clinging2thecross

March 5, 2013 10:23 am I think one thing that needs to happen is that everyone has the same definition of Comic Book Terms, because there seems to be some confusion. And please feel free to say if you disagree. To quote IthoSapien, "I’m a little confused by your phrasing; are Tie-ins, Crossovers, and Events totally separate things in your book?" To me here are the definitions: Event: A big, overarching storyline that effects most of, or a good chunk of, the Universe and has long lasting effects. Recent Events: AVX (while only a few titles were involved, almost every major Marvel Character belongs to either the Avengers or the X-Men and had some play in the outcome.) Also Flashpoint, the repercussions of that rebooted the entire universe are still being debated, for better or for worse. Crossover: A storyline that directly continues from one book to the next. In other words you must read one part before you read another part, or else the story doesn't make sense. A current crossover going on is Wrath of the First Lantern. Part One was in Green Lantern 17, Part Two was in Green Lantern Corps 17, Part Three in Green Lantern: New Guardians 17, Part 4 in Red Lanterns 17, etc. Throne of Atlantis was also a crossover. Tie-Ins: Tie-Ins are stories that take place within an event, however are not necessary to be read in order to understand the greater story. Night of the Owls and Death of the Family had tie-ins. You could just read Batman and not read Nightwing, Red Hood, Teen Titans, etc. and you could understand the story. AVX and Flashpoint also had Tie-Ins. The tied-in material may be dependent on the main story (see Death of the Family Tie Ins 16) however the main story is not dependent on the tie-ins. And I am going to add one of my own, which is a subcategory technically and that is: Mini (or Micro) Event: A Mini Event is something that does not effect an entire universe, but effects a subcategory of a Universe. Night of the Owls, Death of the Family, H'el on Earth, Rise of the Third Army and Wrath of the First Lantern, X-Men Schism, X-Men Regenisis, those were all mini-events. They affected all/most of their related titles, but didn't go outside of that (Death of the Family didn't effect Superman or Green Lantern.) Can these overlap? Yes. AVX was an event with Tie-Ins. Flashpoint was an event with Tie-Ins. Death of the Family was an Mini-event with tie-ins. Notice that all of these are (mini)events with tie-ins. Crossovers, due to the continuing storyline between books, typically do not have tie-ins, although some people would classify the books that the storyline crosses between as tie-ins. The only reason I disagree is because the tie-ins are not necessary to the main story. Hope this helps clarify the meaning and stops some confusion.