I really would like at least a 5-year moratorium on events from Marvel.  I have no problem with events in one book having consequences throughout the rest of the universe so that it feels like a shared world.  But heroes all feel like they don't have a corner in their lives to call their own anymore.  And events have lost all meaning.  Used to be something to look forward to, seeing something company-wide meant it was huge and momentous.  Now, it just means it's November.  Or March.  Or July.
 
I'm not sure Marvel knows how to do anything non-event anymore.  Was kind of hoping with Alonso coming on as EIC, we'd see that mentality retired.  No such luck.  (And, no, Marvel is not alone in this.  DC has been doing events for the last few years too.  It's just that their events are dragged out even longer rather than Marvel's concept of shorter, stacked events.  I'll let you debate the merits of either approach.)

I am so sick of all these damn events. Actually the comic titles I've stuck with the most consistently over the years are those that are self-contained. It is easy to get sucked into the events, so I understand why Marvel uses them to boost sales, but it is also just as easy to get burned out on keeping up with what is happening.

WE CAN'T KEEP UP. This sucks because we can only either choose one to stay on top of... or only get a few from each. I would just pick the one that has kept up good reviews or is the one starring the heroes you like most.

I like good stories, good art and consistency in the creative team. Big events don't provide any of those three factors. I now avoid most of them until they are published in a graphic novel at least, and only after reading whether anything really happened.

I'm sorry but the people on here buying all the books, then complaining about all the events marvel is pushing are hypocrites pure and simple. You are feeding what you consider a problem then complaining about that problem which makes you come off as schizophrenic since you hate the events yet you buy them up. Marvel is essentially looking at this and going..."okay people are complaining about the events yet they are buying them since are sales are still up. We could stop the big events but are sales would most likely drop so we will keep pushing big events since even though people are complaining about it they will buy the books."

If you all really wanted to get marvel to stop doing so many big events just boycott buying their comics that feature all of these events in them. When sales start dropping marvel will look to its marketing department and fans response and change tactics and not push a ton of events. In the meantime I wouldn't be getting angry about this or DC's reboot since there other comics out their besides the ones marvel and dc publish. Since I personally can't stand big events and don't like starting over from scratch throwing everything away I've been checking out other titles instead. I finally got around to picking up all the issues of the Boys and have got to say I really have enjoyed it so far. Hell I even started reading Vampirella a comic I never thought I would touch since I saw the movie (it was beyond horrible) and thought the comic would be terrible. Instead I've found it so far to be not bad from what I've read of the first 8 issues of the relaunch.

Anyway that's just my two cents for whatever its worth.

I love the "Big Events" style of storytelling.  why shouldnt marvel heroes all interact with one another.  I havent enjoyed comics this much since I was a naive child in the 90's and still thought I might develop super powers when I hit puberty!

Awesome article Babs... 
 
Actually to add on to your piece here... 
 
Marvel publishes too many books in general...and I know I am probably in the minority to think this...it just seems like Marvel publishes with the attitude of..."lets throw a  whole bunch of garbage out there...if it's got Wolverine or Deadpool or Spider-man in it people will buy it even if the story/art sucks".   
 
It seems like storytelling at Marvel is dead, and has been for a while.  I remember reading an old piece by Robert E Howard (the guy who created Conan for those who don't know) where he stated that when he wrote, it was like the character was telling him the story in his head (hopefully not a sign of pyschosis) and that he was just the means for the character to get his story out.  I was at a Wonder Con panel with a bunch of DC writers two years ago (side note...I had the opportunity to meet Babs that day - she is one of the nicest/coolest comic book people you can ever meet)...but I digress...the DC panel pointed out that when you are writing about iconic characters (like most comic book heroes are) that you should not be trying to tell YOUR story about the character...you should be telling the character's story. Marvel tells THEIR story, not the character's story.   
 
Am I the only person who was let down by the anti-climactic conclusions to Civil War or Secret Invasion?  
Am I the only one so disappointed by "Ultimatum" that I gave up the "Ultimate Comics Universe" for good because of it? (I used to love Ultimate - I appreciated it's "realism" - I even understood WHY Ultimatum happened - it just was done horribly)...Am I the only person who thought "Dark Reign" went WAAAY to long? (and it's conclusion was both overdramatic, and unsatisfying as well)...Am I wrong that the first "New Avengers" arc (which had such potential - especially with the introduction of the "Next Avengers" movie kids) had such potential but was also a let down? (I HATE covers that show something that doesn't actually happen in the book - as in the "fight" between Hulk and Thor)...It's made it hard to get excited about Marvel books in general, and a lot of Marvel "events" because I don't want to be disappointed again...(Though I'll admit "Fear Itself" has not disappointed - yet).
 
