At a stretch I'd say probably Valiant's original UNITY crossover.  At least, I enjoyed it for what it was at the time.   Bonus -- if you weren't interested in buying the whole thing you could stick to your chosen title(s) and you still got the gist of the crossover from the POV of the characters in those titles.  

I wish more crossovers were written with an eye toward the different ways readers enter and follow the story.  Not everyone has a $300-a-month pull list yet these crossovers increasingly cater to this shrinking minority. 

So, you'd rehash ACTS OF VENGENCE?

:-)

Marvel announces the death of Bruce Banner.

Nothing exceeds like excess!!

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I think it's a testament to how good the Byrne Superman reboot was that it remained virtually unchanged for the next twenty plus years at DC. Their most recent reboot in 2011 didn't even make it five years before they went back to that other Superman, you know, the one that JB brought new life and new readers to and influenced the next two decades of Superman comics with. I think another thing that was great about that Byrne reboot was that it made the character unique again by doing away with Superboy and all the other Kryptonians with the exact same powers, a move that DC is doing the exact opposite of with their current reboot which is turning Lois into Superwoman, a new Superboy, a new Chinese Superman, etc. Comics are going in the wrong direction by killing the uniqueness of their characters and draining the coffers of their remaining fanbase with these so-called big events.

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Not quite. ;)

My idea would not involve crossovers or multi-issue tales. My hypothetical X-Men VS Dr Octopus issue would have NOTHING to do with my hypothetical Iron Man VS Juggernaut issue. All self-contained issues: no big arc, no crossovers, no requiring fans to have bottomless wallets, just standalone tales. Reading the X-Men/Octopus issue would not require picking up the issues featuring Iron Man/Juggernaut or Captain America/Vulture.

I think big event stories should be self-contained within that series alone, with no needing to buy up the rest of the store for what usually turns out to be a lack-luster storyline.

What's terrible is that BIG EVENTS happen 2-3 times a year now (at M*****), and individual books get maybe 3-4 issues to tell a story before "the universe is sudden changed and nothing remains the same", or some mega event is shoe-horned in for no reason. I had jumped back into buying comics for a short time, but a stream of constant events/reboots/restarts/reimagining turned me off big time.

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Same here. Too off-putting.

Sometimes the smaller, low-key storylines make the bigger ones special. Been watching some KNIGHT RIDER on DVD recently. You'll get relatively low-key stories (corrupt sheriff, corrupt politician, etc.) and then, at the end or beginning of a season, you'll get something major, i.e. a hi-tech vehicle coming after Knight and KITT.

Comics don't have "seasons" as such, but maybe give us something big once ever 3-5 years. Give us a 100-page special on rare occasions. Every 4-5 years, do an event. But right now, it feels like overkill.