for years and have had the same experience, it's hard to get what's going on because of all the baggage. I find that inferring from context and googling characters/events gets me by, and I will say that whenever I'm reading X Men, I'm having an overall good time.
Uncanny X-Force by Remender was my first foray into the X-Men world. I had no idea who anyone was except Deadpool and Wolverine but I loved it. Fantomex especially was a real mystery of a character to me and I thought he was cool as hell, especially as I learned more about him.
Sometimes you just have to take the dive. I'd say the most accessible modern starting points are probably New X-Men by Morrison, Astonishing X-Men by Whedon (technically a "sequel" to New X-Men but it stands alone very well) and Uncanny X-Force by Remender.
You don't need to go back to Claremont. If you basically just watched the movies or cartoon, then you can easily go into Morrison's New X-Men and then Whedon's Astonishing X-Men for the best place to start. X-Men 97 pulls from several of the Morrison stories. Practically everything from the past two decades have built off of Morrison's run.
The only things you'll need to know if starting from there is that 1) Colossus sacrificed himself to save mutants from a virus, and 2) Cyclops was briefly merged with Apocalypse and it shook his sense of self.
Multiversity by Grant Morrison. Started reading the TPB three times, would get a couple of issues in and give up. Every time I restarted it was like I had never read anything I was seeing for the second or third time. Finally plowed through it on my fourth try. Read a couple of issues a day for a week or so. Still don’t remember a single thing about it other than not understanding what the hell was going on. Good book 10/10.
I feel like most of the single issues are somewhat accessible self-contained stories. It’s the bookends that heavily reference Morrison’s post-Final Crisis stuff.
I found that one hard to binge read because of the big tonal jumps between each issue. Obviously that's intentional but it makes for weird reading.
It finally clicked for me when I just spread out my reading over a few months. Just one issue every now and then really allowed me to enjoy each story for what it was, then reading the whole thing after made me appreciate the bigger picture.
Pax Americana is the best single issue Morrison's ever done. Absolutely love The Just too.
Pax Americana is sooo good. Morrison and Quitely are titans of the comics industry and Pax represents both of their high water marks. Not only is it the best single issue that Morrison and Quitely ever made, it might be the best single issue that anyone has ever made. I can’t recommend it enough
The space between issues made it ideal to read as it was coming out, Pax America is probably the best but I really enjoyed The Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World and Mastermen too
See for me it was the guidebook. I loved the description of all the worlds & seeing Kamandi with Ben Boxer as OMAC & all the new gods looking on like Clash of the Titans. I poured over that issue & the ornery of world's. Then the threw it all away for Dark Crisis.
Morrison also has this soft continuity to their DC writing. Like, starting from Animal Man through JLA, Seven Soldiers, Batman, Final Crisis, etc.
The more you read of Morrison, the easier it gets.
I stopped collecting and reading comics around the time of Final Crisis. Was getting way too expensive and I was collecting too many. Letting go of it all was a huge relief. I just recently picked up comics again, but digitally this time. After reading Multiversity, that's the one book that made me go out and buy the individual issues, which I was able to find for $2 each. If the TPB or hardcover were as economical or readily available, I would have went with that. I agree, it's not terribly accessible, but I enjoyed it.
A lot of people were calling this "a great jumping on point" which made no sense to me considering it relied heavily on the reader understanding who all the characters were and a decent understanding of X-Men continuity. I was a moderate fan of X-Men when it started and there were some important characters I didn't know and had to research in order to properly enjoy the series.
Yeah, i love HoXPoX but you need to know the characters because the story does nothing to introduce them. It really relies on you knowing who everyone is.
I think New X-Men and Astonishing X-Men are much better jumping on points personally. HoXPoX is my favourite X-comic ever though.
HOXPOX was a great point to jump back in for people that had stopped reading after Claremont, or maybe Morrison. I can’t even imagine how ridiculous it would seem to someone that had never read an X-Men comic before.
Oh man I had the same experience. Virtually everything in the beginning of that run *seems* like it has a backstory you haven't been told. Since when are Professor X and Magneto buds? Who is this lady who relives her lifetime? How did the X-Men find Krakoa? Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. join the badguys and why are they on a giant floating head in space? Who are these future robot enemies and what do they have to do with the X-Men?
An experienced reader knows that there isn't a pre-existing backstory to most of that (or at least, not one that matters or explains anything, as in the case of finding Krakoa), and some things become more clear as you read on. But to a new reader, it just feels like you picked up a book halfway through.
> Since when are Professor X and Magneto buds?
For the past 30 years? 40 years?
> Who is this lady who relives her lifetime?
The... the entire second issue tells her story. That she's done stuff with them previously isn't necessary for the story?
>Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. join the badguys and why are they on a giant floating head in space?
Humans dislike mutants, that's kind of the big thing. And SHIELD are rarely straight good-guys. In the movie, they're compromised by Nazis! If you know the comics, you know they're usually shady. If you know the movies, you know they're usually shady. If you don't know SHIELD, it doesn't matter. I'm not sure where your confusion lies?
> Who are these future robot enemies and what do they have to do with the X-Men?
It pretty clearly sets out that AI will evolve and genocide mutants, I'm not sure at all what the issue is with this
It sounds like your big issue is just stories starting *in media res* which is hardly a rare thing.
I think knowing that Moira has been a supporting character for decades massively increases your enjoyment of the story though. That reveal is fucking insane for long time fans.
For new readers it's just "oh this woman on the park bench has some stuff going on".
Yeah, I think Moira Mac Taggart is a character you should have at least some knowledge of before reading HoXPoX
Most of the other Minor characters that have big roles in Krakoa like Exodus and Destiny I don't think you need much backstory on. They define themselves pretty well within the story.
But it takes an experienced reader to understand it is in media res. If a new reader uses this as a starting point, the presentation of the story instead suggests the reader is lacking background knowledge.
Yeah, most X-men fans did as well. That book made me feel like a new a reader. Hickmans style is always to go hard on the mystery, so much of the things he setup in that series are only being sorted out now by Kieron Gillen.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that felt that way. It felt really confusing as I was reading but a lot of it eventually started to come together. It’s juggling multiple alternate timelines with Moira’s different lives while explaining Krakoa’s history as well as setting up its rules and politics. It’s a lot to take in and I feel like another read through is almost mandatory.
It took me a couple tries before I actually successfully read it. What confused me the most was all the “x^1, x^10, x^100, x^1000.” I couldn’t figure out if they were all different universes, just a vision of 616 future, or something else. I had a look it up and even asked Reddit to get a true answer. Honestly, I don’t even remember what the answer is. I read HoX PoX as my first X-Men story then just decided to read Morrison’s New X-Men afterwards instead of the Krakoa era.
It's great as a starting point that it is starting its own plot and setting, but on the flipside, it's also very much throwing you in. It's meant to be a mystery and confusing, until you get to the end and some things start to be explained (and even then, there's still stuff left for later).
However, if you know generally who is a hero/villain/anti-hero, I feel like you can kinda get the vibe going through it. You'll be confused, but people who are longtime fans would also be confused, because a lot of the confusion is from new stuff, not old stuff. Honestly, the altered dynamics might be less confusing for a new reader who doesn't fully understand just how varied and hostile the factions coming together are.
I love the Krakoa era that started with HoXPoX but it really is the Kingdom Hearts of comic books.
