Events are largely superfluous. They're mostly just stunts and tactics to artificially and temporarily boost sales by playing off of OCD collector tendencies. And this is speaking as someone with mild OCD! There's a reason why 'red sky crossover' is understood terminology, and even that came from one of the first such 'events'...showing that even at the start, people weren't exactly sold on them. And that hasn't really changed; I can count on one hand the number of these events and crossovers that have actually been any good at all.
If the writing isn't good enough to carry sales outside of events, then events -- which tend to have the most inane writing of all -- aren't going to be much of a help in the first place. It's a false assumption that events are the big sellers, at least in terms of hooking repeat customers. So often, too, they get rid of characters in events, which always drives away a portion of their potential market. One thing I always say is that every character is someone's favourite. Once you've tossed them out, even temporarily, you've lost those readers. And it's very much a case of once bitten, twice shy; people are typically not as willing to make the same mistake twice in trusting their beloved characters to a writer or even a company that did them wrong.
All the mega-crossovers also tend to change characters for the sake of a story, rather than change a story to suit the characters, which is a huge pet peeve of mine and it's just bad writing besides. So many of them, too, try to put all the characters on the same level, which just isn't believable. To quote an acquaintance of mine from some years back, 'sorry Fantastic Four, I was handling a bank robbery and thought you could handle Annihilus!'
We just don't need these events. The only time in history I thought events were interesting was back when they would do events across the annuals. At least with those, you could grab the annuals if the story interested you and wouldn't have to endure crossover issue after crossover issue hosing all the rest of the story and characters. It was usually mentioned in the monthly series, but it wasn't harped on. Life went on, and we didn't have to have everything veer off-course for months like we tend to now.
What needs to happen is that writing needs to be improved across the board so that people enjoy reading comics again. When we have reached the point of lurid trash like Avengers Arena being promoted as something they hope will be a big seller, that's kind of indicative of a serious problem. Additionally, Marvel and DC both tend to promote art trends in entirely the wrong directions, as they're not what people want to see. And why is someone like Greg Land still working? Because it's all about 'names' and 'events' now, two things that have demolished what little fun was left in comics.
Log in to comment