Broken Frontier

I don’t want to make any enemies here, but I’m gonna write about something that seems to get a lot of people hot and bothered—and not in a good way.

Let me tell you a story.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a signing at a local comic shop. It’s a great shop. The manager is someone I consider a friend. The employees are all top notch. The customers are cool and I enjoy talking to them.

At some point, the manager and I started talking about events. Y’know… Fear Itself, Siege, Blackest Night, Civil War, Flashpoint, Secret Invasion… It was a short but lively conversation. As we talked, a customer walked through the door and overheard us. He was an older gentleman. I’m guessing he’s been reading comic books even longer than I have. Anyhow, hearing what we were talking about, he loudly proclaimed:

“Down with events!”

He threw his voice so that everyone around could hear him.

“Down with events!”

He didn’t talk to me directly as he stormed toward the back of the store.

“Down with events!” he cried. “Don’t write gimmicks! Just write good stories!”

I looked at the manager and smiled. He just shrugged and said, “Event fatigue.”

I should have probably let it alone, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I needed to call bullshit on this guy’s statements. I walked toward the back of the store, and said something along the lines of:

“I don’t know. I think there’s plenty of room to tell great stories within an event. And it seems like people like them. I mean, event books tend to outsell non-event books.”

“I don’t like reading events,” he said. “I only like reading good stories.”

“Well,” I said, “going into shameless self-promotion. My comic book, The Sixth Gun, has been getting some pretty great reviews, and it isn’t tied into any events whatsoever.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Down with events!”

It was interesting that he said that, but the pile of comic books he was buying included Fear Itself tie-ins and most of DC’s The New 52 books. All event books. (If you don’t think The New 52 are event books, you may not fully understand what an event is.) Did he have a copy of The Sixth Gun? Skullkickers? Chew? Severed? Scalped? American Vampire? Brilliant? Nope, nary a one.

So I had to point that out.

“There are a lot of non-event books on the shelves, you know. A lot of them are very, very good. I know people like to complain about events, but why do you think the event books outsell non-event books by as much as 1,000 to 1?”

“I hate events!” he said. “I only want a good story!”

We talked a little more, but he seemed stuck on his “Down with events!” tirade. It wasn’t a bad conversation, but I’m pretty sure at some point I told him I was gonna pull the replica of Gandalf’s staff from the wall and beat him up and down the store with it.

And then he left, buying only his event books.

“Down with events!” he cried back into the store as he left—proud, I’m sure, that he had demonstrated his position so eloquently.

So, here’s the thing. Events are a fact of comic book life. If there’s going to be a shared universe, a shared continuity, the characters within that universe are going to interact. The result is often an event. The first event comic I got hooked on was Secret Wars, and I loved it. I liked seeing all those different characters thrown together. I liked seeing how the story in one book affected all the others. I still like them. Events are a way for publishers to bring their characters together, shake things up a little, and (yes!) make a little money.

Buy your event books. Buy your non-event books. There are great stories to be found in the pages of both. Don’t bitch about an event just because it’s an event. Read it and enjoy it or not based on its own merits. And for pity’s sake, if you are going to complain about how there are no good stories out there, then you owe it to yourself (and to everyone who has to suffer through your complaining) to read some books that might be outside your comfort zone.

I suggest starting with a little book called The Sixth Gun.

Today’s Comic Book Bucket List

Today’s foray into things to do in comics before I die is…

Write a Devil Dinosaur Story

I don’t know what it is about a big red T-Rex that I think is so cool, but I’ve always loved Devil Dinosaur. I remember so vividly reading an issue of that book while sitting in Mrs. Broadhurst’s 5th grade class.

Mrs. Broadhurst didn’t approve of funny books, but I had finished my test early, so there was very little she could say about me reading instead of sitting there twiddling my thumbs or throwing spitballs. I think that if she had seen the title, she might have thrown some kind of holier-than-thou fit. But she never noticed. That was a small victory that made that school day a little more bearable.

Thanks, Devil.

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Cullen Bunn is the writer of The Damned, The Tooth, and The Sixth Gun from Oni Press and The Fearless from Marvel. He is also the author of a middle reader prose horror novel, Crooked Hills, from Earwig Press.
 
Website: www.cullenbunn.com
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