Learned today that 40% of comic book fans don't actually read the books in order

I was at my local shop, Comic Kingdom in Denver, and the owner dropped this stat on me. He said he surveyed about 300 regulars over a year and almost half just jump around to whatever cover looks cool. I always thought I was weird for reading issue #12 before #1, but apparently that's super common. He said some folks even buy just for the art and never read a single word. Anyone else guilty of skipping around or am I the only one who's a total mess about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

walker.alex3d ago

Ha! Gotta disagree hard on this one. Reading out of order is like watching a movie from the middle, you miss all the setup and character building. Comics are stories first, not just pretty pictures to flip through. Skipping around means you lose the writer's intended flow, the cliffhangers lose their punch, and you end up confused about why certain things even matter. I get that covers look cool, but that's like judging a book by its cover and then never opening it. Maybe I'm old school, but if you're not following the story, you're just collecting paper.

west.claire3d ago

Actually I used to be one of those "flip through for the art" people until I got into Saga a few years back. Started somewhere in the middle and had zero clue why anyone cared about this weird planet or that blue character everyone was fighting over. Went back and read it from issue #1 and it was like a whole different comic, everything actually made sense and the emotional beats hit way harder. So yeah I'm with you now, reading out of order is basically robbing yourself of the story the writer worked to build.