The phrase "event comic" has practically become a four letter word for many comic book readers these days. On the surface, events seem like a great concept. The whole point is that a publisher gathers its greatest and best-selling writers and artists and allows them to tell a big superhero epic on a scale grander than usual. The creators tend to have more freedom to make big, sweeping changes to characters and the world around them, resulting in a major new status quo for the universe in question. The comic gets big hype, sells well, and everyone's happy.

Wolverine probably dies of exhaustion at this point.

Except that last part seems to happen more and more rarely. Plenty of readers complain about event fatigue. Some make a point of skipping events entirely and dropping books that happen to tie in with those stories. And while events tend to be among the best-selling comics of any given year, recent events haven't made the sales splash books like Civil War and Infinite Crisis did a decade ago. More and more, the consensus is that event comics aren't living up to the hype. Why is that? And why is it that writers who routinely deliver some of the best, most exciting superhero adventures on their monthly titles often fail to meet that standard when they tackle these event comics? Why is the ongoing Ultimate Spider-Man comic always so good, but last year's Cataclysm event wasn't? Why can't Original Sin impress the same way Jason Aaron's work on Wolverine and the X-Men or Thor: God of Thunder does?A little background is probably in order. Event comics first became a thing back in the mid-1980s. Marvel storylines like Mutant Massacre and Secret Wars II began to experiment with telling major stories with subplots that expanded into other comics in the form of tie-in issues. DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths drastically revamped the DC Universe in 1985, and many DC books tied into that conflict in various ways (often as minor as a comic's protagonist seeing red skies as the multiverse collapsed). Marvel and DC began to emphasize this style of big, crossover-heavy storytelling more and more with comics like The Death of Superman, Knightfall, Acts of Vengeance, and Infinity Gauntlet. Heck, the X-Men practically turned into one nonstop crossover event for a few years. But as with all the excesses of the '90s, eventually this practice fell away and things died down for a while.It wasn't until around 2004 that events came back into vogue, with Marvel using Avengers Disassembled to drastically shake up that franchise and DC kicking off the Identity Crisis mini-series. Disassembled begat House of M begat Civil War begat World War Hulk and so on. And now both publishers seem to always have at least a couple big crossover storylines unfolding at any given time. Right now, DC has the "Doomed" crossover in the Superman books, they're setting up a major New-Earth/Earth-2 conflict in several books, and the Green Lantern franchise has become as event-driven as the X-men franchise was 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Marvel is wrapping up Original Sin and preparing for The Death of Wolverine, AXIS, and the Avengers NOW marketing push in the months ahead.All of this points to one of the most obvious problems with event comics right now - there are too many of them. It was one thing when they only came around once in a while. Event comics were still a novelty in the days of Infinite Crisis and House of M. They were something to get excited about and look forward to for several months. But as commonplace as events are, there's no chance to build up any sort of anticipation. They're not special anymore. Nor is there adequate opportunity for writers to explore the ramifications of events. That was a problem even when Marvel followed an annual cycle. Writers would craft one storyline where their respective books dealt with the fallout of an event, and then their next storyline would already be setting the stage for the next. That's a pattern Brian Michael Bendis' Avengers books and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's cosmic books followed for years. But now that Marvel publishes at least two line-wide, universe-spanning events a year, the problem is only compounded. There will only be a matter of weeks in between the conclusion of Original Sin and the start of AXIS.Editorial interference also seems to be an issue. It's a massive undertaking to plan a crossover that links the Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and other franchises into one big story. Numerous writers, artists, and editors have to be involved. Plans have to be drawn up well in advance so that everyone knows what's happening when and how the various books will intertwine. Writers have to know exactly what they can and can't do with their particular piece of the larger puzzle. Wolverine can't stab the Red Skull here if he's busy slicing Loki in another book. That sort of rigid storytelling environment is just inherently limiting in some ways. Writers are better off left to their own devices, telling their own, self-contained stories within a more general set of editorial guidelines.