It seems to happen every year. All your favorite comics start ramping up their storylines. Something big is coming. They are all leading to something. The big summer event! And, like moths to the flame, we get extremely excited about the upcoming crossover in our favorite universe. Finally, all our beloved characters join together to fight a common threat and we flock to the comic shops to pick up endless tie-ins.

And then, 4 months later, suddenly, our passion for this event, this amazing, life-changing book that will forever alter the comic world forever, dies and we are left wondering when this epic story will end and we can get back to loving our comics again. This, my friends, is what we call event fatigue and it can happen to the best of us.

I wanted to write a little about this issue because I am feeling event fatigue with Secret Invasion right now. It is strange, as this is my first major event since starting to read comics on a weekly basis. I didn’t expect to feel this much disdain for the event, especially since this is my first. I read Civil War in about a month (which is how I started in comics) and loved it. I then read World War Hulk in about a month as well and loved that, too. I expected Secret Invasion to be no different. So now, I begin to wonder if maybe major events like this read better when you take them all at once, without having to wait a month in between the main story.

There is also the issue of the tie-in. I wonder if I would feel the fatigue less if I wasn’t blogging about comics. But nevertheless, it feels like I can’t go a week without mentioning Secret Invasion. Now that things are winding down, this is not quite as bad, but at the peak of Secret Invasion, around July or August, I’d say, at least half of my weekly books involved Secret Invasion. Sure, it is great that these big crossover events involve the whole universe, but at a point, we, as the readers, need a break from this story. We can’t be expected to maintain interest in one story for long. This is why the story arc works so perfectly. After about 6 issues of a story, we get a change. But this is worse when it is a major event, because 6 issues of every comic you read means that you are getting the same story, over and over, every week. And this gets tiresome.

I’m not saying that comic book publishers should not do events. In fact, I think they just about have to. Take a look at Marvel. Without the big crossover events, the universe would not be nearly as interesting as it is. Without Civil War, we wouldn’t have a dead Captain America, the Initiative, and Spidey’s Brand New Day. These events are game changers. They keep the universe from getting stale and boring. The end of Secret Invasion is set to bring in Dark Reign, which, if the ominous title says anything, is going to be a big paradigm shift for the Marvel U. The complaint really comes down to how much time do we really need to spend on an event. Those of us deep into comics have been preparing for Secret Invasion for at least all of this year. And by this point, with Secret invasion wrapping up in a few weeks, we are sick of thinking about it. It seems that the publishers could throw the tie-ins into a 2 or 3 month period, at the peak of the event, to keep things exciting at the turn, but at the start and end, just make it all about the main story.

Maybe I’m alone on this complaint and maybe others love having one big story to get deep into for months. If so, write a comment and let me know about your feelings on event fatigue. Regardless of your view, post a response and give us your opinions. I’ll ask the question: Are you feeling Event Fatigue?