Big Event storylines
 

Blackest Night
Civil War
Infinite Crisis
Secret Invasion
"New 52"
Dark Reign
Flash Point
House of M

There isn't a comic fan who isn't familier with the rate that Marvel *and* DC both have been pumping out huge company wide crossover events.
Lately it feels like each company puts out two a year. And the embers of the last are still scalding hot when they plunge straight into the next one.

I've been reading a lot of comments over the last few years that while they're enjoyable, it seems most people wish they would cool off a little.

Looking back just twenty years, things were extremely different. Huge company spanning crossover events were extremely rare. Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, these were the exceptions and exceptional, and fondly remembered. And quite honestly reveared, because of their rarity. While the norm was big crossover events within a family of titles, instead of the entire company.
Examples:
X-Men- Phoenix Saga, X-Cutioner's Song, Phalanx Covenant, Age of Apocalypse
Batman- Knightfall, No Man's Land

I can't help but feel that AoA, Phalanx, and Phoenix would be entire marvel events, if they were being done now.

While I enjoy a big event... I admit I got entirely wrapped up in Blackest Night, I personally feel it's time to stop. Go back to when such events were very rare, and felt earned (Secret Invasion being a great example of a wonderful concept that loses almost all of it's impact due to being just another in a long chain of them), and letting the individual family titles have their own events.

But that's just my opinion.

What's yours?

Marvel and DC use events because they find that they're basically cash cows, and can be used to bring in readers to different aspects/families of the marvel/dc universe. Has there been too many events? Sort of, yeah.

One thing though....

X-Men- Phoenix Saga

Wasnt some huge crossover....there was only one X Book then and this was a plot that went a few years....not really a crossover....just a well written story where seeds were planted in two parts....

"Phoenix Saga" (The X-Men #101-108, 1976–1977) referring to Grey's seeming assumption of the Phoenix power and the repair of the M'Kraan Crystal.

"Dark Phoenix Saga" (The X-Men #129-138, 1980) referring to her corruption and fall

Yeah, I understand that it was just one book. But I refer to the whole thing, Phoenix and Dark Phoenix when I say "Phoenix Saga." it's just easier. And if X-Men had a family of titles, it certainly would spread across all of them. And it was certainly relevent to every x-man past or present to that point.
But I used it as an example to push the point that I feel a story arc like that would now a days be a huge company crossover.

You want an incredible crssover that was actually all about the story?
Annihilation.

That's how a crossover should be- you DONT need to get anything but the core books to have a great story, but if you get the crossovers, it enhances it.

Annihilation: Conquest and War of Kings works very well if you only read the main books as well.

Contrast that with Fear Itself where we got issue after issue of Bendis talking heads talking about nothing, doing nothing and wasting our money on filler, plus War Machine fighting...er...chinese mystical bullshit...instead of wrapping up tht book's painfuly lame storyline- that break in the snail's pace story killed the title- a good thing, sadly, as it had potential.
That Fear Itself crossover was ALL filler, building up, making weapons, hype hype! HYPE!- then there WAS NO FIGHT!
They spent six months of every Marvel title only to build up to Thor getting killed in ten panels.

His Death did not last two months. (makes jacking off motiion with hand)

I'm not buying any more of that bullshit and like a million other readers have gone to either only a few good non-crossover books like Daredevil and Punisher, or have turned to online pirace sources.
Mavel's sales will keep tanking and Disney will exert more and more influence- gimmicks like that stupid "Nick Fury Jr." idea- to push sales.
Because Disney knows shit about comics, right?

I just go to Wikipedia and read the short version of whats going on. They want to keep bringing in new kids to get into these things, but what kid can afford all the useless crap. I Mean $3-$5 for one comic book??? And they want you to collect them all?

Ummmm no...

Im sorry but I cant spend that kind of cash as an adult to keep up with whats going on.

I mean if you were around and read the whole DP saga you spent alittle over $16 and this was in the span of 5 years.....

How much is going to cost to collect all of Fear itself, Secret Invasion, Civil War, AvX?

The comics industry in general is bloated. Less books would be more quality. I can't stand how many issues they insert into some of these events. Civil has over 100 if you want to get every story and most of those books aren't very good. I bought the TPB for Secret Invasion but those six issues aren't even a decent chunk of the story. What's worse is that while reading those books it is very clear that you are missing things. Most of the time I can't even read the main titles of an event and get more than a partial idea of what actually happened. And it's worse when "tie-in" titles have little more than the event banner connecting them to the story. They complain about piracy but then force it upon readers who want to fill in holes created without wasting time and money.

Like I said I dont collect anymore, but to me it has just taken the place of Foil Covers, 6 Different covers for one issue that the 90s became...

And all that was to give the illusion that you were buying something that might be valuable one day. The days of holding onto things and them becoming worth large sums are long gone. The reason old comics are worth so much is because there were less of them around and few people thought to keep them, much less take care of them. It's kinda like figure collecting now and why I go loose. When so many people are stashing stuff away in mint condition and things are being promoted for their collectable value they never really gain any. Gimmicks like variant covers are just companies trying to justify the price of their products.

I collect loose....MOC people erk me. They say its not, but I think deep down its the "Its going to be worth something one day". Its not...

This!!! Annihilation and it's related events (conquest, war of kings, thanos imperative) were great! Chaos War, Fear Itself, and so many others recently...Rubbish!

I do all my comic reading online or via collected editions these days so that I can get the good and skip the garbage.

