"Siege"? I'm feeling 'event burnout' dude. Wait? Spider-Man! Wait! A new way to do events?

So this "Siege" thing looks cool! Spider-Man is involved, I guess. Now I can care...

I'm terrible. Time to be a bit more academic about this, Jon.

Joe Quesada has written about "Siege" and Marvel's 2010 crossover 'events' at his Cup O'Joe blog. Apparently, they are attempting a new model this year:

"Joe Quesada: It will be a different feel from what has been going on these last few years, let's just leave it at that."

Since 2oo8's "Secret Invasion" was the end-point of Brian Michael Bendis' crazy-huge Marvel Universe-wide meta-story 'event' series that he had been building since 2oo4's "Avengers: Dissasembled" they are going to follow it with several smaller scale "family" events. Whether this is set in stone, I couldn't tell ya, but:

"Siege"
Considered the Avengers event for 2010, (which essentially makes it the next Earth-wide Marvel U event) will tell the story of Norman Osborn's attempt at taking out the last item on "The List": the removal of Asgard from its spot floating above American soil. Yeah, good luck with that Normie...

"DoomWar"
The Fantastic Four event, will tell the story of an attempt on the parts of the FF, the Black Panther, and the X-Men to finally depose Dr. Doom from his perch as ruler of the small Eastern European country of Latveria.

"Fall of the Hulks" and/or "World War Hulks"
The Hulk event, will be... all those damn Hulk clones and sons and whatever wailing on each other for a long time... or something.

"Second Coming"
The X-Men event. There's always an X-Men event. Ever since, like, 1986 there's almost always an annual X-Men event. This one will tell of the return from the future of the young girl named Hope, so named because she was the first mutant born since the "House of M" event storyline in the present.

I think this new model is pretty exciting because, if nothing else, we're finally going to get a change from the status quo.

Superhero comic-book publishing history lesson: Big publishing companies produce big-scale stories they call 'events' that affect wide swaths of their characters simultaneously. And they've been doing this since the Eighties.

But before 2oo3 things were way more organic, although things started out strictly annual...

First, DC published many stories that specifically dealt with their Golden Age 1930s characters in the Justice SOCIETY of America interacting with their Silver Age 1960s characters in the Justice LEAGUE of America. The first was told in two parts: "Crisis on Earth-One!" and "Crisis on Earth-Two!" in Justice League of America v1 #21-22. This went on annually from 1963 till 1971 then a bit less regularly from 1973 until 1984.

In 1985 DC shook things up in a big way with "Crisis on Infinite Earths", the third story to be referred to as an 'event'. The sequel "Zero Hour: Crisis in Time", which came out in 1994, put a lot of the chaos of the original "Crisis" back in its place. Then there was "The Final Night"in 1996, "Day of Judgment" in 1999 and "Our Worlds at War" in 2oo1.
(All Universe-wide stories.)

So what exactly is an 'event' story-line, you may be wondering? What makes the difference between a normal everyday story and a crossover 'event'? WELL... that's hard to answer. Wikipedia.org is as helpful as ever. The page for "Crisis on Infinite Earths" defines a "summer crossover" as a:

"series designed to tie many of their [any given publisher's] comic book titles together under a single storyline (and thus sell more comic books)"

In 1982, Marvel picked up on the idea of a story with all the major characters interacting and produced the first 'event' limited series: "Marvel Super-Hero Contest of Champions" in 1982. Then a toy line tie-in prompted the creation of "Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars" in 1984, followed by "Secret Wars II" in 1986, "The Evolutionary War" in 1988, "Acts of Vengeance" and "Atlantis Attacks" in 1989, "Infinity Gauntlet" in 1991, followed by "Infinity War" in 1992, and "Infinity Crusade" in 1993, "Onslaught" in 1996, the sequel to which was "Heroes Reborn" in 1997, "Maximum Security" in 2ooo, and finally "Infinity Abyss" in 2oo2.
(That's just Earth-wide stuff. Not the bajillion X-Men events that came out in the meantime...)

Then Marvel Comics hired Brian Michael Bendis and things changed. The pattern of about one Earth-wide story occurring like clockwork every calendar year has been happening for about six years now (usually in the Summer):

"Avengers: Disassembled" - 2oo4
"Secret War" - 2oo4
"House of M" - 2oo5
"Civil War" - 2oo6
"World War Hulk" - 2oo7
"Secret Invasion" - 2oo8

Most of these stories were either written or orchestrated by the quite brilliant Mr. Bendis.

