Comic formats

Beginner (you can skip to expert if you know the basics)

If you are completely new to the world of comics, you might be confused by some of the terminology. And even if you aren’t new, this will still be useful. Let’s start with the basics by traveling back to the 60s: you are 15 years old, and after school, you decide to visit a newsstand to check out the DC and Marvel comics (comics used to be sold alongside newspapers; now there are comic book shops and even Netflix-like platforms for reading them, such as Marvel Unlimited for Marvel Comics). There, you happen to find the comic book series Amazing Spider-Man, issue #50 (interestingly, this very comic served as inspiration for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2). Pay attention to the series names. The comic book series is the name of the comic series (equivalent to a TV show like Gotham); the most popular ones are Amazing Spider-Man for Spider-Man, Action Comics for Superman, and Detective Comics for Batman. The issues, on the other hand, are the units of the series published monthly (like an episode of a show that airs weekly).

So, what is the big difference between a comic series and a TV series? Well, a comic series can be interconnected with dozens of other series, and there can be multiple series for the same character: in addition to Amazing Spider-Man, the 616 Universe Spider-Man has Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Sensational Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Superior Spider-Man, Spider-Man and the Backyardigans (not that last one), etc. These comics can be divided into runs, which are somewhat like seasons of a show (a run describes a certain number of comics written by a specific writer, like Stan Lee). There are also what they call back issues, which is best explained with an example: if Marvel Comics were publishing issue #603 of Amazing Spider-Man next week and I decided to buy issues #590 and onwards to catch up, we are talking about back issues.