By way of personal example, I skipped ALL of the Flashpoint tie-ins and did feel like I missed a lot reading just the main series. Oh...I was able to figure out what happened, but it always felt like I was only reading half of the story.
On the other hand, I bought everything for Fear Itself and am now kicking myself. When it is all over, I'll have invested WAY more time and money in the miniseries than in the event itself. Let's run them down:
Fear Itself: Black Widow - I recall thinking this was okay and liking the art, but I don't remotely remember what happened.
Fear Itself: Deadpool - Awful and unimportant. Uncanny X-Force has showed that Deadpool can be a real character, but this miniseries was dreadful.
Fear Itself: Fearsome Four - Terrible. This has had the most jumbled art team imaginable. My only excuse for this is that Marvel thought Michael Kaluta was doing this series (which would have been good), but when that fell through....they soldiered on anyway. The high point has been a few pages with Simon Bisley art.
Fear Itself: Fellowship of Fear - Ugh. A recap of who the Worthy are in FI. Seem to recall this was all reprint material.
Fear Itself: FF - Again....very unmemorable. I think it had to do with Ben Grimm getting Worthified, but I can't really remember.
Fear Itself: Spider-Man - Not terrible, but not really necessary. It just showed that folks in NYC are scared and doing bad things.
Fear Itself: The Deep - A beacon of hope in the mediocrity. This has been a lot of fun seeing, Loa, Lyra, Strange, Namor and the Surfer battle Attuma. Nice job!
Fear Itself: The Home Front - The main attraction here has been the 7-part Speedball story with art by Mike Mayhew. It's been a fine story, but I just don't care about Speedball that much. Very skippable.
Fear Itself: The Worthy - I don't remember this at all. But, looking up in this post, I think I've got it mixed up with Fellowship of Fear so it can't have been anything special.
Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force - Not very good, but then again....I'm not a very big Simone Bianchi fan. Skip.
Fear Itself: Wolverine - Not bad, but not essential and you can get your Wolverine fix in about 50 other places in the Marvel U.
Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt - Quite good and well worth reading.
Now, by contrast, I also follow most of the ongoing Marvel series that have tied-in to Fear Itself. Not all of those issues have been awesome, but most have been quite good. I'd say that they're all of about equal quality with the regular series so if you like Bendis' Avengers, you'll like his Fear Itself tie-in issues.
So, looking at that butcher's bill, I said, "Self, what the hell are you doing? You are smarter than this. You KNEW that those miniseries would be a little disappointing overall and you ordered them anyway. What did you expect?" and I resolve that I was done (I mean it, D - O - N - E!) with event tie-in miniseries.
I was chuckling to myself about how I'd finally had a moment of clarity in comics, how much more compact my pull list would be and how much more time I'd have to read better material.
And then Spider-Island happened... In addition to running through the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, there are a few tie-in miniseries and they're all quite good. Cloak & Dagger, Spider Girl and Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu feature art by Emma Rios, Pepe Larraz and Sebastian Fiumara respectively and I couldn't be happier that I brought them home with me. Does this mean that event miniseries are good?
So, what are the lessons of event tie-ins:
1) Be careful what you pre-order. When a series is only 3-4 issues long, you'll be committed to basically the whole series before seeing if the first issue is even good.
2) Don't go "all in". Read those solicits and look at the creative teams first. If there isn't a story hook or creator who excites you, skip it.
3) Remember that you can always find it somewhere. You will never "miss out" you little OCD bugger you. If I can go online and buy a copy of Eerie #1 (the ashcan where only 200 were printed) and have it Fedexed to my house tomorrow, you will be able to find these event miniseries somewhere. When was the last time a Big 2 comic actually appreciated in value? At worst, you have to pay a few bucks in shipping but you'll be saving that by skipping most of the bad miniseries.
4) Pray for digital to happen faster. Won't it be nice to actually see some reviews before you download the comic to read it. Who's going to buy the miniseries that says, "Scattered mess with 3 different artists and only tangentially tied to the main event"?
- Dean Stell
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