Infinite Crap?

Just getting your attention. Here's my question to you: Big, universe-spanning crossovers, good or bad? I know sales numbers indicate that fans like them, but I want to know from you, my ten loyal readers, my 'true believers'.
See, I have a conundrum. I recognize that if there is going to be a massive event, then it should be reflected in the other books in that universe. For example, when the Avengers had the war with Kang a few years back that took over a year, I thought that was great story, epic stuff. But, this battle was all over the world, Washington D.C. got blowed up, and none of the other Marvel books reflected this. Not a peep about it in Daredevil, or Fantastic Four, nothing. It was kind of silly.

At the same time, I can't stand these events where everybody is in everyone else's books, and everyone has to deal with this event. Case in point, during 'Disassembled' Paul Jenkins did a 5-part story where Peter gets transformed into a giant spider, dies, emerges from the shell of the giant spider, and has organic webshooters, and the ability to communicate with arthropods, to some extent. It was that book's tie-in to the whole 'Disassembled' thing, and it just didn't seem to fit with the tone of the book as Jenkins had been writing it until then. But I figure editorial told him this tie-in HAD to happen and Peter HAD to have organic webshooters, and so Jenkins did the best he could.

See, the problem is these events take away time the writer could be further developing the plots they had been working on. Based on what I've read, Greg Rucka had a bunch of plots that he was building up gradually in the pages of Wonder Woman. Then along comes 'Infinite Crisis', and all that stuff goes out the window, because DC just HAS to have a huge OMAC battle. Sure, it's probably a lot of fun for the casual reader, but if you had been reading Wonder Woman for a long time, and you wanted to get some closure on those plots threads Rucka had been teasing along, where are you? You're square in the middle of S.O.L. City. And I think that's my main problem with these things. The stories that you've been reading, that you wanted a conclusion to, get dropped, and you're left hanging. It's like if I was reading The Stand, and all of the sudden, three-quarters of the way through, it becomes the Da Vinci Code. Sure, I liked parts of The Da Vinci Code, but I was reading The Stand. That's what I wanted closure on.

So anyway, there was another beef I had, but it's more of the same really. It just seems that when writers kill off a character in one of these things, it's not going to have ramifications on anything they write. Brad Meltzer kills Jack Drake in 'Identity Crisis', well why not? He doesn't write Robin, so it doesn't affect him. But if Bill Willingham had plot ideas for Tim and his dad, too bad. I don't know, I guess if they're going to do them, I would be happier if they were confined to one title, and all the others could ignore them. Doesn't appear that's going to happen.

Anyway, that was my bitchfest. So what are your thoughts? Do you like the 'Infinite Crisis' style events? Should all the books tie-in? What say ye?