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Mainstream comics & "Big Events"

Fysh

Well, now seems as good a time as any to post commentary on the idea of "Big Events", given that Infinite Crisis is looming and House Of M is already under way. I must admit this post is inspired by the latest Permanent Damage by Steven Grant, as well as some past discussions about Identity Crisis and Avengers Disassembled (I'll dig out the links and post them up later), but anyway...

What's the general feeling on Big Events in mainstream comics here?

Personally, I only vaguely pay attention to mainstream comics out of curiosity rather than any devoted following, so it doesn't affect me much. But I still remember the disappointment and ultimate boredom that I felt when trying to keep up with the Crucifixion saga that led to Marvel's Onslaught event. That had interesting and worthwhile follow-on effects (I thought Heroes Reborn had the most interesting version of Iron Man I've ever seen, and the closest to how I personally see the character behaving), but still didn't really justify an unnecessily sprawling storyline that required you to buy about five times as many monthly issues as normal to understand what was happening. And the same is happening with the current big events.

The other interesting thing is pointed out by Steven Grant in the article I linked to above. I'm following and enjoying Grant Morrison's "7 soldiers of victory" saga, and it works so far much better as a "big event" than the ones I have experience of because the links between stories enhance the bigger picture - but you can still enjoy the story of the Shining Knight without reading, say, Zatanna or whatever. Is that the way they should be done, or should it be done as a universe-building and unifying exercise where you have to follow all the books to understand what's happening?

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iguana

I can't stand "big events." I was 15 when Marvel did AOA and I kind of enjoyed that. But for the most part they put me off.

Tbh they seem like little more than a sales event. It ensures that anyone who wants to read the whole story has to buy a whole bunch of comics they would never normally read. Then it tries to hook them on the characters in those books so they keep buying them after the event ends.

I know that a company is going to try to sell as much as they can but this seems pretty underhand. The readers who usually get caught by this are the younger ones and I think that long-term it backfires.

Instead of keeping a story in a single book that produces quality every month ensuring that readers keep buying, maybe for the rest of their lives. They get teenagers with more money than sense to buy lots of books for a few years. Then they realise that the stories aren't that good and there are other things to spend their money on and they quit reading comics completely.

The big events are a symptom of too many spin-offs. Often when a comic (or anything) introduces spin-offs they reduce the quality of the original by splitting the talent. This initially brings in more revenue as fans buy both books, but leads to a drop-off when people get tired of the poor stories. To get sales back up they introduce big events.

For me a few years of big events did my head in to the point where I stopped buying comics for a few years. The never ending MEGA-ACTION did my head in and the comics often became too convoluted to give a damn about. Every year there are new events and revelations that are supposed to change things for ever. It makes it impossible to care about what is going on.

It is impossible to do something huge and original every summer. If a big-event was the result of a really great story idea that involved the characters from a number of books, then they can work. But the reality is that this happens and then the company thinks "hey we just made a fortune, lets do it every year." Leading to a series of big events that just get more and more pointless.

DoctorEdgeWild

Big events can be very useful if a comic gets stale or boring. They are a good way to punctuate a time line in a longer running comic. However, some of the Marvel/DC big events are built up so much, they become tiresome. It must be quite interesting for the writers, giving rise to collaborations and crossovers.

I don't buy into current storylines much to be honest. There is such a huge amount of older comics (available very cheap!) which are new to me, even if they are old to most.

Also, 'Big Events' are sort of forced on readers as opposed to certain stories which may just slip by most readers becoming big events in your own imagination.

A good example of using big events sparingly and intelligently is Judge Dredd. The apocalypse war, the Dark Judges and Necropolis among a few others punctuate the time line really well, and stories don't always have to nod towards an upcoming big event which I find happens in DC comics fairly often.