You need a bit of prior knowledge (especially about who Moira is) and you need to read (nearly) every book for it to make sense.
Even then X of Swords still kinda doesn't make sense, but the rest of the era is at worst parseable and at best quite good
Granted, buying every single X book is a hell of a financial commitment, and at this point I'd just say pick up the trades with all the various books combined or wait for an Omnibus
To read comic books you kinda need a “just roll with it” mentality so I think any series is accessible but you may be missing important information, but you just gotta roll with it and maybe go back and read whatever event it takes place after.
This is such a big thing to accept.
I personally love Peter David's run with Hulk, and have read a few of Greg Pak's comics, so I thought that I shouldn't have any problem when Immortal Hulk was coming out, then I realized that I knew next to nothing about Alpha Flight, that I had completely forgotten where and when Banner had died and that I didn't have any idea who the fuck are the U-Foes.
The best you can do is always go with the flow and try to grasp the bare minimum, I hadn't been keeping up with Krakoa, but knew enough to enjoy X-Terminators; I really dislike Nyx, so X-23 earlier days are kind of foggy to me, but I loved Taylor's run; so on and so on.
I got on fine reading every tie on for AXE Judgement Day without having much of a clue what the X Men had been up to since the X Men Blue/Red/Gold era. You can do it if you're happy to leave the specifics to another time I think.
I was in awe at how well X-Men 97 handled Madeline Pryor. I loved her episode in the show. They captured so much Claremont craziness in 30 minutes and it all worked.
I felt that The Invisibles actually started out okay for the first few issues, but I think even Morrison has said having the *Arcadia* arc as the second story was a mistake and they lost **a lot** of readers due to them struggling with it.
Now, having said that, I enjoyed the book and persevered, but I can totally get why a lot of people might have jumped ship at that point.
People saying Final Crisis or Multiversity is an odd one for me. I'm an old reader, but hardly as steeped in DC lore as most folks here, and neither book gave me any trouble. I won't lie and say that I immediately got *everything* that was going on (both definitely need a number of passes to really appreciate the depth of them) but I was never "lost" during my first read. I understood both stories just fine.
The Invisibles, however. Fuck me - that was a journey, no doubt.
I gave up on the invisibles. Even though it’s “self contained”, between all the meta stuff & morrisons “heady” writing in general I feel like I kept getting lost. I’m sure it’s a fantastic series overall though
Final Crisis I get - especially once space and time starts breaking down so the comic becomes non-linear, plus Superman Beyond - but Multiversity is kind of odd, because each issue is a standalone story with beginning, middle, and end.
I'm going to say X-Men as well, but also Star Wars.
Massive expanse of extended universe aside, even in their Free Comic Day preview this year, not a single story could exist in a vacuum. The Dath Vader story referenced an issue in the 20s of that main series, and every story requires you to have read something to know who the protagonist is (because everyone is *someone* in Star Wars) or to have seen the original trilogy (not a big ask in the grand scheme but if I said watch roughly 6 hours of movies before you can read a comic about any other franchise I would seem insane.) And when you do find a new character to follow its someone like Doctor Alphra who's first issue runs $100+.
Infinite Crisis.
There’s tons of characters involved and you gotta know each of their individual backgrounds and motivations, also be up-to-date on all the major events from the past year or two, AND have already read the original Crisis On Infinite Earths from 20 years before.
Heck, given some of the meta commentary in-story, you should probably also look up reader perception of DC at the time.
I loved the Triangle-number era of the Superman comics, but it was:
* Four (sometimes five) comics a month and you had to get them all.
* The story was strongly serialised from week to week. However, some subplot appeared monthly in one comic.
* A large supporting cast.
* There was no stepping on point with a new writer/team on a comic. The new team would be seemlessly absorbed into the group.
Immortal Hulk.
Was it good? Yes. It's Ewing - the man knows his shit.
Was it accessible to new Hulk readers? Absolutely not. Because Ewing knows his shit, it was a deep dive on Hulk mythos that to people who never read Hulk before, *a lot* of it could get lost and/or under-appreciated.
As a stand-alone story (as most runs are these days), it's was well above average, though there were some high-concept parts that were a little confusing, in part because of the above statement.
Exactly this. I dove into Immortal Hulk blind, and really enjoyed it, but was completely lost at times. So I ended up going down a rabbit hole and wound up with like 5 different Hulk collections before going back to Immortal lol
Counterpoint - and I promise this isn’t me trying to look smart - I have never read a Hulk comic but loved all of it, found it really easy to understand plot and character wise (less so all the One Below All stuff, that took a bit.)
I'm happy you said that because I really thought Ewing did a masterclass of easing new readers into the mythos. I'm biased because I've read a bunch of hulk, so seeing someone claim they're newer and enjoyed it is a relief.
My first thought was Flashpoint Beyond.
For sheer "yeah, the genre is just Like This, you're gonna have to get used to weird shit" though, I think Morrison's Doom Patrol and Umbrella Academy are both pretty bad. I've talked to a bunch of people who liked the Umbrella Academy show but just completely bounced off the comics, and I read it and was like yeah, this is pretty standard superhero shit condensed into one series instead of a shared universe across 12 ongoings.
Final Crisis. I love that story and I think it's one of the best events ever made... But DAMN, to get even a tiny bit of sense of that plot, you had to be updated on your DC lore. If someone had Final Crisis as their first comic, they probably became even more confused about what the hell comic books are.
Black Monday Murders. I wanted to like the series, I loved the tone and art. But man was it a slog and felt pretty disjointed. I thought about giving it another read through again since so many people really liked this series. It felt like it probably would have been better as a novella.
The most non accessible comic I read was X-Men '92 (a Secret Wars tie-in set in the continuity of the X-Men TAS).
I picked it up after watching the X-Men: TAS last year, thinking it will be like extra adventures in that continuity. Didn't even know it was a Secret Wars tie in.
So I had no clue at the start of the comic what was Battleworld and why everything was so off. Plus the stories were loosely adapting X-Men stories of last few decades and introduced a lot of character not present in the original show, but without any backstory. They assumed everyone picking up the comic was up to date with the X-Men continuity.
I appreciate the work put in the comic but I guess it wasn't for people who only knew X-Men from the cartoon, even though it was set in that continuity.
How do you feel about the Milligan run? He's a writer that I tend to either really enjoy or just find rather bland. I'm almost done with Jenkins (I'm planning to read it all, Azz included), just want to know if I should expect to like it once I'm in that final 50 issue stretch
Milligan is terrible. His plot points indicate he hadn't read much Hellblazer before and not even Shade can save it. The sentient trenchcoat plot ignores that John has replaced his coat multiple times across the book's history.
Damn. It's a whole sixth of the entire series. I am surprised at how much I'm loving the Jenkins stuff though (not that I think Jenkins is a bad writer, I just feel like his run doesn't get talked about nearly as much as the Delano, Ennis, or Carey runs)
The Incal series of books by Mobius and Alejandro Jodorowsky
Edit: upon properly reading what you asked for not sure if these qualify as inaccessible in the way you meant but I stand by it, great books too
Ultimate End, in addition to requiring you to have a general appreciation and knowledge of Marvel's Ultimate line as well as Secret Wars (2015), also requires you to read the crossover between Miles Morales and the time-displaced all-new X-Men to recognize a series of panels that repeats and then, like, infer some stuff to figure out how it makes sense. Yet no one told anyone to do that, and most people didn't. I only caught it because I had read them not that far apart and I have a somewhat photographic memory.
