The Coronavirus Sanity Handbook: Comic Books

In tough times, there’s no escape quite like disappearing into a universe of real heroes

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

You’ve reached the end of the Netflix scroll, IG just doesn’t hit the same when travel budgets are moot, and you’re not shelling out $10 a month for BET+ just to get foggy episodes of Martin. You’re bored. So are we. It’s going to be a loooong quarantine.

Luckily, there’s a solution out there — one that’s colorful, widely diverse in content, and provides damn near endless escapism. Allow us to reintroduce: comic books.

Not convinced? We get it. Comics has carried on for more than a century, and the overlapping story arcs, deaths and resurrections, ever-shifting superhero teams, and periodic universal resets — not to mention the annoying-ass segment of fans demanding you know every inch of the material — all make getting into it seem like a hassle. And despite the fact that it suddenly feels like we have all the time in the world to parse through all the weird minutiae of the Marvel or DC Universes, sheltering in place doesn’t mean you don’t have other shit to do.