Doubtful Donkey

I'm completely off DC, for good. With Marvel, you can read the main House Of M book and thats it, and everything else adds to it as a whole. With the recent OMAC Project/Wonder Woman fiasco, it's obvious DCare trying to force you to buy EVERYTHING crisis related

spooydermot

House of M has actually changed my mind on 'big events', it's a genuinely interesting story line, I'm reading the main HOM storyline and the Spiderman one aswell,Ironman too, I'm planning to pic up the one issue of captain America that covers HOM aswell cause it looks like it might give some interesting history on it. Have'nt been tempted to pick up the Hulk of Fearsome/Fantastic 4 (I've always hated the fantastic 4).

What I'm slowly getting at is that it's nice how it's been structured (so far) that one doesn't have to buy every Marvel title to get the story. This is the same reason I've avoided the 'infinite crisis' story line - despite being impressed by the really cheap and really large preview issue - becuase you have to buy every DC title to get the whole story.

Thatn said, I'm still not completly sold on the idea of these events....

One thing I hate about big events is the promise that: "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!" - from reading HOM, it looks like the point to to make everything the same as it was at the begining of the story?

7 Soldiers is a big event in a real sense, its a story that is taking place over a full year, it's a real slow burner and is being told in a very rich fulfilling way....it doesn't seem like a heartless marketing campagin.

It was in fact the 'big events' that put me off comics a few years ago, the 'apocalypse' story where you had to buy both 2000AD and the monthly Megazine was a realy cheat on readers (especially younger ones , which I was at the time)

Most of the 'big events' only happen with well established characters, spiderman etc. but recently I'm leaning more towards the opinion that a proper major shake up is needed, I looked through a recent Marvel Previews book and what they had lined up was gimic after gimic after gimic...I mean MegaMorphs? WTF? ...I mean whats next? Wolverine vs. Freddy (actually that might be kinda cool...)

I guess at the end of the day it's a 'take em or leave em' affair...if you feel the story is worth it then go for it, if you feel that its too transparantly an empty marketing ploy then go for one of the less mainstream comic publishers who might be producing something more original.....

Spideyman

spooydermot wrote:

One thing I hate about big events is the promise that: "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!" - from reading HOM, it looks like the point to to make everything the same as it was at the begining of the story?

Actually Marvel have promised that there will be some major reprecussions from it like this "DeciMation" follow on. Think the whole idea that the heroes won't be able to put everything back the way it was and that there'll be a kind of mix of the two realities.
Here's hoping... for something that doesn't suck that is.

spooydermot

Spideyman wrote:

Actually Marvel have promised that there will be some major reprecussions from it like this "DeciMation" follow on.

Yeah, I saw a preview of that all right, hopefully it'll be up to scratch...

baldi1212

I've been reading both House of M and Infinite Crisis and for once, I am happy to say both mega events are actually worthwhile reads. There is so much going on at DC I'm very curious to see how it will unfold. After Infinite Crisis they are going to release a follow on series called 52 with one issue being released per week. I haven't found the need to collect every issue which is impossible but I thought they did a very good job with Identity Crisis and keeping it self contained.

House of M is just a great story, full of action, consequence and emotion.

I know very little of the new Spiderman Evolve or die storyline, I can't imagine it being any good

Jay Tomio

Generally not a fan of te hbig event, although in the long past I enjoyed Secret Wars (from Marvel) and Valaint had a wonderful event a decade ago with Unity.

Many times big events are used to reign in an set right continuity issues. It would be nice if the big companies would work on continuity during the writing process instead of having to clean up their garbage ever 6 years to a decade.

Fysh

Old thread I know, but i figure it's a fitting subject to bring up again.

With "Civil War" taking off at the moment, "Infinite Crisis" seguing into "52", "One year later" and the various follow-up threads, and "Seven Soldiers Of Victory" just about to finish up....

How do you think the recent crop of "Big events" have fared? Have they lived up to the hype? Have the stories been worth following? Has the scale of the "event" lived up to what was claimed?

