5 Things We Don't Miss About '90s Comics (And 5 We Do)

How many event comics have there been in the last, say, fifteen years? Big stakes with heroes from multiple books coming together to solve a problem, maybe a death or two. Civil War 1 & 2, Blackest Night, Siege, Fear Itself, Identity, Infinite, and Final Crises. These comics are the perfect demonstration of the law of diminishing returns.

It's hard to believe that was not always the case. Marvel and DC each launched their first huge crossover events in the mid-'80s with Secret War and Crisis on Infinite Earths, respectively.

Once those were complete, they were left alone, for the most part. DC was considerably more keen on running cross-book events with titles like Invasion! and Bloodlines, but even then they only occurred across a handful of books, often incorporating the Justice League and perhaps one or two supplemental teams.

And for Marvel, this was rarer still. Despite publishing a sequel to Secret War the following year, their crossovers were relatively non-existent until the legendary Infinity Gauntlet was published in 1991, some five years later. Perhaps that's why it's so fondly remembered.

Monumental stakes and consequences that could potentially shake up the status quo. When Barry Allen died in the original Crisis, he stayed dead for twenty-three years, which is centuries for a superhero. The Infinity Gauntlet became a looming threat over Marvel for years.

Events today happen so frequently that their gravitas has been all but extinguished by familiarity. And when it comes to comics, there's rarely anything worse than boredom.