Ok so we've all had opinions and discussions regarding the constant slew of events that Marvel does. Most seem to dislike the big event because it usually breaks up the flow of the writers in their books and normally the events dont live up to all the hype. Plus how many times in the course of a few months can shake-up and change the status-quo? That said, i think we all know that the Marvel event wont be ending anytime soon as they seem to be in love with doing this.

In light of the recent OGN by Mike Carey as well as thinking back to the God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel, it made me wonder if there was a better format for the event stories. Since, as I mentioned, events seem to hijack the storytelling and really hurt the flow of some books/writers.... would the OGN format be better for telling the event story? You buy the book and get the story told as a whole in one swoop instead of it being spread out over 2-3 books with the multiple tie-ins and stretching out over several weeks. As fans most of us can be impatient when it comes to the storytelling and pace of the different arcs. I think more recently alot of this comes from being let down and not getting the pay-off from the long drawn out story arcs and plot lines.

I do realize this would still present challenges. For one I would just love to do away with the events period or if they still existed then do one every 2 years. Also if the event really does change the status quo like say a character death or villain/hero changing allegiances, it would still effect other books going forward. However I guess editorial could just regulate this. As an example I tend to think this is sort of what they did with Wood's Xmen team vs Remender's Uncanny Avengers. Remender planned to kill off Rogue, though she was on Wood's Xmen run. She just disappeared from Xmen and was replaced. That seemed like editorial mandated this. So i guess if something like that happened in the OGN format Im talking about, the editor would tell a writer that they could use character-x up until a certain point and then they have to be replaced or left off. Of course when it comes to the previews you would have to be a little more secretive, but so what. I also think that having one writer do the story separate, would cut down on the character misrepresentation and the sort of "broken" and disjointed feel we get sometimes when different people are trying to tell parts of the same story.

Your thoughts?

So Thor, Wolverine and Captain America can be all included in the same timeline comic books where Rogue isn't allowed to? That makes sense Marvel, you never disappoint.

On-topic, I think it's a great idea, but we all know it will never happen.

@hawk2916: for me, it's more the tie-in issues from other ongoing series that bother me more than the event books themselves. It's basically the difference between Secret Wars (1984) and Secret Wars II (1985).

The first was a great, completely self-contained 12 issue series that had all of the major characters team up for one story; it took place between the issues of every regular series so as not to disturb the flow of any other book, but still had consequences that weren't fully explained until the series itself was over. The sequel, on the other hand, took place during the events of the regular books and had 35 tie-in issues on top of the 9 issue series itself.

If you look at event books like House of M or Civil War, or even Avengers Vs. X-Men, they all read just fine as stories themselves without having to read all of the event tie-in issues, which rarely add much to the main story anyway.

I think your idea of having them just be released as graphic novels to begin with could work, but I think even if they just released them as their own series, independent of what happens in the other books, that could work just as well.

It's actually a pretty good idea, that I'd get behind. The thing is, it takes away from their sales options. Battle of the Atom(don't shoot yet) was pretty much the only reason i picked up WatX-Men that month. And Wood's X-Men, had only just started so anyone who was reading a high seller like ANX-Men might decide to follow Wood's book afterwards. And after they make us chase down the individual books in the event chain, they comeback 4 months later and sell the collected issues.

I like a small crossover here and there, but i don't like these timetable events. We know that every 3rd and 4th quarter storylines get put to the side for an event, but a few weeks ago when we were all talking about how great the X-Books were an how they were individually finding themselves, we get Will of Xavier info......its just pulls me out of it.

@oldnightcrawler: I can most certainly agree with this.

I'm sure that's the theory, and it must be working for them if they keep doing it, but for my part it had the opposite effect; I was reading all of those books before BotA, stopped reading all of them half way through, and only started reading half of them again after it was over. I feel like they must lose some sales that way, and if more people dropped books during crossovers or tie-in issue, they'd be less likely to push them so hard.

well that's just it: crossovers used to be a big deal because they didn't happen all the time, so when they did, it was something to get excited about. Now they've become something that people dread, we just grit our teeth and wait for it to be over rather than dropping books that have them, but every event tie-in or crossover issue we buy into makes the likely hood of another that much more inevitable.

I thought you would :v

@oldnightcrawler: Yea, but even when wanting to avoid crossovers, my curiosity gets the better of me. You'd think saving money would be an incentive but when your entire weeks pullist is crossing over it sort of puts you in a position where you feel you might as well see what the story you want to read is being interrupted for.

Idk, it's really just the last few years that Event started to bug me, i remember the X-Men tie-ins for Dark Reign, Fear Itself and even Secret invasion were some of the better parts of the end of Uncanny under Fraction. So does that mean quality justifies the interuptions?

I know what you mean, it's why I did read the first half of BotA and as many of the AvsX tie-ins I did, it's just that in retrospect I wish I hadn't bothered. And that's not a feeling anyone wants. And I did end up dropping books after both of those.

even if you think of them as the better parts of Fraction's run, were they actually good?

