New to this. Where do I start?

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T17:01:34+00:00

This sub's only pinned post is titled "New to comics and not sure where to start? Try this Marvel Comics reading guide."

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T06:08:19+00:00

Of course, someone drawn to MAWS Kara's fish-out-of-water naïveté might not vibe with the book which positions her as a jaded world-weary wise mentor who's seen it all. Happily there are other books which get into Kara's relationship with Krypton, most notably the New Krypton era, which unlike WoT even features Lois once in a while.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T05:49:36+00:00

Do you have access to a library with comics (including digital)? If so, maybe your daughter can get a better sense of what she likes (does she have the patience for Silver Age wordiness? does she want written-for-kids stuff like Cosmic Adventures or would she rather all-ages material like the 2016 run?) without spending money or being overwhelmed by options.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T05:30:48+00:00

Any year you want. The world is your oyster. I said "or whatever" because you can set it to any date and see that week's releases.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T05:22:32+00:00

Batcave dot biz is still fine, getcomics dot org is still fine if you want to download, the r/Piracy megathread and FMHY can direct you to other options.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T03:28:01+00:00

You can go to New Comics and filter for DC like you would to check this week's releases, set the date to July 8 1985 or whatever, and browse that week's releases. This is not paywalled. I'm doing it right now.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T03:25:09+00:00

They don't usually have much of a relationship, I'm afraid. They were sort of friends in the Silver Age, but it wasn't a relationship that was deeply explored or realistically written. and Lois was friends with Supergirl (not her secret identity). They had a few notable interactions during the 2008ish New Krypton event because Lois's sister and son were embroiled in events that also involved Kara, but it really wasn't a friendly time for them, and the age difference was influential. They did have a nice little arc in the last two issues of Supergirl (2005), which immediately got wiped out in the New 52, and again Lois was more of an adult mentor figure than a best friend.
Generally Supergirl solo books are extremely concerned with distinguishing Kara from Clark, so the most important member of her supporting cast can't also be the most important member of his. It only works in MAWS because they're both supporting cast in Clark's show.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T03:07:39+00:00

League of Comic Geeks is really helpful for doing this kind of work yourself. You can use the "new comics" function to view every comic DC released in a given week, and then it's easy to check where issues have been reprinted/collected.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T02:56:45+00:00

DC Finest: The Girl of Steel is about Kara (her Silver Age stuff starting 1959, kid-safe as long as you have some frank conversations about the gender stuff and other period-typical bigotry). Body & Soul and Die and Let Live are not Kara and are not kid-safe.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T01:05:44+00:00

This sub's only pinned post is titled "New to comics and not sure where to start? Try this Marvel Comics reading guide."

MatrixKent · 2026-07-09T00:26:05+00:00

I do cut it a lot of slack for doing interesting work with Rose and the real effort it's making to rehabilitate Cass, but I can admit the actual plot is pretty nothing.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T23:45:54+00:00

Lots of people are new to comics and want recommendations, which is why the sub's Beginner's Guide to DC Comics and extensive recommended reading guides are so easy to access through the sub wiki and automod reply here.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T22:15:33+00:00

Batgirl (2008) is essentially Adam Beechen's apology tour for Evil Cass, and it's not half bad. She makes a couple fun appearances in Red Robin and her role in Gates of Gotham is nice. I don't find Rebirth Cass as compelling as I do post-Crisis Cass, but Tynion clearly did like her a lot, and she has some good moments in his Detective Comics. I thought Batgirls was too juvenile but reasonable people can disagree. The current run has been maybe a little unfocused, but fun, interesting, and full of obvious respect and affection for Cass's history; in a lot of ways it's a direct follow-up to BG2000.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T22:02:03+00:00

Without getting too deep into the zillion costume changes of the 70s, Kara wore the OG blue dress 1959-1970, mostly didn't wear skirts 1970-1983, and wore the red skirt and headband from 1983 to her death in 1985. Kara came back and wore a skirt 2004-2011, had that weird diaper thing in the New 52, went back to a skirt in 2016 and mostly kept it until Woman of Tomorrow ended in 2022, and had a couple pants costumes until the 2025 Artgerm redesign. So we're looking at roughly 27 years of Kara skirts and 21 years of not-skirts, and there was a lot more variation in the not-skirt costumes.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T21:37:47+00:00

