Last week…okay, this week, but it was meant to be last week…I talked a bit about Terry Pratchett’s latest novels, and someone suggested in the comments that I should write a “So You Want To Get Into Discworld” post. This is actually a really good idea; the question of “Where do you start with the Discworld books?” is a pretty common one among fans of the series. Much in the same way as “Doctor Who”, in fact, and much for the same reasons; both series are very long (32 seasons of Doctor Who, 38 Discworld novels), both have very loose continuity that enables you to jump in at different points (lots of Doctor Who fans have started with “Rose”, lots of Discworld fans have started with “The Wee Free Men”) and both have beginnings that aren’t necessarily the best in their series (Doctor Who starts with a relatively-inaccessible black-and-white episode from the infancy of television, while Discworld’s first book was written as a random fantasy parody, and is something of a hodge-podge of ideas.) But as both are tremendously rewarding to the long-term fan, both are worth getting into. So where do you start?

With “The Robots of Death”, a classic Fourth Doctor…no, wait. Sorry. Got a bit mixed up there. You start reading the Discworld novels with the understanding that you really do not need to read them in order. It helps you to understand a few details, such as why the Librarian at the greatest institution of magical learning on the Disc is inconveniently stuck in the form of an orangutan, and why the Thieves’ Guild of Ankh-Morpork is a fully-licensed and authorized body of law enforcement, but it’s not actually necessary. Each book is fully stand-alone, they frequently feature different casts, and Pratchett is one of the best expository writers in the business, so you should be pretty good to go no matter what point you pick to jump in.

That said, there are better spots to jump in than the first book. It’s interesting, and you’ll want to come back to it sooner or later to catch up on some of the things he’s helpful enough to establish at the beginning, but it’s also very clearly Pratchett’s juvenalia, and Rincewind (the main character of the first couple of books) is probably his least likeable protagonist. Not that he’s unlikeable, but he’s a cynic and a coward and really only has one bona fide moment of true heroism in the roughly seven books he stars in. So we can skip ahead a bit, past the first five books that Pratchett uses to establish the concept in his own mind and figure out what he wants to do with the fictional universe he’s creating as he goes.

Which means that the first book to start with is ‘Wyrd Sisters’. It’s a sharp, funny, easily accessible book that satirizes Shakespeare (the plot is sort of a bizarre remix/mashup of Macbeth, with the witches as heroes and the king as a villain) while establishing a lot of the core concepts and characters that you’ll see recur over the course of the series. Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and the kingdom of Lancre all get an excellent introduction for the casual reader (even though Granny Weatherwax has previously appeared.)

From there, you can comfortably read ‘Pyramids’, ‘Guards! Guards!’ (the novel that introduces the City Watch, probably the best-loved characters by fans)…skip ‘Faust Eric’, which is a pretty direct sequel to one of the first five books, but then you can read the next six in a row (‘Moving Pictures’, ‘Reaper Man’, ‘Witches Abroad’, ‘Small Gods’, ‘Lords and Ladies’, ‘Men At Arms’.)

Now go back and read the first five. By this time you’ll be attached enough to the characters that you’ll feel comfortable reading through the first two (slightly sloggy) novels, and by ‘Equal Rites’ Pratchett’s writing skill has evolved to the point where you’re reading perfectly serviceable fantasy novels. ‘Mort’ is excellent (and has sometimes been my advised starting spot), and ‘Sourcery’, while a little rough in places, does answer a lot of questions you might have had about how magic works on the Disc.

Then go back and read the one you skipped, and pick up again with ‘Soul Music’. Not only will you understand pretty quickly why I suggested going back and reading the early books (‘Soul Music’ and ‘Interesting Times’ are fairly direct sequels to the earliest books) but you’ll also be struck by how much Pratchett has evolved as a writer in those first eleven years. He went from being a good writer to being a truly great writer, and as you continue onwards, you’ll be impressed even more. All of them are worth reading, and by the end, you’ll be just as much of a fan as I am.

And at some point, you’ll want to read them all over again from the beginning…

Once upon a time, there was a book series called “Doctor Who”. (You might have heard me mention it from time to time.) It was based on the then-defunct TV series, and took the show in some fairly strange new directions. Specifically, and I know this is going to sound a little bit crazy, it featured the Eighth Doctor finding out that at some point in his own personal future, Gallifrey was going to wind up going to war with a mysterious unnamed Enemy…a war that future Gallifrey was losing. Different Time Lord factions reacted to this in different ways; the Celestis, for example, planned to flee space-time altogether and exist as beings of pure intellect outside the universe as we know it (something that should sound more than a little familiar to viewers of “The End of Time”) while Faction Paradox…

Faction Paradox was a strange creation. Invented by Lawrence Miles, they were a group of counter-culture Time Lords who revered the two things that immortal guardians of space and time would naturally fear: Death and paradox. They dressed up in skull masks, practiced a peculiar form of voodoo (okay, three things–the technophiliac Time Lords were freaked out by the seeming magic of the Faction) and reveled in creating “safe” temporal disruptions. They weren’t exactly enemies, but they didn’t have much love for the Time Lords, either.

