Big Cross-over Events vs. Individual Titles

So let’s take a wide lens look at comics of present past, and future. We have DC doing all sorts of crazy, culminating in Flashpoint, which was then followed up by “The New 52.” Essentially, individual titles with minimal cross-over (not including the Green Lanterns on this list) followed by a major event, which ended up in them starting over from scratch.

Now that they've started over, we are all wondering “what will DC’s first BIG event be in the coming months?” That's the key here, we don’t know yet, and even if we are given the slightest of ideas, it's still months away from actually happening. There is too much going on in each title to actually give way to a cross-over event. Not to mention Justice League as an issue in and of itself is acting as a pseudo cross-over title, where all of these characters are coming together to face a common enemy.

Compare that to Marvel, where each year there is always “the Big Event.” House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Fear Itself, and now Avengers vs. X-Men. This is a lot to expect out of the writers at Marvel to actually preserve continuity and write the big event. This is just a small list of big events, not including anything Cosmic or individual character books, that involves a multitude of others.

So this Summer Marvel intorduced Avengers vs. X-Men, and I can tell you it's on the top of my reserves list. What I love about this book is how it utilizes some of Marvel’s top talent in one book, which only crosses over into Avengers titles and X-Men titles. Usually crossovers have about 1000 tie-ins you can buy to get the complete story, but Marvel learned their lesson and is limiting it to one unique crossover. It's also bringing back the idea of hero vs. hero, which we last saw in Civil War, one of the greatest books in the past twenty years if not longer.

So what I was thinking is “which concept is better keeping to the classic one character per book, and writing it like that, or should we have crossover events which show that these characters live in the same universe and on the same earth?

I think that both are essential to a comic’s survival, and that when there are too few major events things feel incomplete, there needs to be that spine to tie it together. Also, throwing out too many just doesn’t work. Stick to the best stories and shelve the others. I’m curious to see what others think