Why Comics Should End.

j. De Hoyos
Apr 24, 2017
4 min read

As the resident nerd of my social circle, I am often being asked for comic book recommendations. While that list is expansive, and varies based on the asker’s genre preferences, I often find a few select favorites:

Moon Knight: From the Dead (Writer: Warren Ellis // Artist: Declan Shalvey // Colorist: Jordie Bellaire).
Cry Havoc: Mything In Action (Writer: Simon Spurrier // Art:Lee Loughridge, Nick Filardi, Ryan Kelly // Cover: Cameron Stewart, Emma Price, Ryan Kelly).
Wicked + Divine: Book One (Writer: Kieron Gillen // Art: Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles)
Fight Club 2 (Writer: Chuck Palahniuk // Artist: Cameron Stewart)

Now, there’s a few reasons why I loved these books, and why I recommend them to “outsiders”. The first being, they are relatively isolated. Cry Havoc and WicDiv both start at the beginning, so they don’t need the years of canon continuity that intimidates new readers from picking up a comic. While Fight Club 2 is obviously a sequel, and Moon Knight does have years of previous continuity, these stories do not require that you catch up on them first. Warren Ellis fills you in on what you need to know about Moon Knight and gets right to it; Artist Declan Shalvey explains its brilliance as “a fast read if you read it but it’s a book that you can go over again and again and again and really kind of … it can saturate”. These are all great starter books if you’re looking to break into the medium but can’t devote yourself to decades of back issue continuity and trivia.

The second reason I recommend them was actually subconscious to me until recently when Marvel announced SECRET EMPIRE, the 2017 summer event that will (once again) turn the marvel world upside down and CHANGE EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE FOREVER.

Are you picking up my sarcasm?

This is not to say that I am not intrigued by what they're doing, and writer Nick Spencer’s buildups have certainly got me hooked… but we JUST. HAD. CIVIL WAR….. 2! And Secret Wars...2. As in, WE HAD A CIVIL WAR 1! And a Secret Wars 1! And decided to do them again! and then there was the giant Spider-Verse crossover. Basically what I’m saying is, a lot of us are feeling (and have been feeling) event fatigue. And I’m certainly not trying to pick on Marvel here, as DC is going through Rebirth at the moment.

And yet, events are the highest selling points for comic books: let’s be real, if the events weren’t lucrative, these giant machines like Disney and Warner Brothers would probably reconsider their methods. Sure, they’re big and exciting and full of fantasy and spectacle. But is that really the only reason they’re successful?

I don’t think so. These events are popular for the same reason that I keep recommending those comics up top. Not only are they decent entry points (many events explain the relevant things on the way, as they’re hyperaware of potential new readers), but these stories also come with the promise that they will END. And not just end because it was cancelled, but end because the story has been told and it is time to wrap things up. Each of the comics I recommended above we’re all written with the idea that this story could end right here and now, and still be considered a full work. Yes, Moon Knight and WicDiv continued beyond those books, and Cry Havoc and Fight Club 2 may eventually have sequels, but these books, as they are now, on my bookshelf, are complete. They begin, things happen, problems are resolved, there is a conclusion. They treated these stories less like a never-ending soap opera and more like a movie, or a season of a tv series.

Having a story end makes it far more digestible to new readers than telling them that this series will continue indefinitely, and issues may take years to resolve, or the book may be cancelled before an issue is addressed at all. Sometimes the writer changes their mind after a few issues, or worse, the writer leaves and is replaced with a new one who didn’t have the same vision. And for old readers like myself, self-contained stories are a breath of fresh air that generally turn out better than generic ongoings. To quote Simon Spurrier, writer of Cry Havoc, there is an “industry-wide bias for narrative continuity rather than narrative satisfaction” and he has done an incredible job in Cry Havoc of focusing on satisfaction (this is true of his other works as well, but I digress).

So while the HUGE STAKES! And CHAOTIC CROSSOVERS! might be the big marketing points for these events, the containment of the stories, and the craftsmanship from start to finish are what make the good ones really stick. Eventually all that drama and hype fades and we’re left with our ongoings again, and fewer and fewer of those are captivating enough from month to month, particularly from the Big-2.

So as sad as it is for a story to end, especially when you’ve become so invested in the characters and their development, stories that end are really the best kind. The aspects of an ongoing that initially attracts you is never what will keep you there, as creative teams change, plot lines get shifted or dropped, and giant events dramatically transform the world those characters exist in. If creative teams can really sit down and focus on telling a limited run, they would create stories that hold up in the long-term, appealing to future readers for decades; stories like Daredevil: Born Again, Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom: Triumph and Torment, or Batman: The Long Halloween.