The Greatest Marvel Universe Event!

Another early one that could be included, as it was a really long and epic crossover storyline (4 issues each title) for it's time is the Avengers-Defenders war from 1973.

Does Kree-Skrull really count? It's just an Avengers story that has Captain Marvel in it.

I did plug that one in, but the rest were culled from Wikipedia's list. There are several arguable entries (and some I didn't see fit to include), but I guess those will be the ones that don't get any votes. Be glad that I at least vetoed Contest of Champions.

WWH maybe, or House of M. it's crazy how they show up first every couple years, then every year and then 2010 has 6 of them

Avengers-Defenders War would have gotten my vote if it had been an option, but from this list, I think I'll take Secret Invasion. It was actually a good bit better in setup and execution than the others I've read.

it's crazy how they show up first every couple years, then every year and then 2010 has 6 of them

And even crazier when you consider that it took them a decade to put out another crossover with the sprawl of Onslaught, after which it pretty much became a de facto thing (often with multiple sprawl-y crossovers occurring simultaneously).

I loved Contest of Champions as a kid. Even bought a nick and dent copy of the collection a few years ago. It's crap, but it's hugely better than the sequel that I didn't even know existed.

Seems weird to have Kree-Skrull and not Korvac, Serpent Crown, Madbomb, or any of the other single title long-arc epics.

I'm actually going with Annihilation. I don't think it's quite as good as The Thanos Imperative, but there is no latter without the former. The rehab of Marvel Cosmic is maybe the greatest, and most unheralded, creative move Marvel has made in the Quesada era. Which is why it appears to be over.

Question: are any of the following worth reading?

Operation: Galactic Storm (March 1992)
Infinity War (June 1992)
Infinity Crusade (June 1993)
Onslaught (May 1996)
Heroes Reborn (1996)
Maximum Security (December 2000)
Infinity Abyss (August 2002)

The Kree-Skrull War (June 1971)- Roy Thomas really doesn't quite get some of the props he should for the early Marvel Bullpen about building up the "marvel U", as often he was really the guy that got into tying so many of those threads together. This is definitely a story that spawned a ton of more stories.

Secret Wars (May 1984)
Secret Wars II (July 1985)- I read these as new back in the day and didn't like either one and thought SWII was total crap as it was coming out. The first one did have quite a few things that went down that did stick in the Marvel U.

The Evolutionary War (1988)- I was much more into the indies and DC at this time, but I know I had to read some of this crossover in the annuals. I don't remember it at all.

All of these came out during my hiatus away from comics. From what I understand the Infinity Gauntlet and Acts of Vengeance are supposed to be pretty good.

Atlantis Attacks (1989)
Acts of Vengeance (December 1989)
The Infinity Gauntlet (July 1991)
Operation: Galactic Storm (March 1992)
Infinity War (June 1992)
Infinity Crusade (June 1993)
Onslaught (May 1996)
Heroes Reborn (1996)
Maximum Security (December 2000)
Infinity Abyss (August 2002)

Secret War (February 2004)- I read the whole mini in a single setting and thought it was pretty good.

Avengers Disassembled (August 2004)- Man, I read this as back issues and that blow up where it all goes wrong even being long out of comics and away from Avengers for years kind of got to me. I can see why some of the old fans totally flipped their wig, as that was not just turning over the toybox more like taking it out back and throwing in a bunch of M80s and blowing the sxxx out of it. I think it was pretty audacious and I thought The Raft arc and the early issues of New Avengers were really pretty good build up and rebuilding from this crater.

House of M (August 2005)- I read the mini-series as a single arc and over time read some of the House of M ties in the regular series. It's got some story holes, but over all, I thought it was an ok read and kind of a cool inverse of 'Days of Future Past'. 2 million mutants is just so wrong, they had to do something to get it back to being something "unique" and I thought this was actually somewhat clever, although the x-books are painted into such a corner of miserabilism and such a controductory heavy continuity, I don't think they can really ever get out of the hole.

Annihilation (March 2006)- This is by far the best story with a real beginning, middle and end of the newer mini-series. Everyone seems to give Abnett and Lanning the props on this whole thing, but Giffen wrote the best parts especially the opening Drax mini-series, which I think on it's own would make a great movie. I'd put that Drax mini-series as one of the better self contained Marvel stories since I got back into reading 6-7 years ago.

Civil War (July 2006)- I can see why this was a hit and all, but I think the story is totally rub and is a crap read in a trade, as too many crucial parts are not in the actual mini-series. Iron Man is a real dxxx in the side mini-series and kind of damaged the character to some extent.

