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DC Mega-events: rank your favorites

I'm going to say it: I liked Convergence! I know, it's not hip or cool to say you actually liked something in mainstream comics, but I do! I was a bit uncertain about this event and what it would be, but I have to say, after the several of the mini-series, I really got into the main story and went for the ride. It was great to see characters we haven't seen in a while (Donna Troy, Ryan Choi, Infinity Inc, Hawkman & Hawkwoman, Batman & The Outsiders) and the story reminded me of what attracted me to DC comics when I was a kid: the multiverse and multiple versions of classic DC comics super heroes.

So Convergence got me to thinking: how would I rank Convergence in relation to other mega-events that DC comics has put out over the past 30 years? Here as some of the mega-events I was thinking about:

Crisis on Infinite Earths
Armageddon 2001
Zero Hour: Crisis in Time
The Final Night
Identity Crisis
52
Countdown to Final Crisis
Final Crisis
Flashpoint
Convergence

I'd put Crisis, Identity Crisis, 52, Flashpoint & Convergence in my top 5 favorites.

Thoughts?
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Comments

  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    Don't remember zero hour for good or bad and can't think of any others off top of my head. Didn't read 52 and didn't care for final crisis, countdown and some others listed. But I do know I enjoyed these below (in no order).

    Crisis
    Armageddon 2001
    Final Night
    Identity Crisis
    Flashpoint
    Cosmic odyssey

    Not sure it counts, but I would certainly put kingdom come at #1 for me and new frontier 2nd. Both well above any of the above.
  • shroud68shroud68 Posts: 457
    The Janus Directive

    Suicide Squad, Checkmate, Manhunter, Captain Atom and Firestorm.

    Not quite a Mega-Event( more like cross-over) but I like the chance to pump it up when I can and the Suicide Squad parts was at the height of it's great run.
  • SolitaireRoseSolitaireRose Posts: 1,445
    DC One Million and the first crisis are ones I constantly go back to.
  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    If it counts, I also remember really digging invasion at the time. And blackest night was alright.
  • mwhitt80mwhitt80 Posts: 4,637
    shroud68 said:

    The Janus Directive

    Suicide Squad, Checkmate, Manhunter, Captain Atom and Firestorm.

    Not quite a Mega-Event( more like cross-over) but I like the chance to pump it up when I can and the Suicide Squad parts was at the height of it's great run.

    I wanted to like janus directive, but I just didn't.
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782
    edited June 2015
    DC 1,000,000 is the only one I truely enjoyed. COIE is laborious to read. I've read it 3 or 4, maybe 5 times over the years. I don't feel it holds up.

    I have Kingdom Come and New Frontiers as Absolute editions, as well as All Star Superman. It may not be an event but it was 12 issues and is far superior to many, if not all, of the others.

    Let me think on the series I enjoyed and didn't.
  • TorchsongTorchsong Posts: 2,794
    Crisis on Infinite Earths was the baby that brought them all in for me. I experienced it while it was happening, a month at a time, and read and re-read the issues until they fell apart. I'm one of those people who will always compare any event to COIE. Part of the heritage.

    Honorable Mentions: DC: Invasion, Identity Crisis, Final Crisis (which somehow got better with age)(particularly Legion of Three Worlds), Zero Hour, and Final Night.
  • hauberkhauberk Posts: 1,511
    Invasion
    52
    Identity Crisis
    Blackest Night
    Cosmic Odyssey
    Armageddon 2001
    COIE

    Kingdom Come
    Eclipso: The Darkness Within
    Multiversity
    Final Crisis
    DC 1,000,000


    Millenium
    Countdown
    Zero Hour
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782
    Multiversity
    Final Crisis

    On the fence about Blackest Night and Legends
  • shroud68shroud68 Posts: 457
    mwhitt80 said:

    shroud68 said:

    The Janus Directive

    Suicide Squad, Checkmate, Manhunter, Captain Atom and Firestorm.

    Not quite a Mega-Event( more like cross-over) but I like the chance to pump it up when I can and the Suicide Squad parts was at the height of it's great run.

