Avengers Disassembled - Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited Clickable Reading List

Special thanks to Dave at Comic Book Herald. His reading order is the best on the web, I’ve only added hyperlinks to the Marvel Unlimited issues.

By the way, this blog post is actually a GREAT example of why this blog is necessary. If you go to Marvel Unlimited online and start with Avengers #500, clicking “Next Issue” gives you Avengers #84. This is like Netflix streaming in the early days only worse. Think HBOGO’s or Amazon Prime’s queuing systems six months ago, then imagine something that sucks a whole lot more.

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Note: you should really check out his blog. There’s more comic book goodness there than I can describe. I’ve made a couple of changes to his list and I hope he doesn’t mind.

You can buy Avengers Disassembled at Amazon.com or at your local shop. I highly recommend Excalibur in Shreveport, La and Lone Star Comics in Dallas/Ft Worth. Please tell them you heard about them from the blog - I get nothing but the satisfaction of helping our local shops stay in business!

Click any of the issues below to open the issue in Marvel Unlimited on the web.

Laying the groundwork for Avengers #500 and the main event, we start out with Avengers Disassembled: Prologue.

Thor #80

Iron Man #84 “Turf War” Part 1

Spectacular Spider-Man #15

Thor #81

Iron Man #85 “Turf War” Part 2

Spectacular Spider-Man #16

Tie-Ins and the Main Event

Thor #82 Ragnarok - the cyborg clone of Thor

Captain America & The Falcon #5

Iron Man #86 “The Singularity” Part 1

Captain America #29

Spectacular Spider-Man #17

The official beginning - Avengers Disassembled Part 1

Avengers #500

Thor #83 "Ragnarok" Part 3 of 6

Captain America & The Falcon #6

Iron Man #87 “The Singularity” Part 2

Captain America #30

Spectacular Spider-Man #18

Fantastic Four #517 “Fortitude” Part 1 of 3

Avengers Disassembled Part 2

Avengers #501

Thor #84 “Ragnarok” Part 4 of 6

Iron Man #88 “The Singularity” Part 3

Captain America #31

Spectacular Spider-Man #19 “Changes” Part 3 of 4

Fantastic Four #518 “Fortitude” Part 2 of 3

Avengers Disassembled Part 3

Avengers #502

Thor #85 "Ragnarok" Part 6 of 6

Iron Man #89 “The Singularity” Part 4

Avengers Disassembled Part 4

Captain America #32

Fantastic Four #519 “Fortitude” Part 3 of 3

Spectacular Spider-Man #20 “Changes” Part 4 of 4

Captain America & The Falcon #7

Avengers #503

Epilogue

Avengers Finale #1

Next?

Excalibur #8

Reminder, if you want to buy from My Comic Shop online, click this link. If you want the coolest blog on the web about comics (sorry, it’s not me, I only wish to be close to his level one day), visit Dave’s blog here.

I’ll be making more of these posts, but make sure you give proper ups and cred to Dave if you link to me or like the reading list. Without Dave’s rundown, this would’ve been a much greater task than the already painful ordeal it was to begin with -- Dave is a superstar who has made enjoying Marvel Unlimited so much easier!

 

Until next time,

Excelsior!!!

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited - The Phoenix Saga - Part I of ??

Jean Grey is one of my all-time-favorite comic book characters. She was Marvel Girl in the original X-Men and had powers of telekinesis that allowed her to move things with her mind, create invisible barriers with that mental force and similar fairly simple demonstrations of a super power.

Much later in the comic series, we learned that Professor X had put a psychic block on her powers and that she was really far more powerful with the ability to read minds, push thoughts into minds, fly with her telekinesis and so many other cool things. This made her a useful host for the cosmic entity of life and death known as the Phoenix.

These are the issues that cover key parts of the first story of the rise and fall of the Phoenix. Great material if you want to go back in a time machine and learn all about one of the most enduring characters and themes in the Marvel Universe.

We’re going to stroll along memory lane in this first section, introducing Jean Grey and covering the last three issues before she became Phoenix.

1. The X-Men #1 - before the title was renamed “Uncanny X-Men,” this title started it all. First published September 10, 1963, it was co-created by artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee, incidentally the creators of many of Marvel’s most famous icons. In issue #1, we meet the original team, Professor X and archenemy Magneto. Note for this issue and other comic books, my favorite online comic book shop is based in Ft Worth, Texas and they do a great job of packing and shipping quickly along with pricing fairly. At the time of this writing there is an auction item of X-Men #1 with flaws as low as $101. Click here for the a search of X-Men comic books - issue 1. By the way - Jean’s story starts on page 8 of this classic issue. Never mind the primitive (by today’s standards) art work. Remember, this was before society found it acceptable to draw every comic book female like a super vixen. If you want to see how Jean developed, here’s a great piece of Jean with Emma Frost (big thanks to the fanpop.com clubs “Femme Fatales Fan Art” group where I first spotted it and of course, the amazing artist JamieFayX at deviantART).
2. The All-New, All-Different X-Men #98 - this is the beginning of transformation of Jean Grey into the Marvel Universe’s most-pivotal character. Just a few issues after the formation of the All-New, All-Different X-Men featuring Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird, Banshee, Sunfire and of course future break-out character Wolverine, this story brings us a return of the Sentinels. These mutant hunting robots are ready for action and all about ruining Christmas for the X-Men.
3. The All-New, All-Different X-Men #99 - the anti-mutant hysteria moves to space as the Sentinels go hard after the team.
4. X-Men #100 - the issue before Marvel Girl’s big change!

