---
title: 'How to Start Reading Comics - A Beginners Guide'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=XwCrIh3YaOQ'
video_id: 'XwCrIh3YaOQ'
date: 2026-06-15
duration_sec: 0
---

# How to Start Reading Comics - A Beginners Guide

> Source: [How to Start Reading Comics - A Beginners Guide](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XwCrIh3YaOQ)

## Summary

This guide helps beginners navigate the daunting world of comics by explaining key terms like single issues, collected editions, and runs. It emphasizes that there is no single perfect starting point and encourages readers to follow creators they enjoy to expand their reading.

### Key Points

- **Acknowledging the Confusion** [0:00] — Starting comics is confusing due to decades of history and multiple series for characters like Spider-Man or Batman.
- **No Perfect Starting Point** [1:15] — There is no single perfect starting point; the best place is wherever you want to start.
- **Understanding Formats** [2:12] — Single issues are monthly magazines (~20 pages), collected editions (paperback/hardcover) gather arcs, and omnibuses collect many issues in oversized format.
- **Digital Reading Resources** [4:30] — Use Comixology for purchases, or subscription services like Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe for access to many stories.
- **What is a Run?** [5:37] — A run is the period a creative team works on a series, e.g., Grant Morrison's Batman run. This differs from manga where a single creator typically handles the entire series.
- **Finding Your Starting Point** [7:22] — Search for 'best [character] stories' online, note which stories appear frequently, and choose ones that appeal to you.
- **Expanding from a Story** [10:10] — After reading a story, note the writer/artist, other characters, and referenced stories. Follow creators you enjoy to other works.
- **Following Creators** [12:50] — It's more important to follow creators than characters. Enjoying a writer's work on one character often leads to enjoying their other works.
- **Beyond Marvel and DC** [15:38] — Following creators can lead to independent publishers like Image, opening up more diverse stories.

### Conclusion

The best way to start reading comics is to find a story that appeals to you, note the creators, and follow their work to discover more. This method helps you curate your own tastes and explore a wide range of comics.

