An interesting under reported factoid from San Diego Comic Con 2010:
“One of the things we wanted to do with Heroic Age is get off the crossover hamster wheel,” Quesada said, while adding that big crossovers will return, though they are stepping back from them a bit. “Comics went into a very bad tailspin in the late ’90s — I [wouldn’t]… blame that on crossovers, I would blame that on bad storytelling. It wasn’t about what was between the covers, it was about what was on the cover.”
Source: Newsarama
We’ll just have to wait until the summer or fall of 2011 to see if in fact Marvel’s taking a breather from “big crossover” events.