Riddle me this, Batman...

Riddle me this, Batman: When is an event not an event? Answer: When it happens every week!

Not the hardest riddle the Dark Knight might ever face, but certainly one which on some level might puzzle even his keen intellect. To wit: Why has every issue of 90% of the comics currently on sale(at least by the "big two", DC and Marvel) become something which every comics collector simply "must" have(at least, according to their ad departments)?

Way back when(around the 70's), comics companies began putting out "event" issues. One of the earliest was the Marvel crossover between two of their biggest super-teams, the Avengers and the Defenders. This was truly a collector's dream, as it featured one of the first bouts between Thor and the Hulk, two powerhouse titans whose blows could be felt from miles away. The beating hearts of Fan Boys could also be heard miles away, as all of us greedily ripped through the pages, eager to find out who would prove stronger: the son of Asgard or the Green Goliath? Of course, there was no true winner...the writers/editors knew that deep down, we didn't really want to know that Thor might not be able to beat the Hulk without the help of his trusty hammer, Mjolnir, or that Hulk might not truly be "the strongest one who is". But the FUN was in the reading of the story--who knew when the next time might come for these two fan faves to pound on each other again?

The same drooling reverence was bestowed upon the two-part crossover between Marvel Two-In-One(a feature for team-ups with the Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, and other super-heroes) and the Avengers annual, which guest-starred Captain Marvel and Warlock, two cosmic heavy-hitters who pitched in to help the aforementioned super-team defeat the plans of Thanos, the mad god who was dedicated to proving his love for Death by wiping out all life. This was truly an event, since the extremely popular Warlock character was actually killed off. During the next decade of the 80's, the heroic Captain Marvel would actually suffer the same fate in the appropriately titled "Death of Captain Marvel". Although this time, it wouldn't be any cosmic villain or alien armada that did in our good captain...it would be simple cancer. An honestly innovative way(for comics) to kill off a super-hero.

Of course, the blow-out-to-end-all-blow-outs came when Marvel and DC finally teamed up to bring together two of the most popular characters ever created: Superman vs. Spider-Man. Through some creative storytelling(and deviousness on the part of Lex Luthor, one of the primary villains), Spider-Man was actually able to temporarily square off against the Man of Steel and give him an official butt-whooping some say his overinflated ego had coming. This was a true milestone in the history of comics, and stands as a type of gold standard against which all other super-hero crossovers are set.

Unintentionally, this was also the beginning of the downfall of the Heroic Age in four-color storytelling. As "event" comics--once called "summer event" comics because publishers only pulled out their REALLY BIG stories during the summer, leaving the heroes to their own standard fare during the regular months--became more popular, comics companies figured "what the heck...the folks like 'em enough to keep buying 'em, so let's put out more!" It wasn't long after that the Teen Titans found themselves pitted against the X-Men(the art by Walt Simonson outshined the storytelling in this one), Batman fought the Hulk(what?!?)and eventually Spider-Man found himself teaming up with Superman once more to save the world.

The overall results were less than spectacular, as now fans almost came to expect at least one cross-company pairing each summer, if not more. It got even worse when "event" books started happening year-round, regardless of season...or logic(Fantastic Four and Superman??) Eventually, the Crossover Virus spread, infecting other companies such as Dark Horse, publisher of the Terminator, Aliens and Predator books. Batman soon found himself facing off against Predator(actually damn cool!), Superman fought Aliens(weak) and then of course sequels on these were spun off. The insanity reached an apex, it seemed, when EVERY DC hero fought EVERY Marvel hero in the imaginatively titled "DC vs. Marvel". Here, definitive questions were finally answered, such as: is Superman stronger than the Hulk?(bafflingly, yes) Can Batman beat Captain America(no??) and who would win in a fight--Spider-Man or Superboy(huh??) Along with this "event" came various spin-offs--individual issues featuring certain heroes in stories adjacent and complimentary to the main one being told in the mini-series--which were actually better than the main series itself!

It seemed that the Golden Age of crossovers had been swept away, eradicated as it were, by the Crossover Virus. Gone were seminal, deeply impacting stories such as "Crisis On Infinite Earths", which destroyed, rebuilt and restructured the DC Universe. Now we were stuck with such nonsense as "X-Men Meets Star Trek". Yes, you read that right...and as in Hollywood, wherein any film that makes $10 profit must have a sequel, we were shortly served up "X-Men Meets Star Trek: The Next Generation". Even Alex Ross' brilliant work on "Marvels" spawned at least a half-dozen imitators, painted comics by uninspiring artists. The stories were lame as hell and the artists' work couldn't begin to match Ross' brilliance on his worst day. Ross managed to temporarily save the day again with the release of DC's "Kingdom Come"--an apocalyptic tale of Superman's return after 10 years of retirement, and the unexpected doom to mankind such a seemingly blessed event might bring. Again, DC managed to muck it up in much the same way Marvel did, by releasing an unforgivably convuluted sequel called "The Kingdom". Not only did the company ape the story of Ross and writing partner Mark Waid, they intentionally shut both out of the process entirely.

All of which brings us to the current state of comics...now a dull, vapid wasteland which appears to be bereft of ideas. Where once Marvel's "What IF...?" series and DC's "Elseworlds" creatively speculated on the possibilities of how certain heroes' lives would be different if their experiences changed at key moments, now even the Star Wars series of comics has their own "Infinities" title, detailing such insipid Maxi-geekiness questions as "Suppose Luke Skywalker wasn't able to rescue Han Solo from Jabba's palace?" Marvel itself has no less than 3 major inter-company crossovers going at the moment: "Annihilation", "Last Planet Standing" and "Civil War", the final one detailing the super-heroes' reaction to a Congressional Order demanding they register their powers and identities, or be shut down(an extension of an "X-Men" story run more than a decade ago). DC has just finished its own "Infinite Crisis", a pathetic half-assed and unnecessarily violent and bloody(Hey, Editorial Staff...kids do still pick up comics, remember?) retread of their benchmark "Crisis On Infinite Earths".

The final point here, my friends, is that it seems comics' creators have run out of ideas. Instead of Superboy going to the 30th Century and becoming a Legionaire, Supergirl has instead(although the Clone Superboy was briefly included in several issues). The shock value of Spider-Man revealing his secret identity to the world in "Civil War" has given way to the realization of such a storyline's stupidity factor: short of our hero finding a way to reverse time so everybody forgets his identity, how can the Bullpen folk justify not killing off Peter Parker's wife and Aunt May with a simultaneous attack by every villain Spidey's ever faced? "Into a corner, you have written yourself" Yoda might say. Fans waited years for the Marvel-DC "Avengers vs. Justice League" crossover, and what were we finally rewarded with? A discombobulated, disjointed, uninspiring and only occasionally thrilling retread of the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" storyline wherein the immortal villain Krona destroys universes one-by-one, in his quest for infinite power and knowledge(in the original C.O.I.E., the villain was the far more menacing Anti-Monitor).

What is the answer? Sadly, there are no simple ones. Perhaps the major publishers(and several of the minors) should more readily open their doors to newer talent with fresher ideas. Maybe the editorial staff should review stories they've already done in the past and steer clear of repeats(Avengers vs. JLA/Infinite Crisis). Of course, the most obvious answer is to simply scale back the number of "Events" per year and allow only one each summer, as they did in the Golden Age. By doing this last, it would allow their creative staff more time to come up with fresh and compelling ideas which will lure more fans back to comics en masse, and guarantee--as the rear covers of each DC Elseworlds title promises--to "make characters old and familiar seem fresh and new again".

Hit the showers for now, guys...and give us something good to look forward to next summer.

--Lance