## Transcript

getting into reading comics can be
really daunting and difficult
but let me help you with this guide stay
[Music]
tuned
i know how confusing it can be to start
reading comics
and that's something that needs to be
acknowledged first and foremost
when trying to help people out there's a
lot of confusion because there are so
many characters especially when we're
talking about
mainstream comics like spider-man or
batman that existed for decades and have
just thousands upon thousands of
different comics
and someone who has no idea about how
comics work
is probably gonna look at that and say
okay well i'd like to start spider-man
but i don't know where because
there are so many different series
amazing spider-man web of spider-man
spectacular spider-man spider-man
and each of them has multiple number
ones do i have to go all the way back to
the 60s
or where where can i start i don't know
what to do it's confusing and i know
that and the thing is that you have to
kind of understand a few things before
you get into comics
so that it's less confusing when you
start actually diving in
now the first thing that i have to do is
to dispel the notion
that there is a perfect starting point
for any character or team or franchise
because there's not
the perfect starting point is really
wherever you want to start
whatever works best for you and that's
what i'm here to kind of help you to try
and find
is your perfect starting point for any
character or
team or franchise because you can start
with any single issue you could grab an
issue out of nowhere of
any series any comic any character
and start right there and just expand
from that
story but that might not be the most
beneficial place to start and that's
what i kind of want to help is to find
the most beneficial place for you to
start with anything
or really to help you to be able to find
that spot
for yourself so first i want to
have you know a couple of things
you need to know what single issues are
what collected editions are and also
what a run
is so really quick single issues this is
a single issue of a manga but it is a
single issue nonetheless
these are published oftentimes monthly
sometimes twice a month sometimes
four times a month whatever the case is
these magazines are about 20 pages long
and there are longer ones as well and
they collect the ongoing
stories of whatever character it is that
you're reading about
and eventually these do get collected
into paperback or hardcover editions
now this is a standard paperback edition
it just collects four issues
it's nothing huge but most comics
are collected at least in a standard
paperback like this
that collects a small number of those
single issues
typically this contains an entire arc so
you can pick this up and have
a decent story that has a beginning a
middle and an end
and there are also standard hardcover
editions that often are the same as
those standard paperback editions where
these will just be a collection of a few
issues that make up an arc
but there are thicker ones of both of
those formats as well that will collect
you know a dozen or more issues
um oftentimes collecting like larger
chunks of a whole series
and then there are oversized hard covers
and oversized means the trim size is
larger so it's taller and it is wider
than one of those paperbacks or one of
those hardcovers and oftentimes these
will collect maybe a dozen to 18 issues
and then beyond this there are larger
editions such as an omnibus edition
my name on here is the omnibus collector
because i like to collect these omnibus
editions
now they are more expensive but they do
collect a lot more material
they can collect anywhere depending on
how long a series is it can be
i think small as 10 issues is one of the
smallest ones
and as large as 50 plus issues of
material
they are presented in the oversized
format similar to the oversized editions
and there are larger formats as well
such as dark horses library editions
or dc's absolute editions and many other
formats for
comics so now you have a basic
understanding of collected editions and
not
everything is collected that's another
important thing to note
and the best way to find out what is
collected especially for mainstream
stuff from like marvel or dc
is in my opinion the best resource is
crushing comics.com my friend peter has
been running that website for
forever and he does guides on basically
every major character so you can figure
out
what places are you know good jumping on
points you can see what stories are
collected what issues are not collected
and whatever's not collected that way if
you want to read everything you can seek
out
those single issues or maybe read them
digitally and that brings me to another
great point
is reading digitally what type of apps
are there that are out there
because when it comes to manga we have
stuff like the shonen jump app the viz
media app the manga plus app and stuff
like that
and there are apps like this for comics
now you can use comixology which
basically you have to purchase
digital single issues or digital
collected editions and then read them
through the app
or you can use services like marvel
unlimited or dc
universe which have many of the stories
published by those publishers
available to read similar to the viz
media app or the shonen jump app where
you subscribe you pay a price per month
and you have access to all that content
now the next thing i want to help you
understand is what is a run
now a run on a comic is basically the
the time that a certain creator or
creative team
spends working on that series now for
instance i have grant morrison's batman
omnibus
and morrison worked on batman for an
extended period of time
now their batman run can be broken up
into smaller arcs like batman and sun
the black glove
r.i.p but those are all pieces of their
ongoing
run there can be runs that are just a
few issues long or you can have runs
like chris claremont's initial run on
the uncanny x-men that lasted for 17
years now this is something that's
different than manga
if you're a manga reader usually there's
not really runs
a series begins under one creative team
or one creator
and it will stay with that team or
creator until the end
if you're interested in reading
something like one piece
and you say you know where do i start
you start with volume one and you keep
going from there
but it's different for comics and the
way that people will divide
comics up and recommend is often going
to be
by the run and that's how i recommend
stuff is by people's runs
so if it comes to spider-man i might say
oh you know my favorite runs on
spider-man
are the roger stern run the dan slot run
right now nick spencer's run is is about
