Are "Events" Ruining Marvel Comics?
pfinnegan
Posts: 32
With the recent teaser posters for next year's Secret Wars, I wondered if maybe the events are just becoming too much. So, I wrote a bit about it on my blog.
http://www.exploringmarvelu.com/2014/11/are-events-ruining-marvel-comics.html
What's your opinion?
http://www.exploringmarvelu.com/2014/11/are-events-ruining-marvel-comics.html
What's your opinion?
Comments
For me, I love most events. It was events that for me back into comics, with Civil War and Infinite Crisis.
There have been brief periods where I felt that burnout, but for the most part, I'm excited at what's coming.
They should be a platform the grand universe wide story, not the cash grab of this half of the year, or every other quarter of the year. They don't need to have universe wide ramifications changing the status quo. Just give me a good story that is solid from page one of issue one to the last page of the final chapter.
I habitually get hyped for events only to be let down by what turns out to be a sub-par stories and I will admit that may be me allowing my expectations to get the better of me. But more often than not as these events wind down to the last few issues and end, that's when the buyer's and reader's remorse kicks in.
Personally speaking? I like "events" as long as I'm not required to buy every single book under the sun to follow it.
I don't think it's a question of "Are events ruining Marvel" specifically. I think it's a question we should ask of BOTH comics companies (and maybe some others too).
I think big sweeping story-lines are great maybe once a year for sales purposes. I think I can concede to that without getting pissed at the company. NO events just doesn't seem like a smart business model anymore given the way they sell. But one big one (probably during the summer) seems reasonable to me.
What bothers me is the AMOUNT we get. And it's not just the universe wide stuff, it's the family titles that bother me.
Marvel: Every X book needs to be involved in an X related story-line every 3 months or less. Same with Avengers. Same with gamma characters. Same with spidey characters.
DC: Batman books must all cross over occasionally. So will the Superman stuff. Oh, Green Lantern? Yeah lets do that to. Since issue #20 there have been THREE events within Green Lantern; 'Lights Out', 'Uprising' and the current 'Godhead'. It's awful.
But, to me, "event" SHOULD be UNIVERSE wide, not just character family wide. But I've got no other word to call those character specific events, so yeah.
I originally thought they were going event/crossover heavy because of the increase in trade sales. But now I'm not so sure because the number of books in an event are approaching Omnibus territory, rather than just a trade. Or maybe they just want to package a few trades to make up one event (see Annihilation).
Blackest Night was the perfect example. There was a trade for the mini-series, a trade for the GL issues and a trade for the GLC issues. Then they had everything else. Problem is, if you're reading GL, you're probably reading Blackest Night. And GL doesn't work without Blackest Night for those issues. They SHOULD have put out a trade with Blackest Night, GL and GLC all in order in one or two volumes...which they did....MUCH later...in absolute format.
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Nothing drives me from a book faster than "crossovers". DC is the worst with this in the N52 era. The Batman and Green Lantern familes of books have been over burdened with crossovers.
Personally I love them. I don't even see them as events..they just play the role as the main story running through the universe at that time.
This isn't to say I won't pick up a trade later to see "what happened" but really, I have the internet and geeks who can't keep a secret for that kind of stuff. :)
I think Civil War was the last bona-fide event book I followed religiously. Secret Invasion lost me early on and really I haven't looked back since.
I say all this with a complete understanding of why the Big Two feel a need to do it. Events aren't geared to attract readers like me, who'd much rather curl up with issue #27 of Cloak and Dagger or something like that.
The only drawback is when the "event" is shoehorned into a title that you are reading on a monthly basis and poorly meshes with the current storyline. However, I find that does not happen as often as you would expect. Handled by a Writer with decent chops, the editorial mandate can often be seamlessly woven into the story.
Even though I argue that the Events should be dialed down big time, I still enjoy them for the most part. Most of Bendis' Avengers events were great, in my opinion. Infinity was a little convoluted, but it was good. Some of the x-title crossovers were good (Second Coming, Messiah Complex) and some not so good (Battle of the Atom, X-Termination).
As someone else pointed out, the Bendis events were planned well in advance and the story came first. Now it seems that every 3 months, writers need to pitch the next "event" and Marvel just runs with the best pitch. It's a situation where they want an "event," so they solicit a story, instead of "here is a great story..it will make a great event." At least that's how I see it.
Let's look at what 2014's "events" have actually been.
Goblin Nation - this was an arc in Superior Spider-Man, with some tie-in stories in the other Spider-Man comics. Barely an event, more like line branding.
Revolutionary War - A series of one-shots, trying to tap into what tiny modicum of nostalgia there is for 90s Marvel UK. No more an event than Seven Soldiers or Multiversity are.
