An Imparting of Wisdom

I have deduced the key to enjoying Big Comic Events, and I found it within Annihilation. The key is. . .

Don't care about any of the characters. Let me explain.

If you have characters that you feel strongly about one way or the other, than it affects your ability to enjoy the story, because you are either hopeful that Character A (see, Ray, The; Infinite Crisis) makes it through OK, or that Character B (see, Superman, all; Infinite Crisis) kicks the bucket. But, if you have no strong feelings towards the characters one way or the other, you can simply enjoy the story for what it is.

Here's an example. I'm enjoying Annihilation: Super-Skrull. I think Super-Skrull has this sort of Clint Eastwood-esque "I'm going to do it my way, and screw you if you don't like it" thing going on, and that's very cool to me. I want to see if he can stop the Harvester of Sorrows before it reaches the Skrull homeworld and kills his son, along with every other Skrull on the planet. But if the story is done well, then I won't be horribly disappointed if he fails. Say, the Harvester reaches the homeworld much more quickly than he thought because all the different warlords are too busy squabbling and trying to hoard as much for themselves as they can to build an effective defense. I would be alright with that as the conclusion to Super-Skrull, as it nicely sets things up for the actual Annihilation mini-series, as he now turns his goals towards revenge.

Could I say the same thing about Civil War, if Spider-Man has to scramble to get help before SHIELD takes Mary Jane and Aunt May away as collaborators, after Peter breaks ties with Stark, only Peter fails? Nope, I sure couldn't say I'd be OK with that. Because I like Spidey, I have a rooting interest to see him come through OK, the same way I have a rooting interest that Wolverine disembowel Hank Pym at some point (What? I'm sick of messed up Hank Pym stories, and Wolverine hasn't killed anybody relevant in a decade).

Now, I grant you those situations aren't equal. Aunt May and MJ are established characters; Super-Skrull's kid is a Character Motivation Tool, but I think the idea holds. It's the same with the others involved. I like Nova, but he's not going to crack my top twenty favorite Marvel characters, so I'm pretty much willing to go with what the story gives me, as long as it's good. If that means Nova dies fighting Annihilus because he tries to tap into all of the Nova Force (which he'd probably need), and it causes him to lose control/focus, so he gets taken down by a sneak attack (Thanos?), or it's too much power, and it just wipes him out, I could say sit there and say "Hey that was a pretty good issue". If he's triumphs and maybe recruits the former Heralds of Galactus to form a new sort of Intergalactic Police Force, that's also fine.

Granted, this idea may not be really practical given that everyone has different favorite characters, and so the issue where Vibe dies would be approached differently by me than by Scipio, but maybe it means you have to divorce yourself from any deeper childhood attachments (or adolescent, or whatever) to the character, and just go with the flow, so to speak.