Take Guardians of the Galaxy for example - the new series (written by Brian Michael Bendis) started back in 2013 when the film was given a release date and I started purchasing it, as it look kind of cool and I was unfamiliar with any of the characters (except for Groot - who's origin story I had read a few years earlier in the excellent Marvel Monsterworks).
So there I am, happily reading my Guardians of the Galaxy, when a crossover occurred with something called INFINITY - basically this was an Avengers tie-in and seemed to connect on a couple points with my comic but as I was only focusing on my own title, I ignored the connecting titles and moved on.
Next was The Trial of Jean Grey - a tie-in with Bendis' other title, All-New X-Men. This one was a six-issue story alternating between the two titles, so I purchased the three issues of X-Men and enjoyed the story for what it was.
In the last few months however, Guardians has begun a crossover event called The Black Vortex, which includes issues from - All-New X-Men, Captain Marvel, Cyclops, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardian Team-Ups, Legendary Star Lord, and NOVA.
This was clearly too many comics for me to purchase and stay happily married, so I decided to see if any of these other titles were available at my local library.
The answer was yes, and I started catching up on NOVA and X-Men. The problem was, one of the X-Men titles crossed over with The Indestructible Hulk (written by Mark Waid) as well as Uncanny X-Men (written by Bendis), so I put requests in for these titles. My BFF Mike helpfully loan me the Hulk and Captain Marvel titles, but as I started reading Hulk I saw tie-ins with Dardevil and Thor, both of which the library have and both of which tie into any number of other Marvel titles.
The other problem is these are a lot of fun to read, but I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed... oh wait, in this issue Hulk meets King Arthur!
Okay, I'll stick around for a few more, but THAT'S IT!
Probably...
