Exploring the Comic Book Event

Something drastic has been changing during the past couple of years in the modern comics’ industry. Then again -- what hasn’t changed? In a medium where success is never assured, and Marvel and DC comics have thrown almost every idea into their own publishing line, which ideas last? The answer is simple, the biggest stories ever told! 

General feelings regarding the current fan and critical reaction of the fabled comic book crossover event has recently spiked. These so-called “events” typically involve A-list talent and a horde of classic comic book characters mashed together. At first, the general reception towards these comics’ events was extremely positive, and since then public opinion has ebbed and flowed decade by decade. While comics’ fans still endlessly debate which comic book event can be regarded as the first ever published, the one that was first universally marketed towards an event was known as Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

 

This is bar none one of the most important comic book series ever created. Published in 1985, and written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez, it is one of the most essential pieces of comics’ history that can still be purchased today in a giant trade paperback. The story unfolded across 12 issues (known as a maxi-series at the time), and featured the sort of bombastic storytelling spread across multiple earths and heroes that had fans in a mad fury waiting for the next monthly installment. Even today, this tale still has an incredible lasting effect on the modern DC Comics’ Universe.

 The tag line read as follows “Worlds will live...worlds will die...and nothing will ever be the same again.”

This is one of the first stories that actually justified that catchphrase with a death, destruction, and rebirth spawning a simplification of the extremely complicated DC Universe over a set period of time. DC Comics started as a group of characters being published across numerous different companies; their heroes can feel disconnected to each other at times for the that simple reason. Superman and Batman are two candidates that are not easy to put together under the same umbrella. There was also an incredible amount of superheroes created in 50 years at the company; and pairing down some of the original material similar to how the company had also rebooted in from the Gold to the Silver Age of comics, was an important milestone in their legacy.

Unfortunately after this tale, we saw an influx of comic book crossover material that was disheartening. Both Marvel and DC Comics were publishing a horde of events that never stopped shipping annually. Skip a couple more years into the 90s, and the problems of intense crossovers and slap dash attacks on the wallet grew even more infuriating for the average reader. 

These numerous publishing events have been a mainstay for the current iteration of Marvel and DC, but have also been especially prevalent since the 90s onwards where the amount of material being published was virtually impossible to keep up with, unless you were content with declaring bankruptcy. It could and should be argued that nobody was guiltier of this horrendous tactic than Marvel themselves, who started to publish over two events in the span of one year. With a very successful cartoon and the addictive nature of the strong comic book series, the X-Men housed the highest amount of events in this period.  

It’s easy to track where Marvel started going wrong in hindsight, beginning with the publisher starting to launch these event titles back-to-back--Secret Wars and Secret Wars II that launched in 1984 and 1985 respectively. In fact, the only reason why the original Secret Wars was published was to justify the existence of an enormous toy line. I am no expert on the subject, but I feel like subpar toys don’t justify sloppy comic book stories. Especially when this was by far one of the most important stories that Marvel has ever told, if only in the fact that the company was combining such an enormous amount of characters together in one story. Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Avengers, and the X-Men comprise most of the material that Marvel has. Most of these characters were running amok during the story.

Secret Wars focuses on the Beyonder, who mystically summons our heroes from the respective comic book series. Since most comics published by Marvel crossed into this event, this tale ends up hurting those stories. Another extremely important aspect of the comic book “event” is the “tie-in.” This is when the crossovers bleed into the heroes’ main ongoing series. For instance, when the Beyonder summoned Thor into Secret Wars, his titled reflected the status quota, and did not contain an appearance from Thor. Tie-ins were around during the aforementioned late 1980s crisis era, but they have grown more and more prevalent to comic book sales and stories these days.

Thus ends part one of our look back on events from both Marvel and DC in the Bronze Age to the Chromium Age. Next week, we will continue our adventures into the some of the strangest and most bombastic comic book stories ever told--“the comic book crossover event.”