101: "A Thing That Happens, Especially One of Importance"

A look at "event comics" and my own origins in the comic book industry.

101 is a series about foundations - both in comics, and my engagement with the medium. Today, we’re talking a bit about “events”.

One of the first event comics I engaged with as a retailer was Civil War #7. I was fresh into the business, working part time at a shop, lowest on the pecking order, and scared to death.

I had set up my file maybe a month or so prior to getting the job. After turning 21, I decided that I had left enough of a personal mess in Central Alberta that it would be best to try something else out entirely. My sister was attending a fancy dancing school in Edmonton, and she needed a roommate. I had somewhere to land. It was something.

I was able to transfer my job working at a bookstore chain to a location just a short walk away from where I’d be living. It was part time, so I was going to need something else to help pay my share of rent and food. In typical fashion, I put this off until I could find a home for my comics pull list. I had enough saved up to get me through a few months if I couldn’t find work, but if I missed a few issues of my books, I didn’t want to have to scramble to track them all down.

My co-workers were kind enough to direct me to a few of the nearby shops. I landed at a shop called Wizards because it was the only place that greeted me when I walked through the door as a new customer. That was a thing I had never experienced before. When I returned later that week with my pull list, they were putting a “help wanted” sign in the window. I immediately went home and updated my resumé and returned a couple hours later.

I didn’t hear anything for two weeks. I would pop in one Wednesday, nervous as hell. The owner would ring me through and ask me a few questions about what I thought about certain books. On the third week, he asked me if I would like a job. I was thrilled.

I started two weeks later, after telling the manager of the bookstore about my changes in availability. I would not be able to work Wednesdays, or Saturdays. Those were my days at the comic shop. It was absolutely terrifying.

Up until my mid twenties, I was painfully shy, and eager to please. The store owner thought this was hilarious. He was the prankster type, who’d let you twist in the wind a little before letting you get back on the ground. During my second week, I dropped a statue and it broke. It was one of those stupid ones that has a base that isn’t attached to the statue at all - just something the OTHER base of the statue sat on. I was on dusting duty, and the thing just slid right off and smashed on the ground. I was mortified. The owner came at me with a “what the hell!” He sounded pretty livid. I babbled a long apology that I don’t think made much sense, and he let me go for quite a while before his face broke out into a smile.

He clapped his hand on my shoulder, “Hey, I’m not being serious. This happens all the time, don’t worry about it.” He proceeded to tell me about other statues that had met similar fates at his hand. It was a thing that happened. I was relived… but boy, was my heart ever beating fast.

Working in a comic shop was a dream of mine. When I was a kid, I used to wait forever as the dial up would tell me about the new comics that were coming out on any given month from Marvel. Most of these, I wouldn’t be able to get, because my mom didn’t much care for the habit. I usually made it to a comic shop twice a year, somewhere around my birthday, and just after Christmas. Once I had transportation of my own, the game completely changed.

I was the kind of customer retailers dream about. I dug through sites to get info, sent in my orders early, and took the time to browse of bonus goodies while I was in the store. I wasn’t happy with the things I could discover on my own. I wanted more, and was easily swayed by a decent recommendation. I was going to know everything I possibly could about the medium that I loved, and I would happy pay to learn more.

Getting the job at Wizards felt like something tangible after floating adrift after high school. College had proven to be a terrible fit for my brain, and dosed me with my first bout of depression - though I wouldn’t realize that for over a decade. My personal life was as messy as a shy 19-20 year old could make things, and it seemed to change on a dime. And suddenly, after a move, I had landed somewhere that felt solid. I was attached to a thing that I was passionate about, and I didn’t want to lose that. Every little prank sent me into a mild panic. And there were a lot of pranks.

This translated to my relationship with a lot of the customers. I was quiet for… probably the first year of working there. I let the manager do most of the talking. He was kind to me, always down to chat about some of the newer books, as well as offer recommendations of his own. I worked with him on Wednesdays, and someone else entirely on Saturdays. This someone else was a bit of a grump, and didn’t talk to me much. I always felt he was mad at me. I would later learn that it was more of a demeanour thing than anything else - but it certainly didn’t help with my level of comfort working that shop.