To me Marvel gave up continuity, story telling, and any actual respect for their characters a LONG time ago.  They publish stories to make money (which is not necessarily a bad thing because I do love a lot of Marvel characters and want them to stay in business) but to tell their characters' stories. This is part of why Marvel's characters act so inconsistently and out of character.  
 
It's why Marvel publishes so much stuff that is over the top dramatic (Marvel is the "Desperate Houswives" of comics). It seems like two and three times a year we get told "This event will shape the Marvel Universe (or this part of the Marvel Universe) for YEARS to come"...or at least for the next three months until the next "Event to shape the Marvel Universe for YEARS to come" gets hyped. 
 
I touched on it a moment ago...but Marvel really has become a cheap soap opera.  Almost all if it's characters have become so inconsistent - sometimes almost totally perverted - from their original concepts and ideals.  I was truly hoping that with the "Heroic Age" Marvel's characters (while still being realistic) would become HEROIC again - that instead of constant hype we would get good storytelling and great/inspiring stories...alas, that has not happened...and it seems that we will not have a "re-birth" of the "Marvel Age of Comics". 
 
And that is the real tragedy of so many events...the loss of our heroes.

This is classic marketing-obsessed editorial thinking, if something works once then it must be repeated over and over again till it's reached sickening levels of redundancy. For example, this whole Schism malarkey with the X-men was introduced by Marvel with the preface that this division between teams would lead up to yet ANOTHER event that would allegedly REALLY change the face of the mutant race for all time....once again. Notice none of these things REALLY change much at all? We got 6 mutants kids after Second Coming, that's it.
 
The reason why House of M did so well was because it had the excitement of all the heroes coming together but also a really hefty and well thought-out structural and emotional foundation that ultimately helped it to really set sail...or "sale" rather.
 
Doesn't mean there needs to be an Alien Invasion and another mutant massacre and another mutant messiah and another damn collection of superheroes or this "Fear Itself" nonsense.

 
I mean Marvel has its sales to keep up.  
Perhaps it is time to write some of the less popular characters up to their full potential and introduce them to a whole new audiance that would get to like them. This would probably not sell that great but the stories would be quality.

I'm sorry but the people on here buying all the books, then complaining about all the events marvel is pushing are hypocrites pure and simple. You are feeding what you consider a problem then complaining about that problem which makes you come off as schizophrenic since you hate the events yet you buy them up. Marvel is essentially looking at this and going..."okay people are complaining about the events yet they are buying them since are sales are still up. We could stop the big events but are sales would most likely drop so we will keep pushing big events since even though people are complaining about it they will buy the books."

If you all really wanted to get marvel to stop doing so many big events just boycott buying their comics that feature all of these events in them. When sales start dropping marvel will look to its marketing department and fans response and change tactics and not push a ton of events. In the meantime I wouldn't be getting angry about this or DC's reboot since there other comics out their besides the ones marvel and dc publish. Since I personally can't stand big events and don't like starting over from scratch throwing everything away I've been checking out other titles instead. I finally got around to picking up all the issues of the Boys and have got to say I really have enjoyed it so far. Hell I even started reading Vampirella a comic I never thought I would touch since I saw the movie (it was beyond horrible) and thought the comic would be terrible. Instead I've found it so far to be not bad from what I've read of the first 8 issues of the relaunch.

Anyway that's just my two cents for whatever its worth.

personally thats y i stopped reading them

This is the main reason I gave up on Marvel and DC a long time ago because everything started to revolve around these massive events. Everything got tied into something and in order to understand the story somehow you'd had to get different comics that explained what the hell happened and will happen afterwards. I still pick up a Marvel and a DC comic. Sporadically. If I like the cover and a I have an extra buck to spend. Sporadically. So for me it's Bye buy Marvel and Bye buy DC. Don't ever crap in my cereal and tell me it's chocolate. 

Marvel has become virtually the equivalent of SPAM! I mean events are cool but damn Fear Itself. ROTFLMAO F-CKING GARBAGE! I mean the crossovers alone are just way to many and very mundane. I mean with Blackest Night as least most of the crossovers were important and held the interest of the reader, yes I can say that cause I have yet to hear a single person say Blackest Night was awful. Also marvel need to trim down its comic book roster. I mean how many freaking Avenger comics are there going to be. And Wolverine........ugh makes me puke just thinking about it.