When I think of X-men stories that I really liked, from all of the last 50 years, there's only two or three of them that were crossovers (Mutant Massacre, Fatal Attractions, and Phalanx Covenant), none of which were tied into event books; what does that say?

They should just hold off on events for a good 5 years. Allow the writers some breathing room to take characters and stories places, then, when the massive event or crossover come along, it has a lot more hype behind it.

yeah, or even if there were like one every couple of years. That would still give the regular books more room to become their own thing before/between having to be effected by the events. Like you say, it would be more likely to be something people wold look foreword to.

But even if they were perpetually putting out event books, they could just as easily do so without all of the tie-in issues that disrupt the flow in the first place. Because it's really not the event books themselves that do that, it's that they crossover with the regular books, and the crossovers that disrupt and restrict what the writers can do in the regular books.

The events themselves often call for something "big" to happen. Usually a characters death or an undoing of what was considered status quo up until that point, that is why its nonsensical to happen every year, and its actually a reason why Peter David quit writing the X-books in the mid 90s if I remember right. Even if they do happen in their own separate books they still have an effect on continuity, most of the time, an unneeded effect.

@oldnightcrawler: Hey by no means are they classics. But the X-mens fight with the possessed Juggernaut or the battles against the Dark X-men for San Francisco were pretty cool.

Of course Dark Reign and Fear Itself as wholes will never be scene as great works and pretty mediocre if you include their tie ins, but they were pretty good to the X-men, if only for the fact that they were framed as "here's how this crisis effects the X-men" instead of a huge invasion of characters from every book in the shop

they read easily enough even if you weren't following the events (which I say not having read either of them outside of Uncanny X-men), so I'll give them that. And they didn't disrupt the flow of the book too much. That's the thing with tie-ins that makes them such a gamble, I guess; if a book's regular writer wants to have his cast participate, it can be done to great effect, like the X-factor Decimation issues or the New Mutants Necrosha issues.

My problem's more that if writers are editorially mandated to have their books participate in a crossover, rather than because they genuinely feel it could work for their story, it's bound to result in lots of forced and/or filler issues for what rarely adds much to the event story itself anyway. Which both disrupts what could be otherwise good stories and taints the event story overall.

Definitely true, since I was disappointed by Necrosha when i finally got around to the main story, but the New Mutants facing Cypher and the Hellions was great because the writing team really embraced it.

I see what you mean though, like the Inhumanity crossover was forced and it took whatever steam was left in Uncanny after BotA and brought it to a dead stop. It was hard to work in, didn't affect any characters and was forgotten right after. If anything i'd replace it with the flashback issue instead. A more bi-yearly system for event's would be appreciated, and instead of tie-ins maybe something like the Age of Ultron tie-ins that came out. Like having WatX-Men- 32 and then WatX-Men- 32.AU....then everyone's happy and they get to sell another book.

I barely noticed that that issue #15 was an Inhumanity tie-in in , since it really just felt like a down-time issue, developing the dynamic between the characters; the event of the tie-in just seemed like something for them to be a superhero team about in the third act, it could have been anything. It's like the first 3 issues of Mighty Avengers were Infinity tie-ins and the next two were Inhumanity tie-ins, but I didn't read either of those stories and I still liked those 5 issues.

I do think that, in theory, Age of Ultron was a better option for how to do an event. That said, I can't really say if it worked for them since I didn't read any of it. It was a cool idea to give people the option of tie-ins, I just wasn't intrigued by the event itself.

I would love if events were formatted like this. What happened to Rogue is one of my biggest complaints since getting back into comics. The lack of reaction to her "death" in other books is confusing to me. I am sure things will be set to rights once Remender is done with the story he's telling in Uncanny Avengers but my excitement at having Rogue with the X-Men title only for her to disappear with no mention left a bad taste in my mouth.

I always thought crossovers from other titles were/are attempts by publishing houses to get fans interested in other books, to hopefully get them to add these titles to their pull lists. Someone who read exclusively Spider-Man would pick up Thor's book because of an Event, and maybe enjoy it enough to continue reading it. Just an idea. It being revenue-motivated makes me think there is more to it than just getting fans hyped up and re-invested in the books they already read.

In my opinion if a story is told well a person can become interested in a character and pick up the book featuring said character. I dont see that all the tie-ins are necessary. Just tell the damn story. No gimmicks and No b.s. The way Age of Ulton was done wasnt bad either. For me I still say we dont need an event every year. I would do things this way: I say do one every two years. No need to change the statis quo 2 or 3 times a year. Its stupid. When there actually an event its done either AU style or in OGN format with only one writer telling the story. Any others can be consultants. You could even time it so the OGN comes out whule we are waiting in the next months issues of whatever books. This way there are 3-4 weeks to read it and the next issue can pick and continue on