Last Updated: Sep 27, 2024
Welcome to ReadThingsRight, a website designed to help you navigate the complex world of interconnected universes. With some of these universes as massive as they are, a good starting point and viewing sequence isn't always simple to find. This website is here to try and determine to perfect order for the best audience experience, prioritizing story and cohesive flow over chronological order or release order. I have broken my orders down into ones based on comic books, ones based on movies, and ones based on television shows, all of which generally shoot for the same goals. So if you're stuck on how to read or watch something, here's how to ReadThingsRight.
Each reading and viewing guide is ranked on 3 scales, each from 0 to 5. Quality determines how good the story is on average. Cohesion is how much the story makes sense, even when put into it's best possible order; sometimes things are just really disconnected until the crossover. Accessibility is how accessible the story is for newcomers, assuming they have no pop culture knowledge of the characters.
2015 saw relaunches of both the X-Men and Inhumans franchises following an 8-month timeskip, and Marvel intertwined the fates of these two franchises. Some time ago, the Terrigen Mists that gave Inhumans their powers were released into the atmosphere as giant clouds, moving around the world as they created more Inhumans and killed any mutant they touched. So from late 2015 to 2017, Marvel's mutants and Inhumans struggled to find a solution to the grim reality of the situation: no more mutants, or no more Inhumans. Or at least, that should be the case, but the plot threads really don't come together until the big crossover event, Inhumans vs X-Men, and its prelude, Death of X. Until then, while the Terrigen Mists are still relevant, it mostly feels like a background element to the two groups' personal stories. Unfortunately these stories do affect the crossover, so we're stuck with an era at war with itself over whether it wants to tell small stories or big ones.
Featured Order:
Following Secret Wars in 2015, Marvel decided to revamp the Avengers, focusing not on one storyline starring key players,
but on multiple separate storylines starring the next generation of heroes, including Sunspot, Squirrel Girl, Kamala Khan aka
Ms Marvel, Sam Wilson aka Captain America, Deadpool, and Rogue. This era is split into two main parts, separated
by Civil War II, and unified by their themes of the next generation working to be better than the old. The three main storylines
are headed by Al Ewing (New Avengers and then U.S.Avengers), Mark Waid (All-New, All-Different (ANAD) Avengers and then
Avengers and Champions), and Gerry Duggan followed by Jim Zub (Uncanny Avengers). While these three runs are
disconnected plot-wise, they are connected thematically and all interact with the same big events in different, interesting ways.
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Peter Jackson directed a series of six movies based on JRR Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, set
in Middle Earth. The Lord of the Rings films were made first, released between 2001 and 2003, while The Hobbit films
were released between 2012 and 2014. This watch order prioritizes coherence and continuity over release order.
Featured Order:
Based on Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga, this long-running franchise follows Goku as he grows from a
comedic kid into a fighting machine, facing off against anything from terrorists to aliens to gods. While
there are a lot of non-canon Dragon Ball features, this watch order will focus solely on the canon shows
and films in the Dragon Ball franchise for the most accurate story.