Fast forward a few years, and the TV series comes back. The book line pretty much dies out, becoming a vague, inoffensive adjunct to the show, but due to the vagaries of British copyright law, Lawrence Miles remains full owner of the Faction Paradox concept. He launches a spin-off line of books, set in the Doctor Who universe with the serial numbers filed off (the Time Lords become the “Homeworld”, but the Enemy stays the Enemy because Miles insists he never intended them to be the Daleks.) Surprisingly, these books are quite good. This is the story of the best of them.

“Warlords of Utopia”, by Lance Parkin, is perhaps the highest of all “high concept” science fiction stories; it starts in an alternate reality where Rome never fell, but in this novel, the inhabitants (with the help of Faction Paradox) discover another reality where Rome never fell. Then another, then another, until they have a vast cross-time Roman Empire ruled by a Council of Emperors.

Then they discover all the universes where the Nazis won World War II…

The concept, and the ensuing war, is one of the cleverest ideas I’ve seen explored in science-fiction in a long time. (Full disclosure: I’ve been on a few mailing lists with Lance Parkin over the years, and am on a first-name basis with him, even if we’re never going to see eye to eye on Buffy or the Star Wars prequels.) The book genuinely feels like an idea that someone needed to write a book about, and Lance was just the person to write it. I recommend it to anyone who’s seen the two relevant tropes more time than they can count.

I make no secret of it; I adore the Marvel Essentials line of trade paperbacks. My own blog, Fraggmented, has dozens of posts devoted to these insane 500+ page black-and-white chunks of classic comics, each one giving you twenty or more issues of a title for an almost sickeningly reasonable cost. (Some of the collections of late 80s and early 90s comics, like X-Men and Wolverine, actually give you the comics for less than the original cover price.) There’s something so wonderful about being able to sit down with a comic and see the long-term plotlines unfolding in front of your eyes, taking in years of development in just a few volumes. I’ve been buying these for years now, picking up classic runs of Fantastic Four and Avengers for a song and taking a chance on comics like Man-Thing and Killraven that I probably wouldn’t have bought if not for the cheapness of the format. I won’t say that this is the last word on the subject–heck, I could probably do a whole other post on the similar Showcase Presents line at DC–but here are my top ten Essentials for those of you interested in dipping in.

10. Captain America, Volume 1-4. There’s a Volume Five coming out soon, and I’ll probably buy that when finances permit as well. For all that Captain America is seen nowadays as a stodgy, stuffy agent of the status quo, he was originally a counter-culture firebrand and a lens through which a variety of excellent writers looked at the changing face of America. And for all that Ed Brubaker tries to inject some “edginess” into Cap, he’s still light-years away from the smack-talking rebel Stan Lee once wrote, and you’ll be amazed at how interesting Steve Rogers was as a person before Mark Gruenwald bowdlerized him in the 80s. (Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of what Gruenwald did, but he seriously blanded down Steve Rogers’ personality.) The series is a little inconsistent, but there are long stretches of good stuff in every volume. Highlights include Cap fighting it out with Nixon on the White House lawn, and delivering a humiliating smack-down to a villain that was so thorough the character never appeared again.

9. Defenders, Volumes 1-3. Actually, you could probably stick to the first two books and come away happy–Steve Gerber’s magnum opus that closed out his run on Defenders hasn’t entirely aged well, and comes off a little pretentious now that the 70s culture that nurtured it has faded away. But this is still a classic Defenders run, and the reason the series is fondly remembered long after the multitude of failed relaunches and reunions. (Tip for prospective Defenders relaunchers: If you go back and read these books, the Silver Surfer and Namor left the team after about five issues. For the most part, the stable Defenders team was Doc, Hulk, Hellcat, Valkyrie and Nighthawk.)

8. Power Man, Volume 1. It’s interesting to see the way that Luke Cage has been almost a cultural mirror of African-Americans over the course of his appearances in the Marvel Universe; he went from being a raw, hard-edged underdog who refused to let his oppression at the hands of a racist prison system break his spirit, to a walking comedy jive stereotype, to a street hustler and borderline thug, and finally to a cynical, worldly-wise veteran of the revolutionary 70s. But he was never better than in his first few appearances, when his character was treated with total sincerity by writer Archie Goodwin, and it’s worth picking up the book to read those old stories. (The later volumes are good too, as is the Iron Fist solo series, but I’m sticking with the best stuff for purposes of this list.)

