Fifth Week Event
A fifth-week event is a novelty comic book promotion. Comic publishers schedule releases in four-week cycles. On an occasion that a month has more than four weeks, publishers often sell unusual comics to fill in the scheduling gap.
Name:
Fifth Week Event
Aliases:
Start year:
1996
First issue:
Spider-Boy (1996) #1 Big Trouble
Definition
In the 1990s, DC Comics published 4 monthly Superman titles. The interlocking stories created a weekly narrative that continued throughout the year, but that publishing schedule accounted for only 48 out of the 52 weeks per year. With 4 months each year containing a fifth Wednesday (the day comic books go on sale in America,) DC introduced a fifth Superman title, Superman: the man of tomorrow (first issue 1994) to fill that gap.
Later DC would choose to publish a full series of comics sharing a commom theme to still keeping publish something. The first skip week events were linked to a range of existing (or proposed) titles with a shared theme: New year's Evil. The initiative would be also used by secondary imprints Tangent, Vertigo and Wildstorm.
Later Marvel would imita Dc with their own fifth week events.
List of fifth event weeks
DC Comics
- New Year's Evil:(1997) Supervilliand one-shot
- Girl Frenzy: (1998) Female characters from the different titles.
- The Kingdom:(1999) Follow up to Kingdom Come.
- Amalgam Comics: (1996 & 1997) Co-published with Marvel Comics.
- Tangent comics:(1997 & 1998) Titles with characters than only share the name from previous characters.
- Sins of Youth: (2000) Young Justice event, where the age of the superheroes are reversed.
- Green Lantern: Circle of Fire (2000) Green Lantern event. Team ups of secondary characters with unknown Green Lanterns.
- Justice Society Returns (2001) Promotional one shots followed with a new JSA series.
- Power Surge (2002) Promotional one shots for Power Company characters.
- Justice Leagues (2001) JLA event. The world only remember the Justice League of A...
- Silver Age (2000) Celebration of the Silver age iconic titles.
- Y2K (1999) Vertigo comics where the heroes of the Vertigoverse deal with the end of the world.
- Wild Times (2000) Wildstorm event. The characters of Wildstorm comics in alternative times.
Marvel Comics
- Amalgam Comics (1996 & 1997) Co-published with DC comics.
- Marvels comics (2000) The comics published IN the Marvel earth, as seen by their inhabitants.
- Marvel Mangaverse (2001) Marvel characters as manga archetype versions.
- X-Men: Black Sun (2000) Belasco returns.
- Marvel Knights 2099 (2004) Celebration of the 10th years of Marvel Knights imprint.
- What if vol 5 (2006) Alternate outcome to several Marvel events series, gathered later in trade What if: Event horizont.
