Let me start off by saying that I love comic book events. There is nothing like the excitement and potential for shocking twists and turns that a good event can bring about. The rumors start flying around the forums and we the comic book fans get giddy to sink our teeth into these game changing stories. But I think I’m not alone in the thought that perhaps these events could be spaced out just a bit more to give some of the regular titles a chance to breathe and grow on their own. In a lot of cases you can read a whole year’s run of a book and have the regular monthly stories get interrupted by an event multiple times. This can often interrupt the flow of a writer as he or she struggles to mix in a story that isn’t really his own and add it to the overall vision for the title.
Now I can’t be completely critical of events because after all if these events were some how not making the two big companies money, they wouldn’t do it quite so much. The truth is these books do sell and are typically at the top of the sales charts time and time again. We the comic book buying audience are suckers for a mega story and will often go above our budget just to dip our toes in another universe changing arc just so we won’t feel like we’ve missed out.
I hope that one day if DC and/or Marvel sees a dip in their sales based around an event they will try to give it a rest for at least 6 months. DC in particular needs to let their new books exist on their own then slowly build to a big event. I know some people have been screaming for a year without one, but I think half a year is more likely to happen in the case of DC. Especially when the competition has nearly three events going on at once and still seeing pretty good sales from them. To both companies credit they are at least rather consciously making sure that you don’t necessarily have to pick up all the books in an event to know what is going on. When I first got back in to comics a couple of years ago, Blackest Night was just ending and Brightest Day was about to begin. I made the rookie mistake of trying to grab up nearly everything with “Brightest Day” in the title until I realized how ridiculous that was. Instead I got the main book and one or two of the other books that I was going to buy regardless.
So until the next mega event I’m going to enjoy this downtime in DC, however long that is. In the Marvel Universe I plan on picking up one of the new X-Men titles once Schism dies down and hope they will allow those titles to grow without too much crossover at first. If they give us just a little time to catch our wind I don’t think it will have much affect on their bottom line. Besides don’t our favorite Superheroes deserve a little break from constant global disaster? I think they do.
Seriously Matt, if DC events us again in a few months I’ll be annoyed.
Manapul in an interview seemed convinced that DC was going to leave events alone for a couple years.
Here’s hoping he’s right.
I agree events can be seriously annoying. Don’t get me wrong I do like reading them but one of the biggest problem that I have, and you mentioned, is having to interrupt the story I’m reading in order to include that character in the event.
I feel what you are saying acutely. Frequent events are a two pronged problem: they don’t allow individual titles to take on a life of their own, as you so rightly point out, but the other problem they tend to suffer from is the whole “save the universe/multiverse/world/reality/existence/timestream/whateveraslongasitisnearlyincomprehensiblylargeandimportant”. You also allude to this. I think it is a huge problem. Once you have saved the world where do you go? To the universe. Then the multi. And on and on and on.
It doesn’t really leave you anywhere to go. It’s good to go all out, but it’s great to keep things in reserve as well. And I frequently get the feeling that they do one or the other to the detriment of one or both. Ah well, it’s just one of those things.
