Crisis of Finality on Invading Dark Reigns: Raging at Events!

Alright boys and girls, another month has passed and another group of events have come and gone.
Another group have come and gone and what have we learned?
 
Apparently nothing.
 
We are at a crossroads as comics fans. As fans of the comics medium, we are now at decision time. And that decision is becoming harder and harder not to make, but the big companies are trying to force us to make it.
 
The decision is: do we continue buying monthly comics, or do we stick strictly to alternative press or indie comics and trades?
 
That decision has been boggling my mind so much recently that it usurped the original idea for this monthly look (which was going to be a look at comic characters to look at during Black History Month). I couldn't continue with the original idea as I am just all kinds of upset now about what has happened.
 
I've raged about Grant Morrison before and I'm sure I will again, but this isn't all directed at him, just a healthy portion of it this time. The rest is directed at Bendis and all the event comics being stuffed down our throats EVERY SINGLE MONTH.
 
When is it no longer an event? Every month or quarter we are given a new event. Whether it's in the pages of Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, Spider-man, the X-men, Hulk, whoever, we get a new event every few months.
 
And every few months it's the same thing. Promises of SWEEPING changes. Promises of new status quos. Promises of things to not look the same as they did the month before.
 
In the last few months, we were treated, on the DC side, to Final Crisis, Batman R.I.P., Superman New Krypton, and who knows what else. The Superman one is left out since it mainly stayed it's own event (with little off-shoots and minis and one-shots), but the first two get discussed here.
 
Neither Final Crisis nor Batman RIP did what they promised. Batman didn't die in either, even after being shown dead in both. How does that work? In RIP, he "died" in 681 of Batman, only to return in the very next issue. In Final Crisis 6, he died, only to return at the beginning of time in Final Crisis 7.
 
What. The. Fuck?
 
I'm left scratching my head at this because we were promised finality. We were promised sweeping changes. All we got was the cancellation of three Bat-books far superior (for the most part) to the standard Batman books and far more enjoyable in RIP and we were given a return of Aquaman and the death of Hawkman.
 
But who cares?
 
There was nothing final about Final Crisis. Hawkman and any other ancillary character who died is GUARANTEED to come back as a zombie Lantern in Blackest Night.
 
And for certain, it will not be the Final Crisis. So long as DC sees green for it, they will keep making them and charging us an arm and a leg to buy them.
 
And now they're gearing up for Blackest Night, Battle for the Cowl, the Titans crossover, another Superman event, and Origins and Omens which will be a part of EVERY DC book. When does it end? When will it stop?
 
When people stop buying them.
 
The same can be said about Marvel. Since Disassembled about 5 years back, we've had a House of M, Civil War, Planet Hulk and World War Hulk, Skrullmageddon (Secret Invasion), Annihilation and War of Kings, not to mention One More Day/Brand New Day and every couple weeks of X-events.
 
When does it end?
 
When people stop buying them.
 
It's frustrating as a comics reader when someone, who claims not to be forcing books you don't wish to read down your throat, explains why the hell Norman Osborn is the leader of the military in the Marvel Universe in one book that isn't part of your monthly reading and explains why Tony Stark is the most wanted man in the country in another.
It doesn't make sense.
 
All it does is spread the reader thin, fatiguing us to the breaking point, and pushing us to the brink where we will stop reading because a) we don't have the patience, b) we don't care anymore, c) we don't have the money, and d) we're just completely pissed off at being used.
 
Let's look at House of M, Civil War, and Secret Invasion. Scarlet Witch and all the mutants lost their powers, bringing back Hawkeye in the mix. Captain America and Anti-registration forces lost, leaving Peter Parker's identity known, Captain America dead, and teams on the run. Secret Invasion did absolutely nothing except shit more on Tony Stark and brought people back from the dead.
 
Two of the biggest things that could have happened in House of M and Secret Invasion were completely throw-away. Yes, some mutants lost their powers, but how many lost their powers and haven't gotten them back yet? Xavier lost his, has them back. Magneto still doesn't but both his kids have theirs back, Iceman and Polaris both got their powers back. I can't think of a single mutant who lost their powers and I was saddened for the loss.
 
And now the woman who signed the death warrant for millions of mutants is an Avenger again? Peter Parker's identity is a secret again? Wasp was the only major character to die during Secret Invasion?
 
I'm done with event comics. I was reading Ultimatum but it completely and utterly sucks so bad that it hurts my teeth and my chest wants to cave in on itself.
 
