I agree. Most of these had great stories that ended badly (not for the characters necessarily, but for the readers).

Sorry, the story is almost 1 1/2 years old so I didn't think about spoilers.

No biggie.. i'm behind the 8 ball and don't really worry about spoilers at this point.

Heck I'm 2 months behind on current comics too!
I get my comics mailed to me from my college comic store.. Needless to say I've got a few boxes waiting to be opened!

Civil War. It definitely started with Civil War. Everything since then has been a conglomerated mess.

During the 50 and 60's or silver age marvel thrived on the cross over, but in reality they were guest appearences or a title like the Avengers. Stan Lee was pretty good at placing characters into stories without costing the reader an arm and a leg Some characters like Kazar or the Inhumans thrived and survived on those crossovers.

DC also started running crossovers with Flash 122. This lead to an annual crossover of the Justice League and the Justice Society and later with groups like the Marvel Family and the Freedom Fighters. Fans waiting for that annual summer crossover with passion. Who would it be next year.

Then came the 70's and Marvel at the time had a huge crossover called the Avengers / Defenders war. You had to buy both books to follow the story. This story plannted the seeds. There were some crossovers or guest appearences of characters that had lost their titles at both Marvel and DC, but the next big event would have to be under Jim Shooters watch and that was Secret Wars. Secret Wars turned comic book readers into Marvel Zombies.
That success gave us Secret Wars two. This epic unlike its predecessor features a much bigger crossover into the individual titles. Whereas SW1 had what Marvel called the "White Event" and had the characters disapear in their title for a panel or two, SW2 continued to cross over for several months. Nothing had been done like it before and fans loved it. But you did not have to pick up the Spiderman issues to know what happened to anyone else.

Marvel began to cross over titles like the X-Men and the new mutants, but those crossovers had 1 maybe two writers and followed a tight storyline. Some of those stories actually make great trade paperbacks.

DC answered back with the biggest crossover ever "Crisses on Infinite Earths". Everything in the DC universe changed. The changes were so big they printed up miniseries to help the readers figure out what had happened. This crossover included every DC title and put the books in a zone of strict continuity.

Like the Justice League annual event Marvel began to do the same with the X-Men titles. Soon editors with failing titles began latching on to these events and the crossovers began to become meaningless stories that used up 2-3 times the paper they should have.

But if you want to know when the mess turned into a mess I would point a finger at Joe Quessada the Editor in chief. Today Joe Quessada has twisted Marvel into a traffic jam of crossovers. So many that no one can follow them all. So large that it takes a half dozen trade paperbacks to collect them. Marvel had a simple cohesive understandable path that readers could follow. Today under Quessadas direction I doubt if the editors can even follow things. Why publish 4 Avengers titles that pull and twist in 4 seperate directions when you could publish a weekly Avengers title that any kid could follow. How many books did Wolverine appear in last month or Spiderman?

If an editor in chief doesn't care that he just destroyed 25 years worth of stories (Spiderman) for his readers because he wants to attract new readers why should he care that the Marvel universe makes sense to anyone. I was a Marvel zombie until Joe Quessada. Today I have lost that spirit. In large part to Joe's indifference to the characters and his indifference to the continuity.

Marvel was a place where the characters aged while DC's characters remained stagnant. So what if Spiderman Graduated High school, Then College, then got a BA, Then became a teacher, married Mary Jane in the process, got his wife pregnant, had a baby stollen, lost his aunt, finally became accepted by the heroes and became an Avenger. Those stories were why we read the books. So what if he aged 10-15 years. Why take that away from the readers.

The same can be said of the mega crossover why tell meaningless stories that kill the characters growth. Why stick Wolverine in 14 issues during a month and act like your not killing the golden goose.

Today Marvel has two worlds. The world that you enter when you pick up your favorite title and the world of the meaningless drawn out crossover.

Instead of spending all your money collecting worn out crossovers I would recomend picking up the Masterwork series of your favorite characters. They have almost completed the silverage and the crossovers haven't gone crazy yet, plus you can find out what its like to read a storyline by the masters like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and many others.

