Want to read comics? Awesome. I do too. This site is what I consider a fun, honest reading order for comics, specifically the Marvel Universe, at the dawn of the 21st century, my personal favorite era of comics.

This is when things were weird, irrational, and heroic... But how can you read them?

Marvel Unlimited
Marvel Unlimited was recently updated and I’m still getting used to it. There are some things that are nice, like following series and creators and being notified when new issues appear on the service, but finding older books has been made a little more difficult. However, at $70/year, it’s a pretty cost effective way to read over 29,000 comics, even if it’s a pain to find some of them. There’s a three month delay between issues hitting the stores and hitting the service, which is the shortest period for either of the big two’s subscription models.

DC Universe
DC Comics has a similar service called DC Universe Infinite and it’s come a long way in the past year. What started off as a bad Marvel Unlimited imitation has since become the more stable and navigable of the big two digital sub models. What used to be a 12 month delay between books on shelves to books on the service has been shortened to six months, which isn’t ideal, but isn’t unbearable either.

Comixology
I haven’t used Comixology, so I can’t speak to that app’s quality. But, it being a digital book browser owned and operated by Amazon, I assume it runs well. The selection is a bit more generic, greatest hits from a bunch of publishers, but if superheroes don’t do it for you, this may be the service you’re looking for.

The Library/Hoopla
One of my favorite options is the free option - go to your local library. I know I live in San Francisco and I’m fortunate to have a kick-ass branch just a few blocks way from my apartment, but even better than a physical book you can check out are the myriad books you can rent online. There’s a digital extension that many libraries are partnered with called Hoopla (and here’s a neat article laying out how it works), and all you need to make it work is an email address and a library card number. From there you can check out multiple titles a month and read as much as you want. I read all of Saga from Image comics last month and didn’t have to leave my bed to do so. Sometimes with bigger crossovers, this is my preferred means to read them. The scans are of books not issues, and as such, they’re already in the correct reading order.

Online Stores/Resellers
You could also hunt down old trade paperbacks (tpb’s) that collect the issues. My favorite sites to use to track down old, out of print books are Mile High Comics, Things From Another World, In Stock Trades, and resellers on Amazon. I’ve been building up my trade collection and it’s actually pretty cheap to get the stuff you like, so you may want to consider that if you want a physical book after reading a story you like on Unlimited (which is what I’ve been doing), or if you just prefer something tangible in general. However, make sure you check the condition of the book before you order, and if the book is more expensive than you’re comfortable with, ask for additional photos.

Comic Shops
The final method is to hit up your local comic shop and track down back issues, and you can find the one nearest you by using Comic Shop Locator. When I started going to the shop every week, I had no idea what was going on. And I had no idea what was happening before I didn’t know what was going on, so if a story was referenced, I’d look it up and grab it out of the back issue/bargain issue bin. This is simultaneously easy and hard, cheap and expensive. A lot of issues have either maintained their cover value or lost it - you can probably pick up most issues of New Avengers for $1-$2 if you look in the right places. But random issues could be upwards of $10-$20+ because of what happened in them. It’s a crapshoot, but so are comics in general.