Pages

Introduction

Introduction to "Comic Book Numbering"

Comic book numbering used to be a very simple issue - each issue was incremented one number from the preceding issue in a simple natural number sequence starting at issue #1 until infinity.

Occasionally there would be some complications when a series was re-named (often when a key character in an ongoing anthology becomes popular enough for their own title), such as "The Incredible Hulk (1968)" taking over the numbering from "Tales to Astonish (1959)" or "Captain America (1968)" taking over the numbering of "Tales of Suspense (1959)".

However, DC Comics started an inadvertent trend when John Byrne re-structured the Man of Steel in the mid-1980's. All Superman comics (Action Comics and Superman) were taken offline for a few months, and a re-launch re-started Superman (1987) with a new #1, and continued the pre-existing Superman (1939) numbering with "Adventures of Superman (1987)". Superman (2006) re-merged Superman (1987) and Adventures of Superman (1987) to a single title.

Both DC and Marvel comics insisted on the occassional oddly numbered comic (0, -1 for Marvel, 1,000,000 for DC) which made continuity of numbering strange.

Marvel had a mathematical psychotic break and sold off key characters (e.g. Hulk, Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four) to a group of artist/writers in the ill-fated "Heroes Reborn" period of about a year in the mid-1990's, each series being re-started as a new #1. This experiment lasted about a year from 1996 to 1997, where the characters were re-introduced into the "real" (616) universe of Marvel in "Heroes Return".

Marvel's marketing department, realizing that "#1" issues had extra purchase value, began randomly re-starting series to generate new #1's. Later, someone woke up and realized that they were missing the chance to capitalize on significant milestone issues (500, 600 etc.) and began to re-number the ongoing series, with mixed success. Some re-numbering was simply the inclusion of series X and series Y of the same character, with the new numbering being the sum. However, with other series, the effect was somewhat confusing (see Hulk).

This site is an attempt to make sense of the numbering issues.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Incredible Hulk - Issue #600 Mystery

The Incredible Hulk – Ongoing Series History and Numbering


Marvel Comics has had a bad habit of messing with the cover numbers of their comics, driven, I suspect, by the marketing department trying to have more “#1” issues.  Eventually, they realized that there was merit to having a lineage, and having significant milestone issues (e.g. “500”, “600”) and began revising the cover issue numbers.

Comic titles have adopted the convention used in newsgroups, where the title includes the year of the first issue (e.g. “The Incredible Hulk (1968)” and “The Incredible Hulk (2000)”).  This helps clarify which series is being referred to.  Should the same title appear twice or more in a calendar year, “a”, “b” etc. are used to discriminate (e.g. “Superhero X (2000a)” and “Superhero X (2000b)” refer to two ongoing series of the same title, both launched in the year 2000).

However, the calculators, and the marketing timetables don’t always align with reality and issues actually published.

How, exactly, did Marvel cover-mark The Incredible Hulk (2009) issue as #600?

Below is a table of “Hulk” and “Incredible Hulk” comic series (note, mini-series and single issue “one-shots” are excluded).

The counting strategy outlined below comes from “the Comic vine” (http://www.comicvine.com/the-incredible-hulk/49-24715/).  






Series
Issues
Total Issues
“Full Hulk” Numbering
Tales to Astonish (1959)
1-101
101
1-101
The Incredible Hulk (1962)
1-6
6 (not in total)
n/a
The Incredible Hulk (1968)
102-474
373
102-474
Hulk (1999)
1-11
11
475-485
The Incredible Hulk (2000)
12-112
101
486-586
The Incredible Hercules (2008)
113-141
29
n/a
Hulk (2008)
1-44
44 (only 1st 13 issues)*
587-599
The Incredible Hulk (2009)
600-611
12
600-611
The Incredible Hulks (2010)
612-635
24
612-635
The Incredible Hulk (2011)
1-ongoing
n/a
636+
*An alternative count is to include “The Incredible Hulk (1968) issue -1 (between 454 and 455) and only included 1st year (12 issues) of “Hulk (2008)”.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. HuggsMay 27, 2014 at 8:51 PM

    I hate Marvel for doing this numbering system. Better be constant on Volume 1 2 3 with corresponding series number.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)