On Universes and Unity
By Jennifer
I have a confession to make. It’s taken me a long time to work up the courage to admit this, so you’ll excuse me if I’m a little nervous. Breaking taboos in the comic book fan world is scary business. But I’m a brave soul, and a conscientious one. It’s time I came out of the shadows, and ‘fessed up to my… unusual proclivities.
*deep breath*
I love massive company-wide crossover events.
Secret Invasion? Loved it. Civil War? Awesome. House of M? Sign me up for more! (Literally: I’ve been loving Christos Gage’s House of M minis.) If a storyline spills out over a wide swath of Marvel’s monthly output, dragging in characters (and readers) from every corner of the universe, I’m sold.
I understand that this isn’t a popular position. Everyone these days seems to be talking about “event fatigue,” and there’s been plenty of perfectly legitimate criticism of the storylines themselves, their structure, their weak and scattered aftermath, and their marketing. Caroline has written, persuasively and eloquently, about the problems inherent in the way these crossovers are run. I’m not here to argue against her position, or anyone else’s. I simply want to explain why I’m not fatigued, and why I, despite being fully aware of the stories’ flaws, still enjoy the hell out of them.
In the end, it all comes down to connection, and unity.
I love comics. I love the characters, I love the stories, I love the writers, I love the monthly 22-page format. But what I love most of all (and the reason I’m ten times less likely to pick up a DC or Indie book than a Marvel book) is the Marvel Universe. I love that the Marvel Universe, this big, sprawling thing full of characters I love, exists. I love that the X-Men can hang out with the Avengers (and that Wolverine and Beast can be Avengers). I love that Spider-Man can team up with the Fantastic Four. I love that S.H.I.E.L.D. (or, now, H.A.M.M.E.R.) watches over absolutely everything. I love the feeling (impossible in any other medium, save possibly soap operas) of seeing a beloved, forgotten character pop up in a completely unexpected place. I love the idea that everything that happens in any one book in this universe is happening in the background of every other book Marvel publishes, and that any interaction, any crazy team-up or bizarre new Avengers line-up, is possible.
Of course, in practice, the universe frequently doesn’t behave as a cohesive unit. The X-Men are always off doing their own thing, unremarked-upon by the rest of the characters. Cosmic Marvel mostly operates completely off the radar of the Earth-based books. Cable can take over the entire world (and dye everyone pink) for a day in Cable/Deadpool, and no one in any other book will ever comment on it. And does anyone actually know what Moon Knight is doing? It’s easy, sometimes, to forget that the Marvel Universe is a single entity.
But when it’s time for a crossover, the universe does come together (or, at the very least, makes the pretense of doing so). In those books stamped with a crossover logo, you can be guaranteed to see the sort of interaction and universe-spanning plots that I crave. The execution is often shoddy at best–don’t ask me what the exact requirements of the Super-Human Registration Act were, or how long the Skrulls were around, or what “timely” political metaphors the writers were actually trying to craft. But for those brief (ok, not-so-brief) months of a crossover event, the universe operates as a universe, where things happen to (almost) every character, and everyone is given the chance to react to a central crisis. For that time, in those particular books, a huge, collaborative, universe-spanning story is being written, and that, in my opinion, is really damn cool.
Connection and unity, however, don’t apply solely to the Marvel Universe (or DC Universe) itself. They also apply to the comic book fan community. And there is nothing I love more than the unity a giant crossover event creates in the community. Sure, much of that unity is the shared commiseration of fans grumpy about that week’s unwanted developments, or about the latest character killed off, or about the emptiness of wallets forced to cough up another three four dollars for the umpteenth tie-in. But at no other point do such a large group of fans come together to read one single story.
I don’t read every book Marvel publishes, and I know very few people who do. If I met a fellow Marvel fan, on the internet or in person, I don’t know for sure that we’d have books in common to talk about. What if that person primarily read Spider-Man, whose solo books I’ve read less than three issues of in my tenure as a comics fan? The conversation would likely die before it began. But if that conversation happened during Civil War, I can guarantee we’d have had plenty to discuss. I may have been reading that storyline primarily for the breakup of Iron Man and Captain America, and she may have been reading it primarily for Spidey’s inner turmoil and unmasking, but we’d still have that common ground, that base from which we could jump start a deeper conversation.
Crossover events bring the comic book community together. Through the clever marketing of the Big Two, crossovers become essential reading for understanding any part of the universe. And whatever ethical concerns these tactics may raise, they work. When a crossover happens, almost everyone feels obligated to read it, discuss it, and analyze it. And the community, much like the Marvel Universe, becomes, for that period of time, a cohesive unit–not a scattered collection of people who just happen to like the combination of words and pretty pictures.