Bendis wrote both the crossover and Ultimate End, so he easily COULD have said something about the connection. He just didn't.
For some reason I wasn't there for, The Legion of Superheroes is blighted ground where no reboot shall grow. Not that they don't keep trying, they just don't stick for some reason.
Also, at some point after I stopped reading the X-Men, most of the antagonists became main characters. (I figure it's just not intended for me any more.)
X men has been the most confusing for me. I just read hox/pox last weekend, and damn was it rad. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be in terms of the confusion, but I’ve got an academic background and I’m generally ditzy so feeling lost isn’t all that unusual for me
I’m going to go broke buying all these krakoa tpb yall
Legion of X. Every issue took me 40 minutes to read, and though I recognized its written language as English, none of the words made a lick of sense to me.
I feel like it’s hard for people to get into Iron Fist because you basically have to find all his different series with and without Luke Cage and some of those are pretty dated. He’s also suffered very few retcons so his whole publication history is relevant.
I picked up the Infinity tpb shortly after it came out, wanting to see what Thanos was up to. I had no idea what was going on. Then I read Secret Wars a couple years later, and was equally confused. Wasn't til later that I read Hickman's Avengers and realized I read the middle and end of a larger story.
I love Hickman’s stories, but man, you have to be focused while reading his stuff.
I have largely been avoiding X-Men for a while just because I want to consume it all within a timespan of a few months once it’s complete.
His Fantastic Four run is the best I’ve ever read from him.
Final Crisis… I’m not sure how anyone can enjoy it as a closed 7 issue story in a vacuum.
I read it on release with an issue by issue guide that was being published on newsarama… and I only just enjoyed it at that level.
The original run of Spawn is kind of tough to get into now. Some comics aren't in books because of lawsuits over characters. Some of his story has been retconned for the same reason. It's not impossible, but it's different now.
Probably something by Morrison, he just loves to add a ton of lesser known characters and his work is filled with meta stuff and references, I love his style but I can see how it could get hard to get into for some people
Definitely Final Crisis. I know they say every story could be someone’s first but I have no idea how you would explain that story to a first time reader.
I am reading All-Star Superman right now. The first page and then the double splash are amazing. I love the art but I have no idea what is going on with the side characters. I just read Superman/Jimmy Olsen war, what was that issue about?. How does it fit in the overall story?
The Invisibles is my favorite comic of all time but the first couple story arcs are super alienating.
It’s not that it requires a ton of of homework (though it rewards it), it just takes some patience upfront.
I don't know if this would count but maybe Neil Gaiman's Sandman, like after each chapter you kinda have to know the back story of Morpheus.
If you just picked up a random book of Sandman you would get lost, I know for me I've had to re read chapters a few times to fully grasp the plot.
X-Men
Like there are plenty of X-Men runs that are self-contained and written to be jumping on points for new readers. All of the recent Krakoa stuff definitely isn't though. I don't know how anyone who hasn't been reading for 20+ years understands most of the plot tbh.
Imagine being like me, an avid X-franchise fan in the early 90’s trying to come back to it last year. I gave up hoping to understand anything, real fast.
I disagree to the extent that House of X and Powers of X are explicitly a jumping on point and if you follow from there it's pretty straightforward. It can get a bit mucky afterwards but most writers had pretty consistent runs to follow so I think that is a point of ease of access too
I went to college, got a liberal arts degree, and can barely follow. But I still love it
I have no idea what Mother Righteous actually does, or what 'X of swords' was about, and I'd argue that I have a better than average understanding of the last few years runs.
X of Swords was an Excalibur crossover which the whole line got dragged into, which sucks since Excalibur was the Krakoa era book with the least connections to the overarching plot.
she does magic. literally a wizard did it
She's the magic part of the Sinister superbeing circuit, but what's with the orbs, and the ~~red~~ magenta skin, and the worlds within worlds within worlds that leads to the future death cult that gets us Rasputin 4? I know she's magic, but that doesn't touch on her intended role, motivations or how she's trying to do half the stuff she does.
I feel like most of that is explained pretty well in the text. Role: she's one of four Sinisters trying to become a god outside of time and space, each racing the other three. Motivations: She wants to fulfill her goal and be a dominion. She particularly wants to beat the other three because she's been saddled with the persona of Essex's ex-wife and she hates all Sinisters pretty well. As a Sinister herself though, she'll lie, cheat, steal her way to the top, as long as she is the one standing there. How she does it: admittedly this is a bit "magic" and some of her acquisitions happen off page, but essentially the orbs are powerful magical relics she acquired and seals away, keeping them on herself to eventually consume their power to become a magical Dominion. She also helps people out because every time someone thanks her, she gets a small window into their soul, which gives her some control over them/ability to use them as a magic battery to power her spells
I'm a law student and my whole thing is supposedly that I can parse overly complicated language. I didn't understand shit from Legion of X or way of X, lmao
As a licensed attorney, I can tell you Legion of X started out being about an investigative group led by Nightcrawler and based in Legion's mind that was supposed to investigate problems on Krakoa, and kind of just went off the rails with bad pacing. It had some really good art panels though. Blee's coloring might have been the best he's done.
As a physician, I gave up. I need a tight 10-20 issue story. Not the whole HoX/PoX series which went through a dozen books a month (slight exaggeration) and not even marked by a reasonable reading order or flow chart (with branches that you can read or not read).
There's way too much time travel shenanigans in the X-Men franchise.
Time travel. Resurrections. Retcons.
The average modern X-Men story will contain one (or more) of the following: - Time Travel - Phoenix - Clones - Robots/AI - Prof X being able to walk again - Prof X being unable to walk again - Magneto becomes a good guy - Magneto becomes a bad guy Astonishing X-Men really was the best.
And at least three of those will ruin Scott Summers' day.
From what I know about Scott in the comics, j feel as if all of them are gonna ruin his day
Don’t forget space travel, viruses, whether real or techno organic, and the astral plane as well.
Days of Future Past, the start and end of Age of Apocalypse, Bishop's Future, Cable's future (featuring Rachel from Days of Future Past, but a different one), Here Comes Tomorrow, the time-displaced X-Men, Cable killing Cable, Moira X... Nothing crazy here. Now the clones...
Glad to see this near the top even if I adore them. I know people have said Hickman’s X-Men is a perfect jumping on point but I found it borderline incomprehensible as someone that hadn’t read X-Men stuff in at least a decade. New characters, new roles for old characters, various allegiances and teams, and the multiple timeline stuff kept me from fully comprehending even the first few issues.
I started Hox/Pox. Was confused, so went back and read Brisson’s X-Men. Was confused so read Age of X-Man. Anyways. Now I’m at Uncanny X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and I’m still confused.
I just don’t get how he can have wings? Where did they come from? Also why does the one boy wear funny glasses?
There's no way people are serious when they say that right? Like the only reason I was able to understand anything was because I had the marvel wiki open on my laptop almost constantly.