Personally, the only one of the above I have followed was Seven Soldiers Of Victory, and frankly it's been disappointing as a megaseries. For all the promises that each storyline would work by itself, there's no real depth to the stories without the context provided by the Sheeda invasion. I wanted this to be interesting and there have been some fine moments along the way (The Guardian's pirate train fight, Frankenstein on Mars, the Bulleteer at the comics convention, or Mister Miracle's escape from...everything in "Forever Flavoured Man") but it hasn't felt distinct enough from every other "big event" that required me to read every issue of x,y,z and q in order to know what's going on.

There again, having read some recent interviews with Grant Morrison I discovered that he is now in a consultant-type position with DC to advise on storyline continuity; not only that, but the Seven Soldiers project was part of other consultant work he does for them (not unlike the work Ellis did in creating NextWAVE) to reinvent old and unprofitable characters. In that context, it makes more sense. However, I can't help feeling disappointed that a series which seemed to promise soldiers rather than superheroes seems to be lining itself up as just another superhero team book launchpad. It would have been so nice if this could have ended as a simple self-contained story, instead of having to generate the obligatory "new adventures of" book, or whatever.

On a completely separate note : does anyone else find it curious that Marvel and DC are going in more or less opposite directions with the changes to their world and narratives that they are making through these big events? (Ie DC trying to become "less dark", Marvel dealing more and more with grim and gritty situations) Do you think this will work out as a good thing in terms of making their comics more interesting? Or will it just be something they'll reverse and retconn in a few years time?

Briony Noh

Broadband in Navan sucks AND I just lost everything I typed a minute ago through one careless key-press (not 'delete', don't think I'm that bad yet).

Anyway, as I was saying (keep it short this time)...

Big Events: First one I recall was the Death of Captain Marvel. Author driven, Jim Starlin had a vision, although I accept that Marvel's ongoing dispute with DC over the character's name was probably what kicked off. Written as a graphic novel, released as a graphic novel, though I'm sure somebody at some board meeting somewhere must have pointed out how much more money they'd have made if they'd released it as a series first.

Second I can recall was Frank Miller's tenure on Daredevil. An unrecognised-at-the-time masterpiece that you can now buy, and quite rightly so, in collected form. Written as a series but with an overall story-arc in mind.

After that, it gets a bit like TV series: the fan base is big enough to make a movie, anybody got any ideas? The X-Files springs to mind here as an example of the big screen being totally unnecessary to the story being told. There was nothing special about it that hadn't already been done in the TV series (not ignoring the fact that it finished off a story that had been bubbling away through the previous however-many-years), a fact that was highlighted by the thoroughly misguided inclusion of (the super-excellent, by the way) Martin Landau's pointless character. Two episodes. Three at the most. Nah. More money in Europe and Asia if we sell the movie then the network rights for the series.

I haven't bought in to the Big Event thing since Secret Wars, which was just pointless as far as I could tell. Maybe great things have happened since then, and I am aware of the one or two that are almost universally accepted as being essential reading, but as far as I'm concerned, if anyone in publishing ever thought enough of my opinion to ask it, I'd say if somebody brings you a story that needs the bigger canvas, then commission it appropriately: set the parameters, decide on an ending, commission the talent with the interest and vision to see it through from start to fin. Don't just say, "here's an earner, tell everyone we're doing an End of the Universe crossover for the next year and a half, any storylines that need to be closed, get them closed by the end of the month. Oh, by the way, Spider-man is the first victim. We need something to guarantee those audience figures in the first weekend. What do you mean we don't own Spider-man? Do you think I'd kill him if we did??"

Sorry, got a little side-tracked there.

I suppose what I'm saying can be boiled down to one sentence. I will, however, resist any and all inducements to delete what I've already written. But, nonetheless, I have a sentence which says that: If I want a Big Event story, I'll buy a book. Sorry, two sentences: I buy comics for the same reason I read a lot of short stories - (with a parenthesis) - they're a quick-fiction-fix.

There. That was MUCH shorter.