Marvel Reading catch-up.

[rponton]

Hello all.
I'm new here, but an old hat in comics.

So.....
I've been reading comics essentially my whole life. Mostly Marvel, but I did fall into the 90's trap and read EVERYTHING.

I fell out of the comics world (Marvel Universe) back around 2002-3. I fell out in the standard MCU around "Avengers Disassembled", and the Ultimate MCU around the Galactus thing.


Until then, I was a veritable encyclopedia of all things Marvel. I've been trying to get caught back up since around January. My primary Hero was/ is Spider-Man.

I. Am. Lost.

I know there's a huge reboot coming in a few months, but I still want to try and catch up with what I missed, regardless of the Secret Wars stuff.
I'd like to get caught up before I get into "Secret Wars"
What is everyone's opinion of what would be big stuff to read?

Daunting, huge, and impossible to get to prior to Secret Wars starts, but I'm a glutton for punishment.


Incidentally, I'm also doing a Chronological run-through of Spiderman.

[Diamond]

Just read the current volumes of Avengers and New Avengers. It's all you need for Secret Wars.

[DrTraveler]

J. Hickman's New Avengers and Avengers run, along with Secret Wars. If you want you can toss in Avenger's World as the first 14 issues cover what is clearly a lost story set after Infinity but before the Time Runs Out arc, while 17-20 are a prequel to Time Runs out.

If you want to really dig deep, you can go back and read his Fantastic Four run. That starts about issue 570 with a prequel miniseries Dark Reign Fantastic Four and a companion book Future Foundation. That is really good stuff on its own but also contains the seeds of what is happening in the Avenger's Run.

From there you can expand out. The Marvel Now books (Rick Remender's Cap, Jason Aaron's Thor, The Superior Iron Man) all have stuff that tie in too.

Marvel has hinted that pieces of this are all over the place including the Bendis Xmen books, Age of Ultron, and Hickman's and Bendis's work over in the Ultimate Marvel Universe. But Hickman's is the clear direct predecessor to the Secret Wars book coming.