Terms you might need to know.
(this is constantly being updated over time, so check back with each new article posted to see if any new terms were added.)
Comic Book: This term can be used in two ways. Either to refer to the individual floppy issues that come out, or to refer to any story told in sequential panels.
Panel: This represents one frame of the story, often it is framed by negative space refered to as a gutter.
Ongoing: This is a term for a story that has no definitive ending. This can also refer to an artist or writer whose tenure on a given book has no definitive ending.
Mini-series: A mini series represents any story of 11 issues or less, typically telling a self contatined story.
Maxi-series: This refers to a story with a set number of issues of 12 or more. For example Watchmen, Brightest Day.
Continuity: this refers to the ongoing story and what is considered to have happened and what isn't.
Out of Continuity: These are stories that don't impact the universe a given story is in and can be ignored without any consequences.
Elseworlds: This is a term for DC's out of continuity stories. These are said to be taking place in one of DC's multiverses.
Multi-verse: In modern, DC continuity the earth that is the primary location for the DC stories is one of 52 earths and is actually the one that holds up all of the other earths. It's complicated.
In-House: This means it was done by the company. For example an In-house ad for marvel would be advertising Marvel books.
Creator Owned: this means they aren't using charcters like Spider-Man and Batman. The characters and the story are owned by the creators.
Imprint: This is a company within a company. The two big ones are Vertigo for DC and Icon for Marvel. These are often Creator Owned stories. And more often than not these are stories for Mature Readers.
Ultimate Comics: This is a Marvel imprint that is seperate from the main marvel universe. Started in 2000 as Ultimate, relaunched in 2009 as Ultimate Comics. These stories feature revised, changed and modern versions of the main marvel characters.
Vertigo: Is one of the oldest, Mature Readers line of books. They have some(If not THE) highest overall quality of line of books in the comics industry.
616 universe: This is the (often fan) designation for the main marvel universe.
Event book: this refers to a miniseries designed to serve as a spine for a given event. For a more comprehensive definition of event comic, please refer to the Event Comic three part article, a link at the bottom of this page.
Banner book: A banner book is an ongoing series featuring a banner on the cover denoting that it is a tie in to the ongoing event. This event can be either a tie-in for an Event book or...
Banner Event: A banner event is a line-wide theme that unites the books however isn't nessisarily denoted by a single event but rather a change in status quo. Examples include the Batman:reborn bannered books and Marvels Dark Reign event.
The remainder of the terms have been alphabatized for your ease of search.
Absolute Edition: These are prestige deluxe editions. While not containing as many pages of story as an omnibus edition from Marvel, it instead features a slipcase, a page size properly reflecting the original size of the art, and a specific story. The shortest volume featured only 6 issues of normal length material while the longest ran at 12 issues worht of material.
Ages:-Golden Age:This is the first age of comics going all the way back to the 1920's. it continues until the early 60's.
-Silver Age:This is an age that begins in the sixties. It's marked by the start of the Marvel universe and it's united characters. It is here that we also see a more unified DCU leading to the formation of the Avengers and the Justice League respectively.
-Brozne/Dark/pre-crisis age: This is the time from the end of the silver age(traditionally marked in the mid to late seventies by the Death of Gwen Stacy) that lasts until the DCU event in the mid 80's called Crisis on Infinite Earths.
-Crisis on infinite Earth:Sometimes called Crisis. This was a universe spaning event that reset the DCU by unifying all of DC's infinite multiple universes into a single, cohesive universe.
-Post-crisis: This is the period after Crisis on infinite earths.
-Modern Age: The Modern age is most often marked as having started in around the year 2000 when both Marvel and DC had experienced new regime changes and began revamping their entire lines for a modern world.
Brand New Day: The spider-man world post One More Day.
Crisis-Level Event: This is an event that redefines the universe. It should be noted that Marvel's events of this level change the status quo but do not revise continuity. The major examples of this are: DC: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Idenity Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint. For Marvel these events are Secret War, The Onslaught Saga/Heroes Reborn, House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Fear itself.
Crossover: This is a type of event that utilizes more than one ongoing book to tell a story. For example, the Collision story line crossover back and forth between Daken:Dark Wolverine and X-23. Crossovers can include any number of issues and have a specific order they are read in.
DC Archive: The DC version of the Masterwork volumnes.
Filler: This refers to a story that interupts the normal story and isn't relevent to the normal story.
Fill-in: This refers to a writer or artist. They replace the regular ongoing writer/artist for a temporary time due to other circumstnaces that would prevent the regular to do it.
Hardcover: This is a book with a hardcover.
Masterwork: These are mastergrade reprints of older material in an oversized format.
OGN: Or original Graphic Novel. These are in both hardcover and paperback and represent a story that was written as a single uninterupted book. These are sometimes in continutiy and sometimes within their own continuity.
One More Day: sometimes OMD. This was a marvel event in the spider-man family of books. The events of this caused a revising of continuity and caused Spider-Man's marriage to Mary-Jane Watson to have never happened. This all transpired by a litteral deal with a devil like figure named Mephisto. The real clutch is that this event was credited to J. Michael Stryzski. But most sources point that the entirety of the story was the product of then Editor in Chief of Marvel, Joe Quesada's desire to deage Peter Parker. The story was poorly written and generally hated. This writer found the act deplorable.
Omnibus: This is a prestige oversized edition of previously printed material. These volumes traditionally run a higher page count than any other volume and will usually be thematic such as being based on a certain creator or creators, a certain storyline, or a certain character.
Retcon: Or Retro-active continuty. This is a revisal of a past event. Typically this happens to events that were not looked proudly upon but on occasion will happen towards good events. This is usually done via new flashbacks or dialogue.
Slipcase: this is a hard bound book that fits inside of a hardcover casing. This casing is also called a slipcase jacket.
Trade Paperback: Also refered to as a paperback or a trade. This is a collection of a single issues that form a story arc.
Trim size:
-Standard Sized Trim: This means a book is slightly bigger than a comic such as that none of the art is altered.
-Oversized Trim: Or oversized. This is a bigger book with the art slightly large as to be closer to the size of the original pencil art. These are often featuring a larger ammount of material and come at an additional cost.
With these terms you should be able to follow along and participate in discussions about comics.
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