Marvel has become known for its event cycle since the ’00s. The ’00s were huge for Marvel; the publisher did their best to get rid of the stink of the ’90s, focusing on putting out the best comics they could and letting sales follow. Marvel’s event cycle was a key part of this success, but it also became a problem for a lot of fans as time went on. However, at first, everyone was all about Marvel’s event books and that started with House of M, by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Olivier Coipel. House of M was sold as a crossover between Marvel’s two hottest books — New Avengers and Astonishing X-Men — and fans were hyped for it. House of M was a hit from the beginning, with many fans loving it. They’re all wrong, though. House of M has always been garbage and it’s time to admit that.
The damage that House of M did to the X-Men wouldn’t be fixed until the Krakoa Era, and started Marvel down a road that would hurt the publisher. House of M is a snapshot of Marvel making massive mistakes and getting praised for it, which is honestly the most Marvel thing ever. House of M was doomed from the beginning, though, and taking a closer look at the book can reveal just where the whole thing went wrong.
House of M had a lot of hype behind it. This is partly because of X-Men/Avengers crossover aspects, but it was also because it continued the story started with “Avengers Disassembled: Chaos”. Fans were hyped to know the next chapter in the life of Scarlet Witch and House of M #1 did a fantastic job of setting everything up. The first issue was actually really good, hyping fans even more. And then the boredom began. Brian Michael Bendis has a certain style of writing. It’s one that is more about the soap opera drama and talking heads than action, as well as a rather earthbound imagination (he was better at street-level than cosmic stuff) and House of M was a perfect example of this. There’s really no nice way to say this, but House of M was a boring book. There really wasn’t anything exciting about the book. The world-building wasn’t great in the main book, and each issue was more about Wolverine talking to people than anything else. It got especially egregious when Wolverine and Layla Miller started restoring everyone’s memory of the old universe, where readers got multiple variations of, “I’m going to kill Magneto!” This all lead to issue seven, a book that is one of the worst action issues of an event book that I’ve ever read. The pacing of House of M is glacial, and while the art is pretty great, there’s something about the way Bendis writers that drains any vitality or excitement from books.
While there multiple problems with House of M as a comic — it’s badly paced and boring more often than not, spinning its wheels to hit eight issues — there are more problems with it other than being a bad comic. House of M‘s success set Marvel down the road of the event cycle, building events that would change the line every year or two. The event cycle made reading a Marvel a chore at times, and House of M was the beginning of that. House of M was also the beginning of the marginalization of the X-Men. Marvel was trying to position the Avengers as Marvel’s most popular team and they did this by pushing the X-Men off into their own corner. House of M stuck the X-Men into almost twenty years of dark, depressing X-Men stories. House of M did so much damage to Marvel as a creative entity. It served to make the empty event cycle into the focus of the entire Marvel Universe, leading to a cycle of diminishing returns that chased a lot of fans away, and destroyed the X-Men as a concept for years to come.
House of M is an example of everything that can be wrong with a comic. It’s a boring, badly paced event book that completely wastes a great artist. It didn’t do much to build any characters, mostly taking away things from beloved characters. Sure, Wolverine got his memory back, but that’s it. Its effects were almost completely negative. At the time, there was a feeling that Marvel was hurting the X-Men on purpose, and the damage it did to the X-Men would take ages to fix.
However, the biggest problem with House of M is its place in the creation of the event cycle. Event comics are always going to be a part of the comic industry, and they’re going to have big effects on the publishing line. However, House of M led to the cycle becoming the most important part of Marvel’s publishing schedule every year. Marvel and its fans would have been better off if House of M never happened.
How do you feel about House of M? Sound off in the comments below.
Marvel has become known for its event cycle since the ’00s. The ’00s were huge for Marvel; the publisher did their best to get rid of the stink of the ’90s, focusing on putting out the best comics they could and letting sales follow. Marvel’s event cycle was a key part of this success, but Read More