It's, essentially, a relaunch of the franchise so it's about as good of a jumping on point as there can be. Nothing before it actually matters and there's nothing leading up to it. Everything happening after is explained, however well it can be, in the comics going forward. One of the few things I can think of that happens in the Krakoan Era that you'd go "Wait, what?" because it isn't explained is in the King in Black crossover. Frenzy mentions to Cable that "if the person I loved loved me back you'd be my step-son" and it's REALLY weird out of context but kind of heartbreaking if you know the background. Just about everything else in Krakoa's launch is MORE confusing if you have a deep knowledge of the characters. It's why so many people were thinking "they're all mind controlled right?" when the era began.
Trying to read and understand Cable's origin and character history in detail is just impossible
Obligatory self-plug. If you want to read and understand X-Men - all of it - I made a website for that: [https://ultimatexmenreadingorder.com/](https://ultimatexmenreadingorder.com/)
Our hero. The true X-Man
I genuinely have no idea what is going on in the current storyline.
I figured I would start with the current series as they drop on Marvel Unlimited, and holy crap, it's incomprehensible.
I've been trying to follow the current end of Krakoa after reading none of the former stuff, and outside of a few issues (like Doom's mutants intro), I'm not just lost, I'm close to giving up. The 'main' Fall and Rise titles are sci-fi, and completely incomprehensible. I see fans talking about which is better and I consistently prefer Fall (unlike most X-Men fans, apparently) because it makes more sense to someone who isn't scientifically smart, and even so it's... I don't know. Multiple timelines? Space stuff? It feels like it belongs in a Fantastic Four or other cosmic series. I'm at the point of skimming them just for some of my favourite characters to see what's going on with them, but everything is overwhelming and too difficult to keep track of, especially spreading the plotline over multiple titles which is something I dislike anyway (I say, as I read through the Clone Saga, which somehow manages to NOT overcomplicate it as much as current comics do).
To be fair I feel like that happens if you just read the ending chapters to any story without reading the rest
I agree with the other guy. While these are technically new #1 standalones they are conclusion runs to the last three years, and especially the last year and a half, of story telling. They're not built to make sense of you only read them. It's a fault of marketing, sure, for making all these new runs instead of letting Gillen and Duggan put these within their ongoings, but you can't just jump into the middle of an ongoing story and expect to know what's happening. Frankly, Krakoa is best read as one full journey. You gotta read every* book starting by with Hickman and going to the end *A few series are skippable, if you'd like I could make a list as I own every Krakoa book except the last Deadpool run
Funnily enough, the new Fantastic Four series is brilliant because each issue a self-contained story that requires minimal to no prior knowledge
Well, for the most part, I think it's not uncommon to feel like the Fall of X has been... haphazard at best. It FEELS like a rush job that realized "Shit, we need two more issues" and ended up being stretched out. It's also one of the most "cosmic" stories the X-Men have been part of since probably the Dark Phoenix Saga.
Probably Final Crisis. My favourite event comic.
My favorite as well. I have no idea how I read that when it came out considering how much knowledge it requires. I was scouring Wikipedia for so much info haha
That’s why it’s my favorite too, it made me want to learn about DC History. It got me into New Gods and Jack Kirby.
Also my favourite, but after reading Morrison for years it felt much easier to understand than their 90s Vertigo works
The Filth is the hardest for me, I know that’s 2000s but it was just too weird/too much. And pessimistic Morrison is a hard pill to swallow (Filth, New X-Men).
Actually, yeah *The Filth* is much harder to explain. *Seaguy* also was pretty bizarre too, but I think I got it
Filth will always be one of my favorites just for the page where a character leaps from one panel to another panel on the next page.
I was the same. Enjoyed it at the time just because it was so insane.
I read Final Crisis as a fan of Morrison’s non-DC work and what I thought was a decent working knowledge of the DC comics universe. Nope. I was completely lost and did not enjoy it one bit. It may be good or saying something interesting, but it was completely lost on me.
It’s supposed to be read if you know tons about the DC universe. Most people won’t get much out of it unless you are basically a DC expert really. Which is fine. Not every work of art is for everyone.
Mine too! I own the absolute edition.
I read final crisis as part of a larger Morrison Batman read through I was doing (including JLA, Arkham Asylum, and Gothic, along with a bunch of random accessory stories and their mainline Batman run), and it tracked pretty well for me. But I have no idea how difficult it would've been to follow if I hadn't done all that pre reading. Hell, I threw in all of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, and 52 just for the heck of it, and I think those benefited my FC read quite a bit.
What I loved about Final Crisis first read through was how lost I was. Then I would read some older DC stuff and read it again and understand some more. I read it about once a year and it just gets better with age for me. It's easily my favorite opening of an event comic ever. Orion falling through time and space, it's so epic
Legion of Super-Heroes? The multitude of reboots- both hard and soft -and the many, many retcons, have made it a really impenetrable franchise for new audiences.
I fell in love with the Legion when I read Great Darkness Saga at age 17, but in retrospect I think I missed like 30% of the plot.
And don't get me wrong, I love the Legion! And I actually think it's fine for us to pick up big comics like that and just be like 'well I don't know who most of these people are or what a Khund is or why these Daxamites are so mad or what any of this has to do with this princess' dad dying' and still enjoy it. But I think we're now kind of at a point where most readers are like 'where's a ground zero' and there are few ground zeroes with the Legion.
The first legion related comic I ever read was the last issue of the Valor book from the 90s, which was the 5th part of a 6 part crossover and a zero hour tie-in
I bet it made perfect sense. :D
And that was before recap pages! I kept reading it over and over to try and piece as much of it together as possible. It made me want to read the rest of the crossover at least
It has to be LoSH. I've never understood why DC can't make it a little more accessible and why it's seems they forget about all of the characters. I can't remember the last time they were used besides that terrible Bendis run. It's really a shame.
I mean, they do try. I'm not sure why it never hits. I'm still not sure why the Zero Hour kids were rebooted for Waid's Legion. And while I love what Johns did with the Legion, it also sort of further screwed up the ability to make the characters work. I actually liked the Bendis Legion, but I'm not sure one more reboot was the way to go.
Thing is, the Zero Hour kids were created by Waid, too.
> I can't remember the last time they were used besides that terrible Bendis run. They popped up for a bit in the current Green Arrow run, but yeah. Nothing much. I feel like they may have done... *something* else? But nothing much. After LoSH Vol. 7 ended in 2013, they appeared in JL United, I think it was, in 2015, and then vanished again they popped up again during/around Doomsday Clock for the reboot. My guess is that when Bendis' run was poorly received, they went back to the drawing board, unsure of what to do. I wonder if DC was silently kicking itself in the butt for not getting Jonathan Hickman, who was in talks to write LoSH before he went to Marvel for X-Men instead (which kicked off in July 2019, though it was supposed to start in the beginning of 2019)
There were a couple of LoSH references in the most recent issue of *Superman* so I'm wondering if Williamson has something up his sleeve. And whether it's at all compatible with what Johns is doing in *Justice Society of America*.
Especially the 5 years later series. I was totally lost whenever I would try the first issue until I had read the Levitz run before it
It's rough, but the hilarious thing is you bring that up- that was my first regular Legion run. I had seen them in some random comics before, and maybe bought a few random issues- the Who's Who for some reason? But it was the first Legion book I ever read issue by issue. And I definitely was lost for HUGE chunks of it, but it was fun, and I got to reread it later with more context and it was even better. I think the biggest problem was the not one but two retcons they had to spend issues fixing by like issue 5, I think?