I would love to read more marvel. but there seems to be no jumping on points, I know they did the .1 stuff but comics like Venom and Spiderman had more then one .1, I think if they lessened up on the events and made them mean more then more none marvel readers could jump on. I mean we basically know they are killing someone new every quarter at the end of an event. just seems they are more concerned with money than story telling.

The thing I hate about event books, is that I tend to want to follow the whole story, buying as many of the tie-ins as possible, therefore, as they increase the number of events, and the number of books that tie in to them, I simply don't have time to read them all, so if my comic book pile at home starts piling up, I end up stop following the comics that have multiple issues I haven't read.  The way I see it, I'm not going to continue to buy what I don't read.  
 
Because of this, I dropped all Avengers titles around Fear Itself, and haven't come back, because I can't keep up.  And I hate this feeling that I'm missing something that's going on in the Marvel Universe, because I love those characters, but when I have an ever increasing pile of comics that I can't keep up with then something has to go.

@nick7913 said:

@cody1984 ... and everybody else who keeps arguing that people who don't like the events should stop buying them to show Marvel that they don't like the direction they've taken: People have stopped buying them. This has already happened. Then when their favourite titles kept getting bogged down in event after event they dropped those, making for even lower sales and cancellations for many otherwise outstanding books. I've been faithfully keeping up with New Mutants but have been having storylines interrupted all the time and will probably drop it too. I used to buy 10-15 Marvel titles every month. I believe I'm now down to 5 or so. Readers are jumping ship and Marvel hasn't gotten the message. Events might outsell regular titles but have been declining in sales since Civil War and the only reason they do sell is because you honestly can't follow any story without having the status quo "changed" and then you have to buy tie-ins just to keep up. If Marvel would commit to a better policy they would have me back in a flash. Regrowing the non-fanatical readership will be harder and slower than losing it but it's worth it. It's probably time for Marvel to stop digging itself into a hole and start trying to climb out of it. If they still can.

I'm sorry but I got to disagree with you about people not buying the titles featuring big events. The sales numbers maybe lower right now then they were for civil war I don't follow comic book sales numbers so I can't verify if your right or wrong about that. Yet my point is I've read posts on here by people who are buying the main event books and the tie ins and still complaining about the "big events" so my critism of them is valid. If you dropped the titles completely or wait until the tie ins are finished then return to the series than obviously my response doesn't apply to you or anyone who does the same. Now you are write that this does kill a lot of peoples favorite titles for you it is new mutants for me it was the Punisher's 616 series after Ennis left...luckily The Punisher's MAX title was (and still is) around so this wasn't a problem for me and other Punisher fans if the main series gets dropped. For others though it definetly is a major problem and I do get why people are frustrated. As far as the reason behind the events being changing the status quo I really do view that as nonsense since the status quo after the events is still maintained. Only an event like Ultimatum really changed the status quo since it killed off a ton of characters altering the ultimate universe completely. Also I got to ask do we really want the status quo changed for certain characters? Marvel tried this with the Punisher twice and it was ...how should I say...not received well by fans. Anyway, if sales keep on dropping for big events marvel will have to eventually stop doing so many of them or go out of business.

too many yes, most even i can't keep up

FIFTEEN Marvel Events in 2010...? Yikes...! I can only remember a few or them... Siege, Shadowland, Chaos War... was Age of X 2010..? Second Coming was, right..? I think that's all I've got. Does Widowmaker count..? I read Siege, Second Coming, Shadowland, and Widowmaker. The best of them was definitely Second Coming, but Siege was entertaining more or less. Widowmaker was a pretty good story, but Shadowland was pretty much crap. It just didn't fit. It made too big a leap from Matt's slow decent into madness to all of a sudden he's leading the Hand (which was fine), killing Bullseye (still bought that – the guy killed two of the loves of his life), but sitting on a throne and lording over Hell's Kitchen in a big dojo.. just didn't feel like it made sense. I much more believe Matt trying to simply look on the bright side of life in Waid's new book than the whole dojo thing. It didn't fit for Matt.

