The Quarter Bin is written by Joe Fogle
To get myself back into the swing of things, I’ve been doing a lot of “research” by going back and re-reading and finishing up some of the big Marvel crossovers from the past few years. Even though dishes are piling up and I’m starting to smell myself, this is much more important than meaningless chores and self-cleanliness.
The trends that I’ve been noticing with the big crossovers going all the way back to the “House of M” event is that one, the events seem to encompass every single Marvel book in publication and two, they always start off good/decent and totally drop the ball by the end of the story arc.
Topic 1: 12 million other books. As a reader, do I really need to know how the Great Lakes Avengers are dealing with the Skrull Invasion? Does anyone really care if Big Bertha is a human or a Skrull doppelganger? I know I don’t. Sure, I don’t have to buy the 600 other books that are labeled as related to a particular crossover, but some of them have story elements that are important to the overall event or contain particular information to or just focus on a certain character, i.e. Howard the Duck. “Civil War” and “World War Hulk” were roughly 100 books if you wanted to follow everything. With comic books priced at $3-4 that’s a hell of a lot of money to sink into a story about the Hulk being mad at everyone again. And what do you get out of those 100 books? The Hulk (who hasn’t been interesting since he was a Vegas bouncer) destroys stuff, turns back into Bruce Banner and punches out Robert Reynolds (the Sentry in human form) by accident, reverts back to the Hulk, turns into a giant light bulb or something and then turns into Bruce Banner for “good”. Meanwhile, it was all just a big misunderstanding…oh, and by the way, 90% of New York City is destroyed. Whoopsy!
In “Civil War”, Captain America fights against Iron Man and the government after they propose a Superhuman Registration Act. Cap fights fiercely against it putting his friends’ lives on the line time after time because he believes that is the right thing to do. The registration act is wrong and evil and blah blah blah. After many delays in the final issues of “Civil War” (I thought that they planned these things out ahead of time), Cap must have got restless and bored because he just decided to give up, because it was the wrong thing to do now or some BS…even after people died for his cause and that the Superhuman Registration Act was completely and utterly evil and bad and stuff. Cap was arrested, convicted of criminal charges and shot dead while in handcuffs. Thanks for that Marvel. Tony Stark wins and Captain America is killed by a neo-Nazi. Hurray for Marvel! Even the Watcher says you screwed up on this one.
I remember the days when big Marvel crossover events were somewhat self-contained and followed a coherent storyline with a cool and satisfying ending. “The Infinity Gauntlet” was roughly around 20 issues if you followed the additional storylines and started with the Earth being destroyed and ended with Captain America standing face to face with Thanos and dying for the cause and a full-on roster of cosmic deities fighting against a creature that just wanted Death to love him. X-Cutioner’s Song (my personal favorite crossover of all time) was a straight up X-Men crossover but it had some of the coolest and most memorable comic moments that affected the X-Universe for years to come. The question was put out there as to who was the true son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor, Cable or Stryfe since they shared the same face. The X-Men had to rely on Apocalypse to save Professor X. X-Force got their chump asses royally kicked by the combined forces of the X-Men and X-Factor. Cable sacrificed himself to save his parents and, at the conclusion of story, a little thing called the Legacy Virus was unleashed unto the world.
Transport yourself ten years into the future of comic-dom. Will anyone look back upon the clustered mess of something like “Civil War” or “Siege” and be able to seriously hold them in the same regards to “Days of the Future Past” or the sheer awesomeness of “Onslaught”? Ok…just kidding about that one. I meant to say “Secret Wars”. I doubt it. I miss the days of the six issue crossover events with good writing and endings that mattered. Oh well. I guess I’ll just read “The Infinity Gauntlet” again. Adam Warlock rulz!
Joe is the creator of the indie comic book “Creatures of War”. He would like to shamelessly plug the website here: CreaturesOfWar.net. Be sure to check out Creatures of War on Facebook for even more shameless plugs.
Did you miss the last Quarter Bin about the Day Captain America Died? Check it out here.
