Marvel, I think you have a problem

You see, after the grotesque screw-up that was Secret Empire, Marvel declared they were done with “event” stories for a while. I was all for this because, to be frank, comics are expensive and regularly expecting a niche audience of people with adult financial responsibilities to massively increase the amount of money they're giving you is bad business. Making that strategy the main way you introduce new series and concepts is a recipe for disaster.

Furthermore, the event model interrupts regular series' narratives for months on end, sometimes in pretty intrusive ways, like when Al Ewing's Ultimates series basically forgot its own premise for the durations of Civil War II and Secret Empire.

So this sounded like a pretty good idea to me.

Except...

Right now Avengers and Champions are having a crossover and after that the three Avengers titles are collapsing into a single weekly title for a sixteen week event (and I am still not clear on whether U.S.Avengers, my favourite Marvel title, is coming back afterwards); Amazing Spider-Man, which only just established a brand new status quo, is just starting a crossover with Venom; and, the X-Men books are heading towards Phoenix Resurrection sometime in the new year.

And this is Marvel trying to cut down on events that force their readers into additional purchases or, more realistically, into dropping smaller titles that are less prone to them like the late, lamented Unstoppable Wasp (lamented by me, damn it).

I think those guys have a problem.