1. The All-New, All-Different X-Men #101 - this is it. Enter: The Phoenix! Jean Grey saves everybody in this exciting issue where she debuts as The Phoenix in that sexy green costume.
2. The All-New, All-Different X-Men #108 - there are plenty of great stories in between 101 and 108, but 108 brings back the Shi'ar Empire introduced in issue #97 and we discover the limitless powers of The Phoenix.

A word about the titles used for the comic books in the links: Marvel calls the titles by the last name they had before the numbering restarted or ended. I’m using the titles found on the cover of the books, although it could be said that these All-New… issues are simply titled “X-Men.” Check out the collected editions of books at Amazon.

There’s so much more in the Phoenix Saga. Many trade paperbacks, many issues to come, but this gets you to where Marvel Girl first becomes the Phoenix and should leave you a real taste for what’s to come.

Until next time,

Excelsior!!!

A Great Source of Reading Lists

The Comic Book Herald is an awesome blog, filled with great Marvel reading order content. The site lists trade paperbacks and individual issues for many popular crossover events. The trade paperbacks are usually linked to an online source like Amazon, but the individual issues aren’t linked to MDCU. That’s where this blog comes in -- soon I’ll have links up to help comic fans quickly find the next issue to read in all of the best big Marvel crossovers.

Check out the Comic Book Herald here.

I wasn’t following comics since I was a kid, so it was great to get back into them and be able to catch up on so many great stories like the House of M. Check out CBH’s great reading order guide for the House of M here.

If you are looking for a great comic book store, buy comic books at mycomicshop.com

We also use Amazon for many of our store purchases - comics, vintage comics, shipping boxes and more!

Note: as usual, whenever you see an asterisk (*), you can look at the bottom of the post for links to that item on Amazon or eBay.

Until next time,

 

Excelsior!!!

What SUCKS about Marvel Comics Unlimited

Dear readers,

There are some drawbacks to the MDCU platform at this point. It reminds me quite a bit of HBOGO and Amazon Prime videos when they came online. First, you can’t “subscribe” to a comic book series. You can add individual comics to your “library” and you can even have up to six comic books offline if you are using an iOS device, but this is not something that is really helpful.

Surely there needs to be a better way to organize comic books in libraries for users of the service. Marvel doesn’t want to discourage people from buying paper comics (or digital ones) monthly, so they delay digitizing of new issues. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how sometimes a single issue will be missing from a long line of old issues. I noticed some in Uncanny X-Men that were missing, so you lose parts of story arcs. That sucks.

Another big drawback is one of the reasons for this blog: searching for comic books sucks. The web-based interface is better than the iOS app, but it’s still a real bitch to use.

As you can see, searching for “uncanny x-men 266” gives you a lot of results. Luckily for this particular search, the first one is the correct link. If you click it, you’ll get the following screen.

With many other searches, the results aren’t quite as useful. When searching for age of apocalypse, you get this:

As you can see, it’s not exactly easy to find the comic book issues you want to read. The only way to improve the search is to click the Comics option under the By Category heading on the left.

Although you will still have trade paperbacks and other content (like variant cover editions) that are not available on the online service.

Marvel - please consider adding a U symbol to the listings as shown below where the link contains any MDCU content.

Until next time,

Excelsior!!!

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited - The Reading List Blog!

Dear readers,

Marvel Comics Unlimited is really a cool feature for people into comic books, whether you were a fan in the 80s as a kid (like me) or a more recent fan, this service allows you to read comic books from the silver age on through to recent books from as recently as 2012.

There are some gaps in issues, sometimes the sequence is out of order (especially on mini series) so you’ll click next and see two issues out and think the next issue is missing, only to discover that clicking next again gets you that missing issue.

The service is available on iOS and looks great on the iPad and iPad mini -- but you might be surprised to learn that the iPhone is great thanks to the “smart panels” feature of the app. This link will open iTunes to the Marvel Unlimited app that is designed for both iPhone and iPad.

Android fans need not worry, Marvel loves you too and they offer access via your web browser too, with an app coming to Google play soon. I love the browsing experience on Chrome and use Chrome on my 27” iMac for most of my reading.

There are some downsides to the service, and I’ll cover those in another blog post, but first, let me explain the purpose of this blog. There are tons of great reading lists that help you navigate the complex order required to follow along on major crossover events in the Marvel Universe, like House of M, for example. This blog will feature posts that list the individual issues for crossovers, notable major stories in the Marvel canon like the Death of The Phoenix, the first appearance of Gambit and more, all with hyperlinks to the Marvel Unlimited browser-based version of the comic book.




Speaking of Gambit, nerd friends, did you see this? AND yes, I know the actual first appearance of Gambit was a cameo in X-Men Annual #14, which unfortunately is not on the new digital service yet.
So, welcome to my blog, your comments and suggestions for issues and events to highlight are welcome!

Excelsior!!!