Original Sin - A mini-series with a variety of spin-off mini-series. Some ongoing comics are branded with Original Sin branding but only really tie in thematically rather than crossing over. You can just read the core series with no problems. You can also read the branded issues of your ongoing comics without reading the core series. Arguably the platonic ideal of events in terms of execution if not content.
Death of Wolverine - A mini-series with a variety of variable quality spin off comics and some logical tie-ins after it ends. Arguably could have just been part of the regular Wolverine comic as it's not really an event, just marketed as one.
AXIS - A mini-series with a variety of spin-off mini-series and crossovers. This is the Event this year closest to the Bendis event formula, in that it is a direct continuation of many plotlines established in an Avengers comic, in this case Uncanny Avengers. And you are missing details if you aren't following certain comics and vice versa if you read those comics and don't read AXIS. On the plus side, things have actually happened and it isn't treading water until the last issue.
Spiderverse - A 6 issue Spider-Man arc with mini series lead-ins and tie-in issues of other Spider-Man books.
Time Runs Out - A branded crossover between Avengers and New Avengers.
To me, only Original Sin and AXIS feel like true line-wide events, and only AXIS feels like it's weaving itself through the line in a way that derails ongoing plots in existing comics.
Now, how these are all marketed might be more of a problem than the "events" themselves. But no more so than exhausting your audience with double shipping, weird decimal point issue numbering and excessive variant covers.
That being said, there have been titles I’ve been somewhat interested in and passed on simply because I knew they'd be crossing over with some big storyline every few months.
That explanation itself is the CliffsNotes version and look how long that paragraph is. And that's only the first "event" on your list. Anybody else not currently reading any Marvel titles want to go right out to your local comic shop and buy every one off the rack?
On the other hand, I feel we get a lot of "Events" and a lot of issues that make the story. My biggest issue with events today is that there are just so many of them and it makes them feel less special. I'm going to use Doctor Who as an example. The new Doctor doesn't like hugging. He hates it and so when he does actually hug, it makes it more special because he's doing something he would otherwise not want to do. Events should feel like that. When you have one after another after another, it just doesn't feel as special. It just feels like another thing that is taking place before the next thing that will eventually happen.
Events should feel important and when you have the amount that companies are putting out, they don't feel as important as they do. Some are interesting like this Spider-Verse. Every Spider-Man or Woman having to team-up to stop a threat is an interesting one and this is a story I intend to get in trade. I love the idea of events. They are fun and when done right, they feel important. I guess I do like events but I wish they felt more important nowadays.
Marvel did have a period when they didn’t do any big events, just some crossover stories that stuck to a “family” of books, and over time, their sales dropped across the board. There are a lot of theories as to why, and here is mine:
Your mainline average super-hero comic is $4 a pop now. Because they cost so much, every issue has to be a Big Deal. When comics were below $2, you could take your time with fill-ins, smaller stories, focus on supporting characters, give new creators a chance to be terrible and learn how to put together a story. That’s how you got long runs like Bill Mantlo on Hulk or Mark Guenwald on Captain America. They weren’t BAD stories, they were ok stories that fit in the on-going super-hero soap opera and played with characters that hadn’t been used a lot. It’s a buck or two, you read it in 15 to 20 minutes, and you would be OK with that. But now, people want stories that Matter. They want things that Change things.
I think it’s like that with a lot of entertainment. You don’t see a lot of new sitcoms catching on because once the situation is established. Things really don’t change, while on dramas, stories now have to move forward. CSI and Law and Order were both long-running shows where things didn’t much change, the crime was investigated and solved, and this is CSI’s last season, Law and Order is gone….people want shows like Walking Dead and Breaking Bad where Big Things Happen. Movies are bigger now, and you don’t see a lot of the character dramas any more.
The problem is, you can’t have Big Things happen all the time in on-going serialized drama. In pro wrestling, they call it Hot Shotting, giving a BIG event to draw everyone in and thinking they will stay, but not having anything to follow it up.
With So Much Media, people want more. Comics are the same. We want Big Changes (as long as they are big changes we like or big changes we know will go back to normal) we want Big Stories. We don’t just want captain America punching Batroc the Leaper again, we want Cap to deal with a Big Issue. Events in ALL media are here to stay, but especially in comics where, again, it’s $4 a pop for a 22 page story. The days of the “Here’s a nice little story about Spider-Man helping a terminally ill kid” comic book issue are long gone.
When I read your closing sentence it reminded of my single favorite issues of comics I've read in the last 15 years.
Wolverine #41 (2000) - a standalone issue of wolverine where he was saving a baby from an African warlord. The issue is mostly silent; it also was the last issue of wolverine before Civil (and the endless tie-ins that followed). I'm an X-property agnositic, but that story was great. It makes miss those kinds of stories.
What you are talking about is the continuity coming out of that arc and title launches. Too many title launches is another topic that might be a bigger problem than "events". Or it might not. But there's definitely more #1 issues per year than there are events.