More About Comics

Yesterday, I talked about comic books. Today, I am again talking about comic books. This is because of the avalanche of comments I got that said, and I quote, "i want to know how to sing very well, pls kindly send me some materials". Sigh.

Oh, wait. Since I wrote that, I received another comment that was actually on point. I guess that ruins my clever introduction. Although to be fair, it didn't take much ruining. Let's just get on with this.

Right now, both Marvel and DC are running big, crazy special events. This is something that's been going on for awhile, possibly ever since Marvel's Secret Wars thing which didn't make much sense. It was followed by Secret Wars 2, which made so little sense it was practically anti-sense. It involved a superpowerful being (as powerful as the whole universe) wandering around, talking to various superheroes, meddling with their plots, and learning about being human. It was utterly pointless, but it had the benefit that anyone who read a Marvel title needed to read it in order to know what was going on. And by "benefit", I mean "the thing that made it extra-annoying".

So that's what's going on now. In Marvel, they've got something called the "House of M" that involves, um, I'm not sure. I remember hearing about how some art was copied from a picture of the King of Spain (true!) but other than that, the whole concept was announced so vaguely that I didn't bother. See, I respond better to details than to "This will be so exciting it will break the internet right in half!". And since pretty much the only Marvel title I read is The Avengers, and they don't seem impacted by whatever's going on over there (even though most of the characters are also in House of M doing something, which I covered yesterday when I asked how characters could be in two places at once when they're not anywhere at all), I just haven't bothered.

In DC, there are three different Important Things happening right now. See, first they had the "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" (which came after "Identity Crisis"), and the led in to "OMAC", "The Rann-Thanagar War", and I think one other I can't remember right now. Maybe there are only two important things. Anyway, this will all lead into Infinite Crisis, which will probably turn the whole DC Universe Snowglobe upside down and give it a vigorous shaking. So it feels weird to read any DC titles right now, because even -- oh! "Day of Vengeance", that's the other current one. Sorry about that. Anyway, even the titles that are only vaguely connected to all this are apparently going to go through a gigantic upheaval at the same time as everyone else, so the pacing feels off. Normally if you read a lot of comics, it's basically several different serialized stories, so at any given point, some are ending, some are beginning, some are reaching a climax, maybe a couple are having one-shot breathers between multi-issue stories. But right now, all of DC's comics pretty much have to wrap up their stories in the same month, so it feels like there's some puttying and stretching to get things onto schedule. Not everywhere, but here and there.

So my problem is that I'm generally unimpressed with the concept of these things. They're usually an excuse to do arbitrary crossovers and make changes for the sake of change. On the other hand, I'm not strictly reading comics for enjoyment; I'm also reading them so I know what the heck is going on in, well, the world of comics. So that means I feel like I ought to at least pick some up. But that means I'm just encouraging them.

No, I don't know who "them" is.