Today brings a pretty damn interesting confluence of events for Big Two comics: the release of not one, not two but three event comic issues. As you likely know, events have become increasingly common, as these flagships are the blockbusters of the comic world. Mostly restricted to Marvel and DC, today we’ll see “Forever Evil” #1 from DC and “Infinity” #2 and “X-Men: Battle of the Atom” #1 from Marvel. If you dig events, this is your golden age.
If you don’t…well, there are other comics for you to read.
As a long time fan of comics who grew up in the heyday of events – the 90’s – this aligning of the eventful stars had me thinking about events and what my favorites are. With that in mind, here are my personal five favorite events of all-time. Make sure to share your favorites in the comments, and let us know your thoughts on today’s releases as well.
5. Infinite Crisis
The predecessor to #1 on this list, Infinite Crisis was the book that got me back into superheroics after years of being out of the game. I had read copies of the first three issues in the small shop in my college town of Moscow, Idaho, and by the time the fourth issue came – where Superboy Prime took on the Teen Titans and basically anyone else with a pulse – I couldn’t wait for the book to get into my shop that often saw delays. I actually begged a friend from nearby Spokane to bring a copy with when he came into town, and I voraciously devoured it. This book singlehandedly got me to switch from buying trades only and predominantly Vertigo and Image books, to getting back into floppies and capes books as well.
This book came from writer Geoff Johns and artists Phil Jimenez, Jerry Ordway, Ivan Reis and George Perez, and if you wanted to explain what the DC universe is…or was…all about, this book would do a pretty damn good job. A magnum opus of the event comic art form.
4. Sinestro Corps War
Incredibly, I actually came into this event late. I was always a Kyle Rayner guy. He was my Green Lantern. But when I came into this, the crown jewel of Geoff Johns’ run as a Green Lantern writer, I came to realize that this was so much bigger than an artist with the will and imagination to accomplish anything. It was a sprawling cast put into horrible situations, and the way they proved themselves as heroes as they got out of it. Told in widescreen glory by artists Ivan Reis, Ethan Van Sciver and Patrick Gleason, this is maybe the best looking event comic series ever, and with Johns and Peter Tomasi guiding the way, it was also one of the most action packed and purely representative of the section of the universe it existed in. It took Green Lantern and changed everything forever, leading us to where we are today: a Green Lantern world.
3. Annihilation
Like the top book on this list, this event did an incredible job of telling a massively successful story considering it didn’t have any flagship characters, but ultimately it doesn’t matter who is in it because this story is flat out brilliant. Written by Keith Giffen and illustrated by Andrea di Vito, this comic is an incredible “pick it up and read it” story of cosmic, epic proportions on a scale that made it feel like the universe could be finished by the end of the story. However, if you read the lead up stories – in particular the Drax and Nova minis – this story gets all the more richer. This story instantly revitalized the cosmic Marvel universe, and without it, I’d wager we wouldn’t be seeing a “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie in 2014.
2. Age of Apocalypse
Full disclosure: I read this for the first time when I was 11, and holy crap, as a young X-Fan, this thing blew my damn mind. I love stories in which we get stories of how things could have been, and this event completely replaced all of the titles from the world of the X-Men for an extended period. To me, it felt like nothing would ever really be the same, and in a lot of ways, it did actually change things. Isn’t that the purpose of event comics? To do just that? This was a monumentally entertaining series that also was about as flat out cool as comics could get.
Continued belowOr at least to this permanent 11 year old.
1. 52
Not a traditional event comic in that it was 52 issues long, this definitely looks and feels like an event though, and that is enough for me. I’m actually re-reading this in omnibus form right now, and it is a book that weaves one of the finest superhero tapestries ever in comics, as writers Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns pour their individual strengths into a book that is inventive, exciting and completely unparalleled in sheer scope and scale. Add in Keith Giffen’s work on breakdowns and the litany of gifted artists who contributed pencils on the book, and you have one of the most incredible year long endeavors in the history of superhero comics.
It gets massive bonus points considering it is an event comic with a cast filled with “B-list” characters like The Question, Ralph Dibny and Booster Gold that made us care for them like they were one of DC’s vaunted Trinity. More than them, even.
