Some Comic help

[salmastryon.livejournal.com]

Last year, y'all gave me some great recommendations on TPB I should get with the amazon gift certificate I got for xmas. This year I'm get some money I can spend anywhere I want. So really I got two fold question I'd like your advice on.

First: Should I go to electronic comics?
I know I can acquire them at Marvel or Comixology. There may be other places I don't know about. I don't have a lot of space and if it is a decent option then I'd like to give it a try. I'll miss the paper, but electronic versions would be more likely to be reread than sit in the bottom of my closet in a box and plastic sleeves collection dust like my X-calibur and Elf Quest does. So, I was wondering what peoples opinions were on paper versus electronic and if I do go electronic who should I go with?

Second:What should I get?
I really enjoyed the Iron Man/Captain America tpb y'all suggested last time. And the Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes Ultimate Collection, gave me a good grounding on the teams overall history and beginnings. While I didn't have the money, Red Zone was suggested and sounded like a good one to get. If I do go electronic, I wouldn't be adverse to picking up one of the titles. At 4 dollars a pop(rounded up), more than one would be a bit steep for me. I need some money left over in my book budget for each month. :P

So suggestions on which collection/books I should perhaps pick up would be great. I'm still really hesitant to pick up and read the extreme angst fest that is the Civil War. Especially since, as I understand it, reading just the Civil War book leaves out a lot of the plot. I'm definitely thinking of grabbing Red Zone, lucre_noin did a good job on selling me on it earlier.

Psst, I don't know if I tagged this right. Let me know if there is a tag I should add or if misunderstood the tags I used.

Comments

[whizzy.livejournal.com]

I've found holes in digital unlimited, but it's usually the recent stuff or a couple issues smack in the middle of something old (like, from the '70s) for no good reason. I just checked, and they definitely have all of New Avengers (the issues were added between 2007 and 2011), all of Avengers Prime, all of Disassembled, most/all of Civil War. (Know they have the main event and series tie-ins, and I've tracked down some kind of obscure CW related stuff there too.)

Part of the problem is that the trades seem to be collected under the name of the story arc, if there is one (Disassembled; Red Zone). Outside the TPB, Red Zone ran in Avengers volume 3 #65-70. MCDU's search engine is so terrible that it's almost always easiest to search for by individual issue number. Like, searching for Red Zone doesn't bring up the issues, searching for "Avengers v3 65" brings up a freaking reference to the issues but not the issues themselves. I found it under "Avengers 65" and then Avengers (1998 - 2004). And then, #67 shows up as unavailable from the actual page, but if you click the read button from the overall listing it does load.

I guess MCDU's slogan should be We probably have it, how hard are you willing to work to find it, sucker?

Team type recs are probably the way to go, since you'll get interaction between Steve and Tony (not all that common in their solo stuff) and a bunch of others.

New Avengers #1 is the logical jump in point for modern Avengery goodness. It picks up after Disassembled.

I don't agree with all of these (http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/02/the-25-greatest-avengers-stories?page=1), but there are definitely good ones in there. Anything catch your interest?

The current run of Avengers (it's up to #9) and Avengers Assemble (up to #14) are the ongoing team + Steve and Tony books to look at. Avengers is all worlds-being-destroyed cosmic-entities-in-tight-shiny-outfits, while Assemble is more banter-over-breakfast lizard-people-in-the-sewers speed.

For Steve, you'll hear people mention Brubaker's Captain America. That's volume 5, which covers a lot of ground (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America_%28vol._5%29). Consider it background for the CA2 movie.

If you want to go old school, Tales of Suspense is the title where Iron Man (and Pepper, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Agent 13, a lot of villains) were introduced. Starting at #58, each book was split between an Iron Man story and a Cap story, with appearances by other Avengers too. A lot of the stuff has since been retconned, but modern writers keep returning to these old stories for inspiration.

[salmastryon.livejournal.com]

After wrestling with it in my head for a bit, I think I'm going to go with the unlimited. I was orginially thinking of going for just a month and making a list of what to read, but my mom told me it is just another 15 dollars get the annual subscription. She has a point to 5 dollars a month is a great deal even with a 6 month lag. Did some research and in general there seems to be 6 month lag on new stuff.

Now that I'm not going after just 2 trade paperbacks I'm torn on where to start. Though I'll probably go read red zone first. Also probably hit the other comics covered in the tbp people have mentioned in this post.

After that... I've heard differing advice on whether to start with new avengers, disassembled or avengers forever.

[whizzy.livejournal.com]

I just saw that Marvel finally released an Android app that will access the unlimited digital sub. About to install it, I hope it doesn't suck...

Avengers Forever is a side series thing, so you could start there. And then Disassembled leads into New Avengers.

[salmastryon.livejournal.com]

I've noticed from the reviews of it, that it works for some people, and for others it only works partically or not at all. Unfortunately, my phone(or maybe it is because I'm running Jellybean 4.2) is one of the ones where the swipe(page turn) function doesn't work. :(

Here's hoping there is a patch sooner rather than later.

[whizzy.livejournal.com]

Well, bugger. I was kinda hoping the app would be decent since it took them so freaking long to release it.