to wrap up and there are
manga that do have like spin-offs and
stuff like i know you know you could be
reading my hero academia
and there are several spin-offs but for
the most part manga are typically
one series and it's pretty cut and dry
how to read forward in that series which
makes it hard for manga readers to start
reading especially like superhero comics
alright so now we have these terms out
of the way you understand
single issues collected editions how to
read digitally what a run is and stuff
like that
and some of the differences between
manga and comics
now let's get to the meat of this video
how do you start though where is the
best place to start
and like i said i want to help you to
find out the best starting place
for you so the best thing that you can
do
if you're just starting and reading
comics you don't know anything about
any creators or you know anywhere that
you can start with certain stories
first think about what are you
interested in because you're probably
wanting to read comics because
you're already familiar with something
maybe you're a big fan of the avengers
movies or some batman cartoons or you
played the spider-man video game on ps4
and really loved it and whatever it is
you'd like to
see some of the source material where
that comes from you're interested in
diving in
so you take whatever it is that you're
interested in let's say you're a big fan
of christopher nolan's batman movies and
you can't wait for the new movie from
matt reeves and you'd like to read some
batman comics
in preparation for this new movie so
what i recommend doing
is going online and searching just
searching for the best batman comics or
best batman stories
greatest batman stories top 10 batman
stories whatever you want to search
search those great stories for that
character that team
we're using batman again as the example
here and you're going to find a ton of
different lists oftentimes they're going
to be lists
from websites you know big comic book
websites like ign or cbr or news-a-rama
stuff like that
or you'll find individual people's blogs
where they talk about their own opinions
on what their favorite stories are or
maybe people's youtube videos like my
own
where i talked about my favorite batman
stories so
look at or watch or read as many of
these
articles or videos as you can or as you
want to
and pay attention pay attention to the
stories that are being brought up
what stories are being brought up
multiple times between multiple of these
articles
and also pay attention to what the
stories are about
and why they're being recommended really
pay attention to
what these stories are because that's
how you're gonna see you know i don't
expect you to go
and read a list of you know the top 25
batman stories and then
read every single one of those 25
stories but choose the ones that appeal
to you the most that appeal to your
tastes and then go with those
and see why these people are
recommending them see if that appeals to
you go with those stories pick up a few
of those
read them and then we're going to expand
from there so let's take a few examples
of batman stories that come up
really often on these top story lists so
we have stuff like
the death in the family or we also will
often have
morrison's arkham asylum another popular
one that will come up a lot
is going to be alan moore's killing joke
and then one that's
probably going to be on everyone's list
is year one
so let's take year one for instance you
read year one and you
really enjoyed it you really love this
story now there's a couple things that
you want to pay attention to when you're
reading these stories
take note of the things that you enjoy
number one
who's the writer and who's the artist
pay attention to who the creators are on
this book
number two if this story has any other
character aside from batman in it that
you might be interested in
take note of that and then number three
if it is a story that's connected to the
greater continuity of the universe that
it takes place in
take note of any stories that are
referenced often there will be editor
notes
in the book maybe not so much in batman
year one but a lot of times there will
be editor notes that will tell you like
oh do you want to see where this took
place
read this issue so that's how we start
now you you chose some books you enjoyed
those books
and if it comes down to year one
you're going to say okay well this was
written by frank miller
and it had artwork by david nazicelli
frank miller and david mazzagchelli have
done
work elsewhere they teamed up together
for a daredevil story
called born again and it is one of the
best stories over at marvel definitely
my favorite story arc for daredevil
it's just an amazing story so you
enjoyed what they did with batman
chances are you're also going to enjoy
what they do
with daredevil so go from batman year
one
and go pick up daredevil born again
because chances are you enjoyed their
work in one place you're gonna enjoy
their work in another place
now you've started to open your doors to
another character entirely another
franchise entirely because now
you're reading daredevil now if if you
find that you really enjoy the character
of daredevil then you repeat the same
step as before but instead of looking up
the best batman stories
start looking up lists for daredevil
recommendations
so for daredevil you might see that
people recommend stuff
like mark wade's run or brian bendis's
run so let's say
you decide to read mark wade's run
because it looks like something that
would appeal to you
you read mark wade's run on daredevil
and you really love that once again
repeat this
you see other books by mark wade mark
wade has written
black widow he's written captain america
he's written all kinds of characters
he's written the justice league go find
some more mark wade books
and it just keeps going from there this
is in my opinion the best way
to start getting into reading comics
because this shows you that what's
important
is not always the character and while
the character
is important it's the writer and it's
the artist these are the ones
who are making this story enjoyable for
you
and so it's more important in my opinion
to follow the creators
in what they're doing rather than just
looking at the characters
so let's move back to those batman books
so you read the killing joke and you
really enjoy this story now there's a
few things to take
note of here number one the creative
team once again
we get alan moore and
brian bolland so you can look up
creations other works by moore and
bolland
together or separately and then who's
involved with this story of course we
have
the joker so if you enjoyed the joker in
