Event or Story Arc?

Thought experiment time.

Hold tight, fans, because things are becoming more confusing in the shared universes. The old days just had a comic series, and you might have an annual or a giant-size special, or even a limited series or a trade paperback later. Eventually we tossed in things called crossover events, meaning it wasn’t just Spider-Man having a crossover with the Avengers, or Daredevil running across Power Man and Iron Fist, it was an “event.” Secret Wars was the classic crossover event, which had its own maxi-series, but also had the regular titles show the effects of this event, which crossed over into all aspects of Marvel’s shared universe of characters.

The more modern term “meta-story” has come to mean the all-encompassing ideas that form the foundation of the shared universe itself. Grant Morrison had a constant theme running through his Final Crisis books, ideas that were carried forward from his earlier works in DC, such as his multiple Seven Soldiers of Victory series, his run on JLA, and others. The current Dark Reign meta-story forms the playing field for Marvel in all of their books, and weaves a consistent narrative through every title, with very few exceptions.

The interchangeability of these similar words is making everyone use them in haphazard fashion, which can cause a little confusion with those readers who don’t buy every title. Although it is common and appropriate for people to refer to Final Crisis and Dark Reign as comic “events,” they both assumed such an overriding element of the shared narrative, I would submit that the term comic event should only be applied when speaking of a particular time range, such as “comic event of 2009.”

Of smaller scale than the meta-story come the events themselves, such as War of Kings, an event that also has its own mini-series and accompanying mini-series, plus a couple regular monthly titles that reflect the consequences of the event storyline, and sometimes greatly affect it within those monthly titles. Is War of Kings only an event, though, as the narrative of the universe seems isolated, contained to only those few titles? Because the atmosphere of Dark Reign has managed to make its presence felt in Nova, but has War of Kings made a dent anywhere in X-Men, even though Lilandra looks to be dead?

Go one degree smaller and you have the themes that can weave throughout multiple titles, but do not have a separate mini-series of their own, and the effects of which are often not reflected elsewhere in the shared universe, or only selectively so. Wolverine: Old Man Logan might be one example. DC has started doing this a lot more, with their Batman: Reborn theme in the Bat-books, the Blackest Night in Green Lantern titles, and World Without Superman in the Super-family of books.

Marvel has been much more constant and consistent with its use of events to move forward the meta-story, with the impacts of storylines starting in House of M, having lasting impacts that led into Civil War, with World War Hulk being a mini-event that still made itself felt. After Civil War, Secret Invasion came on, and the events from Civil War added to the tension and helped the reader to understand not only how such mistrust built, but how the natural tensions also added to the mistrust when people realized shape-changers were among them. The totality of these events has led inexorably to Dark Reign, in a linear progression that has done well to lay the groundwork for a universe-wide meta-story. The editors may have let the small bits on continuity by the wayside, leading to a ton of small snafus, but they have definitely been working hard on developing a cohesive universe. Remember years ago back when Tony Stark was thought to be dead in his own title, but the West Coast Avengers book didn’t reference that development for months? Big change!

DC has been in a smaller league, with Final Crisis being the biggest attempt. The Super and Bat books are developing their themes nicely, setting the stage to spread further if they get a chance. Blackest Night is the best example of a theme that should grow into a meta-story. Already a theme for a couple DC books, this event will get its own mini-series, and eventually turn into a company-wide crossover, with repercussions felt in every corner of DC’s shared universe.

Is Batman: Reborn a theme or an “event?” Does an event have to have every element: own mini-series, multiple titles, and crossover characters? Will War of Kings eventually be referred to as part of the meta-story as other writers incorporate aspects of the outcome from it into their own titles? Or do all of these events add into the meta-story automatically, becoming part of the fabric of the underlying universe by the simple fact of their being published?

At the end of the day, these terms will probably still be used interchangeably. For a reader such as myself, who likes complicated stories, the cohesiveness of things like Dark Reign are pleasing for me. For other readers, they may feel irritated. A ton of people, and unless I miss my guess, the majority of the reading public, tend to like reading self-contained stories. How frustrating is it to get one or two titles, and see whatever storyline that had been developing get shoved aside by the agenda from some other place that has to be reflected? As the companies move from isolated event comics into a meta-event crossover like Dark Reign that infects every title, does this help sales or hurt them? And how long can the editors and writers hold the weave together so tightly until it all unwinds?

I don’t have any answers this time around, just a bunch of questions. Should there be some sort of organization to better classify the campaigns that the comic book publishers unleash on us? The continuity-minded fan inside me says yes. The avid reader inside me just says to read the latest comic and forget about it. But if words are to have meaning, it may be worth the time of some leaders at DC and Marvel, or maybe industry-watchers like Wizard Magazine, to consider. It’s usually a good idea to establish concrete definitions whenever you have a chance, and the distinction might relieve some readers who are getting dizzy from event fatigue.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

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