WOOF WOOF! Hey guys, it's me Marcus aka The Maddogg, and thank you for tuning in this video
is going to be a little bit different it's the video that i wish existed at the time when i was
getting into comics but that time youtube didn't even exist so i'm not really sure what video i'd
expect but one thing i've wanted to do with this channel is to kind of break down the barriers
and allow people to find a comfortable way of getting into comics it's why i did the where
to start series it's why i'm planning on doing character 101s because the comic community needs
new people in it to survive and we need to get over this gatekeeping mentality it's not fair
for us to expect everyone to know what's happened in all 678 issues of x-men that have come so far
or to have every single omnibus that's already been printed so this video is going to be my
comprehensive guide for people who may not know everything about comics but they really want to
learn we're going to go over stuff like the publishers the terminology the formats the
best ways to get into comics release schedules and also some places where you can buy them if you've
been reading comics for a while then unfortunately this video may not be for you and hopefully this
is just going to help a few people so that we can get some new voices into it hopefully more money
can come into the comics industry and we can get even more on the buses so first off i'm going to
talk about the publishers and you've got your main two and you probably know who these are already
but you've got dc comics and you've got marvel comics now as much as i want people to get out
of that gatekeeper mentality one word of warning do not ever cross over the characters between
these two never ask anyone when batman's going to turn up in the avengers and never ask anybody why
doctor strange didn't save superman from doomsday but those are your two main ones and the majority
of characters that are in the popular culture are probably owned by those too but there are
other comics publishers that you may not even know about so we've got stuff like image comics
boom comics idw dark horse only press darkhorse for example owns stuff like hellboy and sin city
idw's got licenses to tv shows like teenage mutant ninja turtles transformers and gi joe boom studios
does creator and stuff but it's also got like power rangers and image comics is probably the
biggest independent publisher it might actually be the best gateway if you haven't read any comics
before so you've got great superhero stories like invincible you've got spawn you've got savage
dragon but you also get more niche genres such as criminal paper girls saga the wicked and the
divine and you've also got probably the biggest non-superhero comic of all time in the walking
dead it isn't essential to know all this stuff but it just builds up your knowledge that you can
broaden your horizons and one thing to also notice that smaller publishers can often be brought into
the main too so for example a couple of years ago there was a publisher called top cow who did
independent comics they recently got brought by image so now a lot of that top cow material such
as postal is now being published by image and as well sometimes the big two will have their
own independent lines to keep it separate from the main universe so for nearly 30 years dc comics had
the vertigo line which is where they could do more mature content such as trans metropolitan preacher
and sandman but then recently that line got changed into dc black label but before that there
was a branch of image comics called wildstorm but then wildstorm got brought by vertigo so therefore
by proxy wildstorm which was originally an image comics line ends up being a dc comics line so it's
worth knowing these things so that you don't end up buying into a line that's maybe being brought
by someone else and now you can't buy it for cheap which is an issue that a few people had with a few
agent library editions now we're going to get into some of the terminology because i know this can
be a little bit difficult to understand so you've got stuff like tpbs you've got singles you've got
ohcs you've got omnis that sounds like i was doing some kind of bad freestyle rap and i can promise
you i wasn't because if i did a freestyle rap you know you'd be great but the first one that you
probably need to learn is singles what we mean by singles is a single issue of a comic so it's
normally around 30 or so pages it's got adverts on it and it'll come out if the schedule is right
once a month these are traditionally what you can normally only buy from your comic shop but it
is the best way to get this story as it's coming out because after that you've got your tpbs which
stands for trade paperback and this is a form of a collected edition now collected edition is the
general term for any kind of group of single issues in a different format whether that be
a paperback or a hardback and the first type of collected edition that normally comes out is a tpb
so they'll put it all in one and it'll look a lot better on your shelf and this tends to come out
every six months or so depending on the release schedule of the single issues if this sells really
well it tends to get an ohc which stands for an oversized hard cover so as you can see here this
is a tpb the trade paperback and you can see it's quite thin but it looks really nice on your shelf
and it'll collect six or so issues sometimes at the minute marvel seems to be doing four issues
at once but the ohc will tend to collect one two or three of those trade paperbacks into an ohc and
the reason why it's called an oversized hardcover is because as you can see it's slightly bigger
than the trade paperback so the art looks a lot better in this as well it is thicker because it's
containing more issues and it's also taller so if you like something for the art it might actually
be worth waiting for an lhc to come out then if the run is really enjoyed by a lot of people and
there seems to be some kind of financial benefit in it a company will now do something called an