this story then you might decide that
you want to seek out other joker stories
or maybe you enjoy seeing you know
commissioner gordon or barbara gordon's
parts
in this story and you'd like to see more
from them so then you decide
well i really like the writing in that
one i'd like to read more from alan
moore
so you look up best alan moore comics
and you're gonna get a whole list
because he's written
so many things over his decades that
he's been
in the comics industry and of course
you're gonna see stuff like watch men
pop
up and you'll jump into watchmen and
read this and you might really love it
and then there's more stuff from here
you you see that dave gibbons was the
artist here maybe you want to read more
stuff that dave gibbons has worked on he
worked on green lantern core
or you can grab one of my favorite
comics of all time
swamp thing by alan moore and then you
find that you really enjoy the character
of swamp thing and you want to see what
other swamp thing runs are recommended
from there maybe you pick up the new 52
run
by scott snyder and you enjoyed his run
on swamp thing so you want to read more
by scott snyder so you read scott
snyder's batman run
which you might have seen pop up in some
of those top batman story lists or maybe
you decide to go with the charles soul
run on swamp thing which was also part
of the new 52 and you really enjoyed
that
so then you look for more stuff by
charles sol and you see that he wrote
the red lantern series he wrote the
thunderbolts he wrote
all kinds of stories this is a great way
to really start introducing yourself
to a large range of stories from
all kinds of publishers for all kinds of
characters from all kinds of creators
and again you need to pay attention to
those creators because they are the ones
that are really going to inform your
tastes
and it's really a lot safer for you to
say
i enjoy the works of grant morrison so
i'm going to pick up more grant morrison
works rather than saying i really like
batman so i'm just gonna grab more
batman books
because not every batman book is going
to appeal to you even if you're a huge
fan of batman and they don't need to
because they're written for different
people
but if you're a big fan of what morrison
did on batman
then you might go from there and say
well i also want to read more more since
i'm going to pick up doom patrol animal
man
and countless other stories by morrison
so it's a very
simple tactic but it's one that i think
is extremely effective
in really helping people to
be able to help themselves i think in
reading comics and in starting to
explore the comics medium
and the cool thing is that this is not
just going to
be relegated to marvel and dc because as
you go forward and you read more books
by different creators
you're going to start finding that these
creators you enjoy
have also written work outside of these
larger universes
for instance maybe you're interested in
reading fantastic four and one of the
recommended runs that seems really
enjoyable to you
is jonathan hickman's which these
omnibus editions are getting reprinted
soon so it'd be a nice time to jump in
on that run
and so you choose to look at jonathan
hickman's run and you really enjoy his
writing and you find out that
he's actually done a lot of work outside
of marvel
over at image and you might want to pick
up his series east of west
and this is a self-contained series over
an image that has a beginning middle and
end but you might be turned on to the
artist nick dragada who's done a lot of
work elsewhere
or maybe you check out the series
manhattan projects by jonathan nickman
so it just opens all these doors to
trying out these creators and it can
send you through to other publishers and
from those other publishers maybe you
find that you really enjoy the style of
stories that are written over at image
so you start expanding and wanting to
read more stuff from image even if it's
not
from a creator that you're already
familiar with like joshua williamson's
nail biter
or margaery lou's monstrous and both of
those creators
have done comics over at marvel and dc
so it just brings you right back into
that
and then maybe you read marjorie liu's
work with x23
and decide that you would like to read
more of that character and expand from
there and check out tom taylor's all-new
wolverine
it's a never-ending cycle you will never
run out of material to get
and you're really just curating your own
tastes that way and
feeding to yourself in in further being
able to find
things that basically you know that
you're going to enjoy or you can be
confident that you're going to enjoy
now this video is basically the crux of
a series of videos that i'm going to do
getting into various comics and various
franchise
this is my advice on how to start and i
think that it's the perfect advice for
anyone who's not
into comics specifically mainstream
marvel and dc comics
but you might be into other media like
manga
or maybe you watch a lot of tv or movies
and stuff like that because
this is a way to kind of help you to get
past those preconceived notions that we
mentioned at the beginning of the video
where you're no longer thinking there
has to be one beginning
and one middle and one end to every
series to every team or anything like
that
but i'm going to be creating more videos
that kind of work in conjunction with
this
and what i'm going to do from here is to
talk about different
characters different teams different
series different creators
to help you to try and get into that
stuff more easily now i've already done
one of these videos basically for batman
and i was planning on doing one for the
x-men as well
but i felt like i needed to do this
video first to expand on kind of
how to get into stuff like the x-men
before actually talking about
the x-men franchise because it's such a
grand one so
if you liked this video if you enjoyed
what i had to say here and if this
advice was helpful for you at all and i
really hope that it was
please subscribe to this channel if you
haven't already and stay tuned for those
upcoming videos
i will be trying to put those out as
frequently as i can and if there's any
characters or teams or maybe even
creators that you'd like to see me
work on these videos for i already have
a list of ideas that i'm moving forth
with
but please comment down below to let me
know
which of those you would like to see me
talk about that you would like some help
with
so thank you so much for spending this
time with me i hope this video was
entertaining
and that it was informative and let me
know what character or what franchise
that you are most interested in starting
to read
see on the next one peace out