If they wanted to try and make these events work more easily for the reader then they would make suspend individual titles during the event. Instead of Secret Invasion 1-6 and then a hundred other connected issues just make Secret Invasion 1-15 (or 20 or whatever) with no tie-ins anywhere else. Less issues but more focused. Maybe a certain issue doesn't feature the character you like but their story gets told somewhere in the run. I think they would stand a better chance of boosting overall sales this way. I mean, if an event turns out to actually be really good it's too easy to miss issues and lose track the way they do it.

Smart man! Check your local library as well- mine has an entire two shelves of nothing but marvel and DC trades- read every issue of Exiles over one lazy, raiy weekend on the couch!

I can't stand crossovers. They are overdone and just plain annoying. First I have to deal with the way Bendis is writing partial stories and them the Avengers are tied up in something else keeping away a story arc. Why do I have to wait one year to get one good story going when they could give me three or four smaller ones and still have content.

Also inclusive title tie ins make me want to get the books even less. I started picking up some Green Lantern books before Blackest Night and then after it was over I got more issues feeling I had missed a lot of the madness but they did the "War of the Rings" bit of bs. Why? It just feeds back on itself and if yiou haven't been reading the title for the last few years you get lost. That is why I don't touch X-books. They always have something like this going on. I know for current readers who get all the books it is a great deal but those who only get a couple titles are either forced to buy more or get part of a story. I buy none because I can only afford so many books a month and I can't afford all the X-books. I have no idea where to start or how the plots go or any of that crap. Hell I hate they way I have to deal with the X-Men right now with my Avengers.


They need to write good stories that are resolved in the title they are in not 3 or 4 others. They need to let crossovers rest for a while. I know DC has said they are not doing it but Court Of Owls and the Culling are both crossovers. Suicide Squad/Resurrection man are crossing and in a month or two my beloved Swamp Thing and Animal Man titles will cross over, well not to upset about that one. The thing is DC said it wouldn't happen for at least a year. All stories were in one book and wrapped up there. Stormwatch stopped that. I was told it was just showing after effects but I didn't buy it then and I bought none of the crossover books.

Screw em! I will buy some new stuff but I love my Silver Age better.

I still think small crossovers can be really smart and well written- a perfect example being the recent one month crossover between Daredevil Spider-Man and Punisher.
That kind of crossover give readers the story from three very different perspectives and lets the characters develop their own book's plot/story lines while still behaving as they should.
For example, we've all seen stuff like Civil War where both Cap and Tony were acting NOTHING like their established character backgrounds or motivations would have them act- the editors decided to go with the story and all the writers had to bend their characters to fit that crossover- to the point where it seemed more like the Ultimates universe than the main marvel one.

The best crossovers are cosmic crossovers- mainly because it's not Earth-centric and the characters involved are not "headliners", but interesting, well written characters- not media "properties" like Wolverine or Spidey that you
A) know will never die and
B) cant do anything that changes their core character.

Superman will never screw the pooch like John Stewart did and get a planet full of people killed, changing him forever into a much more deliberate, guilt-ridden hardass guy.
Fans would not have it- they like constantcy and to be able to pick up certain books and know so and so is the best there is at what he does or the Dark KNight or whatthehellever.

Stick with small story-driven crossovers and skip the nonsense crossover issues of a title- they're always a waste of money- every two crappy filler issues is a Marvel Universe figure!
If you count the Fearless useless miniseries, Fear Itself had twelve filler issues! That's a Galactus, right there....and since the issues never go up in value, you could always get back issues if anything actually happened worth reading (certainly not in Bendis' Avengers!).

since i read journey into mystery, i had to read through a boring garbage crossover with the exiles. Even though ive been reading comics for 10 years, I had no idea who any of the exiles were aside from x-man and that morphing robot. I dont like reading X-books....

I guess Exiles is a mutant title but I wouldn't say an X-book. There are far too many crap titles over the years loosely related to the X-Men. I wish they would just trim it to two X-Men titles and X-Force.

The Exiles is Quantum Leap meets Sliders, meets Marvel Superheroes.

It began with Age of Apocalypse Blank becoming displaced in time, where she met alternate reality versions of Morph, X-Man, Nocturne (The daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch in her home reality), Thunderbird, and Mimic.
All displaced from time, they are told by a being only they can see and hear known as the Timebroker, who tells them that something has gone wrong in their realities, and they cannot travel back until they fix it, by righting wrongs in other realities.

It's indirectly connected to X-Men, but not exclusive to Marvel's Merry Mutants. Most of the time they help many other marvel characters. A female Sunfire, a female Sasquatch, Magik, AoA Sabertooth, Hyperion, 616 Psylocke, and 2099 Spiderman have all been members of the team at one point or another.
And composing a second team once, was an evil Spiderman (Carnage, I think?), She-Hulk, Gambit, Storm, vision, and Deadpool, too. Weapon X came into conflict with the Exiles many times, because their mission was to be a hit squad of sorts, and kill bad elements in order to fix timelines.

It was one of Marvel's better titles, constantly getting good reviews. And far better than the actual X-Titles. Naturally Marvel couldn't leave it alone and royally screwed it over, pretty much destroying it at the end.

It took the basic concept of "What if..." and added a stable cast of characters (Great characters at that), and let it grow.

Exlies definitely had some good stories. Wasn't there a team of evil Wolverines at one point?

it was a two issue storyline where there was an entire world of nothing but Wolverines. It was great.
The Timebrokers decided there was a problem and Wolverine was the only one who could deal with it, so they kept recruiting wave after wave after wave of nothing but wolverines.

My favorite story from the whole series!