    I wanted to like janus directive, but I just didn't.
    The Checkmate stuff was victim of bad art but the Suicide Squad stuff was really strong. I'm a big fan of the B list character as evidenced by my Avatar and screen name so that they killed some off in a huge James Bond battle at the end sold me. Not a great one or even epic but a slice of crossover that I think the big two never did enough of and should have in a shared universe.
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782
    OK.I just reread Cosmic Odyssey. I think it was better back in the day.
    A few points:
    Jonn would not have stopped the explosion if he were with John. There wasn't enough time.
    Superman comming across Orion's slaughter of the Thanagarians is the best part of the series. Orion used to be badass.
    Does anyone know why it was so important to have Jason Blood be part of the story. I felt like I was missing some 1988 backstory.
    Batman is still a precrisis Batman (can I use "precrisis" in a post-concergence era?). He can sure take a beating.
    Starfire could have been anyone else.
    Xanshi has an Arctic area, just like Earth.
    The sequence of John contemplating suicide is great. Nice art work.
    The New God's needed Jonn to read Metron's mind? There are no mind readers among the Gods?

    A dude jumps through a parademon's gaping entry/exit wound.

    image

    image
  • Chuck_MelvilleChuck_Melville Posts: 3,003
    As far as DC's events, Crisis On Infinite Earths is still the big one to top.

    I enjoyed the first few follow-ups: Legends and Millennium, both of which tried harder to create tie-ins that actually tied-in to the main story, a trickier task for Millennium, since it was a weekly.

    Zero Hour had, to a degree, the same energy and feel as Crisis, and Final Night gave me a genuine feel of dread as the sun threatened to die out. Invasion was interesting, and gave us the concept of the metagene for the first time.

    I thought Infinite Crisis was pretty well constructed, what with all of the interlocking mini-series that led up to it. Final Crisis was very good and entertaining, until it got to the last issues and Morrison fell to talking the story instead of letting the story tell itself.

    Armageddon 2001 was a fun series that ran through all of the DC Annuals in 1991, and gave us a double track: the main story (Waverider looking for the hero who would betray and kill the others) and the alternate timeline stories of each hero's future. Too bad they had to change the ending at the last minute.

    Bloodlines was in the middle range -- I liked the premise and a number of the stories, but the creation of a new hero or villain in every story got rather gimmicky, and danged few of these characters were ever used again. And for all of its faults (and there were many), I still kinda liked Countdown To Final Crisis.

    Probably the worst were War Of The Gods (a Wonder Woman based event that got little support from most of the editors and creative teams from what I've heard, and which wound up getting tangled up into two or three other multi-book storylines at the same time) and Worlds At War (one of the worst Superman based events I'd ever read).
  • nweathingtonnweathington Posts: 6,748
    popestu said:

    Does anyone know why it was so important to have Jason Blood be part of the story.

    There were a couple of characters Starlin wanted to use that weren't available, and the Demon came in as a substitute. Starlin also wanted all the heroes to go through some type of transition, and reuniting with Blood ended up being Etrigan's transition.
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782

    popestu said:

    Does anyone know why it was so important to have Jason Blood be part of the story.

    There were a couple of characters Starlin wanted to use that weren't available, and the Demon came in as a substitute. Starlin also wanted all the heroes to go through some type of transition, and reuniting with Blood ended up being Etrigan's transition.
    Thanks.
    I love how fictional charachers are "not available".
    "Sorry, he's on vacation at this time. Have you tried..."
  • mwhitt80mwhitt80 Posts: 4,637
    shroud68 said:

    mwhitt80 said:

    shroud68 said:

    The Janus Directive

    Suicide Squad, Checkmate, Manhunter, Captain Atom and Firestorm.

    Not quite a Mega-Event( more like cross-over) but I like the chance to pump it up when I can and the Suicide Squad parts was at the height of it's great run.

    I wanted to like janus directive, but I just didn't.
    The Checkmate stuff was victim of bad art but the Suicide Squad stuff was really strong. I'm a big fan of the B list character as evidenced by my Avatar and screen name so that they killed some off in a huge James Bond battle at the end sold me. Not a great one or even epic but a slice of crossover that I think the big two never did enough of and should have in a shared universe.
    Yeah. I got into Janus directive through the old checkmate.
    I got into a lot of the post crisis dc 6/7 years ago when I was too broke to afford new books but could buy lots of 80s dc online/ebay for supercheap. It was kinda amazing and fun to dig into a lot of those books. And with the economy in the crapper it sort of felt like I was stealing them.
  • RickMRickM Posts: 407
    Why isn't Infinite Crisis among the choices?