To counter this DC produced more regularly as well, eventually creating a 'Summer blockbuster'-type competition between the two companies:

"Identity Crisis" - 2oo4
"Infinite Crisis" - 2oo5
"52" - 2oo6
"Countdown" - 2oo7
"Final Crisis" - 2oo8
and currently
"Blackest Night" - 2oo9

Marvel's stories invariably end up named "______ War" and DC's stories are always "______ Crisis". Other than the names the stories can vary widely as they more or less are always written by different people, drawn by different people, and produced under different corporate administrations. Generally, in the past six years Marvel has been working on making their events more interconnected and character-driven, while DC has been making strides in adapting the format of the event itself.

See: "52".

"52" was a weekly comic-book published, #1 to #52 from May 2oo6 to May 2oo7, but it encompassed so much of the DC Universe that it worked on the scope of an 'event' and was indeed a limited series. Limited to 52 issues, but still limited. It was immediately followed by "Countdown" another year-long weekly series this time published starting from #52 down to #1. All major threads of the DC Universe were involved. It was definitely a crossover event.

How this new wrinkle of mini-family-events will affect the crossover event format in the future is difficult to see. I'm guessing this new format will be more profitable for Marvel as they will have by the end of the year put even more comics featuring multiple characters on the racks without alienating as many readers who feel 'forced' to buy the 'event' books to continue following their favorite character. However, if readers still buy all the series anyway (which they might, comic-book readers do tend to be strange. duh.) then they may complain even more of suffering from quote-unquote 'event burnout'. At any rate, Marvel's gunna make more money this way for sure. If successful, why wouldn't they do it this way for a few years?

I think this will end up feeling a bit more organic from a storytelling point of view. And that is only good. My only question is: Where's the Spider-Man event!?

Hardcover Hell!

This is a bit of a rant. Forgive me.

Okay. Flashback time. It's Fall 2005. Jon Gorga has just begun his senior year of high school. He knows that the current Marvel event is "House of M", but he believes it to be an X-Men thing which qualifies it generally under the 'stay away-too complicated' category, even though the New Avengers are in it. But it's not the 'real main-continuity' Avengers, isn't it? It's the 'House of M' world Avengers. Mutants are the majority instead of a minority, Peter Parker married to Gwen Stacy and living like a celebrity and stuff like that. Case closed. I didn't need to own it. Not the story of the life of the Spider-Man I was following. Skippable! How smug I was.

Flashforward. It's late Summer 2007. And Jon Gorga finally deigns to read the first issue of House of M and discovers: "Oh, yeah it's still Spider-Man it's just that the world is different. Their memories are altered so that all this different bullshit seems normal to them. Well, I still don't know if I need to own that. It's one damn step away from an alternate Spidey." Then in "House of M" #4 immediately after it becomes clear that these are THE Avengers, a remarkably tender scene occurs between Wolverine and the young Layla Miller:

"Who are you?" "L-Layla." "Like the song?" "No." "Where'd you come from?"
...
"I mean I woke up and everything was all-- I thought I was crazy. My parents were the same but everything else was--I mean, what's going on? Am I crazy or not?" "You're not crazy." "You sure?" "If you are-- then we both are."

Tears. Something about this scene never fails to leave me on the verge of tears. EVERY TIME. I don't know how it happens. I don't know if it's the gorgeous art by Olivier Coipel or the simple manner in which Layla Miller expresses herself or the fact that after 48 hours of running around like he's going insane Wolverine, the big bad-ass, finds his answer in a thirteen-year-old girl. A thirteen-year-old girl who's been going through pretty much just what he has for the past two days. Probably it's the combination. It's beautiful somehow. So now a sophisticated college boy Jon Gorga says: "I NEED to own this. This is GOOD."

And that's only one of many amazing scenes that follow. In #5 Spider-Man gets the memories of his original life back. And promptly FREAKS OUT. He's looking at a dead woman he loves and the child he can't possibly have had with her, he feels the life he always wanted wiped out in an instant. He physically doubles over on a car's hood in psychic/emotional pain.

And the twist in #7? Forget it, I couldn't ruin that for you. You have to read it yourself. But that moment when Bendis pulls out the big emotional rug from under you, that was when I said: "I need to own this in hardcover. This is an amazing eight-issues-of-comics worth story. This is a great Spider-Man story, a great X-Men story, a great sci-fi story. This is a great story. Period. It deserves a nice hardcover position on my shelf." Which brings me to my point:

Hardcover comics reprint collections are the most frustrating/wonderful/stupid thing the comics industry produces.

A hardcover edition of the "House of M" mini-series was due out in January of the next year (2008), but January is too late for Christmas, so I've had a jones to own this hardcover for a long time. I thought: "It's a story I'D like to read over and over. It's a story I could put in anyone's hands and..." Oh wait. Not quite.

