Oh, there's still great stories being produced, and the best writers manage to work within the Marvel continuity while not assuming their readers have prior kno

Oh, there's still great stories being produced, and the best writers manage to work within the Marvel continuity while not assuming their readers have prior knowledge of it. Unfortunately, you can't see any of that from the cover of the comics, and the best writers share shelf space with a whole lot of dreck, as well as a bunch of not-dreck that assumes you've already been reading the series for ten years. My advice is to buy collected story arcs rather than individual issues, avoid crossovers, favor single-character rather than ensemble books, favor series relaunches or miniseries, and once you've found a writer you like, buy for the writer and not the character.