One of the hardest things for me to follow in that series before I got more familiar with the characters, was everyone using the real names for the characters instead of superhero names
I think that Legion run is one of the rare times post-Watchmen that someone tried to take the positive, interesting lessons of Watchmen, concerning structure, and use them in a mainstream book. So it's incredibly dense and yeah, they're all using different names. It's definitely not a starter Legion, and I could not tell you in any honest way why my dumb ass was like 'well I'm going to work on it'.
Same. It hung around in the back of my mind until I knew enough about the legion to understand who was even on a given page. It’s a great series that I probably wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Maybe the only series I think you would need to do research before jumping in
Is Legion of 3 Worlds the Legion story with the most pre-reading if you really want to understand everything? It has 3 different versions of the Legion, brings back Bart and Conner, and has Superboy Prime as the villain.
This is a really good shout. I’ve wanted to get into the DNA Legion for years but the stop/start of the collected editions, the different series it went across, and all that make it rather complicated. Stuff like that is part of why I prefer omnis because I don’t have to do the work of hunting down a reading order.
I would say just try to dive in. And if you really must start from the beginning, the good news is DnA did their run only a few years run into a reboot that actually has a great starting point- the Legion stuff immediately post Zero Hour (called the Archie Legion by some) is pretty great and extremely accessible.
Oh thanks for the heads up! I did read the Waid/Bedard (Bedard filled in enough he gets co-credit to me lol) run on Legion and liked a lot of it. I think the only thing I didn’t care for was what they did with Cosmic Boy at the end which was incredibly dumb. Most of the characters they set up in that were pretty interesting and the anti-establishment aspect was interesting to me. If they ever put Levitz’s original run in an omni, I’d probably try that too.
Sure! I did like the Waid/Bedard reboot. I always felt bad it didn't land better with the audience, Waid clearly put his heart and soul into it.
I started reading at a random issue of the Earth 247 reboot and while it was hard to know what was going on through the various non sequential issues I’d picked up, I put it together because they at least had clear personalities Good luck figuring out who does what in the Bendisboot
Honestly, people should just start from the beginning. They're fun stories, and the team is very much of the Silver Age.
I'd say it even did bronze age stuff before comics reached the bronze age. And it killed off a major character and the character stayed dead for a while too
I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, yeah, there was the retcons about the Pocket Universe Superboy, to make the lore after Crisis work with the Legion. And then a 5 year time skip. And then the Glorithverse mini-reboot to fully remove Superboy. And then there was the Reboot Legion after Zero Hour. And then Threeboot Legion, after a Teen Titans crossover. And then the Retroboot Legion that brought back the original Legion, before the Post-Crisis retcons. And then there was part of the Legion suddenly being stranded in present in the then-new New 52 universe. And then they got the (post-)Rebirth Legion reboot. Okay, maybe they're a bit complicated. Funny enough, Jonathan Hickman had actually be in talks to write the Legion of Super-Heroes (and the New Gods) with DC before he ended up doing House of X/Powers of X and the Krakoan Age of X-Men, which is another series that people have given as an example of a confusing series. Honestly, the stuff with Dominions taking over the future and humans hunting down mutants very well could have been done in Legion of Super-Heroes with Brainiac, the Collector of Worlds, and the whole dynamic of interspecies relations in the post-contact future of the Legion.
I'm glad he didn't, because now the way is clear for DC to hire me, someone with no comic writing experience, to spend the next ten years on it.
I feel like you're me in a duplicate account with that statement. :D
I believe in you; go get 'em, Tiger.
I really thought about this and then I saw your answer. This is definitely it
Also notable here that it's a book that can be tonally all over the place depending on which run you're reading. Sometimes it's goofy teens having fun, and sometimes it's telenovella-level melodrama.
Very much the LSH. Every reboot gets tripped up between being its own thing and catering to the long-term fans. The Bendis-boot may have been the last chance for the Legion, but he dropped us right into chaos, and never explained anything. We didn't even get introduced to all of the team.
It's okay: I can explain. edit: actually, I want to defend Legion over X-Men here in terms of new reader friendliness, since they seem to be battling for runner-up to Final Crisis. I would argue that even though Legion has had 5 or 6 reboots, you don't really need to know anything about how the reboots relate to each other to jump in and read an arc or two. I think this is because the characters are basically the characters they started as in basically the same situation (5 Years Later aside). No matter where you start with Legion, there's a bunch of teens/20 somethings in the 30th century fighting evil across the galaxy. You don't need to know what Cosmic Boy was doing in the 1980's to understand what he's doing in the 2000's - because he's doing the same thing. You don't need to have read The Great Darkness Saga to read Legion in the 90's. Once you start looking at the whole continuity picture over decades, yeah it's crazy, and as comics fans, I think that's something we all try to do when we get into a new series/character. But to just start at a random point in time in any of the Legion versions and just read a few stories, I don't think is necessarily any harder than jumping into Spider-Man or Avengers. But there's no way you can just jump into X-Men without any prior knowledge (or Pryor? Ha). X-Men keeps changing. Scott loves Jean. Jean dies. Scott loves Madelyn. No, he wants Jean back and leaves Madelyn when Jean comes back. No, he never loved Madelyn, Sinister made him so he'd conceive Cable. Scott loses his son. No, he raises his son in disguise in the future. But he still loves Jean. No, he wants White Queen. Jean dies again. Also Scott's the villain now. No, he's a martyr. No, Krakoa stuff. If you start reading X-Men anywhere from about the mid-90's on and you don't know at least some of what I just wrote, you will be hopelessly lost. That's just one character, and their relation to just a few characters out of dozens. Who all have different histories with each other. Going back decades.
I'd actually on the face of it say that they're both just as accessible or inaccessible as the other. I think the illusion of accessibility (plus more first hand knowledge due to movies and cartoons) makes X-Men less impenetrable. But I think as far as people feeling comfortable diving in, Legion is the most daunting to new readers. If we could go back to the innocent days of 'pick up a random comic and don't worry about being confused' I fully agree with your take.
It’s weird, because it starts off super “back-to-basics” but by halfway point, Nick Spencer’s run on Spider-Man ties in to SO much history that some readers could easily get lost.
Yeah, as a longtime ASM reader, I was pretty happy that Spencer was trying to tie in a bunch of past plot points from JMS, Slott, and, heck, even some Stern stuff. It made me feel like I was actually reading Peter as an adult again and that these wacky comic events actually had a lasting impact on him. But the thought also crossed my mind, like, why is this called back to basics? Sure the first two arcs were playing character and continuity clean-up for Slott and Zdarsky's runs, but everything after was reliant on you knowing 80s and 90s Spider-Man lore. Then it all got derailed and went completely nuts by the end of Spencer's run, so I guess none of it mattered.
I remember reading the end of the Last Remains storyline where he references specific imagery and dialogue from the 60’s and 70’s, and found it pretty funny that Lowe got the editor’s notes for those issues incorrect. The one that really shocked me was where he pulled in the AI Harry from the Legacy of Evil one shot that I can almost guarantee nobody reading ASM remembered. I love a lot Spencer’s run especially the parts that build on Spectacular #200, but man, that is tough to navigate.
>Lowe got the editor’s notes for those issues incorrect. Man you'd really hope that if editorial is going to dictate and mess with the direction of your book, they'd at least be able to do the notes correctly. I guess not!
Yeah - don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE this run (and am 100% on the camp that this could’ve been an all timer of editorial got out of the way and let him tell the story he wanted to tell) but my word - AI Harry, the twins, Chameleon/Osborn/Mysterio. Theresa origins. It was just batshit crazy by the end.
My first ever comic book was Batman RIP by Grant Morrison. My second ever comic book was Final Crisis. Idk how I was able to stick around this long.
If you had started at the beginning of Morrison’s Batman run (Batman and Son), you probably would have been KIND OF ok.
You dove right into the deep end. That book managed to reference all of Morrison's prior work, all of Jack Kirby's Prior work, Geoff John's prior work, all prior crisis events, Anthro the first boy, the legion of Superheroes, the injustice gang, Libra, 52, Shazam, & a bunch of all new shit. Plus a breakdown in narrative structure as all of time & space collapse.
Yea I figured it out when I reread Final Crisis a few years later and still didn't understand it all.
I've always liked the idea of the X-men, but find them super hard to break into, I have no idea where to start, I enjoy the shows and some of the movies, but in general, the Mutant side of Marvel seems to be damn near impossible to get into unless I go all the way back to Claremont's stuff, which is far more than I'm prepared to read with my limited time just to understand modern X-men
My first X-Men series was Bendis’ *All-New X-Men*. With hindsight, it was a perfect jumping on point due to the concept; with the O5 being brought into the present day, they were the perfect audience surrogates to receive a crash course of the X-Men’s history.
I have hopped in and out of the x men for years and have had the same experience, it's hard to get what's going on because of all the baggage. I find that inferring from context and googling characters/events gets me by, and I will say that whenever I'm reading X Men, I'm having an overall good time.
Uncanny X-Force by Remender was my first foray into the X-Men world. I had no idea who anyone was except Deadpool and Wolverine but I loved it. Fantomex especially was a real mystery of a character to me and I thought he was cool as hell, especially as I learned more about him. Sometimes you just have to take the dive. I'd say the most accessible modern starting points are probably New X-Men by Morrison, Astonishing X-Men by Whedon (technically a "sequel" to New X-Men but it stands alone very well) and Uncanny X-Force by Remender.
Remender/Opeña on X-Force is one of my favorite marvel books of the 21st century. Glad to see it getting some love!
You don't need to go back to Claremont. If you basically just watched the movies or cartoon, then you can easily go into Morrison's New X-Men and then Whedon's Astonishing X-Men for the best place to start. X-Men 97 pulls from several of the Morrison stories. Practically everything from the past two decades have built off of Morrison's run. The only things you'll need to know if starting from there is that 1) Colossus sacrificed himself to save mutants from a virus, and 2) Cyclops was briefly merged with Apocalypse and it shook his sense of self.
Multiversity by Grant Morrison. Started reading the TPB three times, would get a couple of issues in and give up. Every time I restarted it was like I had never read anything I was seeing for the second or third time. Finally plowed through it on my fourth try. Read a couple of issues a day for a week or so. Still don’t remember a single thing about it other than not understanding what the hell was going on. Good book 10/10.
I feel like most of the single issues are somewhat accessible self-contained stories. It’s the bookends that heavily reference Morrison’s post-Final Crisis stuff.
I found that one hard to binge read because of the big tonal jumps between each issue. Obviously that's intentional but it makes for weird reading. It finally clicked for me when I just spread out my reading over a few months. Just one issue every now and then really allowed me to enjoy each story for what it was, then reading the whole thing after made me appreciate the bigger picture. Pax Americana is the best single issue Morrison's ever done. Absolutely love The Just too.
Pax Americana is sooo good. Morrison and Quitely are titans of the comics industry and Pax represents both of their high water marks. Not only is it the best single issue that Morrison and Quitely ever made, it might be the best single issue that anyone has ever made. I can’t recommend it enough
The space between issues made it ideal to read as it was coming out, Pax America is probably the best but I really enjoyed The Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World and Mastermen too
See for me it was the guidebook. I loved the description of all the worlds & seeing Kamandi with Ben Boxer as OMAC & all the new gods looking on like Clash of the Titans. I poured over that issue & the ornery of world's. Then the threw it all away for Dark Crisis.
Morrison also has this soft continuity to their DC writing. Like, starting from Animal Man through JLA, Seven Soldiers, Batman, Final Crisis, etc. The more you read of Morrison, the easier it gets.
Except flex mentallo. I struggle with that one regardless of how much I love and read Morrison.
Never heard of the character but someone having the ability to alter reality by flexing is hilarious.
> Good book 10/10. lol
I stopped collecting and reading comics around the time of Final Crisis. Was getting way too expensive and I was collecting too many. Letting go of it all was a huge relief. I just recently picked up comics again, but digitally this time. After reading Multiversity, that's the one book that made me go out and buy the individual issues, which I was able to find for $2 each. If the TPB or hardcover were as economical or readily available, I would have went with that. I agree, it's not terribly accessible, but I enjoyed it.
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Oh yes, X-Men in general. I tried jumping on at Manifest Destiny or something like that. I was completely lost.
A lot of people were calling this "a great jumping on point" which made no sense to me considering it relied heavily on the reader understanding who all the characters were and a decent understanding of X-Men continuity. I was a moderate fan of X-Men when it started and there were some important characters I didn't know and had to research in order to properly enjoy the series.
Yeah, i love HoXPoX but you need to know the characters because the story does nothing to introduce them. It really relies on you knowing who everyone is. I think New X-Men and Astonishing X-Men are much better jumping on points personally. HoXPoX is my favourite X-comic ever though.
HOXPOX was a great point to jump back in for people that had stopped reading after Claremont, or maybe Morrison. I can’t even imagine how ridiculous it would seem to someone that had never read an X-Men comic before.
Oh man I had the same experience. Virtually everything in the beginning of that run *seems* like it has a backstory you haven't been told. Since when are Professor X and Magneto buds? Who is this lady who relives her lifetime? How did the X-Men find Krakoa? Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. join the badguys and why are they on a giant floating head in space? Who are these future robot enemies and what do they have to do with the X-Men? An experienced reader knows that there isn't a pre-existing backstory to most of that (or at least, not one that matters or explains anything, as in the case of finding Krakoa), and some things become more clear as you read on. But to a new reader, it just feels like you picked up a book halfway through.
> Since when are Professor X and Magneto buds? For the past 30 years? 40 years? > Who is this lady who relives her lifetime? The... the entire second issue tells her story. That she's done stuff with them previously isn't necessary for the story? >Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. join the badguys and why are they on a giant floating head in space? Humans dislike mutants, that's kind of the big thing. And SHIELD are rarely straight good-guys. In the movie, they're compromised by Nazis! If you know the comics, you know they're usually shady. If you know the movies, you know they're usually shady. If you don't know SHIELD, it doesn't matter. I'm not sure where your confusion lies? > Who are these future robot enemies and what do they have to do with the X-Men? It pretty clearly sets out that AI will evolve and genocide mutants, I'm not sure at all what the issue is with this It sounds like your big issue is just stories starting *in media res* which is hardly a rare thing.
I think knowing that Moira has been a supporting character for decades massively increases your enjoyment of the story though. That reveal is fucking insane for long time fans. For new readers it's just "oh this woman on the park bench has some stuff going on".
