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Ahhh, welcome to the comic verse, Anon!  I’m super glad you’re sticking around!  I MEAN STEVE AND TONY RIGHT???

Comics can be so confusing, though, I feel you.  The tricky thing is that starting to read comics really does end up, eventually, feeling like diving into the deep end, no matter where you start, because there’s so much and it’s all interconnected.  On the other hand, you don’t have to read too many to get the feel of it, I don’t think.  So it goes both ways.  My main advice is don’t worry if you’re confused at first—everyone is, and they can be confusing!  Just latch onto the parts that interest you the most or that seem most fun, and follow those.  And seriously, I’ve been heavily reading Marvel comics for years now (whoa, when did that happen), and I’m always finding out stuff I didn’t know about and going THAT HAPPENED???

So, since you’re into Steve and Tony, my overall advice is to focus on the Iron Man, Captain America, and Avengers titles in general.  Sometimes compilations of issues through the years can be really useful, and there is, handily, this one:

Iron Man / Captain America, which covers a lot of their appearances together.  Namely: Tales of Suspense #58, Iron Man #172, Iron Man #228, Tales of Suspense one-shot 1995, Iron Man/Captain America Annual 1998.  You might have seen the panels about staring into Steve’s “azure eyes” and their general mutual admiration society, that’s from the 1995 Tales of Suspense one-shot.  Tales of Suspense #58 is the one where the Chameleon takes on Steve’s form and tricks Tony into thinking the REAL Steve is the Chameleon, who’s beaten him up, hijinks ensue.  Iron Man #172 is in the middle of Tony’s drinking arc, when Steve confronts him and it goes badly, pushing him down further, and Iron Man #288 is their confrontation in the middle of Armor Wars.  The Iron Man/Cap Annual from 1998 involves Tony wiping people’s minds of his secret identity and Steve being angry with him over it, then they go to a tropical island together, fight AIM, and make up.  Very fun.

More follows under the cut!

i’d recommend starting with some comics that aren’t too attached to an ongoing storyline: avengers prime **, avengers annual (2014), avengers: endless wartime, captain america & iron man (2011), and marvel 1872 (this one the sad canon western au that no one can shut up about). they’re a good place to familiarize yourself with comics stevetony

**avengers prime takes place after siege, which is a comic event where norman osborn attacks asgard and the gang defeat him. think of it as a post-civil war fix-it. even though you may need a little bit of prior knowledge to start it works pretty well as a standalone story and also there are a lot of iconic 616 stevetony panels in it

if you want to read through ongoing storylines though, here’s a compilation of some “reading orders” (in quotes because you don’t HAVE to start from the very beginning if you want to, usually you can skip around and it’ll be okay since most of them aren’t too connected to one another) for a few characters + the main avengers team. i broke down the iron man list in detail here, but sineala has a better, more concise summary of the avengers, iron man, and cap reading order here

also yesterday i reblogged this post which has a list of comics with some more good stevetony content. (you have to search them up though, most of the links are broken)

Let’s just take a look at everything going on in these Two (2) screencaps alone. How much data do you think he’s processing at any one time whilst in that suit (+ JARVIS AND the rest of the avengers on audio). He reads, evaluates and acts on the info, all in the space of a second before moving on to the next task. JARVIS might give him the information, but it’s tony stark’s brain that processes all that data vomit. On the field, the amount of information he must process in a mere minute must be astounding.

And I mean, not only can tony pilot this shit all on his lonesome, but he can do it with nothing more than a pair of glasses.

Whilst taking a drink:

Whilst Driving a Whole Other Vehicle

Too basic for you? I mean, I guess all he was doing was some basic flight in those, right? Well what about saving thirteen people from a falling airplane and safely guiding them all down to earth again- whilst in a cabin on a boat

and keeping a conversation with pepper while steering his suit to give her a gentle as fuck backrub

and before that, look at the fingers: