Where to Start Reading — Simple comic guides, with links to books.
Where to Start Reading — Simple comic guides, with links to books.
The new movie Into The Spider-Verse looks absolutely amazing, and the comic that shares the same name make one of the best intros into comics you could want. The original comic Spider-Verse introduces to a lot of characters, writers have been collected in one big book.
This book is big, and a little pricey, but it includes the full Spider-Verse series, including every single related issue, so it's a pretty great deal. You don't need any other books to enjoy this really fun series. The only downside is that they've included the issues grouped by series, not by when they happened. If you prefer to jump around and read them in chronological order, How To Love Comics - Spider-Verse has a good issue-by-issue reading list.
For anyone who wants a little more lead-in, I've included some lead-ins below, as well as some ideas for series after Spider-Verse. The three books below are all set before Spider-Verse begins, but are not necessary to enjoy the story.
Amazing Spider-Man Volume 1 - The Parker Luck - This has no connection to Spider-Verse or almost none. I include it because it's just one book before things get started, and it's a really clean starting point for Spider-Man, so some readers may be interested.
Amazing Spider-Man Volume 2 - Spider-Verse Prelude - This continues the Peter Parker storyline up to the Spider-Verse event. This also isn't necessary but adds some nice backstory.
Edge of Spider-Verse - This is a really fun book. As Spider-Verse was getting ready to feature many, many, many Spider-Characters, they decided to do a brief series introducing different alternate-universe Spiders. One of them, Spider-Gwen, was so wildly popular that plans for her own series began before her first issue of _Edge of the Spider-Verse) was even on shelves! If you only grab one other book besides Spider-Verse, this should be it.
I have a few articles that have starting points after Spider-Verse, including Spider-Woman and Spider-Gwen. In addition, the series below, Web Warriors of the Spider-Verse, continues directly after the events of Spider-Verse with many of the same characters and settings:
Four years later, the sequel Spider-Geddon was published. This was a fun series, especially for fans of Miles Morales who took lead, but not as essential reading as the original. The main series is joined by a prequel, Edge of Spider-Geddon which continued some of the stories from the original Edge which didn't get their own series, and a tie-in collection Covert Ops. These are good for readers looking for something very, very similar to the original Spider-Verse, but not something I would normally recommend to new readers.
A few years later, another event, Secret-Wars included a tie-in very confusingly also called Spider-Verse, which I'm sure has confused a lot of new readers. It's a fun tie-in to that event, but it is not the original Spider-Verse story, so be careful not to get them mixed up.
All Articles Ant-Man, Archie, Avengers, Batman, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Civil War, Daredevil, Deadpool, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hawkeye, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Jessica Jones, Loki, Marvel Events, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Old Man Logan, Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat, Runaways, Secret Wars, Shang-Chi, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man, Spider-Verse, Spider-Woman, Squirrel Girl, Superman, The Eternals, Thor, Vision, Wasp, Wolverine, X-Men, Young Avengers,
Iron Man
Spider-Woman
Young Avengers
Secret Wars