The Initiative (March 2007)- kind of see above. That said, Avengers The Initivave is a pretty decent read. Ellis did some really cool stuff with the T-bolts and Osborn.

World War Hulk (July 2007)- I think this was a pretty good read and smash 'em up, even though it setup Loeb to completely fxxx up the Hulk in ways that are going to take years to fix. It was a cool conclusion to the clever way they got the Hulk out of the way for Civil war and the great Planet Hulk story (which I think considering how much Loeb screwed up the character, they should have just left him out in space).

Annihilation: Conquest (August 2007)- It's ok, kind of rub and way too continuity obsessed to be a "good" sequel to the first story.

Secret Invasion (June 2008)- Good setup and the side stories were pretty well done but the actual mini-series is barely there plot wise. It's basically a poster book. I think it was a big fumble by Bendis and probably the beginning of the nurd rage against him in the marvel-u.

Dark Reign (December 2008)- That said about Bendis, the Dark Avengers is one of the more interesting reads of his comics at Marvel. I think he did a nice sequel on Ellis t-bolts run. They could have handled The Hood part of the story better.

War of Kings (March 2009)- never read.

Siege (January 2010)- cool fight scenes and artwork but again it was kind of weak on plot along with being awkward with how they resolved JMS Thor run. T-bolts story was pretty good in this one.

Realm of Kings (January 2010)- never read.

The Heroic Age (May 2010)- more or less some arcs. I thought Bendis avengers were better than some, but at least gauging by nurd rage on the internet, I'm in the minority at this point.

The Thanos Imperative (July 2010)- never read.

Shadowland (September 2010)- Could have been a good story arc, but it sucked as a miniseries and just finished off painting Daredevil into a bad corner. I'd put it on editorial interference, but Andy Diggle's Marvel comics were really underwhelming.

Chaos War (October 2010)- never read.

Fear Itself (March 2011)- Eh it just didn't have enough story to really fill it out. WOuld have been better as just an Avengers or Thor story arc.

This is the biggest issue with doing this huge crossovers, as way too often, there is just not enough plot to fill it out so big and the fact it's got to fill a trade, it just doesn't work.

death of Thanos imo

Secret Invasion (June 2008)- Good setup and the side stories were pretty well done but the actual mini-series is barely there plot wise. It's basically a poster book. I think it was a big fumble by Bendis and probably the beginning of the nurd rage against him in the marvel-u.

I remember enjoying the hell out of Infinity Gauntlet as a kid, but I don't know how well it holds up now

As weak as the actual miniseries can be (see Civil War and Secret Invasion) I feel like under the Bendis era the general execution of the crossovers has been a lot better, with better side minis and tie-in issues, particularly the ones he wrote. Compare this to say, Daredevil fighting demons during Inferno.

But holy crap, I didn't realize there were so many since 2010. Secret Invasion/Dark Reign/Siege seemed pretty streamlined. I've been pretty out of the loop.

War Of Kings/Realm Of Kings/The Thanos Imperative is one big arc, the culmination of Marvel cosmic under Abnett & Lanning wrapping up all sorts of threads other creators launched over the years and left hanging.

Again, I think Marvel Cosmic is the best stuff Marvel's done in the last decade (Nextwave and Silver Surfer: Requiem excepted).

I need to check these things out!

Marvel's employment of crossover issues underwent a complete 180 at some point. The Infinity Gauntlet crossovers were almost laughably inessential (unless, for instance, a tale of Silver Surfer and the Rhino gathering up escaped zoo animals had such a subtle resonance with respect to the larger story that I somehow failed to detect it), whereas the Civil War and Secret Invasion minis are fairly slight and shitty stories on their own and really only work in the context of an 80-issue story that most people don't have the time/money/wherewithal to fully experience. I respect that to an extent, but it's a hard sell for sure.

that's a totally fair assessment - if you didn't dig New/Mighty Avengers i can see it all not being very meaningful

I agree with everyone who's stumping for the cosmic stuff, by the way. Both Annihilations were sufficiently BIG and great fun, and I particularly liked reading them alongside Planet Hulk and that first year of Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men and their space shenanigans. I love that all of that disparate space stuff dovetailed into a larger, interconnected tapestry at a point. I have most of the rest of the subsequent ______ of Kings stuff, but I'm a couple of years behind on my Marvel reading at this point.