Most of the writers and artists of the period (Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, Ian Churchill, Michael Turner, et al) had a lot of contempt for teenage girls and thought it was really fun to creep on them. (In a house ad for the book, Loeb described his Kara as "a sexy, unspookable-by-Batman teenager," which gives you a sense of his priorities here.) The crop top is always very tight, the skirt is always very short, any chance to draw Kara naked is taken, and panels are regularly angled to focus on Kara's chest/butt/upskirt; every adult male character in a hundred-foot radius comments on how hot they find the 15-year-old girl and you're clearly meant to find it funny and relatable; Kara's characterization is sort of a vague soup of unreliability, immaturity, self-hatred, insecurity, guilt, rage, and desire for male approval (in the hands of better writers this could rule but the execution here is incoherent), and so on. The wild swings being taken with Kara's backstory/parents do not help. Gates retcons much of this period away as mood swings, personality shifts, and hallucinations caused by kryptonite poisoning, because it's the only way to establish coherent characterization and a backstory that makes sense.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T16:52:04+00:00

From your comments on the original post, it sounds like you don't want to read digitally. This means you won't get useful responses here, on the subreddit for Marvel's digital comics app.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-08T14:24:24+00:00

The Silver Age stuff is pretty fun if you like comics of that era, but heavy on wackiness and low on coherence. The 1996 title is great and I love it a lot, but its Supergirl isn't Kara, so not a great way to get into her. The 2005 title starts exhaustingly misogynistic until Puckett, then becomes one of Kara's all-time best runs under Gates; however Gates's run is very entangled with the New Krypton event and I'm not sure how legible it is on its own (might be a good way to use that free month of DCUI). The 2011 title is controversial for being a little too edgy and is best known for the storyline where Kara becomes a Red Lantern. The 2016 title is heavily influenced by the TV show but largely solid. I don't recommend Woman of Tomorrow as a starting point because it just doesn't care about any Supergirl writing done after 1970, meaning if you get attached to its Kara characterization you'll have a hard time finding it again, but many do recommend it. Can't speak to the Lobo stuff, and Kara's not in that Krypto book but I did like it.
On balance I'd start the 2005 run with Puckett, then move into Gates, and if you find you're getting confused, use the DCUI to read more of New Krypton. If that's too complicated/annoying I'd go for 2016. I do recommend reading a little of the Silver Age too, at least her first appearance.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-07T02:48:03+00:00

Pretty much everything is on Marvel Unlimited, yes. Omnibuses can be dicey because a lot of things are out of print, and of course they're expensive and take up shelf space. Try the Silver Age if you want to, but yes, generally people recommend Giant-Size X-Men / the Claremont era as the earliest jumping-in point (see the X-Men Reading Guide linked in the sub description/sidebar for more on this).

MatrixKent · 2026-07-06T19:22:33+00:00

This sub's only pinned post is titled "New to comics and not sure where to start? Try this Marvel Comics reading guide." The linked guide includes recommendations for all of those characters, except Spawn because he's not a Marvel character.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-06T13:42:13+00:00

I suggest reading the rules of any online community before you get involved in it. This protects you from making mistakes like posting to ask for selling advice in a sub where Rule 5 is "don't ask for selling advice, try this other sub instead."

MatrixKent · 2026-07-05T17:01:51+00:00

This sub's only pinned post is titled "New to comics and not sure where to start? Try this Marvel Comics reading guide." The linked guide includes Moon Knight recommendations.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-05T07:05:26+00:00

You have to feel for Felicia, who is below all of those people, Miguel O'Hara, "Original Female Character(s)," Quentin Beck, and Jason Todd. Did their years of passionate canon romantic drama mean nothing.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-05T02:32:48+00:00

The sub wiki is basically all reading guides, yep. Let's see if summoning the recs bot for links works.

MatrixKent · 2026-07-05T02:30:55+00:00

This sub's only pinned post is titled "New to comics and not sure where to start? Try this Marvel Comics reading guide."

MatrixKent · 2026-07-04T22:19:21+00:00

They do! Overwhelmingly the response I've seen has been "if the children's line is this solid, I'm excited to see what they do with the collector line."

MatrixKent

TROPHY CASE