omnibus now an omnibus is a much thicker version of an ohc but it's the same trim as it more often
than not and what this will do is it'll collect the majority of the run now this is daredevil by
brian michael bendis and it's one of my favorite ones of all time the entire series is contained in
two trade paperbacks whereas before it came out in five ohcs so often it can save you a bit of
money depending on the series that you're getting and it will also save you some space if you are
quite space conscious now this is something that you won't really see from marvel comics but dc
and sometimes it tends to be um darkhorse who also do it they will bring out an absolute addition the
benefit of one of these is as you can see it's much much bigger than an omnibus so you get that
all in a much bigger style it also comes with a really nice slip case to protect the book and
you tend to get quite a few extras in this this is batman the killing joke and the reason why
this is special is because it's got the original colouring and the modern colouring of the book
inside it so if you have somebody talk about an absolute edition that's normally what they mean
some of the other terminology that you might need to know about is when somebody says a run
so somebody might mention brian michael bendis's run what this just means is it's the entire series
that that one writer did so every single issue that they wrote is contained within that run
and other terminology that you might need to know if you're getting into the collected edition game
is stuff like oop and os now os means out of stock and what this means is that at various retailers
such as maybe read comics in stock trades or amazon they don't currently have the book in stock
this isn't really something to worry about so if a book's out of stock and you see it skyrocketing
to enormous prices i wouldn't recommend getting it the one that you should worry about is oop which
stands for out of print so this means that the publisher whether it be marvel dc image or whoever
no longer have any of that book in print of course there can always be a reprint but once it's
officially in that oop status things tend to end up becoming a whale now the term whale normally
comes from that moby dick kind of sensibility so it's that thing that is kind of difficult to get
you're gonna struggle to get it especially out in the wild because it is difficult to come by
and if you do come by somebody might be charging over cover price all cover price refers to is
the price that's on the back covers of the regular retail price i myself tend to have a rule that i'd
recommend for other people that i never pay over that cover price because then it always means that
if there's going to be a reprint i'm not going to be too disappointed because i didn't pay more
than what i'm likely to get for if it does come back in print the only other terminology that i
think is really relevant is stuff like pre-order this is mainly for collected editions but when
the solicitations for a boot come out which is something i'm gonna get into later you can
often pre-order a boot whether it be from a comic shop or a retailer such as amazon that means that
as soon as that boot comes out you're gonna get it as soon as possible and you're not really going to
have to worry about it becoming a whale or after prince now i'm going to give you a little bit of
a brief overview of the release schedule for a comic so like i said the single issues should
theoretically come out once a month sometimes it can often be delayed whether there's been an issue
with the production or whether the artist just hasn't been up to scratch lately or maybe even
the script wasn't completed in time or maybe there was an event that threw everything off course
but traditionally eight or so months after the series has started coming out that's when you will
see that collected edition again it does entirely depend on how many issues need to come out before
that collected edition can be commissioned but after that it's going to tend to be every six or
so months that you're going to get a new volume of the trade paperback now whenever sized hardcover
tends to include anything between 10 to 15 or so issues so it's going to be about a year or so
after this series starts that you're gonna see that oversized hardcover come into print and from
there if it's something that you're gonna collect in those oversized hard covers maybe it's a volume
one you're looking at a year or so before every volume comes out and an omnibus if the series is
lucky enough to get one tends to come out anywhere between two to five years after the series has
ended that's for modern ones i know some of the older ones such as like the john burns stuff tends
to just come out willy-nilly but unfortunately as well there isn't really much rhyme or reason
to when an omnibus comes out sometimes you can get massive fan series such as the superior spider-man
not getting an omnibus within a couple of years after it's been finished but then something
like donnie kate's cosmic universe is getting an omnibus whilst it's still ongoing the way you can
figure out what's coming out and when is waiting for the solicitations to come out now there's a
hefty magazine that comes out every month called previews what this is going to do is show you
every single issue every collected edition every ohc omnibus and absolute that is due to come out
in the coming months this is primarily for comic shops because it helps them order and know exactly
what they need to order for when but it's also great as a consumer because you can see exactly
what is going to come out in the following months so by having a little look at these you can figure
out which series you'd like it often gives you like a brief overview of what's going to happen
in that issue or series so you can broaden your horizons there and it's got all the major comic
companies so it's not like marvel has a previews and then dc has a previews although admittedly can