I had no doubt that I knew my stuff, but I was terrified to say anything. I didn’t want to have a wrong opinion. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing. I didn’t want to have this thing that I dreamed of for so long slip through my fingers for any reason whatsoever.

Enter Civil War #7.

art by Steve McNiven, who never met a deadline he didn’t hate

The series had kicked off molten hot. This was pretty standard for crossovers at the time - kicking off with a banger that got people talking. I remember forums generating long threads on each issue, dissecting the good and the bad. I remember the sales charts showing a huge interest from readers. And I remember the absolute rejection of the ending by nearly the entirety of the folks who were buying it in the shop.

Folks were let down, and they weren’t afraid to voice their opinion. The ending is Captain America just giving up after being tackled by some randos? The climactic finalé wasn’t a resolution? Why did we bother?

As a baby retailer, I went along with this flow. I had been underwhelmed by the ending, but I was still intrigued by what was supposedly happening next - a Marvel universe where heroes were firmly entrenched on opposite sides of a divide. Something interesting had been set up by the series, even if the ending itself was lacking. There was something there, right? And wait… wasn’t it my job to make sure we sold the comics that were coming up? Doesn’t that get more problematic if folks are focusing on what didn’t work, instead of what did?

This was a tipping point for me. Something that I knew I could help with. The owner wasn’t happy with the ending and was crapping on it every chance he got. The manager clowned on it with his pals. The other worker wasn’t talking it up either. If someone was going to switch the discourse, it was going to be me.

Now, there were some things that I know now, that I didn’t know then. First and foremost: people shitting on books is actually a good thing in terms of engagement. It’s like wrestling. If the crowd is cheering, you’re golden, and if the crowd is booing, you’re also golden. It’s when they’re not saying anything - that’s when you have a problem. Civil War was causing a conversation, and while the landing had left folks cold in terms of how the story worked in a vacuum, it caused very few people to disengage with Marvel’s line of comics.¹

Second: there isn’t a big event in the world that has been saved by this kind of scrutiny. You can always get away with a hot beginning because a beginning offers potential. An ending for an event has to realize the potential as imagined by a swath of different human beings while also functioning as the ignition for what comes next. Because of this need, the ending to an event can never really be an ending. It will never fully satisfy, nor will it truly end.

Civil War #7 was the first step in realizing that superhero comics aren’t built to have any form of a satisfying conclusion. If you’ve landed on an ending, it means that you’ve failed at doing the capitalism properly. The services of the character are no longer required, so it is off to the deep trivia mines with you. The machine needs blood. So what’s next?

I’ve taken to calling this state of being “the perpetual second act” - the stasis that every title and event in Marvel and DC live within to satisfy the needs of the machine. When you’re in those worlds, especially as a retailer, you have to know that there is no end game. To plan such a thing would be tantamount to admitting failure, and would be detrimental to the bottom line. There has to be tomorrow, going on in perpetuity. So we don’t get conclusions - especially in event comics.

So the question becomes: as a retailer, how can you reconcile this with the expectations of your customers? For them, and for many retailers, the ride is the thing. The event is an event because it is important, and it needs to create a satisfying change. But that change can’t come at the cost of an ending, because that means things stop. The change has to move you to what is coming next or else the whole thing dies. So the goal posts of satisfaction move, and they keep moving. They will never stop moving. As a retailer, how do you deal with that?

The answer, somewhat fittingly, is to be found in another post, as two events last year provided me with some much needed clarity on how we, as an industry, need to start framing events.² It also leads into talking about this week’s biggest superhero release, Nightwing #100, which ties into my thoughts on the matter.

Join me this Wednesday as I lay it all out.

Talk with you soon,

-B.

1. That said, I am relatively certain that the ending to Civil War was the thing that caused the owner of the shop to drift away from his love of the medium entirely. From all accounts, he had been losing his passion for a while, but had really dug what was happening in Civil War - and upon reading the end, I clearly remember him saying “that was absolute dogshit”. Outside of engaging with The Boys briefly due to his fandom of Garth Ennis, he fully disengaged from any and all comics going forward - including a weird Avatar book Ennis had written about dogs, which united two of his absolute favourite things.

2. It is also kind of late, and there’s still more work to do.