#shout out to the 2 ppl who know me irl and got invested in a fanwork they have no previous knowledge of

[cryptocism]

Hey! I am very intrigued by the frequency fic but i have almost absolutely no idea about anything regarding inertia and impulse lore. Do you recommend i read anything before jumping into frequency or can i just jump in without knowing anything? Thank you! (Your art is (beyond) awesome so i cant wait to read your stuff too 😭😭😭) (also sorry if this is already asked before 😭😭😭)

no worries!!! ive gotten a few comments from folks who say they don't know anything about Impulse but are having a blast regardless, plus my 2 readers i know irl have no interest in comics whatsoever and yet have read every chapter. so i THINK it's definitely possible to go in blind and infer based on context? but there might be some confusion

my recommendation for minimum reading would be Thad's introduction in Impulse (1995), spanning from issue #51-53, and the Mercury Falling arc: issues #62-66. Frequency is kind of a continuation to Mercury Falling, and most of the references are found in those 5 issues.

There's also plenty of bits throughout Frequency that reference other comics, and I do my best to list them in the Author's Notes when they come up so that anyone who wants to can read em to get the context.

Also if you want to go the extra mile and become an expert on Inertia Lore I made a list of all of Thad/Inertia's comic appearances to date, but it might help to peruse a few wiki's to get an idea of the state of the DC timeline and its crisis events if you're not already familiar. One nice thing about Thad/Inertia being a very minor character in canon is that you could feasibly read through all of his comic appearances in a couple days.

However! I'm pretty sure a full deep dive isn't necessary to reading Frequency, and you can probably get a lot out of just the Impulse issues.