    I actually liked Identity Crisis the most, as it was the most readable despite the insane thing that happened. 52 was also good.

    Morrison lost me on Final Crisis, as did Johns on Infinite Crisis.

    Didn't read most of the others. The thing I don't like about DC's big events is that they always seem to be "this changes everything" narratives, and when you "change everything" on an annual basis, it gets old. It would be like a soap opera doing a Luke and Laura wedding, every single summer.
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782
    RickM said:

    Why isn't Infinite Crisis among the choices?

    I actually liked Identity Crisis the most, as it was the most readable despite the insane thing that happened. 52 was also good.

    Morrison lost me on Final Crisis, as did Johns on Infinite Crisis.

    Didn't read most of the others. The thing I don't like about DC's big events is that they always seem to be "this changes everything" narratives, and when you "change everything" on an annual basis, it gets old. It would be like a soap opera doing a Luke and Laura wedding, every single summer.

    I think you just put Identity Crisis on the list.
  • Chuck_MelvilleChuck_Melville Posts: 3,003
    Frankly, I see Identity Crisis as being a part of Infinite Crisis, and that's where I filed my copies. It's not officially a part of Infinite Crisis, but it always read to me as a precursor or prelude to it.
  • batlawbatlaw Posts: 879
    Any love for underworld unleashed? Man, sad how many of these I dont remember virtually anything more than the names or covers / banners of. Few I actively dislike though.
  • TorchsongTorchsong Posts: 2,794
    Reign in Hell is another one I enjoyed quite a bit because it featured Shadowpact. I was even willing to forgive the shitty treatment they gave Linda Danvers/Supergirl in it.
  • SolitaireRoseSolitaireRose Posts: 1,445
    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.
  • popestupopestu Posts: 782

    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.


    image
  • WetRatsWetRats Posts: 6,314

    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.

    It sure was pretty, though...
  • DoctorDoomDoctorDoom Posts: 2,586
    I quite enjoyed Zero Hour back in the day.

    It had he death of Batman:

    image


    And an awesome an awesome Spectre:

    image

  • popestupopestu Posts: 782
    I was psyched for zero hour because it felt like "my" coie. I was reading during coie but didn't understand the ramifications. My puny child brain was not fazed by alternate realities.
  • SolitaireRoseSolitaireRose Posts: 1,445
    WetRats said:

    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.

    It sure was pretty, though...
    Yep. Mignola's work was always damn purty. Starlin's work on the New Gods?

    ...he should stick to Thanos.

  • Chuck_MelvilleChuck_Melville Posts: 3,003

    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.

    I never really had a problem with that. It was post-Crisis, so I just assumed the rules had been changed, same as they had for practically every other series at DC. As such, I thought Starlin's idea was interesting and worked fine for his story.
  • Chuck_MelvilleChuck_Melville Posts: 3,003
    batlaw said:

    Any love for underworld unleashed? Man, sad how many of these I dont remember virtually anything more than the names or covers / banners of. Few I actively dislike though.

    Underworld Unleashed and Reign In Hell were both pretty decent, though I always thought they were fairly mid-level crossovers. However, UU did have the more interesting concept, that of a deal-bargaining devil whose deals did have some wider repercussions in some DC titles -- and writer Mark Waid took the interesting angle of making the Trickster the real hero of the series, as a con artist who not only knew he was being conned, but played a long con of his own in an attempt to save his own soul. Nice!

    Both series also had some strong support and repercussions over in the ongoing Spectre series by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake, which gamely took on the crossover and turned in some fine stories of their own.
  • SolitaireRoseSolitaireRose Posts: 1,445

    Cosmic Odyssey will always be a book I don't care for because Starlin completely misunderstood what the anti-life equation was. AND Darkseid KNEW where it was - Sonny Sumo had the power, and the Forever People were the ones protecting him. It was not a cosmic entity.

    Cripes.

    I never really had a problem with that. It was post-Crisis, so I just assumed the rules had been changed, same as they had for practically every other series at DC. As such, I thought Starlin's idea was interesting and worked fine for his story.
    Except it shows a profound misunderstanding of what Kirby was going for. The opposite of life is not death, it's the loss of choice. Kirby was puzzled by DC's fascination with death in their comics, and brought in his idea of the Anti-Life to show that there were things more horrific than death.

  • kiwijasekiwijase Posts: 451
    Action Comics #1.
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