Broken Frontier

I wasn’t surprised to see Marvel Comics pop up in iFanboy’s Worst Things in Comics 2011 list. Like Ron Richards, it pains me to see Marvel on there since, like him, I will always have a closer connection to Marvel than DC deep down. It’s purely a nostalgic thing, because I spent my teenage years as an X-freak more so than a Bat-boy. It’s also why I’ll take The Clone Saga over Knightfall when forced to reread a terrible line-wide crossover.

The failure of Marvel’s latest crossover – or event book – was one of the primary reasons Ron cited for Marvel’s bad performance last year. Indeed, Marvel seems intent to keep focusing on events even though Fear Itself clearly signaled everything’s bottoming out for them on that front. The heydays of Civil War (2006) are long past us and it’s becoming harder and harder to get excited about yet another crossover.

What have we had since?

2007 – World War Hulk: a great story for Greg Pak to bring his Hulk epic back to earth, but the shoe-horning in of the Marvel Universe felt forced at times.

2008 – Secret Invasion: the only crossover to come close to generating the same amount of buzz as Civil War did. The ‘who will turn out to be a Skrull?’ was a great hook, though

2009 – Dark Reign: a nice idea at the core, bun spun out over way too long a period of time, with the Dark Reign banner slapped on every title that had just a teeny weeny relation to it.

2010 – Siege: an enjoyable read, a solid and short event to put Dark Reign to rest and get Captain America back in the saddle. It also felt the true end-cycle on what Civil War had started.

2011 – Fear Itself: the proverbial one crossover too many. Everything that was supposed to matter (Bucky’s death) got either a ‘Meh’ from readers or a reset from Marvel a few months later.

True, Marvel set the bar awfully high with Civil War, delivering several jaw-dropping moments that really made an impact (Giolath’s  death, Peter Parker unmasking) and a reshuffling of the decks that had readers buying in. But what made Civil War so successful was that it was a complicated political puzzle weaved into a comic book plot, a conflict where none of the heroes were really right or wrong but stepped up for what they believed in. And most importantly, it was an event that came out of nowhere, like a scorching comet hitting earth at three thousand miles an hour.

The climate was right, the feeding ground was there. You could feel the need for a big event comic among fans even though no one was really saying it out loud, because big event comics had been dead in the water since the 90s comics bubble had burst and nobody wanted a repeat scenario of that.

For Avengers vs X-Men, Marvel’s big 2012 event, the timing might be right (a widescreen Avengers epic with Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie hitting theatres around the same time), but the climate isn’t there anymore. Sales figures for Fear Itself (and for Flashpoint at DC) were so disappointing that clamors to put a – temporary – halt to event books are becoming louder and louder.

The fact that Marvel is going all in, throwing all of their top writers, artists and characters on a heap, instills more fear in me than the failure of Fear Itself did. Because if this ‘It doesn’t get any bigger than this!’ crossover fails, what else is left to hit? Nothing except bottom ground, my friends. And I fear that AvX might become the big “THUD!” where Marvel’s current creative cycle bottoms out.

Before last week, I was hoping that AvX would bring us something relevant, something on par with Secret Invasion at least. I wasn’t expecting Civil War greatness, but definitely wouldn’t have been up for another Fear Itself ride. Axel Alonso says Marvel wouldn’t be doing a story like AvX if there were not going to be any hallmark moments, claiming the stakes have to be right “for the world's greatest super-teams to go head-to-head over something that really matters.”

Taking Alex’ words to heart, I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that AvX would blow me away (with all the Phoenix teasers leading to the return of Jean Grey, for example). And then came this.

Avengers vs X-Men: Versus. The book for the “quintessential Marvel fan”, Tom Brevoort said. I sighed.

Are my fears about to come true? Or am I the only one rolling my eyes when hearing Brevoort say "At the end of the day what you get excited about is seeing your favorite character pummel your friend's favorite character so you can laugh at them.”?

Sure, doing a book that does not serve any further purpose beyond giving fifteen year old kids a boner when they see Wolverine stick his six toothpicks in Emma Frost’s boob implants is ok. I would’ve liked seeing that when I was 15 too. By all means, AvX: Versus should be there for them. But the quintessential Marvel fan? Frankly, I think he or she wants creativity and storytelling that comes out of left field. That fan cheered for Front Line as the support book for Civil War. But AvX: Versus? You can’t throw ‘all-new, all-different’ out of the window any harder than you just did. Even the characters starring in the mini feel that way.

What’s even more cause for concern is that this tie-in mini reeks of Marvel vs DC: All-Access a bit too much. All-Access was published in the late 90s in a period when the Big Two were grasping at straws and came up with a lame event filled with not much more than “Hey, look whose butt I’m kicking!” moments. Innovation and unbound creativity were sorely missing from both companies after they had strung together event after event after event, ranging from excellent to average to god-awful. A short while later, the industry was on its ass and Marvel was facing bankruptcy.

Recent layoffs within the company aside, things are not as bleak today. Marvel still claimed the top spot in market share most months in 2011, but it was no doubt one of the company’s down years, and that’s not because DC stole the spotlight by hitting the reset button for The New 52.

I’m not saying Marvel should do something as drastic as their competition. What I am saying is that the same recipe has been tried one time too many, and now it’s time for something truly all-new, all-different.

Following that awful period in the late 90s, both creatively and company-strategically, we all of a sudden got Grant Morrison’s reinvention of the X-Men, the birth of the Ultimate universe and a rejuvenated Avengers line. Bam! Marvel was all the rave again.

That those last two benchmarks were spawned by Brian Michael Bendis, and that he’s now decided to leave the Avengers franchise behind may be coincidental, but it does reinforce my end cycle metaphor unlike anything else ever could. For Marvel, now is the time to stick the event genie back in the bottle, let creators break free and do something truly bold and daring that sets the comics world on fire.

Because that is what a quintessential Marvel fan expects from The House of Ideas.