I wish Marvel had made a more sustained effort to mold this stuff into a line/continuing series of events rather than allowing it to devolve into...well, nothing I guess?

xpost

To be honest, I don't know what the lay reader would really get out of those recent crossovers. They really are mostly just extensions of the Bendis Avengers stuff, more or less, and your enjoyment of the events is probably gonna be on par with how much you enjoy his other stuff. Like, those Secret Invasion crossovers made up the bulk of the story, but so much of it was about flashing back to and filling gaps in earlier Bendis stuff that I don't see why anyone but a regular reader would care all that much. Like I say, though, I kinda dig the herculean effort Marvel/Bendis have undertaken in recent years to mold their books into this massive years-long story, even if it is a little difficult for the casual fan to dip in and out of.

Say what you will, Bendis did make the Avengers the spine of the Marvel Universe, which is really should have been but the x-men kind of trumped in the 80s and I got a feeling that might be a hard thing to keep going.

My only big complaint with the current Marvel era is the extent to which character development has been kicked to the curb in favor of the devotion to BIG STORIES. They aren't doing much currently that compares with '80s Claremont X-Men in terms of characterization or development of relationships. Marvel has shed a lot of the old school soap in favor of non-stop paramilitary action.

I think there's a thread from me about "Why is Marvel trying to make me care about the Avengers, I don't wanna?" shortly before it all kicked off :)

DC 1,000,000 >> all of this tbh.

I think I was the only one to really like Secret Warriors? That and Secret Avengers. I guess I just like recent Marvel secret stuff.

Farrell OTM. Funny how DC 1,000,000 is hardly ever spoken of today when it was the place that GM laid out the blueprint that he'd be working from for the next ten years or so.

It was? All I can remember from it is that it featured the ending for All-Star Superman before All-Star Superman was even conceived. Other than that, I didn't think it was that impressive, just your typical superhero time travel shenanigans. What's the blueprint you're talking about?

Mostly that. I might've overstated my case for comedic/trolling effect.

Like DC's Invasion! (plotted by Giffen), it did a masterful job of giving every single title in the line a reason to be involved in the 'event', the ability to either get deeply involved or just do a peripheral self-contained story, a solid "core book" spine that enabled you to follow the main plot without reading dozens of books yr not interested in, a high-concept premise that meant you didn't even need to buy the core book if you didn't want to, and in the case of 1,000,000, overall plotting from Morrison that made the books that chose to get deeply involved richly rewarding in the overall context (eg the Superman titles & Resurrection Man vs the Legion books and Supergirl).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The top 3 are my favourite Marvel events, good result!

I'd love to hear whoever voted for Civil War to justify his vote, though... There may've been some good tie-ins, but the main miniseries felt forced and ended with a total anticlimax.

think it was me who voted civil war, enjoyed it far more than secret wars, which is just terrible in every way

Yeaaaahhh...I wonder if those who voted for Secret Wars have read it at all recently.

Annihilation is a worthy champion. I like WWH a lot, but mostly as a part of the larger Planet Hulk narrative.

Annihilation sort of fades into a blur of Marvel attempts to get me to give a fuck about Nova.

Yeaaaahhh...I wonder if those who voted for Secret Wars have read it at all recently.

I reread a few years ago for the first time since the 80s, and was surprised how good it still was. There are some awesome superhero feats (Hulk holding up a mountain), some funny stuff (Klaw is the perfect foil for Doom), some cool new characters (Titania!), unexpected twists (who would've guessed Doom could do that?), all in all just lots of great moments (the scene where the heroes get resurrected, and Klaw's explanation of is just perfect - the perils of omnipotence). Sure, there are some pointless stuff too: I never got why Shooter thought Kitty and Peter should be separated, since as far as I understood their age difference was only 2 or 3 years; the undermining of Captain Marvel is kinda nasty (especially she was the only major black superheroine besides Storm); and the Wasp/Magneto romance is just pointless (though from what I've gathered it was because Shooter didn't know about Claremont's plans for Magneto, and was preparing for him to become an Avengers character). But all in all it was a tight series with an exciting plot that had a clear beginning and ending; being the first company-wide crossover event in superhero comics, it didn't yet suffer from things that came to define such stories soon afterwards. For example, even though Crisis on Infinite Earths was more "important", compared to SW it's a mess: multiple climaxes, pointless attempts to include every minor DC character to the story, plotlines that don't go anywhere and can be followed only by reading stuff beyond the main series, shaking up the status quo just for the hell of it, only for things to revert back to the way they were not long afterwards. Sadly CoIE, and not SW, was the model for future crossover events for both DC and Marvel.

IIRC, Secret Wars was only a crossover event in the most perfunctory sense (i.e. heroes mysteriously disappear in one issue only to mysteriously reappear in the following issue).

