Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-27849105-20160222191612/@comment-61022-20160225153747

That all said, it's just as ADour put it, most titles are a continuation of the on going saga of a character, but they are usually written in story arcs that can understood by new readers and are written in such a way that they can be viewed by long time fans as part of a greater tapestry of their ongoing story.

Occasionally, they'll retell a character's origin in-story, that used to be the standard practice after a certain number of issues they would rehash an origin (updating concepts as necessary). But these days they slap a title summary on the first page that gives you a brief explanation of the important facts of the character and what they have been up to recently. Nowadays they tend to issue limited series that rehash origins of characters.