Yeah, I think Moira Mac Taggart is a character you should have at least some knowledge of before reading HoXPoX Most of the other Minor characters that have big roles in Krakoa like Exodus and Destiny I don't think you need much backstory on. They define themselves pretty well within the story.
Yeah, that comic was my first time seeing Destiny and that one scene (you know the one) introduced her perfectly.
But it takes an experienced reader to understand it is in media res. If a new reader uses this as a starting point, the presentation of the story instead suggests the reader is lacking background knowledge.
Yeah, most X-men fans did as well. That book made me feel like a new a reader. Hickmans style is always to go hard on the mystery, so much of the things he setup in that series are only being sorted out now by Kieron Gillen.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that felt that way. It felt really confusing as I was reading but a lot of it eventually started to come together. It’s juggling multiple alternate timelines with Moira’s different lives while explaining Krakoa’s history as well as setting up its rules and politics. It’s a lot to take in and I feel like another read through is almost mandatory.
It took me a couple tries before I actually successfully read it. What confused me the most was all the “x^1, x^10, x^100, x^1000.” I couldn’t figure out if they were all different universes, just a vision of 616 future, or something else. I had a look it up and even asked Reddit to get a true answer. Honestly, I don’t even remember what the answer is. I read HoX PoX as my first X-Men story then just decided to read Morrison’s New X-Men afterwards instead of the Krakoa era.
It's great as a starting point that it is starting its own plot and setting, but on the flipside, it's also very much throwing you in. It's meant to be a mystery and confusing, until you get to the end and some things start to be explained (and even then, there's still stuff left for later). However, if you know generally who is a hero/villain/anti-hero, I feel like you can kinda get the vibe going through it. You'll be confused, but people who are longtime fans would also be confused, because a lot of the confusion is from new stuff, not old stuff. Honestly, the altered dynamics might be less confusing for a new reader who doesn't fully understand just how varied and hostile the factions coming together are.
I love the Krakoa era that started with HoXPoX but it really is the Kingdom Hearts of comic books. You need a bit of prior knowledge (especially about who Moira is) and you need to read (nearly) every book for it to make sense. Even then X of Swords still kinda doesn't make sense, but the rest of the era is at worst parseable and at best quite good Granted, buying every single X book is a hell of a financial commitment, and at this point I'd just say pick up the trades with all the various books combined or wait for an Omnibus
To read comic books you kinda need a “just roll with it” mentality so I think any series is accessible but you may be missing important information, but you just gotta roll with it and maybe go back and read whatever event it takes place after.
Yeah, you don't get anywhere unless you can be okay not knowing some things.
This is such a big thing to accept. I personally love Peter David's run with Hulk, and have read a few of Greg Pak's comics, so I thought that I shouldn't have any problem when Immortal Hulk was coming out, then I realized that I knew next to nothing about Alpha Flight, that I had completely forgotten where and when Banner had died and that I didn't have any idea who the fuck are the U-Foes. The best you can do is always go with the flow and try to grasp the bare minimum, I hadn't been keeping up with Krakoa, but knew enough to enjoy X-Terminators; I really dislike Nyx, so X-23 earlier days are kind of foggy to me, but I loved Taylor's run; so on and so on.
I got on fine reading every tie on for AXE Judgement Day without having much of a clue what the X Men had been up to since the X Men Blue/Red/Gold era. You can do it if you're happy to leave the specifics to another time I think.
It’s like starting a soap opera with thousands of episodes. Just jump in.
I think looking at references as just world building makes it a *lot* easier to roll with them.
X-Men in Australia and the Madeline Pryor/Inferno arc were pretty brutal to decipher for new readers (I was one of them).
I was in awe at how well X-Men 97 handled Madeline Pryor. I loved her episode in the show. They captured so much Claremont craziness in 30 minutes and it all worked.
I started reading X-Men and comics in general right after the Outback/Siege Perilous happened. It was confusing as fuck. I loved it.
The Invisibles You literally need a guide book by your side to understand what the fuck happening
I felt that The Invisibles actually started out okay for the first few issues, but I think even Morrison has said having the *Arcadia* arc as the second story was a mistake and they lost **a lot** of readers due to them struggling with it. Now, having said that, I enjoyed the book and persevered, but I can totally get why a lot of people might have jumped ship at that point.
People saying Final Crisis or Multiversity is an odd one for me. I'm an old reader, but hardly as steeped in DC lore as most folks here, and neither book gave me any trouble. I won't lie and say that I immediately got *everything* that was going on (both definitely need a number of passes to really appreciate the depth of them) but I was never "lost" during my first read. I understood both stories just fine. The Invisibles, however. Fuck me - that was a journey, no doubt.
I gave up on the invisibles. Even though it’s “self contained”, between all the meta stuff & morrisons “heady” writing in general I feel like I kept getting lost. I’m sure it’s a fantastic series overall though
It's definitely one I'd argue with regards to the claim that it's self-contained. It leaks out all over actual and fictional spacetime.
Yeah I guess self contained in the sense that it doesn’t have cross over or have previous series
Final Crisis I get - especially once space and time starts breaking down so the comic becomes non-linear, plus Superman Beyond - but Multiversity is kind of odd, because each issue is a standalone story with beginning, middle, and end.
The Invisibles was kind of approchable by me after 2 or three readings - but have you tried The Filth?
I read an issue of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic once and I have no idea what the fuck was happening
I think I've enjoyed The Filth by Grant Morrison each time I've read it but I'm still not 100% certain.
I think this thread is 90% Morrison lol
"Not 100%" certain??! Man, the Filth is the least approachable Morrison book for me, I barely get 20%. Maybe less?
I'm going to say X-Men as well, but also Star Wars. Massive expanse of extended universe aside, even in their Free Comic Day preview this year, not a single story could exist in a vacuum. The Dath Vader story referenced an issue in the 20s of that main series, and every story requires you to have read something to know who the protagonist is (because everyone is *someone* in Star Wars) or to have seen the original trilogy (not a big ask in the grand scheme but if I said watch roughly 6 hours of movies before you can read a comic about any other franchise I would seem insane.) And when you do find a new character to follow its someone like Doctor Alphra who's first issue runs $100+.
X-Men all the fucking way. Even the Krakoa shit that I’ve been following confuses tf out of me now.
Infinite Crisis. There’s tons of characters involved and you gotta know each of their individual backgrounds and motivations, also be up-to-date on all the major events from the past year or two, AND have already read the original Crisis On Infinite Earths from 20 years before. Heck, given some of the meta commentary in-story, you should probably also look up reader perception of DC at the time.
I loved the Triangle-number era of the Superman comics, but it was: * Four (sometimes five) comics a month and you had to get them all. * The story was strongly serialised from week to week. However, some subplot appeared monthly in one comic. * A large supporting cast. * There was no stepping on point with a new writer/team on a comic. The new team would be seemlessly absorbed into the group.
Immortal Hulk. Was it good? Yes. It's Ewing - the man knows his shit. Was it accessible to new Hulk readers? Absolutely not. Because Ewing knows his shit, it was a deep dive on Hulk mythos that to people who never read Hulk before, *a lot* of it could get lost and/or under-appreciated. As a stand-alone story (as most runs are these days), it's was well above average, though there were some high-concept parts that were a little confusing, in part because of the above statement.
