Some events, such as DC's "Zero Hour" and Marvel's "Onslaught saga" spanned a publisher's entire line while others only affected a "family" of interrelated titles.
These events led to significant sales boosts and publicity, but many fans began to criticize them as excessive and lacking compelling storytelling.
Following the events of the Infinite Crisis series, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have temporarily retired their costumed identities.
Time traveler Booster Gold attends the memorial, but when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman do not arrive, the change in history makes his robot sidekick Skeets malfunction.
Booster and Skeets search time traveler Rip Hunter's desert bunker for answers, but find it littered with scrawled notes.
The series continues, exploring many of the changes wrought by the events of "Infinite Crisis", introducing new characters, killing off old ones, and putting others in new situations.
In 1986, DC published two groundbreaking limited series: Watchmen by a British creative team led by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
Bruce Wayne, now 55, has been retired from crime fighting for ten years following the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd.
In an effort to prove to the world (and himself) that one's personal demons can be bested, Wayne has generously funded the rehabilitation of Harvey Dent (a.k.a.
The episodes find Batman foiling a plot by Two-Face to blow up Gotham's twin towers, Joker appearing on a parody of the David Letterman talk show, killing everyone in the audience, and fighting Superman, who works for the President of the United States.
Despite Marvel achieving more votes than its rival, and thus winning more matches, the series' storyline opted not to show one side victorious.
After Batman defeated Captain America, it was revealed that the Amalgam universe would be used to settle the dispute, making the Marvel victory an ambiguous one.
The catalyst is based on a battle involving the New Warriors and a group of villains (Nitro, Cobalt Man, Speedfreek, and Coldheart) in Stamford, Connecticut.
The act requires any person in the United States with superhuman abilities to register with the federal government and receive proper training.
Characters within the superhuman community in the Marvel Universe split into two groups: one advocating registration as a responsible obligation, and the other opposing the law on the grounds that it violates privacy rights.
Director Maria Hill attempts to recruit Captain America for a strike force created to track down superhumans in violation of the act.
However, Iron Man supports the act and mobilizes many registered superhumans, including Mister Fantastic, Henry Pym, and Spider-Man, who unmasks himself to the world press in order to find and redeem the anti-registration heroes.