What put you off the Big Two?

[DrNewGod]

Every now and then, I'll buy a current DC or Marvel comic. But not often, and I haven't been a consistent buyer since the 1990s. Astro City was the last title I was following regularly, right up until it's demise last year.

I have both DC Universe and Marvel Unlimited apps, but I mainly use them for the back issues. I've been reading a select collection from each company from 1961 forward, month by month (I read all the titles I'm following on each app from the month of January in a given year, then cycle through February and so forth). I just entered the 1990s, which I suppose is why I'm thinking about this topic.

Even in spite of some of their more problematic shortcomings, I prefer the older stuff. For those of you that dropped The Big Two somewhere along the way, and especially those of you that still read other comics, what was it that made you give them up?

[Kirby101]

Easy answer for me. The endless Big Events that cut into every story in every book, with the obligatory "important death".

There is also a longer answer about the heroes from the silver and bronze age that I grew up reading and made me a collector no longer sinked with the ones in modern books.

FF Annual 1999 was a big moment for me.

[Otto Gruenwald]

Just nothing really interesting to read. It feels like all the criticisms Morrison made in Multiversity and Darkstars ring true. Under the Eisner formula, superhero comics are action+mystery+adventure. Big 2 comics have a lot of action (usually in the form of death and destruction) but rarely any mystery or adventure. The heroes fight against giant cosmic gods and the best they can hope for is survival, nothing more.

Think of it this way. DC has an entire multiverse to explore. So do what do they do with it? Have Perpetua murder a chunk of it. And then write a Dark Multiverse miniseries and DCCeased, and Injustice season 101, and Heroes in Crisis, and now the Batman who ROFLs is turning people into juggalos--because apparently the imagination of writers begins and ends with "horrible things happen to superheroes."

Multiversity was heartbreaking because so little has been done with it besides cameos.

[DrNewGod]

Easy answer for me. The endless Big Events that cut into every story in every book, with the obligatory "important death".

There is also a longer answer about the heroes from the silver and bronze age that I grew up reading and made me a collector no longer sinked with the ones in modern books.

FF Annual 1999 was a big moment for me.

Both of the Big Two making everything about The Next Event were my issue. You could see it surfacing as early as 1987. CoIEs was like the first hit of crack, but Legends at DC and Secret Wars at Marvel are where the addiction really took hold.

I suppose this is one of the reasons I found Astro City so refreshing. It was free of all that, and looked both back and forward on the comics I had loved, if thru other characters.

[chongjasmine]

I quite like reading comics from the big 2, actually.
But I dislike the endless events that occur in them.

[Zauriel]

A 80-year old continuity that was mismanaged, rebooted, revamped and retconned several times.

Today's characters are not the ones I grew up reading and loved years ago. Unworthy Thor? Hydra Cap? Comatose Iron Man? Hank Ultron Pym? Millionaire Peter Parker? Iceman out of the closet? A Schizophrenic Scarlet Witch? No-kill Hawkeye becoming the Punisher?

[babyblob]

All of those "Everything is going to change" events. And Dc rebooting their universe every few years it seems. I still read the big two but man is it hard at times.