At any rate, I generally avoid all the tie-in books and stick with my self-contained character-driven books. I do pick up the main event series usually to check it out, and have been pretty satisfied with the big ones (Civil War, Siege, Fear Itself), but was very underwhelmed with Secret Invasion, especially the tie-ins they were awful stories. The exception through all of these for me was the Dan Slott/Christos Gage books Avengers Initiative to Mighty Avengers to Avengers Academy. They addressed the big events, but were always primarily about character development. They found the balance and I believe, lifted the quality of the over-arching event to greater heights. And the most interesting thing about that is that they mostly comprised brand new characters, or more B-tier, but were always the best Avengers books. I liked the characters so much from Slott & Gage's books that I've been picking up both FI: Frontline and FI: Youth in Revolt since the stories featured. If you don't read Avengers Academy, I highly recommend it. When New Avengers started again in the Heroic Age, I skipped that one, then with the Fear Itself tie-ins I put down Avengers proper, but kept buying Secret Avengers and Avengers Academy. I can't quite tell you what Secret has been up to during the event, but I could tell you in great passionate detail all about what the kids went through going to war in Avengers Academy. If you still don't believe me, Slott and Gage made me care about Speedball and Tigra..! Two characters I couldn't give a rip about before reading them in these books.

As to the larger question, yes, I am tired of the constant events. But I also ignore the ones I'm not interested in, and pick up the ones I am. I don't pick up ancillary books that aren't a part of the primary storylines (like Bab's mention of the Uncanny X-Force Fear Itself mini), just continue reading the main book, or reading the ones only if they get involved. Some writers do it right – Gage, Fraction – or avoid it all together, and that's great too. I think that's what has been nice about Fear Itself is it doesn't feel mandatory to read the extra stuff, and I certainly don't pick up anything I don't want to.

I definitely agree that there are way too many events in the Marvel Universe. I really miss the character driven stories that Marvel used to give out because if a major event did happen, then at least we would know how the character reacts to the situation. Probably the biggest problem I had with Marvel doing so many events was when there were too many events for the X-Men and there wasn't enough time to develop the characters. For example, during Schism, Wolverine sort of acted out of character about not letting Idie fight the Hellfire Club Kids and then suddenly, he is starting a new school and is the headmaster. This was a bit too odd for me because the past X-Men books never mentioned about Wolverine ever wanting to be a headmaster of a school and this just seems like a way for Marvel to just make a series about Wolverine entitled "Wolverine and the X-Men" because Wolverine is such a popular character, but I don't think it was necessary for Marvel to give Wolverine his own book. I think Marvel should have hook up Wolverine's adventures at the new school in Uncanny X-Men.

I like events as long as there is only one event per year and the event has to actually change the characters' lives and how they look at life after that event instead of just putting out some random event every year and not think of it ever again.

Every story that is good is a worth sale for me

Dark Reign ended too soon. That's my answer

I actually don't mind the events or crossovers when they first started in the late eighties, but now the events are largely unreadable due to being across 60+ books by 30+ writers and artists. It just breaks the rhythm and flow of the story and makes it unreadable. Let's get to a practical business model please publishers, because you have completionists out there who want the full effect of the event or crossover don't make it more expensive than a Acura NSX payment. Please?

I am from the future, and I can defiantly say yes, it only gets worse before it gets better (assuming it will get better).

Event books.. You mean cross over events? Not really, it's usually 1 a year but sometimes 2. Here's a list of ALL Marvel crossover events since 1980-

Oh yes, TOOOOO many.

@moonlighterstone:

LMFAO!!

TOO MANY damn books.

Yes

It's total saturation with way too many events and crossovers. Would prefer good quality self-contained books instead.

"Fear Itself" and "AvX" were the last two events I bought. I'm over the whole heroes fighting heroes in yet another soap operatic non-event. As boring as watching paint dry and just too fatigued and budget conscious to keep up with it all. The quality of writing is also sub-standard.

TOO many and most of them are crap lol

Seriously yes. Too much too much too much and only a few of them are fabulous to read.

Ugh marvel just keeps releasing events like spam.seriously stop!

Ridiculously too many.

Too many is good lol...

@enzeru--defunct: Agreed, Fear Itself sucked. The truth is, Marvel isnt just doing too many events, they're pushing too many titles on us per year as well.

I don't think they shouldn't stop, but definitely slow down. The constant events that shake up the status quo make it hard to establish said status quo. therefore the events seem to halt books plots and even halt characters from developing too far so that the characters are constant with the event. I do believe that marvel should treat these as more special, such as tri annually or even quint annually.