[GizmoTron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBlueMarvel

My recollection is similar to that of Webz. Outside of X-men fans, who are admittedly a huge fanbase capable of propelling popularity/sales on their lonesome, I recall the comic book shop assessment being not so glowing of AoA. AoA by no means started nor typified cross over events. It wasn't even the first for the X-men, as I stopped regular reading of main tier X-books following Inferno. The 90s represented a great deal of hype and, sometimes, empty and gaudy numbers given the many non-readers collecting in a get-rich-quick fashion. Once the Zeitgeist glommed onto Supes and Spidey #1s selling for tens of thousands of dollars, everybody from coked out investment bankers to polydent peddling octogenarians were buying up tinfoil variants of Punisher, Wolverine and Ghost Rider left and right. They did the same with everything from Beanie Babies to Tickle-Me Elmo. Remember the foil cover madness, or every title being rebooted to #1 to cash in on the uninitiated that didn't know better? Well, I do. I had friends working in and running shops at the time and while they certainly don't represent a large and diverse pool of evidentiary research, their "meh"ness about AoA wasn't exactly an isolated occurrence - as anecdotal a statement as that may be. AoA is definitely celebrated among the many, many X-men fans, but I'm not sure of the event's cachet far beyond.

Alllllll that said, I can't say I'm entirely unbiased as, imo, there have only been 3.5 cross over events that I've continued to like in the years following: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet, Annihilation, and half of Annihilation:Conquest.

That's the thing, for the "comic book guys" in the shops event fatigue set in a long time ago. Like I said, that's always been true for those that hung around the shops, read their Comic Shop News and Wizards and stayed in the know. They knew what was going on and were harder to impress.

But AOA, while it certainly wasn't the first line wide event ever, wasn't just like another Inferno, or a Fall of the Mutants, or the previous big event with the Phalanx Covenant. It was a huge gamble for Marvel as they literally cancelled/shelved the regular X-Men line for at least half of a year in order to relaunch the entire line with a brand new story in a new continuity. Sure, DC had done big things like kill Superman and replace Batman, but those stories continued on through the regular monthly books. With AOA and barely any message boards or social media like today you had people subscribing to Uncanny X-Men every month, who knew or may have known little or nothing at all about the ending to Legion Quest, suddenly receive the Alpha issue and a new Astonishing X-Men #1 out of the blue without much warning. That's quite ambitious in hindsight, even though big marketing pushes, renumberings, and relaunches aren't so special now, back then it was a pretty big deal, especially with Marvel's arguably top property at the time.

Of course the other kicker was that AOA was by and large was by and large well written, too, which is what fans remember the most. For a long time it was peak X-Men, and turned out to be more than a gimmick or just another comic fad which is why it's had such a lasting impression with X-fans new and old.

And Marvel and comics as a whole as well, since they really do return to the AOA template every once in awhile for their latest events (to varying degrees of success of course).