Warning: Contains spoilers for Avengers #53

In Avengers #53, the actions of Thanos prove that an overload of big events is causing Marvel Comics to mess up its own timeline. The shocking twist at the ending of the issue, in fact, is already undone by the previews for Judgement Day released earlier this month.

The Avengers have been using the corpse of a Celestial after Wakandan engineers and scientists turn it into a highly advanced superhero base, complete with a teleportation system and a supercomputer. The Multiversal Masters of Evil, assembled by the Doom Supreme and Mephisto, have attacked Earth-616, hunting for the Deathloks, the cyborg soldiers of Avenger Prime. In Avengers #53, by Jason Aaron, Juan Frigeri, and David Curiel, Doom Supreme targets the Avengers and attacks the Celestial Base, together with Kid Thanos, a young version of the Mad Titan. They are repelled, but not before Thanos plants enough explosives to blow out the entire "Avengers Mountain" that is literally blown to pieces in the final panel. This could be a nice twist, if it weren't for the fact that previews for the upcoming Judgement Day event released earlier this month show the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Eternals standing near the Celestial Base, perfectly intact.

Related: To Stop Thanos, The Eternals Are Invading Avengers' Celestial Base 

In superhero comics, line-wide crossovers used to be a rarity. Marvel developed the concept in the early '70s and the '80s and then brought it to great fruition over the '90s with unforgettable sagas such as the Infinity Trilogy, or others that fans actually want to forget, such as Heroes Reborn. Starting with the mid-2000s, however, and more specifically with Avengers Disassembled leading into House of M, "a Marvel Comics event" became a common phrase accompanying more and more company-wide storylines. With such a great cast of characters, it is only natural that Marvel wants to bring them together as often as possible, to give readers the perception that "big things" are actually happening in their books. "Nothing will ever be the same again" was the slogan that accompanied House of M, and while smart readers do know that, in the end, things tend to go back to the status quo in superhero comics, events and crossovers tend to do very well in terms of sales.

However, sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. The number of big Marvel Comics events tripled in the 2010s compared to the 2000s, and the past two years have already seen half as many events as the previous decade. Currently, there are already two events going on at the same time, Devil's Reign and the Reckoning War, with two more announced for later in the year, Judgement Day and a new Secret Invasion. On top of that, the Avengers are involved in a massive Multiverse-wide storyline that got its own book, Avengers: Forever. The issue is that it is very hard to keep everything coherent. For example, the Fantastic Four are in prison or on the run in Devil's Reign, as the city of New York is ruled by the iron fist of Mayor Wilson Fisk, but in Reckoning War they are fighting in the frontlines of a universal crisis. There are many other examples of how the Marvel continuity is being messed up by the event overload, but the most conspicuous one is the explosion of the Celestial Base.

There could obviously be explanations for why Avengers Mountain will go back to full integrity before the events of Judgement Day. However, this doesn't change the fact that Marvel Comics is having a very hard time keeping its timeline coherent due to the overload of events, as Kid Thanos' assault on the Avengers just proved.

Next: Marvel's Three Big Events Are Already a Creating a Timeline Nightmare