What is Marvel's most self-contained event book?

[serd]

Hi, when i started reading comics besides Batman my way into the DC Universe was to buy Infinite Crisis. And although i didn't know half of all the characters in the book, i enjoyed it a lot. After that Final Crisis, BLackest Night and Flashpoint followed.

Now i want to do the same with Marvel and read some of the "big stories" while i enjoy AvxX. But here begins the problem, because at DC you only need to buy the main series to get the complete event expirience. At Marvel so it seems you will miss a lot, if you dont read the tie-ins. Now i ask myself which of the events is the most self-contained, where i can only buy the main trade (and perhaps one or two tie-in trades as support) to get a good and entertaining read.

- House of M
- Civil War
- World War Hulk
- Secret Invasion
- Siege

i hope you can help me with this and thanks for your answers.

[marshal99]

Secret Wars and Contest of champions are arguably the most self contained crossover "event" that Marvel had throughout the years although those are very old events now.

[Telos]

Hi!

I'd suggest you don't get into Marvel via the events. Most of them are quite bad and almost none are completely self contained. DC are much better in this regard. You're better off picking a character and jumping on from there. Try the Marvel Recommendations Megathread.

[Lord Bravery]

Annihilation. Best event Marvel has ever done. Stream lined and easy to follow structure. A prologue one shot. 4 mini series leading up to the main event, which was 6 issues. But those 4 mini series are not actually essential to understand the story.

If you're gonna go with Marvel events don't go for the mainstream ones, they are all rubbish.

[streator]

i didn't get most of the tie-ins to the main events of the past decade or so and i would say that house of m as a self-contained story was probably the best read & told the most complete tale. civil war by itself was pretty good, too.

secret invasion, siege & some of the others just seemed to kind of progress the main story along but had a lot of "to see more read this somewhere else" moments.

[areacode212]

I'll second the first Annihilation as being Marvel's best-ever event. It looks like you can get the whole story in just 3 trades (Annihilation Book 1, 2 and 3).

[Squall835]

House of M was pretty self contained, but I wouldn't suggest it as a jumping on point. Like someone else suggested, I would pick a character (or characters) that are interesting to you and pick up some well regarded TPBs.