maybe see that changing in the coming years just with what's happened with dc lately i've already
made a video on that i'm not going to confuse you more here now if you've never read a comic
before it might be very daunting because there's so many characters there's so many runs so many
publishers as well they might be a bit confusing but here's the thing there's no wrong way to start
reading comics no matter what everybody says if there's a book that you are really interested
in that you think you might enjoy and can get excited about that is the best book for you to
start with because regardless of the character i think there's always going to be something
that is worth reading for that character so if you've only ever really watched the x-men movies
and that's how you want to get into comics why not figure out which x-men boot you can read
first or watch my video or if you really want to get into dc comics i've got a video for that
but at the same time there's other characters as well so regardless of what other people think of
the captain marvel film if you watched it and you enjoyed it and you want to read one of her
comics why not that's the best way to get into comics by following the characters that you enjoy
i started that way i started reading superman batman i read ultimate spider-man because those
were the characters that i really liked now the final thing that i'm going to touch on in this
video is the best place to buy comics now if you want to get into single issues the best place for
you is going to be a comic book shop and as well the comic book shop is the best way to broaden
your horizons on what you're going to read if you just talk to the people there they're all
fans already they already have their favorite series so they're going to recommend things to
you when i was about 12 or so this was when i really started properly talking to the people
who owned my local comic shop and he recommended preachy recommended trans metropolitan and he
recommended a ton of other stuff that i still love now and as well that's just a side tip so that
you should just keep talking to people who enjoy comics they will always want to recommend stuff
to you they will always feel like you need to read this book to properly say that you're a comic fan
i've been doing this ten years and there's still books that people tell me that i need to read i
also can't properly say that i like the hobby they do mean that as a joke but if anybody ever says
that seriously to you just don't pay any attention to it but if you're in the uk or the eu the best
place for you to buy comics is going to be stuff like books etc boot depository speedy hen amazon
read comics or forbidden planning if you're in the uso candidate admittedly i don't know too many for
canada but you've got stuff like amazon you've got in-stock trades you've got midtown comics you've
got discount comic book service and cheap graphic novels there's also one in the eu that i forgot
to mention which is cheap dashcomics.com and it isn't really one price per boot so you best check
in between them just to check that you're getting the best price as well i do something called whale
watch i'm just going to plug it here where each month i talk about a few books that i think might
be going out of print or might be coming a whale or books that you can save a lot of money on i'd
recommend checking that out i also recommend a lot of places that you can buy on there so i'd
recommend checking that out i know it's a bit of a cheap plug but if it helps you then it was
worth it but that's all the information that i've got for you on this video and i want to kind of
finish this with a message because like i said at the beginning there are a lot of gatekeepers when
it comes to comics there's people that will make you feel bad if you haven't read a certain thing
or if you don't know who a certain character is or if you've never heard about a certain storyline
who cares are they the one who's making you read the book if it's something that you aren't going
to enjoy or maybe you've read it and you don't enjoy that's fine that's your opinion at the
end of the day i haven't spent however much i've spent on these books just to appease a few people
it's because these are the stories i enjoy i've sold series in the past that people have said
are the greatest ever because i just don't really rate them so if there's one thing you can learn
from this beginner's guide to comics it's don't be afraid to be a beginner don't be afraid to read
something and not enjoy it don't be afraid to say that you don't like something that's got a ton of
hype i'm probably gonna get people unsubscribing but i'm not a massive fan of matt fractions
hawkeye and everybody says that's the greatest series of the past decade and i just don't agree
with it but you know what i don't really care because your comics journey is individual the
cvs you like are going to be personal to you you shouldn't be afraid to not like something
because you feel like you won't be a part of the community because that's not really the case
there's a community of course but yeah the journey should be individual to you and hopefully some of
these tips have helped you along that journey i really hope that they have and i haven't missed
anything out too major if i have please leave it in the comment section below i just wanted
to make a video that i thought would be beneficial to people who may be scared of getting into comics
or just don't have a clue where they begin if that's you and you like this video please give
it a thumbs up and if you didn't like this video why did you get this far please subscribe if you
haven't already and click that bell notification i do quite an array of content so that it's great
for new readers and also for people who've maybe been reading for years please check out some of my
links and make sure that i'm posting comic content all the time but more than anything just make sure
that you stay safe keep reading and keep barking all you mad dogs and i'll see you the next video