There are a handful of Event Comics out there.
The Flashpoints and the Fear Itselfs.
Then there are the Schisms and the Battle for the cowls.
The Return of Bruce Waynes and the Messiah Wars.
Then there are the Second Comings and Chaos Wars.
There are also the Three's and the Death of Spider-Mans.
The Final Crisis and the Ultimatums.
So to write this up into categories.
Some events are line wide and represent a through line, a marker post.
These are books like Flashpoint, Fear Itself, Final Crisis, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, Infinite Crisis, House of M, Civil War.
Some events are family wide.
These are the events like X-Men Crossovers, Shadowland, Ultimatum, Batman Inc./Batman Reborn, War of the Green Lanterns, Sinestro Corps
There are also crossover events. Things like Utopia, Widowmaker.
And some are simply events in their own right out of their solo books.
These are Fantastic Four Three, One More Day, The Death of Captain America, Return of The King.
Some books are events in their own right. Some books are merely stepping stones to the next thing. That isn't to say they can't be both. And often they want to be one and end up being another.
Let's start with when books are events in their own right. Civil War. While Marvel had been teasing this event for months and months leading up. the only time we really saw books that lead into it were right before civil war. And even they just layed the ground work for really show casing the event. Spider-man showed off Tony Stark going to congress. But if you look at Civil War it was just this precursor that set up Tony and Peter's relationship and Tony's connection to congress. And as we approached the end, we speculated the ending but never it was never hyped. And when it came we had a new landscape for comics. But Civil War still mattered. We were still talking about the contents of Civil War as this new era came on.
Then jump forward to Marvel's next big event. An event they spent years setting up. Secret Invasion. for months and months before hand we were watching as the conspiracy and the distrust built. It played on the setup and fallout of Civil War. But after the event started we were suddenly told about this mysterious end point. Kept Hush Hush and called only Dark Reign, we were told that the entire event was pitched on the ending. And once the Dark Reign happened, we didn't care about Secret Invasion. We didn't talk about secret invasion or the big moments. Except to complain about how illogical the ending was. Sure the Dark Reign was a really interesting idea, but the logistics about how it happened didn't work and everyone knew it. It suddenly didn't matter about the events of that transpired before. It was merely a transition event.
Now looking forward we see three major events. Flashpoint. Schism. Fear Itself. In all honesty, I have heard nothing about the end game of Fear Itself, much less the post Fear Itself landscape. and while we haven't heard about the post Schism landscape we know that "things will never be the same." Which means that the entire event might become a one line in a recap, not unlike secret invasion. And then we have Flashpoint. This is likely the most talked about event since Civil War. If you follow comics news then the only thing you've heard in the last few days is about September. DC is relaunching the whole line at number one. We don't know the exact details but the common rumor is that the main continuity and the Flashpoint continuity will merge and create a new younger continuity. But the problem is, we've stopped talking about Flashpoint. We've stopped caring. We know that most of it doesn't matter. We only care about September. Not Flashpoint. Geoff Johns(writer of Flashpoint) has said the first rule of Flashpoint is don't talk about what comes after Flashpoint. And yet here we are, talking about it. DC dropped the ball. They needed to transition us into this, not force us to accept this change. WE needed to be eased into it, or better, kept in the dark until September. I know I was bashing the way marvel transitioned into Dark Reign story-wise, but preview wise they handled it skillfully. They put out solicits with titles, numbers, and creators, but ever solicit and cover said Classified or "Not final title." It was an expert way to hide the truth. And in the end it got us to a good point where we could see some unique stories. Flashpoint was not good at this. They let the reboot cat out of the bag, and whether or not you agree with the change, all it did was stir the pan, not flip the flapjack.
When done right, an event book is a book everyone wants to read because it's well written. This is the civil war's and the Blackest Nights. The bad ones are the events that make us consider them non events designed only to get us to point B, I.E. Battle for the Cowl and X-Men's Utopia. And so we have to stand back and watch as Schism, Fear Itself, and Flashpoint stir until we reach the end of the summer and find out what really happens.
(End of Part one)
Look for Part two this fall upon the completion of Flashpoint and Schism and part three upon the completion of Fear Itself.
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