Golden. Silver. Bronze. Modern.

All of these are eras in comic book history that had their own stories to tell and over the course of the last 80 years, there have been hundreds of thousands of issues published between the main two publishing companies – Marvel Comics and DC Comics – alone. They have pushed what we know about characters beloved for decades and, at times, have published story lines that have had dramatic and long-lasting effects on their universes. Sadly, we’re not super humans, so attempting to read every issue ever published is an impossibility.

But what if you could go through the ones that mattered? The ones that set new precedents, created alternate timelines, ret-conned some of our favorite moments, and in some cases, changed the landscape of the comic industry as a whole?

In this monthly series, I’ll be exploring many of those stories and getting a better grasp on how the issues, story arcs, and events shaped what we know, love, and hate. It’s important to know where our heroes came from so we can understand where they might be headed.