DC's Crisis of Continuity

Recently, a follower on Twitter asked me if I could do a guide to DC's various Crisis events, as he couldn't quite get his head around everything. I'm not surprised, it's a minefield and confusing even to a regular reader of DC's comics. If you go into a comic or book shop you will see lots of books with the work 'Crisis' in the title. If you visit any comic blogs that cover DC's books you will probably see a Crisis mentioned.  Crisis is a very impressive word and it certainly sounds dramatic, but how do all these books fit in together? Where do they link and what do they mean?  And how do they fit in with DC's new 52 comics?

Keep reading for I shall try and break it down for you.

About Marvel Comics' Rolling Status Quo System

Whilst reviewing some Marvel Comics collections I found myself again and again explaining the status quo of the Marvel Universe at the time the story was written. Rather than repeat myself endlessly I decided it would be easier to explain Marvel's system of rolling status quos in one post and simply link back to it in future. Now, to explain:

One of the big attractions of the larger comics companies is the shared universes in which their characters exist allowing their series to mix and interact in interesting ways. One of the great criticisms of comics is that the decades-old characters are not seen to change in any meaningful manner. Whilst I and my colleagues dispute that criticism (we'd hardly have founded this website if we didn't) Marvel Comics sought to overcome that perception by very publicly evolving the state of their universe.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot

You may have heard that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is getting rebooted, without the involvement of anyone from the original film or TV show.  With this in mind, I'd like to remind any fans of the TV show that you can still get your Joss Whedon influenced Buffy kicks, through the medium of comics!

We here at New readers.. have featured two Buffy spin offs, Tales of the Vampires and Tales of the Slayers.  Both come fully Joss Whedon authorised and approved and are of the quality you would expect from the TV show.  If that's not enough Slayer for you, you could also buy season 8, produced as an ongoing comics series, starting with Long Way Home.  The reading order for season 8 is as follows:
Long Way Home
No Future For You
Wolves at the Gate
Time of Your Life
Predators and Prey
Retreat

Neil Gaiman's Sandman. An Overview

Recently, we reviewed Dream Country, the third collection of Neil Gaiman’s landmark ten-volume series The Sandman. Further volumes will be reviewed in due time but before that we present here a brief overview of which volumes are most suitable for new readers. Note, for the purposes of this post we are dealing only with the Sandman ten-volume series itself, ignoring the additional volumes produced in later years and the spin-offs (though again, the best of these will be reviewed here at a later date).

Each of the ten volumes can, in theory, be read in isolation but in practice a little foreknowledge of what you’re getting into might not be a bad thing.

The chronological sequence of the series is as follows:

Suggested Reading Order: Superman - New Krypton

In the last few years the Superman family of books has had a lot of crossovers, collectively titled New Krypton. The general gist of these stories is that Krypton, Superman's long dead homeworld, is recreated leading to lots of interesting and unexpected conflict situations.  It's a cross between a family drama, a detective story, a crime thriller, a war story and a space epic.

As someone new to the genre, or new to Superman books generally, looking through the bookshelves you would be forgiven for feeling a little lost and perhaps not knowing quite which one to pick up.  Which is where we come in.  What will follow is a brief explanation (without spoilers) of the major things that have been been happening in the books over the last few years, and a suggested reading order.