I miss the days when nothing was connected.

That's been my main complaint about JLA for the past couple of issues. They didn't have anything to do with anything. McDuffie started off writing a story about the Injustice League, revealed it was a red herring to a much larger plot, and then bombarded us with issues that have absolutely nothing to do with his previous story, or even each other. The worst part is, you can tell it's editorially mandated in an attempt to get JLA's readers to read other books. It just makes me want to drop JLA.

 

I already did drop JLA, so I don't know what you're talking about. But we're in an age of event-driven comics. Comics have always had events, but they're more prominent now than ever before. When the events suck (like now), it's no fun to have everything chained together. But when they're good (like the build up to Infinite Crisis), it's actually pretty cool to see the characters all inhabit the same world and see their actions affect each other. So the shared universe aspect of today's event-driven comics are actually one thing I don't mind.

 

I'm going to say the period between IdC and Countdown to Infinite Crisis were the tightest and best continuity I have read thus far collecting.

 

and corp, what's your sig from?

 

On one hand I pretty much read all the build ups to Superman: Tangent's Reign in Ion and Justice League of America. They were books I already get.

On the other hand I don't give two s**ts about the Tangent Universe.

So I'm actually annoyed that I've been forced to read all these build ups when I have had no intention on reading the end result.

Although I am looking forward to the Salvation Run tie-in. I really like Salvation Run.

 

I feel the same way. At what point did DC get the idea that there's somebody out there that gives two flips about a universe where the flash is a pink girl? Here's an idea; show us something cool like Blue Beetle from vampire world, or the origin of Red Robin-51.

Salvation Run on the other hand is awesome, almost as good as Gotham Underground.

 

Well, Marvel solved this with their Ultimate series. It's definitely worth a read even though a lot of people raise their noses around it. There's something refreshing about finding the same story in the same book every month.

 

Hasn't the Ultimate universe had crossovers going on for years?

 

Dini's Detective Comics.

 

Nope. Crossovers, aside from minor cameos, were always handled in seperate miniseries, and still are to this day. One thing the Ultimate line did and does right from day 1.

I'm thinking DC Editorial must not value McDuffie at all, if they force him to drop his story, which was going somewhere, in favor of this utter crap. I really can't see how this is something other than setting him up to fail?

 

What about the time Johhny Storm went to high school with peter. or the time peter and wolverine switched bodies. or ultimate secret six.

 

Dini's Detective Comics was part of the Resurection of Ra's al Ghul crossover

 

back on original topic: it seems like there's very few titles which'll just give you a story-in-one issue.
you'll still get them in the solo titles (Dini's Detective, and a few out of Morrison's Batman, Morrison's crazygood All Star Superman), but its mostly team books which have the long span stories isn't it?

frankly its a fan-service to do the long stories which span many different books: it pleases the people who'll buy everything anyway, but scares away anybody who just wanted to pick up a comic one day (paying 5 dollars for five minutes of a movie? no thanks).
It seems like an editorial choice, an attempt to get established readers to buy more books at the cost of scaring away potential new readers. so the goal is to boost the purchasing habits of the current readership, not attract a larger readership.

 

I think this was done on purpose to get the reader to buy more..to read more. Fooling them into thinking this was essential reading. I know this is common sence..but it's sad that this is what comics have come down to in some cases.

 

But you didn't have to read UF4 to get the first part of "Johnny Goes to High School," then read USM for the second part, and UF4 for the third part. The entire story happened in one book.

 

good point.

 

I'm fairly certain that's from The Sword in the Stone.

 

You're gonna have to read either Trades or Warren Ellis' Fell

 

Not really. There are some mainstream comics that don't tie into other stories too often. Once in a while, but it's not as extreme as JLA. Captain America, for one, has been self-contained since Brubaker started except for one or two issues devoted to House of M or Civil War tie-ins, and those weren't even all that intrusive.

My avatar's from Sword in the Stone. My sig is from an argument Rags Morales and Rob Liefeld had on Newsarama.

 

Which is something y'all should already be doing, mothaf**kas.

 

More people would probably read it if it came out more than once a year.

 

I had already dropped JLA before this happened, but I seem to remember some advance warning being made in the last issue or so. And if I hadn't decided to drop that comic at that point, then I surely would have after seeing what was to come.

That being said, crossovers and tie-ins have been going on for many years. I don't really see how things have changed. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm not a big fan of crossovers. I think that in general, it tends to dilute the content and quality of the stories by quite a bit. It's better to just take all of that value (that's being spread out across different titles) and put as much of it as possible into each individual title.

 

I think the problem is that the big 2 tend to go too far one way or the other, regardless of what their policy is. Right now, we've definitely got an overabundance of event-driven crossovers. But if Marvel or DC changed their policy, they'd probably go too far and eliminate all crossovers, which also sucks. If the Black Widow has an organic purpose for appearing in Captain America, or Superman has an organic purpose for appearing in Birds of Prey, they should be allowed to. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

 

I chose to ignore that.