Heroes, Villains, and Me” is a periodic article on Geeky KOOL by Larry Litle about the world of comic books and my reaction to it. “Heroes, Villains, and Me” is not a comic book review article. I will write about current events, speculation and rumors, or my own wacky thoughts about the world of comic books.
Every year Marvel and DC have some big comic universe event. Both comic companies push their events like a drug dealer on the corner. These yearly crossover of their universe characters has become expected and core their companies.
Back in 1984, Marvel Comics premiered their first huge event crossover with the Secret Wars. Never befoe on this level had the fans seen our favorite characters. Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and tons of heroes fought against Galactus, Doctor Doom, and a mess of villains. The did this on a distant planet created by a being called the Beyonder.
The next year, DC Comics responded with their first huge crossover with the Crisis on Infinite Earths. They laid the ground work for this even for a couple of years. The multiverse of the DC Universe was being destroyed. Heroes from various Earths joined together to save one Universe. This crisis ended with numerous worlds being destroyed and the death of two major heroes in Supergirl and the Flash, Barry Allen.
These two crossover events started it all. We look fondly on events because they were well written and a ton of fun. These crossovers did things in comics that we had never seen.
The crossover weren’t always annual events. After the success of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, both companies wanted to build on this success and popularity.
Eventually these events became yearly crossovers. Almost every year, the heroes and sometimes villains from the DC and Marvel Universes join together to stop some sort of crisis or sometimes to fight each other.
The Marvel crossover, Civil War brought me back to comics in 2006. I was away from reading comics for most of a decade because of money. The Civil War got my attention and grabbed my money.
Since I have been back in 2006, I have noticed a few things about the yearly crossovers from both companies.
1) Crossovers rarely have long term consequences. In the beginning, crossovers changed things for characters. Some of them were bigger than others. Barry Allen was dead for 23 years, which is an eternity.
Current crossovers rarely have this effect on characters or places. If we are lucky, a death of a character from a crossover might last for a whole year. Sometimes we can see cities demolished in a crossover but to never have it affect the individual comics.
2) Ideas of the crossovers are cool and exciting but it doesn’t usually meet expectations. I get excited about some of these crossovers. My mind races. How will play out for our heroes? Most of the events start off with a great story but fizzles out in the end.
3) Some writers should not write for events. There are some popular writers who think way out of the box. This can be great to renew like in a struggling comic series. Put this same writer on a crossover for the mass population, it can be some of worst comics in history.
Final Crisis is a perfect example of this. Grant Morrison might have been a genius with Animal Man. When a veteran comic reader like myself has no idea what happened or why it happened in a crossover, they didn’t pick the best writer for an event.
4) Marvel and DC continue to hope they will hit on the next big thing in their yearly crossovers. They want to go back to the feel of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars. Both of these companies continue to come back to related themes to these two series but it just isn’t the same.
The fans desperately want this too. I know I do. It is part of the reason I kept giving them a chance. Over and over hoping for the next event to make me feel like I did in the 80s.
5) I am done with the big crossover events. I gave them up at one time. I wasn’t happy with how these events worked but I got sucked back in.
If I am going to give away money to the big two comic companies, it will be for comics I enjoy reading. Not for half witted yearly crossover events. Let me find the next Ms Marvel or Spidey comics. I will not give my money for another crossover when I am disappointed in the end.
Stay Geeky My Friends!