I enjoyed Sinestro Corps War, but Blackest Night just feels like a cheapened event version of Marvel Zombies that will act only to bring back characters that never should have died in the first place.
 
And that's the issue. Every single one of these "big" events doesn't kill anybody. They bring more people back from the dead than they do actually kill them.
 
Bruce Wayne will be Batman again, but Marvel has done right by Cap fans and kept Steve Rogers dead. He may one day come back, but do we want him too? In the same line, Marvel screwed up big in Secret Invasion. Everyone was left guessing as to who were the Skrulls, but really, who were the Skrulls? Hank Pym, Spider-Woman, Dum-Dum Dugan, and a bunch of nobodies like Thor-Girl. Who cares?
 
Not only that, but EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was still alive and being used by the Skrulls to test on them. Why would a Skrull who was trying to take over the world and was scared of people with super-powers be that dumb?
Seriously? I'm asking why. They would have killed Black Bolt, they would have killed every single one of the people they replaced if they had the balls to do it.
 
But just like every single one of the events, the ensuing madness never meets what we're told it will, it never puts things rightly in their place, and it never finishes what it started.
 
So again, we're left in the unenviable position of looking at event comics and why they are maddening and what do we do instead. What is there we can do?
 
I love comics. I love them so much that the thought of dropping monthly books is painful to me. But when you look at the small-press books, even they are having events.
 
Star Wars had Vector, but it was smart in making it only Star Wars related and it wasn't a necessity to pick up everything.
 
Kirkman is doing a ONE-ISSUE event comic in Invincible, which looks to be a lot of fun. He's also part of Image United, which is supposed to bring all of the current Image founders together for one mini series. We all know it will be late, but it won't affect the regular series and it will only be in the one mini.
 
Why not more of this? If comic companies are so gung ho about making us spend money on event comics, why not more that only involve certain books? Certain characters?
 
Generally, if it's an X-men event, I'll read it. I've read just about all of them dating back to Fall of the Mutants and yeah they don't always have the sweeping changes they promise, but they're fun. Rise and Fall of the Shi'Ar only involved Uncanny X-men, and it's "big" death was Corsair. But it changed things in placing a new team of Starjammers and switching up what happened to everyone. Same with Messiah CompleX and Operation Zero Tolerance and Days of Future Past.
 
Annihilation is the one series, and now War of Kings, which peaks my interest. I will read it in trade/hardcover format because I know that Abnett and Lanning will push the characters to the brink and will make the reader feel in awe of these events, because they are playing in their own little world.
 
But War of Kings is scary in that it is slightly pushing those characters that are off-the-cuff like Rocket Raccoon and Peter Quill and aligning them with some of the X-men and bringing them closer to the forefront. The next big Marvel event could be all about space and could involve the Dark Avengers.
 
I just shuddered thinking about that.
 
But in reality, the best way to do an event comic is not to do them. Just make a comic that people will enjoy. Make a comic that tells a finite story from start to finish and make us happy when we read it and leave us wanting more.
 
Don't force us to plop down extra money to pick up the rest of the story in Justice League Antarctica if we only want to read Action Comics, just let us read what we want and let us decide what we want to do.
Comic fans will be happier for it.
 
Me, I'm not sure anymore. I'm more enjoying books like Madman Atomic Comics, RASL, Unknown Soldier, Scott Pilgrim, Invincible, Werewolf by Night and Punisher MAX, Scalped, Northlanders, Ex Machina, Ghost Rider, things that stick to their own worlds and their own stories.
 
Books that have a defined set of rules and a defined world that they live in. Books that don't live and die based on the sales of an event book.
 
Books that are all about what they promise and keep us guessing. Books that entertain first and tell a great story and do leave us wanting more. But the more we want isn't another vast number of tie-ins.
It's just the next issue.
 
So take a step back the next time you're at the comic shop. Pick up something off the beaten path. Pick up something independent of those events, or hell, if you pick up a monthly comic set in the big universes, don't force yourself to read everything about it.
 
Take a step back and think. Do you really need that issue of Peter Parker Web of Spider-man when Amazing Spider-Man is all you care to read?
 
It's not worth it. Spend those extra 3 and soon to be 4 dollars on something new. Something exciting. Broaden your horizons the right way, and give that money to a comic that needs it, to one that you've never tried before, to one that might tell a story you never thought about but would now like to think about.
 
Give yourself a chance to broaden your scope of comics, and they can become more to you. They can be the best thing in the world.