7 Reasons You Should Give Up Superhero Comics In 2017

In superhero comics, it feels like there’s always a prelude or an aftermath. Marvel published Civil War in the summer of 2006 and ever since then have tried to repeat that success with a new event basically every summer. DC is just as bad, even the much acclaimed Rebirth is ramping up to a big line-wide event featuring characters from Watchmen. Limited series that take over ongoing books are part of the problem, but another huge part is the events the individual titles thrust upon themselves. Green Lantern has been going from event to event without any chance to catch a breath since 2005. The X-Men are constantly in the middle of some new “things will never be the same” gamechanger.

Most of the time, stories get interrupted because of involvement in events. The New 52 Catwoman book could never really find its footing because it was constantly being forced into the plot of some Bat-title. More recently, Power Man and Iron Fist slammed the brakes on its intended story to work in the events of Civil War II (some say to its benefit). But hey, that book is getting cancelled soon anyway, so it barely matters. And if the events themselves don’t end up messing with the plot of books directly, they often do so indirectly because of massive delays. We end up seeing the fallout of the event before the event is actually done, which ruins the enjoyment of both. And then it’s right on to the next. Marvel seems to have learned nothing from the delays on Secret Wars and CW2 because they’re already headfirst into the next event: Monsters Unleashed.

The events are tiresome for their uniformity. Usually seven to nine issues, stagnation and stalling until around issue five, then a hasty resolution that doesn’t quite make sense crammed into the back half of the last issue. But on top of that, they keep characters from becoming grounded. How can we care about how the characters respond to the debate in CW2 when we barely have a sense of how they really feel in the post-Secret Wars Marvel Universe? How can we become invested in a story when it keeps getting interrupted?