Attempting to read every Marvel comic starting with Fantastic Four #1 is no easy task. What comics to include? What order to go in? What should I be looking out for? What to keep track of? What to write about?
I’d be lost without many great websites which paved the way.
An incomplete list of great resources for Marvel comic books and comics in general:
- Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
- Grand Comics Database
- Marvel Chronology Project
- Mike’s Amazing World of Comics
- Complete Marvel Reading Order
- The Appendix to the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe
- Marvel Database
- Cover Browser
- DC Universe Guide
- Digital Comics Museum
- Comic Book Plus
- Toonopedia
- Jess Nevins’ Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes
- Lesser Book of the Vishanti
- Marvel Directory
A couple others are doing similar things to what I’m doing here.
- SuperMegaMonkey’s Marvel Comics Chronology led the way long before I got here.
- Merry Marvel Reading Society Facebook group
- Extremis Reviews started something similar a few years back
- The “Marvel A Day” team started in November 2019. They are going at a rate of a comic a day, and I am not, so they have soared ahead of me. Follow them on Twitter or Facebook.
- The Marvelous Age
- Adventures in the Marvelous Zone
- Marvel Genesis took on a similar project over the course of about 4 years. I’ve just about caught up to where they left off.
- All of the Marvels. Douglas Wolk’s reading that led to his book.
- Earth’s Mightiest Blog
And of course you need more than just the factual resources above. You need commentary and discussion. Here’s where I found the best.
- Classic Comics Forum
- Brian Cronin’s posts on Comic Book Resources
- Atomic Junk Shop
- Comic Book Historians Facebook group
- A People’s History of Comics Facebook group
- Kirby Without Words
- The Virtues of Captain America
- Kirby Dynamics
- Marvel in the Silver Age
- SpiderFan.org
And a very special thanks to comics historian and indexer extraordinaire Kurt Mitchell for enlightening discussion and sharing his notes and draft indexes.
And thanks to the gang at Rita’s pub.
The heroic work above has put a whole universe of comics at my fingertips.