This week Secret Invasion ended. The fates aligned, as they needed to in order to end the great Skrull Invasion that was supposed to change the Marvel Universe, as we knew it. For months the “Who Do You Trust” banner has waved high and proud above most Marvel titles. Friend to betray friend, foe to align with hero, we would be witness to a new dawning in the age of Marvel Comics.

Problem is that didn’t happen.

Secret Invasion was, if nothing else, a really anticlimactic piece of fiction. It wasn’t bad or awful, it didn’t insult or offend, it just didn’t do anything. Writer Brian Michael Bendis is one of the greats in the field, a true master of the comic book genre and with Secret Invasion he weaved a really exciting and action packed tale. What made the story arc so anti-climactic to me was the end, which set us up for the next great Marvel event “Dark Reign”. Secret Invasion felt less like it’s own story and more like a way to bridge the events from Civil War to this new arc where villains are in charge.

Now for those who have not read the last issue of Secret Invasion, turn back here there are spoilers ahead. For those who have or don’t care about spoilers lets push on.

After months of hearing how Secret Invasion would change the Marvel universe the only thing that really happened was Norman Osbourne was put in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. Why was such an obviously stupid move executed? Well because everybody on TV saw Osbourne fire the shot that killed the Skrull Queen.

So either I believe that the greatest security division in history chose it’s leader from TV News Reporting or I’m left thinking that this was a plot device to set up Dark Reign. Either way it cut the balls off of Secret Invasion and forced it to be just a vessel to push into another event instead of it’s own thing.

Secret Invasion is not alone. Over at DC Final Crisis is facing a landslide of unhappy comic readers hell-bent on grabbing writer Grant Morrison by the lapels and forcing him to explain the story. The same goes true for Batman RIP, which again turned out to be anti-climactic. In fact after all the trippy and oddly written stories within Batman RIP you don’t even get to know what happens to Batman. You have to finish reading Final Crisis for that information. So why read Batman RIP at all, just follow Final Crisis.

In that same way there was the Marvel debacle Brand New Day that erased nearly all of Spider-Man’s history. Whose grand vision was that? I mean seriously, how many Vodka Tonics would you have to pour down Marvel editor Joe Quesada’s throat to make him say, “Let’s erase all of Spider-Man’s history from 1985 on!!”

Here’s what makes the Spider-Man thing worse. In the Secret Invasion stories Spider-Man is part of the anti-registration hero crew and a fugitive but in the normal Spider-Man title none of that is going on, though in Secret Invasion they have used the erased history to get out of the corner they painted themselves into when they unmasked Spider-Man. Are you confused? Don’t worry, most people are and I think the issue is with these giant “Events” which seem to hold hostage the idea of developing story lines or writing interesting comics without feeding into a mutli-issue, tie in heavy event.

These huge events have been losing steam progressively for years. Maximum Penalty, where the Marvel Earth was used as a prison for interstellar criminals, Civil War, Secret Invasion and over on DC all these repeats of the Multiple Earths thing is just getting old.

We as comic book readers want kick ass stories and arcs within the titles we read that hit an emotional core with us. Events seem to have lost that ability. The only truly interesting and exciting “Event” has been Planet Hulk and World War Hulk and these were events really focusing on one character.

In the issue-to-issue world of comics there are some wonderful things going on. Ed Brubaker’s run on Daredevil and Captain America is beyond reproach, J. Michael Straczynski’s Thor is really wonderful, Iron Fist has been great, Wolverine has kicked back into high gear, the convoluted X-Men is finding its footing again and even the problem soaked Spider-Man is kicking ass.

Then you look at all the Avengers titles, all the titles mainly tied into the big Secret Invasion event and, for lack of a better term, they suck. It doesn’t feel like those titles can stand on their own and the titles that can stand alone seem to get interrupted or their continuity fucked with in order to hawk these event mini-series.

Over at DC Superman’s New Krypton storyline is very exciting, as has been Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. The return of Marc Waid to writing The Flash has left us with some amazing stories the same with JLS and JSA. Even the out-of-universe titles such as Batman/Superman, Batman Confidential, All Star Superman and so forth have been offering up issue after issue of awesome material. What do all of these have in common? No need for a huge event.

The other problem with these giant events comes from the forever tug of war between art and commerce. Grant Morrison wrote Final Crisis and Batman RIP based largely off of what happened in the yearlong DC weekly comic 52. Instead of leaving that alone DC editor Dan Didio extended things another year with Countdown.

Countdown was an obviously slapped together, completely confusing and largely uninteresting weekly that took a year to finally limp to its end. That extra year made DC some cash but also took much of the sting out of Batman RIP and Final Crisis.

With Marvel it seems more like movie money dictates the trends. As soon as the word came out that Iron Man was hitting the big screen Marvel has been gearing everything towards making Iron Man the central character to the entire universe. Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion all seemed to focus on Iron Man.

Now that the Iron Man fever is over Marvel has quickly dumped old shell head back into peripheral character status. Mark my words, when we get closer to the Captain America movie Steve Rogers will miraculously return from the dead.

These kinds of tricks don’t attract new readers and piss off those of us who have been reading for years. Whenever I go into my comic book store to get my weekly books there is always a cry of discontent over these huge event arcs.

We’re not getting Crisis On Infinite Earths or Secret Wars anymore instead we’re given these gimmick heavy mini-series that also force us to buy other titles we don’t even collect simply to stay current. That says that Marvel and DC don’t care what we want, we can just take what they give us.

I don’t think all event series need to end I just feel they have gone overboard. Let there be these huge events once every two or three years, really shake things up and cause some excitement.

Stop trying to force one down our throats every six months to a year; it barely gives the natural titles time to flesh out stories and new characters before everybody has to jump back into the Big Event pool.

The event issue could also be solved by maybe doing individual character events but not make them so overly dramatic and Earth shaking. Don’t kill anybody or erase their history or force them to retire, just tell a story that creates an event in a characters life and that will shape the future of the title.

With an individual character event you emotionally invest the reader as well as possibly drawing in people who have never read that specific title. Nobody is forced to buy three issues of every book or side titles that tie into the main Event Mini-Series. Really, seriously, it’s enough already.

Comic books are hard enough to make interesting and reinvent just on their own. You’re taking heroes that have been around for decades that play out in a two dimensional format and trying to create new and exciting literature out of that. It isn’t easy and the writers and artists have a tough enough job focusing on those aspects, why make it harder? Why interrupt the flow of a title doing well by forcing it into an event?

Was Secret Invasion awful? No. Were Final Crisis and Batman RIP the most god-awful comics ever committed to paper? Not a chance. What they are though is proof that these events are losing steam with both the creators and the readers of comic books. So lets end it, let us as fans call for moratorium on Big Events within the world of comic books.

I’d much rather walk into the shop on Wednesday and have a myriad of amazing titles to choose from because writers and artists are being left alone to create what they need to create. Nobody is standing over their shoulders making sure what they do is feeding into the next big event series. Remember this: Eisner, Kirby, Lee, Ditko, Steranko, Moore and the other giants of the field didn’t need Big Events to make magic, so why do we?