Most people probably don't know or care who the Scarlet Witch is. (I barely did before I read "House of M") And as she's the force that alters the world, she's pretty important. Furthermore no one will understand what's happening on the first few pages without an understanding of who she is. Then I reread the last few pages of the mini-series. They are pretty much just a set-up for another story. It wouldn't make a ton of sense. So I scrapped it. Really. I figured $30 is too much to pay for something I can read in a certain illegal format on my computer any time I want and which I am going to purchase partially in individual comics. Why have two and a half versions of something?

I then noticed that there was a collection of "New Avengers" issues that would form a perfect long epilogue to the "House of M" story. New Avengers: The Collective is the story set-up in the last pages of "House of M". So there's another thing I could buy in hardcover and have a really nice kind of a set. But still not quite worth it. Then I discovered the gorgeous "Avengers Disassembled" hardcover. This collection tells the fucking awesome story of the end of the Avengers as we knew them and is a great introduction to the Scarlet Witch and leads pretty directly into "House of M". So: Buy "Avengers: Disassembled" and "House of M" and "New Avengers: The Collective" and it will all make sense. I was beginning to have a beautiful vision of all the big Marvel events together on my shelf in hardcover. Oh wait...

Except the 'New' Avengers formed in the meantime between "Disassembled" and "House of M" and Spider-Man gets a temporary costume between "House of M" and "New Avengers: The Collective". So someone who knows nothing will say: "What? I thought The Avengers were gone. Who are the New Avengers?" AND "Why is Spider-Man wearing that thing? Is it metal?" See what I mean? When I buy individual super-hero comics I expect an incomplete story. Anything else would be impossible because Spider-Man has been published since 1962! So why not buy five thousand little nuggets of the story that add up to one mega-story. That works for me. Maybe it's just me being a control freak, but by buying these stories in 22-page installments I can make sense of them: Spider-Man shows up here, then he shows up here, then he gets a new costume and everywhere he shows up for a while afterward he's wearing the new costume. Simple.

But if Marvel and DC are going to tell stretched-out stories AND they're going to publish hardcover collections, they need to start doing it smarter. Because the way it is now, it's IMPOSSIBLE to actually read these stories in order. You've got to make goddamn flowcharts to try to make their collections work in order. Honestly, for me? It's come down to this: I don't want them. And I'm not the only one, people come into the store all the time asking for a story they can understand and fully appreciate. And they are in short order. The problem is only exacerbated by Marvel's insistence at not keeping their collections in print for more than a month.

I WANT:
+A "HOUSE OF M" hardcover with "Son of M" #1-6 and "New Avengers" #26 as an epilogue.
+A "ROAD TO CIVIL WAR" hardcover with everything that was a part of the lead up to "Civil War": "Amazing Spider-Man" #529-531, "New Avengers: Illuminati" #1, and so on.
+A "CIVIL WAR" hardcover with the "Civil War: Frontline" issues, (maybe just the important ones, i.e. #1, #4, and #11), the "Iron Man" tie-in issues, some of the "New Avengers" tie-in issues, the "Amazing Spider-Man" issues, and "Civil War: Casualties of War" mixed in and more importantly "Captain America" #25 and "Civil War: The Confession" as an epilogue. That one is a no brainer, guys.
+A "SECRET INVASION" hardcover with "New Avengers" #31, "New Avengers: Illuminati" #5 first and "New Avengers" #41 and #43 mixed in.

Or simply produce the "Civil War Chronicles" and "Secret Invasion Chronicles" series as paperbacks and hardcovers. I just want things to be published in order. IMPOSSIBLE you say? Yes and no. It IS impossible because Marvel and DC are corporate entities and some of these collections I'm talking about would be massive, but no it ISN'T impossible because Marvel produces those godawful beasts called Omnibuses and the story is laid out for them already, all they would need to do is go back and pick out the parts required to tell the damn story right. They've already done it once: "Secret Wars II" Omnibus Edition is exactly what I'm talking about, except apparently the order of the material is wrong in some places and most of us don't want to read that story anyway. I say play ball fair or go home. Give us a hardcover that tells the whole story or don't do it at all. If you can't enhance what you've already done, leave it alone.


UPDATE: 9/15/2oo9

I spent a far longer time than is sensible staring at the "House of M", "Avengers: Disassembled", and "Secret Wars" hardcover editions at a store today. Le sigh. They are all the same height and depth. Perfect for a shelf. They are so pretty. Damn I want them.

UPDATE: 9/24/2oo9

I own a copy of the "House of M" hardcover. It is so beautiful. It keeps me warm at night. To quote Tom Waits' song "Step Right Up": "It finds you a job. It is a job. ... It disinfects. It sanitizes for your protection. It gives you an erection! It wins the election!" I know it ain't 100% right. But like a good friend who's just a little off, I love it anyway.