Even with all the different websites based around Marvel comics, there wasn’t anything that easily let me as a new reader know where to begin and what I should read to catch up. This guide should help make things as easy as possible with clear starting points for each character.
I ended up making this list with a focus on two main things:
- Flesh out the characters before they go onto having their own more prominent role. That way I could enjoy every storyline to its fullest.
- Ordering it to move the stories forward as smooth as possible without having to switch gears between series’ too much.
Because of this, there are occasionally small continuity flaws as some details are revealed from multiple viewpoints in different series. This list has been optimised for reader enjoyment from first-hand experience and my own hindsight which let me edit as I progressed.
Originally, I made this as a personal reading list for Marvel to let me catch up to the MCU films before they came out and enjoy as many comics as possible along the way. After a while, I started using it to read every major storyline in the main universe (known as 616) so I thought I’d try and share the knowledge and let others read the same epic stories!
One great advantage the comics have over the films based off them is that they tell a much larger scale story and use characters that don’t have any restrictions due to copyrights.
*Please note: every section of this blog is written and edited by a single author*
On this blog will be all of Marvel Comics’ main continuity in chronological order mapped out from across the last 20 years in a simple reading list. That’s 2 decades worth of reading streamlined into one easy-to-follow comprehensive reading order!
It allows you as the reader to pick and choose what you want to pay attention to and is written with a focus on explaining everything to allow you work out how to add or remove what you want with ease.
The early 2000’s was a massive relaunch point for Marvel so this guide will be using that as the starting point. This is a great new starting point because it was a fresh point for retroactively continuity (or ‘retcon’- worth looking up on Wikipedia if you’ve not come across this before) with every character in Marvel. Because of the way they did this fresh start, it was more of a hard reboot than the many others to come soon after (such as 2012’s ‘Marvel Now!’) which rely on the reader having much more knowledge of the characters history to that point.
This is also the single biggest changing point in Marvel in recent years, with the Avengers now becoming Marvel’s A-team and overtaking the X-Men who had been a much larger focus of Marvel in the 90’s. The Avengers from here on out would recruit characters outside of its traditions by adding two new main characters to its roster: Spider-Man and Wolverine. This also pushed the other comic books to streamline much of their other stories around what was happening in this team.
To help make this guide, I took a leaf out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and split it into ‘Phases’ which help round off one era to another. I’ll also try to create a section highlighting some main concepts for any newcomers to these comics as a whole.
For the most part, this starting point works for every character in Marvel- but there are some instances where storylines are based around characters/ history from the previous 60+ years’ worth of storytelling. I’ll try to highlight these points of interest with links to which older arcs to read for these parts as I go along. To do this I’ve added an optional ‘Phase 0’ which should help guide you through ‘non-essential’ (but definitely enjoyable) reads. This will be updated as I go along and split into sub-sections of its own. Those being:
- Starting points for a character(s).
- A storyline good for character’s featured exposition before being later re-introduced.
- A ‘must read’ from outside of this list. This might be because it takes place before the start of this list, or because it’s for a different version of the character like the ultimate universe version.
*Note: This guide is for Marvel’s main continuity known as Earth 616. There’s a separate universe featuring many alternative takes on these characters which started in the early 2000’s known as the ‘Ultimate Universe’ (or Earth 1610). Some elements from this later get folded into the main 616 universe, so whilst it’s not the main focus I have also added the essentials from this in the optional ‘Phase 0’ so don’t worry about missing a thing!
Marvel 616 Reading Order 