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Indeed.

I feel events should be akin to the FIFA World Cup: let's have one big event every four years. In between those four years, let's not have events and let's mainly have standalone tales.

Less is more. I am not going to be buying any DC titles now because with "Rebirth" on every cover, I just find it overwhelming.

I see parallels with US wrestling, too. Remember when big events were rare. Originally, we had STARRCADE or WRESTLEMANIA once a year. By the time the 90s arrived, the WWF had four PPV events a year and WCW had, well, more than that. The WWF then added KING OF THE RING to its calendar in 1993, but five PPV events a year didn't feel like overkill.

And then, in 1995, the WWF went monthly with PPVs. WCW, which had almost been running monthly PPV events prior to that, did the same. Then we had WWF RAW and WCW NITRO, both of which eventually became two-hour TV shows with main-event matches. By the time the late 90s was coming to a close, wrestling fans were burnt out: we just didn't have the inclination for monthly PPV events and weekly shows. And they just wouldn't stop. Back in 1998, WCW was not content with one weekly two-hour show, it added a second two-hour show (WCW THUNDER) which I felt cut into its own audience.

And now some news sites are reporting that the WWF* will soon be having TWO PPV events a month.

I may be making a mistake equating wrestling with comics, but as a fan of both (past tense in the case of wrestling), I am of the belief less is more. I wish we could go back to the days of wrestling have between 1 and 4 PPV events a year; and I also wish we could go back to the days when four-parter "The Lazarus Affair" (in the BATMAN titles) felt special because it was special. 

PPV wrestling events or comic events, much like Christmas Day, lose their lustre when they become routine and regular. I sometimes wonder if the comic company mindset shifted over to football, would they insist FIFA had a World Cup once a year (or twice a year). Less really is more.

*I have never been able to call it WWE, it has never felt right.

Also, MUTANT MASSACRE was the first book I believe to force you to buy multiple books to get the full story. For a large story at least, I know

there were some two parters that crossed over.  

Edit to add; mini milestone post for The War of....

I really did enjoy CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS at the time.  I had always loved Earth-2, and INFINITY INC. and ALL-STAR SQUADRON were two of my favorite comics at the time, but I kept an open mind to the whole "Let's merge the Multiverse" thing.  It was well done and I looked forward to the developments of every issue.

However, it was clear soon afterward that CRISIS thoroughly destroyed DC Comics and it has remained destroyed to this very day.

John Byrne did a great job with SUPERMAN and so did George Perez with WONDER WOMAN, but that was it.  Every other book was a confused mess, post-CRISIS.  Ruining continuity ruined THE NEW TEEN TITANS and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, DC's two most popular books.  Their Marvel equivalent book UNCANNY X-MEN went on to a multi-billion dollar movie franchise, while these two got cancelled five times each and the world doesn't know or care about either right now.  (Really?  SUICIDE SQUAD has a movie coming out right now and TEEN TITANS has never even been a [non-animated] TV show?)

Later, I actually went ahead and bought all 51 weekly issues of COUNTDOWN (TO FINAL CRISIS) in 2007/8 just to see what it was like to participate in one of these BIG events, and also because I liked Paul Dini's writing and was never disappointed in him.  And it was true!  If you can get past all the amateurish, rushed art, COUNTDOWN actually had a good story!  But was it worth the $153 I spent on those 51 issues?  No.  No, it wasn't.

I also agree concerning the after-effects of Crisis upon DC's publishing. For years afterwards, the Legion was about little else other than that their timeline was messed up and in constant flux. Unsurprisingly, attempts to change that by... altering their timeline did not produce good results. Unsurprisingly. Legion fans love to point out that their timeline has only formally been rebooted three times. Each of those three iterations, however, featured ongoing story arcs about the timeline changing or spent considerable time re-introducing characters none of the other characters had ever met before, yet were supposed to be all-new versions of olde-tymey favorites to us! While we ostensibly fell all over ourselves "omigosh-ing" ourselves into near-catatonic bliss to be getting a brand-new Chameleon Boy (excuse me, Chameleon!) and Colossal Boy (excuse me, Micro-Lad! Ha! Never gets old! Oh, wait, no, it did the first time it was used...), weirdly the book spiraled into non-existence, unable to properly remember the names of its own characters on the cover, having revised them so often... Really, I think DC was lucky to get the animated traction out of those teams that it did. It should also be noted that those cartoons used next to nothing, story-wise, from the comics of that era. Why? Because those comics were terrible.

I'll own up to having purchased the occasional issue of a crossover-mania-madness series, but I do try to stick only to the core title, the idea being that the main story will be taking place there. "Blackest Night" pulled quite the switcheroo in that regard, turning the "Blackest Night" core book into the placeholder for a couple of issues and moving the actual story over to the Green Lantern book. I've followed fewer of these things since then. 

Is there any other industry where the audience wants to like the product so badly it puts up with literally decades of constant, unrelenting disappointment? I can't think of one off-hand. Somehow, that issue of Iron Man I picked up when I was eight still has me thinking some Iron Man comic in the future, maybe the very near future, will knock my socks off again. I really don't see that happening, and yet, for whatever reason, I still give a damn about Iron Man. I should bring this up with my therapist... :-)

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The Football Association of England makes a lot of money based on England football supporters being precisely this kind of audience.

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Maybe not decades, but years in the case of wrestling.

I thought most of 1993 in the WWF was bad. I watched it that year. And some of 1995/1996 was bad, too (until things changed and the WWF went in a different direction).