Are major comic book events getting worse?

[QuinnFillory]

In recent years, there have been a lot of comic book events in DC and Marvel. They are always billed as being "the important thing to happen" and "changing everything you knew about such and such and so and so forever" and so on. However, I have been seeing a lot of complaints about these events and how they either have little to no impact or they end up ruining certain characters by writing them to be the opposite of how they are supposed to act. In my opinion, a lot of the time these events are just a lot of noise without any substance. This may be due to so many of them coming out all the time. Now, one or two events per company per year can be fine, just not the glut we have been getting. It is too much.

[Carabas]

In recent years, there have been a lot of comic book events in DC and Marvel. They are always billed as being "the important thing to happen" and "changing everything you knew about such and such and so and so forever" and so on. However, I have been seeing a lot of complaints about these events and how they either have little to no impact or they end up ruining certain characters by writing them to be the opposite of how they are supposed to act. In my opinion, a lot of the time these events are just a lot of noise without any substance. This may be due to so many of them coming out all the time. Now, one or two events per company per year can be fine, just not the glut we have been getting. It is too much.

I think most of them always have been terrible noise without much in the way of substance.

It's just that we expect more substance in our books nowadays than back when these things were still new and shiny, and it's really hard to add substance to an editorially driven superhero pile-up.

[comicscollector]

Seem to me that as usual there are great comic book events and terrible ones,one of the first comic book event i read was Secret Wars 2 so not even way back all of them were great.
But to me the last Marvel comic book events that i have read go from all right to great,so i would not say that currently the comic book events are worst that they were in the 80´s or 90´s.

[Alan2099]

Having a major status quo changing event only works if you've taken the time to build up the status quo.

[Kirby101]

I stopped reading the big two when constant events with "important mandated deaths". Ruined every independent stotyline I was reading. That and multiple books for each character in each event making it economically infeasible to follow.
"When did that happen?" Oh, that was in Super Special Guy Goes to Planet Z mini series that wasn't in the main Event book. Didn't we mention withou tha book you couldn't follow the Event.

[PaulBullion]

Seem to me that as usual there are great comic book events and terrible ones,one of the first comic book event i read was Secret Wars 2 so not even way back all of them were great.
But to me the last Marvel comic book events that i have read go from all right to great,so i would not say that currently the comic book events are worst that they were in the 80´s or 90´s.

I got the first "Operation: Galactic Storm" trade a few years back, and man, what a stinker. Never bothered with the second one. A lot of the recent events were better.

[kjn]

I think Alan2099 is on to something here, in that a baseline-changing event just hangs in the air if there is no baseline. Now, that baseline can be rather vague and often is far too convoluted, but there is a baseline of reader expectations to push against. I think Carabas's thesis that we as readers having become more discerning and demanding also can be part of this, but I'm not so sure it's the only reason. I'm especially thinking about that the way that comics are told has changed, like the amount of included backstory or the balance between textual and visual narratives. But I'm not well-read enough in comics history to say anything more concrete.

But I do think that comics right now suffers very much from the "second artist effect". (As defined by Charles Stross: "The first artist sees a landscape and paints what they see; the second artist sees the first artist's work and paints that, instead of a real landscape.") It explains a lot of the issues I have with comic book art; arguably it was at its worst in the 90s, but it's still very prevalent today, with bodies moving in impossible ways, strange anatomies, all women having the same face, and so on. But I think it has impacted writing as well.

Back in the 90s, events were new, and were done for a reason. It could be an attempt to untangle a too complex continuity (Crisis on Infinite Earths) or a marketing stunt (Secret Wars) with lots of rule of cool. But they were done for a reason, and planned out between writers and editors. But as events became more common, they became less planned out. What's worse, a cadre of comic book readers became taught that events was one of the ways that comic book stories should be told, and they became today's writers and editors. As such, it's possible they include events because they feel they should, not because they have a good idea for an event. Another aspect is that events have become more like actual events, as in a single story, rather than a canvas for individual but interconnected stories.

I also imagine comics like Miller's Dark Knight or Alan Moore's Watchmen had a huge impact on today's creators. In and of themselves, they were critiques of both the superhero genre and a description of the development with Thatcherism and Reaganomics. But an immature reader is likely to miss these aspects, and be overly impressed with the tone and the strong storytelling. By trying to recreate the same thing but without an appreciation of the context in which the works were created, they get only the grimdark aspects but not the depth or nuances of the original works.

[DebkoX]

I find it hard to get invested in some of them as they all premise around 'major' deaths which are temporary or fake or solved with a sudden ability to come back to life.

[ed2962]

I got burned out on events years ago.

[dancj]

Millenium
War of the Gods
Zero Hour
Eclipso

Nah, they're not getting any worse.

[Mister Mets]

I got the first "Operation: Galactic Storm" trade a few years back, and man, what a stinker. Never bothered with the second one. A lot of the recent events were better.

And that's one of the well-regarded 1990s events.

[MyriVerse]

Of the recent (post-Avengers Disassembled) events, I liked Annihilation and World War Hulk. Not the subsequent Annihilation, just the first one. They do seem to be getting progressively worse, imo, and they weren't any good to start.

I think Operation: Zero Tolerance was the last X-event I liked, Galactic Storm the last non-X event.

[comicscollector]

I got the first "Operation: Galactic Storm" trade a few years back, and man, what a stinker. Never bothered with the second one. A lot of the recent events were better.

Never read the second Operation Galatic Storm as well.I did enjoyed a lot many of recent events as Civil War,Spider Island,Secret Invasion,Avengers vs X-men and the main series of Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman and the Battleworld limited series of that comic book event.
It looks like some of the criticism towards comic book events come from a nostalgic opinion that in the past the comic book events were better but to me that´s not something i can agree with.Especially having read older comic book events as Secret Wars 2 or The Evolutionary War.

And that's one of the well-regarded 1990s events.

Agreed.
I did not thought "Operation:Galactic Storm" was as good as the original Secret Wars comic book event.
But was still way better that Secret Wars 2.
That comic book event was a continuation of one of the classic Avengers story,the Kree -Skrull War.And all though some art that was a bit sub-par in some stories of that event it was still a entertaining read,at least from what i remember reading it years ago.