The phrase “event comic” has practically become a four letter word for many comic book readers these days. On the surface, events seem like a great concept. The whole point is that a publisher gathers its greatest and best-selling writers and artists and allows them to tell a big superhero epic on a scale grander than usual. The creators tend to have more freedom to make big, sweeping changes to characters and the world around them, resulting in a major new status quo for the universe in question. The comic gets big hype, sells well, and everyone’s happy.

Except that last part seems to happen more and more rarely. Plenty of readers complain about event fatigue. Some make a point of skipping events entirely and dropping books that happen to tie in with those stories. And while events tend to be among the best-selling comics of any given year, recent events haven’t made the sales splash books like Civil War and Infinite Crisis did a decade ago. More and more, the consensus is that event comics aren’t living up to the hype. Why is that? And why is it that writers who routinely deliver some of the best, most exciting superhero adventures on their monthly titles often fail to meet that standard when they tackle these event comics? Why is the ongoing Ultimate Spider-Man comic always so good, but last year’s Cataclysm event wasn’t? Why can’t Original Sin impress the same way Jason Aaron’s work on Wolverine and the X-Men or Thor: God of Thunder does?

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