7. Silver Surfer, Volume 2. Volume 1 is fairly readable, more notable for its lovely Buscema art than its stories, but Volume 2 is where the story really begins. Steve Englehart finally figures out how to make the Surfer work in a way that no previous writer ever had, simply by freeing him from his imprisonment on Earth and putting him in space, his natural millieu. You’ll need to have a tolerance for certain Englehart-isms (oh, look! It’s Mantis again! And she’s even more bad-ass!) but the series is space opera at its epic best. Definitely deserving of a third volume.

6. X-Men, Volumes 1-4. Yes, it’s probably blasphemy to put the Claremont/Byrne era of the X-Men this low on the list, but trust me–when you actually go back and read them, you find that all of Claremont’s annoying little tics as a writer (his over-narration and purple prose, his borderline creepy obsession with his female characters, his habit of having everyone reiterate their major personality traits for the reader every few pages) didn’t start when he returned to the series in the 21st century. Even so, this was a collaboration that was more than the sum of its parts, and the work they did here has let every subsequent writer coast on their efforts, so it’s worth picking up just to get the backstory.

5. Spectacular Spider-Man, Volumes 1-2. Bronze Age Spider-Man was always a treat–in the wake of the death of Gwen Stacy, there was always a feeling of uncertainty and adventurousness about the title. Just like in the early days, there were no sacred cows…or at least, it seemed like it…and this is some particularly fine Bronze Age Spider-Man. You’ll find Gerry Conway, Roger Stern and Marv Wolfman all writing the title in these two volumes, and those guys are master craftsmen of a sort that the medium just doesn’t turn out anymore. (OK, I tell a lie. Jeff Parker and Fred van Lente have shown huge chops in that regard as well. But Roger Stern still shows everyone How It Is Freaking Done.)

4. Super-Villain Team-Up, Volume 1. Despite my complaints about “decompression” and “event comics” on my own blog, this was a big epic crossover before there were big, epic crossovers, and I love it. Doctor Doom and Namor team up to crush the surface world, only to wind up opposing each other in a gigantic saga of double-crosses, clashing egos, and duels of sheer will between two of Marvel’s best bad guys. There are a few other stories that close out the book (the “Red Skull vs. Hitler” one is a classic, as well) but you’re buying this one for the big Doom/Namor war, and it’s worth it.

3. Doctor Strange, Volume 1. Speaking of collaborations that are more than the sum of their parts, this is Ditko and Lee at their finest. Doctor Strange’s origin story has the elegant wonder of a child’s fairy tale, and the stories that follow introduce an entire epic mythos of cosmic strangeness that has probably never been equaled in the comic-book medium. (Perhaps by Lovecraft in the pulps, but nobody did weird tales in comics the way Ditko and Lee did it.) Later volumes are alright as well, but they’re definitely all trying to imitate the effortless grace of these awesome early stories.

2. Tomb of Dracula, Volumes 1-4. A bold, experimental, almost unprecedented comic, this Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan collaboration (they worked together on almost the entire run of the series) puts the focus on Dracula not as a mere monster, but as a tortured soul in the vein of Milton’s Satan. He is constantly the prisoner of his own pride as much as anything else, denied the delights of a living existence and yet unwilling to surrender to death. As drawn by Colan’s gorgeous, evocative, moody pencils (this is one book I’d recommend in black and white over color), it’s a helluva ride, especially given that Wolfman also gives us a great group of sympathetic vampire hunters to root for. (Yes, this is where Blade first shows up. He’s not even the coolest of the bunch.)

1. Spider-Man, Volume 1. And this is Lee and Ditko at even finer than their finest. It’s a collaboration that finally burned them out on each other, but what the hell, the Beatles didn’t last forever either. And this…every single Spider-Man writer since then, including Stan Lee himself, has been trying to recapture the singular alchemy of these 22 issues. Everything from Spider-Man’s origin to his battles with the Chameleon, the Lizard, the Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Kraven the Hunter, the Enforcer, the Green Goblin, Electro, the Sinister Six and the Scorpion has damn near been carved into stone as the Way Spider-Man Should Be, and here Lee and Ditko seem to bring it off almost casually. Much has been made of the question of “Who deserves the credit for these?”, but that misses the point; Lee needed Ditko’s imagination and unflinching moral sensibility, and Ditko needed Lee’s humanizing touch and deft dialogue. If you’re someone who thinks that Stan Lee is a tired old hack who had more of a knack for self-promotion than for writing, read this comic. It still holds up, even after all these years.

Because there aren’t enough webcomics capable of totally breaking your heart in twelve pages.

(found via the slog)