I think the problem isn't the size or length of the crossover. If it's good, it's good. The hard feelings happen when you don't feel like you're getting your money's worth, and it starts feeling like you're getting strung along.

Punisher 10/Daredevil 257 - those are the earliest issues I can remember where a story was told concurrently from different views. You don't need to read both, but it was interesting to see how both ended up on the same rooftop with the perp.

Civil War - I don't know the issue numbers, but Susan Richards leaving with Franklin was shown in two books, Fantastic Four, and Civil War proper. In one, Sue walks out the front door. In the other, she blows a hole through the building and flies out. You don't need to read both, but you're better off if you don't. If you do, you realize Marvel doesn't care enough to keep their details straight.

If this post is sarcasm, I agree 100%. If not, I couldn't disagree more.

Because that's another problem I have with these big events - at the end of the day the impact of these events is almost nil.

Great idea! Watching the Hulk smash all those puny Skrulls would have been incredibly satisfying. Why doesn't Joey Q. hire you to write this stuff?!

as an amateur comics historian, I believe I can pinpoint the beginning of the trend you're referring to.

Now as far as the Marvel universe is concerned, true crossovers began with the original Secret Wars; which is telling and fitting as you'll see later. The success of Secret Wars led to Secret Wars 2; which was much more tie-in heavy. This started a trend with Marvel Titles. There were years where there were crossover gaps, but since that time there were many "summer" crossover events, that would most commonly spin out of Annuals. at that time, it was seen as a way of cross-pollinating readership, and they didn't push it too hard. It would have been a difficult transition for the writers of the time. the editorial staff wasn't ready to go as far as they have now.

the switch to the style we see in Marvel writing now is easy to identify: Secret War.

that might seem contrary because of the fact that Secret War has almost zero crossover; but it's where it all begins. Its the kernel of the Skrull invasion secret. It directly ties in with the actual beginning of the whole ball of wax: Avengers Disassembled. Since that time we have been caught in an endless cycle of tie-in events.

this is my opinion.

Yeah but it was great because it was like "moon knight we need your help!" and he was all "hell no, stay out of my business. i'm trying to kill midnight."

I believe the true crossover was started in Avengers #1. Thor, Captain america, Iron Man, Ant-man and Wasp were combined to make a great new team and comic.

The real issue is that I have to buy the same comic four plus times. How many times did you see Hawkeye call out Norman Osborn as a villain? Or see Osborn shoot the Skrull Queen*. [*Secret Invasion #7 true believers]**

**Remember when a character is talking and they had the little notice boxes? Were it let the readers know that there was a change and didn't take half an issue to retell it. And it made you want to hunt down and read the things you missed. Good times

I don't mind 1-5 in this:
Crossover type list...
1) Guest appearance. Popular character sowing up in different title than own

2) Two comic crossover. When for a few issues an individual or part of a group uses two titles to speed up a telling of a story.

3) Theme crossover. Events like Messiah Complex(X-Men) or Maximum Carnage (Spider-man) were a set type of comics use each issue to tell a large story that relates to that group. (Team roster changes and new series launches can occur)

4) Vs. When a limited series or even one tittle gathers a few heroes or villains to tell a story. (Misunderstandings and/or mind control have heroes fight each other)

5) What if?. House of M or Age of Apoc. were alternate futures or realities take place in most ongoing titles and have a core book to base it on. (The villains taking over in several titles may be considered.

6) A Bendis. Central Mini series, majority titles effected and used to tell story, limited title runs with regular titles, Overlap, incongruities in story, and jumbled mess. (often w/o great endings)

Let me know if I missed a few

About 23 years too late to be the first.

Well thanks eveyone. I got some good insight from these posts. All I wanted to do was start reading some comics again;pick up a couple old titles to see how they were doing and check out a few that I thought would be fun. I like the current Cosmic stuff but I don't think I like Joephisto's Marvel. I found almost a full run of West Coast Avengers in the quarter bin. I think that is what I'll stick with for now. Down with Joephisto and bring back the lttle boxes that said "that happened in..."