Crossovers have a lot of problems. They’re frequently messy and uncoordinated, with a failure to match every success. But as long as they keep bringing universes together–the fictional Marvel Universe, and the real life universe of comic book fandom–I’ll keep reading them without complaint, compunction, or regret.
Email: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush
While I don’t necessarily dislike company-wide crossovers, I do think they should be few and far between. I started reading comics when, on average, DC and Marvel would have ONE big crossover, usually during the summer. Now there seems to be one right after another. I can’t catch my breath after one before being thrown head-first into the next one.
I have a lot to say here. First, my gut it to agree with Dan and the general consensus that there are ‘too many’. (Aside: I have, however, been at the cons where the Marvel execs have basically said ‘our sales are only getting better so no, we’re not going to stop’ (DC, of course, is down and out and hopefully someone is paying attention but since I have given up on them entirely I wouldn’t know) so I’ve pretty much accepted it.)
However what has been my main issue with these events in the past somewhat contradicts that statement of ‘too many’. I didn’t like when House of M ended and it only seemed to affect the X-Comics (where the most mutant characters are) for a scant issues and the rest of Marvelverse not at all — maybe a sentence here or there in passing, but that’s it. So when Civil War ended and it had actual ramifications throughout (well, not so much the X-Comics but here is where I admit that I have also pretty much given up on them, and mostly for this reason, so) I was pleased. Therefore, if having constant big crossover events is what is required for there to be CONSISTENCY (haha, I know, how can I expect that in comics?) then I am absolutely all for it.
What I want is that unity, I want all the stories that were written to take place in the same universe to actually fit together — not like a puzzle, it doesn’t have to be the same story, but like a mosaic. Something beautiful that belongs all together.
You put this really well, and I don’t disagree with any of it in principle. I just feel like it’s only an enjoyable fandom-wide conversation when the events being discussed are good. And it’s not even that I’m saying crossovers are always bad; it’s that volume rather than quality is the driving force.
Also, I think you do have to take into account that the influx of crossovers drives some people out of the conversation. Sure, it’s nice that the people who are reading Secret Invasion can talk about it with each other, but the conversation ends up excluding anybody who isn’t interested. Now the numbers may show that the former number is bigger than the latter, so maybe it’s a good thing in net, but it is a two-edged sword. (And to be really honest I don’t recall ever initiating a conversation about SI, after the first issue, and pretty much all of my convos about ‘House of M’ or ‘Civil War’ were rants).
It’s not really an anti-crossover position I’m taking; it’s an objection to the way they’ve been handled by Marvel over the past few years.
@Dan I do think that’s a problem with the crossovers. While I’d love to see that unity I talked about happening all the time, jumping from crossover to crossover leads to the sort of “no consequences” world that Anika and Caroline have talked about, and that’s not ideal. I’d like to see more time between the crossovers to see how things shake out for all the characters.
@Anika As I just said to Dan, I completely agree that there need to be more consequences–and that Civil War did a better job of that than House of M did. My ideal Marvel Universe would flow perfectly, connecting in all the right places. I’m just content to take what I can get, since that dream seems, sadly, impossible.
@Caroline You’re very right to point out that the events do leave people out, and it’s definitely a major flaw. I’ve had friends on both conversations on both sides of the equation, and it can definitely lead to a feeling of alienation among fans who just don’t care about the event. I just tend to find the conversations I do have with other readers to be really fulfilling, and even the non-readers seem always to be up for ranting, which can sometimes lead to conversations of just as much interest. I wish with all my heart that Marvel and DC could find a way to make all their readers happy, but I’m not sure where that middle ground might be.
Either way, you’re definitely right that they’e been handled… less than brilliantly. I have very low standards for them, as my article indicates, but I have absolutely no problem with holding the companies to a higher standard than I personally have. Improvement can only help the companies.
It just seems to me that the strength of these greater universes is their diversity — of character, style, story, etc. And you might think that crossovers could be used to emphasize and explore that diversity, but in my experience that’s not really what happens. They turn into “everybody fights skrulls”! — which I just don’t find very interesting. It seems essentially to be telling us that any story that’s not part of a big event (and hence the things that are diverse and quirky and stylistically unique) are less important. Now I know there are exceptions to this — as you know, the ‘Cable & Deadpool’ Civil War book is among my Favorite Things Ever — but for the most part the effect seems to be homogenizing.
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