One of the most enjoyable things about Marvel's old What If comics and DC's one-off Elseworld specials was that they were paced like a rocket-ship, blowing up the world and sifting through the pieces in a few dozen pages.
They still put out the odd one-shot that replicates this easy formula, but there are they are also entire series of comics in new parallel universes - Injustice comics and Marvel Zombies nonsense - all outside of regular continuity, and they just go on and on.
Unfortunately, they all rely on the same tricks - the shock horror of the sudden death (this is the one where Batman is the first to be taken out, this is the one where Spider-Man is the first sacrifice); the ragtag group of random survivors that somehow fight on.
These comics obviously have some kind of audience, but it's all a bit pointless. Most recently, I tried The Dark Ages - another six-issue Marvel sidestep into a world where electricity disappears overnight - from the local library, and it's just the same thing old thing, and nothing means anything.
It's also seeping into regular continuities with endless multiverse shenanigans, you can't even have a story about your friendly, neighbourhood Spider-man story without a million bloody variants all showing up.
I can understand the appeal, especially when regular continuities have been totally fucked up over decades of terrible, terrible comics. But they always feel better as a short, sharp shock, rather than a new branch of the never-ending saga that just keeps on going.
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