To catch up on avengers, school me on what movies I should watch before and what comics to read
Aight so the essential movies to watch so to understand what's going on (Watch in this order) (Not including Black Panther because that's a must-watch regardless):
1 Iron Man (2008) - Introduces the one who started all of this
2 Iron Man 2 (2010) - People don't like this one, to me it's just average, but it introduces Black Widow, War Machine, and some more important story stuff for the future and potentially even for Infinity War
3 The Avengers (2012) - You might want to watch Captain America: First Avenger (2011) and Thor (2011) for this too but those are purely optional
4 Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014) - Not
totally essential to the story so to speak but it's one of the GOAT superhero movies and it's important for Civil War and Captain America's story arc
5 Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - Establishes a lot of future stories and introduces a few important characters. People think this one's just aight, but it's definitely important for context
6 Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) - Also one of the best Marvel movies and the Guardians will be super important in Infinity War
7 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) - People also think this one's just cool, and it might be skippable, but it also brings together characters who will be on-screen with each other in Infinity War that won't make any sense if you don't watch this. You should also watch this right after the first Guardians because it only takes place a couple months after
8 Captain America: Civil War (2016) - Super important to Infinity War and prob the most important movie on this list
9 Thor: Ragnarok (2017) - Also super important to what's gonna happen / happening in Infinity War
Now Spider-Man Homecoming (2017) and Doctor Strange (2016) might not be essential to watch for story purposes, but Infinity War will be better if you do because those two movies do a lot to establish those characters and have you invest in them and be more amped when they finally team up with everybody
Ant-Man is good but skippable if you don't have time because you can understand what's happening without it, Incredible Hulk is a skip, all you need to know about Thor 2 is that one of the 6 Infinity Stones is introduced in it and it ends up with the Collector and Loki fakes his death, Iron Man 3 is a skip
Comics:
The Infinity Gauntlet - Wikipedia
And these: