Monday, June 9, 2014

Acts of (Re)Vengence

I recently discovered that an upcoming Marvel event is something called Axis which will involve the Avengers and X-men fighting against an alliance of several Marvel supervillains.



Which sounds a lot like the plot to an event from the 90's: Acts of Vengence


What is most meh raising about this newest event is that Marvel already had a bit of a Acts of Vengence rehash with their Dark Reign storyline several years ago:


So, yeah, as events go, this latest one definitely seems like it's running on fumes.
Though it did cause me to consider the nature of events. In doing so, I grouped them into 3 categories:

Continuity Conversions - those events that threaten to change everything about a given comics universe (or actually do so)

Some examples would include:
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths
  • Civil War
  • Avengers Vs X-men
  • Infinite Crisis
  • Age of Ultron
Morbid Mysteries - this is an event storyline that revolves around the unsolved murder of a some character.

Examples would include:
  • Identity Crisis
  • Original Sin
I actually like this type of storyline simply because so often, mysteries in comics are simply "Who is this mystery character?!" rather than a true mystery. When you consider how popular mysteries are on prime time television, their absence from superhero storylines is a bit surprising.

Toyetic Teamups - this is an event where some gimmicky grouping of characters is the hook.

Examples of this type are:
  • Blackest Night
  • Fear Itself
  • Sinestro War
  • Forever Evil
Looking at these, you can sort of see how an overdose of the Continuity Conversions has led to those getting devalued over time. One too many such events have suggested the storyline was going to change everything we ever knew only to leave us with nothing more than, I don't know...a momentarily dead Hercules.

Looking ahead, I suspect Grant Morrison's upcoming Multiversity storyline will be a bit Toyetic, but I'm going to check it out. He's usually got a good ear for what to keep and what to ditch when he's pulling items out of his fanboy closet.


As to this latest Acts of Vengence rehash Marvel is gearing up for, I suspect it will be a bit of wild ride - and not necessarily like fans would like. Remender can be a loose cannon with characters. (This is the guy who gave us Frankencastle)


While I find such wild abandon amusing, I suspect most Marvel fans want something a bit more conservative in nature.

It should be interesting to see how that pans out.

- Jim

6 comments:

  1. Jeez.The logo for AXIS reads like SIXIS. I know they're trying to make it so that it still reads the same upside down, but is that gimmick essential to the plot? If not, then they just sacrificed readability for a one-off gimmick (which isn't very well done in the first place).

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  2. I just redid my pull list in light of this positing. My retailer is a good guy, but he'll send me every junk spin-off/special/etc., if I don't remind him every other month that I only want core series.

    I just dumped a ton of Marvel! :-)

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  3. I had event fatigue before it was cool. Mine goes all the way back to Millennium.

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  4. @Reno - I agree with you on that logo. All of the _cool_ factor that might have been gained by having it be readable upside down (whatever that's worth) is completely diminished by the fact that half of the readers on BleedingCool couldn't even tell what it said.

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  5. @GACN - back when I had a pull list, I used to go through such yearly audits, culling out the titles I was simply getting because I hadn't told my LCS to stop putting them in my order. Since I've gone digital, it's a lot easier. If anything, I find myself ending runs perhaps too soon sometimes.

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  6. @MattComix - I remember passing on Millenium too!

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