Yep, that's pretty much it, and I think that's the proper way to do a crossover: have everything that matters happen in the main crossover series itself. It's kinda irritating to read one of the later Marvel crossovers and realize that in order to get some important plot points I have to acquire other titles I would never otherwise read.

And even more irritating is when I'm following only one or two Marvel titles and don't care about big events, but these titles still get enmeshed in them, so I'd need to read a dozen other comic books in order to get what happening in that one series I follow. For example, the only Marvel book I'm currently reading regularly is Avengers Academy, and it would work perfectly as a standalone book, but they still have felt the need to cross it over with all this Fear Itself and Avengers vs. X-Men bullshit. That kind of plotting policy is really unfriendly for the casual reader who doesn't have the time/money/interest to read 10 different books a month, no wonder all the casual readers have abandoned Marvel and DC and all that is left is hardcore superhero fans.

thank god for the purity and integrity of jim shooter

original secret wars crossed over into spiderman at least?

IIRC, the only major changes that SW caused were:

1) Spider-Man got the new suit, though I'm not sure whether Shooter intended it to be a symbiote instead of just a cool new outfit?

2) The new Spider-Woman was introduced. I can't remember whether she even got her own title, though?

3) Kitty and Colossus broke up because of Colossus' affair with the alien woman. (Like I said, this was because Shooter thought Kitty was too young to date Colossus, which feels a bit odd, as Colossus was constantly referred to as a teenager himself. Maybe it was because Colossus didn't look like a regular teenager, and Shooter thought a casual reader would think he's an adult man?)

4) The Thing stayed on the Secret Wars planet and She-Hulk became a temporary member of the Fantastic Four.

Yeah, there were ramifications in other titles after SW. It just wasn't a crossover in the traditional sense.

And, Tuomas, while I understand your complaints about more recent crossovers from a practical/personal standpoint, I think it's unfair to judge them from a qualitative standpoint just because they require you to spend more money. There's definitely an argument to be made that they've become too bloated (I was appalled once it dawned on me late in the game how much I was spending on Secret Invasion and Blackest Night (the latter of which effectively ending DC's association with my wallet)), but from a story standpoint, I vastly prefer this modern style of crossover to that more perfunctory style of old. For example, I recently re-read The Infinity Gauntlet, and I realized that the crossover issues were completely useless in the context of the larger story. In terms of actual crossover, a serious waste of time and money. So while, yes, the Secret Invasion miniseries on its own is awful and borderline insulting with respect to how little of the story is contained within its boundaries, the larger crossover is much better and more engaging because it treats the crossover issues like tiles in a story mosaic. YMMV whether the larger story hangs together for you or justifies the expense, but I find this type of crossover much more satisfying from a narrative standpoint. Particularly in the context of Marvel's more recent attempts to create one large and cohesive world with a more all-encompassing larger story which is perpetuated over the course of years. That "cohesive world building via modular narrative" thing is a large part of why I enjoy mainstream comics, in a nutshell.

Saleswise? THE AVENGERS flick, obv.

Operation Galactic Storm would've gotten a vote if I hadn't missed this poll.

In the mood for an big comic event to get caught up in, and with me spurning the new DC as I would spurn a rabid dog, I dipped into Marvel Infinity to see if it was any good.

Having not bought more than 5 Marvel comics in the last 10 years, Can anyone give me a heads up now if I am totally wasting my time.

Spoiler = I know I am totally wasting my time.

I think you only really need passing knowledge of Thanos Rising, Avengers (since Marvel NOW) and New Avengers. The tie-in issues have been rank though, and Thanos Rising was mommy-issues.

"In the mood for an big comic event to get caught up in..."

Annhilation and Planet Hulk are really good self contained reads in trade paperback form and probably will always be in a 'best-of Marvel Comics' of this period.

Anyone familiar with Atlantis Attacks? I used to have the X-Men annual from that year, but nothing else. Is the whole crossover any good?

How is Onslaught in here but not Age of Apocalypse?

This seems like as good a place as any to ask a stupid continuity question. I understand Noh-Varr/Marvel Boy is in Young Avengers now, and had a brief run as both a villain and a shitty off-brand superhero with a wretched costume called "The Protector". What the Wiki articles (yes, I consulted Wikipedia and the Marvel wiki, it's been that kind of weekend) don't mention is how exactly this works, since Marvel Boy didn't even take place on Marvel's usual Earth-616.

WIZARD DID IT, I'm guessing?

Sure Marvel Boy took place on 616 who says it didn't, huh

(they hand-waved it and he was found in the same prison they stuck him in at the end of the Morrison mini-series)