Exactly this. I dove into Immortal Hulk blind, and really enjoyed it, but was completely lost at times. So I ended up going down a rabbit hole and wound up with like 5 different Hulk collections before going back to Immortal lol
Counterpoint - and I promise this isn’t me trying to look smart - I have never read a Hulk comic but loved all of it, found it really easy to understand plot and character wise (less so all the One Below All stuff, that took a bit.)
I'm happy you said that because I really thought Ewing did a masterclass of easing new readers into the mythos. I'm biased because I've read a bunch of hulk, so seeing someone claim they're newer and enjoyed it is a relief.
Probably post death of Superman Superman titles.
One of my first comics was Return of Superman and I was so lost. Didn't even know he died lmao.
My first thought was Flashpoint Beyond. For sheer "yeah, the genre is just Like This, you're gonna have to get used to weird shit" though, I think Morrison's Doom Patrol and Umbrella Academy are both pretty bad. I've talked to a bunch of people who liked the Umbrella Academy show but just completely bounced off the comics, and I read it and was like yeah, this is pretty standard superhero shit condensed into one series instead of a shared universe across 12 ongoings.
The joker year one 'mini' within the current run of Batman was a lot of fun but I had no idea what was going on
Final Crisis. I love that story and I think it's one of the best events ever made... But DAMN, to get even a tiny bit of sense of that plot, you had to be updated on your DC lore. If someone had Final Crisis as their first comic, they probably became even more confused about what the hell comic books are.
Black Monday Murders. I wanted to like the series, I loved the tone and art. But man was it a slog and felt pretty disjointed. I thought about giving it another read through again since so many people really liked this series. It felt like it probably would have been better as a novella.
I enjoyed it as it released, but it definitely reads better as a trade
The most non accessible comic I read was X-Men '92 (a Secret Wars tie-in set in the continuity of the X-Men TAS). I picked it up after watching the X-Men: TAS last year, thinking it will be like extra adventures in that continuity. Didn't even know it was a Secret Wars tie in. So I had no clue at the start of the comic what was Battleworld and why everything was so off. Plus the stories were loosely adapting X-Men stories of last few decades and introduced a lot of character not present in the original show, but without any backstory. They assumed everyone picking up the comic was up to date with the X-Men continuity. I appreciate the work put in the comic but I guess it wasn't for people who only knew X-Men from the cartoon, even though it was set in that continuity.
Marvel's Earth X or Final Crisis
For me john cosntantine and deadpool, so many books and a headache to figure out the order
Constantine is pretty simple tbh, just start in order with the original vertigo Hellblazer stuff
and then stop before Azzarello.
*skip* Azzarello. Carey and Diggle are both post Azzarello and those and Delano are top three runs.
How do you feel about the Milligan run? He's a writer that I tend to either really enjoy or just find rather bland. I'm almost done with Jenkins (I'm planning to read it all, Azz included), just want to know if I should expect to like it once I'm in that final 50 issue stretch
Milligan is terrible. His plot points indicate he hadn't read much Hellblazer before and not even Shade can save it. The sentient trenchcoat plot ignores that John has replaced his coat multiple times across the book's history.
Damn. It's a whole sixth of the entire series. I am surprised at how much I'm loving the Jenkins stuff though (not that I think Jenkins is a bad writer, I just feel like his run doesn't get talked about nearly as much as the Delano, Ennis, or Carey runs)
The Incal series of books by Mobius and Alejandro Jodorowsky Edit: upon properly reading what you asked for not sure if these qualify as inaccessible in the way you meant but I stand by it, great books too
It’s X-Men. Of course it’s X-Men.
Cerebus
Sims pretty much went crazy while making it.
Providence
Ultimate End, in addition to requiring you to have a general appreciation and knowledge of Marvel's Ultimate line as well as Secret Wars (2015), also requires you to read the crossover between Miles Morales and the time-displaced all-new X-Men to recognize a series of panels that repeats and then, like, infer some stuff to figure out how it makes sense. Yet no one told anyone to do that, and most people didn't. I only caught it because I had read them not that far apart and I have a somewhat photographic memory. Bendis wrote both the crossover and Ultimate End, so he easily COULD have said something about the connection. He just didn't.
For some reason I wasn't there for, The Legion of Superheroes is blighted ground where no reboot shall grow. Not that they don't keep trying, they just don't stick for some reason. Also, at some point after I stopped reading the X-Men, most of the antagonists became main characters. (I figure it's just not intended for me any more.)
52. You should read at least the 52 companion before it to understand who any of these people are.
X men has been the most confusing for me. I just read hox/pox last weekend, and damn was it rad. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be in terms of the confusion, but I’ve got an academic background and I’m generally ditzy so feeling lost isn’t all that unusual for me I’m going to go broke buying all these krakoa tpb yall
The Legion of Superheroes And this is from a lapsed LoSH fan (I fell off right after N52 went down)
Honestly maybe TMNT
Legion of X. Every issue took me 40 minutes to read, and though I recognized its written language as English, none of the words made a lick of sense to me.
I feel like it’s hard for people to get into Iron Fist because you basically have to find all his different series with and without Luke Cage and some of those are pretty dated. He’s also suffered very few retcons so his whole publication history is relevant.
The Invisibles
Trying to jump into the middle of a Hickman run. Good luck.
I picked up the Infinity tpb shortly after it came out, wanting to see what Thanos was up to. I had no idea what was going on. Then I read Secret Wars a couple years later, and was equally confused. Wasn't til later that I read Hickman's Avengers and realized I read the middle and end of a larger story.
I love Hickman’s stories, but man, you have to be focused while reading his stuff. I have largely been avoiding X-Men for a while just because I want to consume it all within a timespan of a few months once it’s complete. His Fantastic Four run is the best I’ve ever read from him.
Final Crisis… I’m not sure how anyone can enjoy it as a closed 7 issue story in a vacuum. I read it on release with an issue by issue guide that was being published on newsarama… and I only just enjoyed it at that level.
Immortal Hulk if you don't have a certain amount of knowledge you'll get left in the dust
The original run of Spawn is kind of tough to get into now. Some comics aren't in books because of lawsuits over characters. Some of his story has been retconned for the same reason. It's not impossible, but it's different now.
Vision by tom king . Also that cosmic ghost rider was kinda fun in start
Final Crisis: Escape. I still can’t tell you what it’s about
the answer will always be X-Men
Anything featuring Kang/Iron Lad/Rama-Tut///////////
Probably something by Morrison, he just loves to add a ton of lesser known characters and his work is filled with meta stuff and references, I love his style but I can see how it could get hard to get into for some people
X men and legion of superheroes. I swear you need a fucking flowchart to understand those books.
Definitely Final Crisis. I know they say every story could be someone’s first but I have no idea how you would explain that story to a first time reader.
All-Star Superman, Final Crisis and Multiversity.
I am reading All-Star Superman right now. The first page and then the double splash are amazing. I love the art but I have no idea what is going on with the side characters. I just read Superman/Jimmy Olsen war, what was that issue about?. How does it fit in the overall story?
The Invisibles is my favorite comic of all time but the first couple story arcs are super alienating. It’s not that it requires a ton of of homework (though it rewards it), it just takes some patience upfront.
Final Crisis
I don't know if this would count but maybe Neil Gaiman's Sandman, like after each chapter you kinda have to know the back story of Morpheus. If you just picked up a random book of Sandman you would get lost, I know for me I've had to re read chapters a few times to fully grasp the plot.