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What does it take for a crossover to be a Marvel summer event? Why isn’t there one this year?

For the past few years we’ve had a big story event followed by another, followed by another. This year Marvel decided to put a pause on the big summer events and leave things as they are with regular stories with their regular books. Or are they? While there is no major line-wide story event there are a few crossovers that do have a significant impact. For example there is “Utopia” with the Dark Avengers and the X-men, plus the space event known as “War of Kings” involving the Kree, Shi’ar, Inhumans, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Why aren’t these events as advertised, or considered, summer events?

Looking back at the previous summers these are the stories I can recall: “Civil War”, “World War Hulk”, and “Secret Invasion”. All of these major events had their own mini-series with other titles sharing in the story. Plus, these stories were very well advertised as having a dramatic impact on the entire Marvel Universe. The “Utopia” storyline does not fulfill this criterion. While it is a mini-series, the events aren’t necessarily told across multiple titles, it’s a crossover between Uncanny X-men and Dark Avengers. “War of Kings” is closer though.

“War of Kings” is a mini-series, plus there are other mini-series tied into the event, and other titles sharing in the story. This fits the criterion I stated before, so why isn’t it a big summer event? All it needs is a big advertising campaign to promote the changes that will occur in the Marvel Universe. But I think there’s the problem. All the changes that happen in “War of Kings” will stay in the area of the Marvel Universe not relevant to the heroes located on earth. Earth, is where “Secret Invasion” occurred, “Civil War”, and “World War Hulk”. It can’t be a Marvel Summer event unless it affects the Marvel heroes that are being published at the time. In other words events like “Utopia” and “War of Kings” only affect a small set of characters in the Marvel Universe, in this case characters not in New York. That’s kind of biased, unless you sit and think where most of the Marvel’s currently published heroes are located.

While “Utopia and “War of Kings” are great stories, they aren’t great enough to support their own summer event. That’s why Marvel has put in some modest advertising for these crossover events. This is really unfair because both stories are going to have a definite impact on the Marvel Universe in many ways. There’s going to be a shift in power on the cosmic side of things and we all know mutant problems always tend to be everyone’s problems. Well until these problems hit New York they will go unnoticed. Well not by me anyway.