Anihilation

After a period of absence (Read work) I have returned, and nothing in the main world is annoying me too much so I can go back to the more enjoyable pastime of talking a load of toot about comics, SF, Games etc.Marvel have been taking a lot of flak for their current habit of bumbling form one evnt to the next (Dissasembled, House of M, Civil War and World War Hulk have all been in very quick succession) however my main gripe is that all too often these are eclipsing some really great titles.So, today I'm talking about the other big event. Anihilation. It started around civil war, marvel wanted to re-boot their cosmic characters and decided to do a mini event. We got Anihilation, the format was simple, a one shot, followed by 4 4-part series, followed by a 6 part series. The success of this lead to a Nova Ongoing and a Hearalds of Galactus 2 part series. In it Anihilus invades with a crushing shock attack. It wipes out the Nova Corps leaving only Rich Rider, now holding the worldmind as Nova Prime, the last of the Nova Corps and features many of marvels cosmic stable, from Moondragon to quasar.So why did this work for me, after all, I don't know half of thsese characters and ditched the last Nova ongoing after issue 1. Well the writing is stunning. But aside from that, its self contained. Granted the 4 LS tended to go off on tangents, but they all come back together for the main event, war against Anihilus. notably Anihilation didn't affect any ongoing titles but did shake up Marvels cosmic universe and kill off a main Marvel Character (Quasar).This is how a big event shoudl be, ignorable. I can pick it up if I'm interested, but leave it without any of the other titles I read being involved. Now its sequil series Conquest has tied in with one ongoing, Nova, and I don't blame it at all, after all I'd be more miffed if we didn't see nova in a big inter-galactic story. Also if I'd not picked up the Conquest one shot Nova caught you up enough to know what was going on for Nova's story while at the same time not focusing too much on the previous 4 issues of Nova to concern those who are just picking this up for the Conquest Tie in. Overall its clean but self contained. Compare this to World War Hulk. I was aware of it going on, but didn't pick it up, but I do read Iron man, so the current return of mandarin story gets put on hold for world war hulk (like the Mandarin was just hanging around waiting for this hulk thing to blow over) and then suddenly we're back as if world war hulk didn't happen. It was pretty jarring and not well executed at all.So, in future, I want more like Anihilation, less like Word War Hulk, Civil War et all. As does my wallet, and my soon to be wife.