DC's use of the word "Crisis" (at least in the relatively modern era from 1980s onwards) has become a red flag for me. They might as well call it "Infinite/Final/Countdown Avoid at all costs for the sake of your sanity on Infinite Earths/Multiverses" - they've all been horrific train wrecks.

Marvel have produced some terrible cross-overs over the years (Secret Wars 1 & 2, and the current godawful Axis, for example), but they never seem to reach the height of sheer incompetence, terrible execution and disastrous downstream consequences* that DC do

(* by which I don't mean things like "Supergirl is dead! dead! dead!" but the way they break their continuity so badly they can't make it fit and spend years writing sticking-plaster stories to try to cover up the worst problems until the next botched continuity-reboot)

As a reader who was here for Contest of Champions, Secret Wars, and CRISIS etc at the beginning, I believe that a lot of the current "events" are better. All those X-Men stories in the 80s and 90s were fairly attrocious, and the Annual events were universally incompetant. I liked Civil War, in fact I think that 2 philosophically opposed groups of heroes fighting like this was bound to happen. Its not like we dont fight in real life over even more trivial things than government approval. By the way arent stories like Avengers vs Defenders just as stupid or even moreso. The groups dont even have the excuse of government intervention and moral disagreement to fall back on. We have accepted the stereotypical hero vs hero first meeting fight for decades, but rail against a story specifically built around it.

I believe we excuse Secret Wars etc because they were written in an era where the scripting wasnt as mature as what we are used to today. It wasnt still at the juvenile level of the early 70s, it was growing up fast, but it wasnt there yet. However we have no mercy for the current writers. If they dont give us the same rehashed characters again and again we vilify them. how does the industry grow in an atmosphere of stagnation ?

The current events (for me) hover between ok and awful, with the occassional excellent like Civil War or World War Hulk. None of the DC weekly series (52, countdown, batman, earth 2) have worked for me, being drawn out, confusing, and just plain boring. I liked the idea of Secret Invasion, but disliked Siege. Liked Fear Itself, even though it was stupid, but am disliking Axis. Enjoyed Final Crisis and Identity Crisis, who cares about Sue and Iris, 2 bit part characters who finally escaped their 2 dimensional hell. 

I dont get too precious about most of these characters, so dont mind them changing a costume, or even swapping the person under the mask occassionally. I think its more positive than trying to hold onto Peter Parker being in school for 50 years. God, Marvel NEED to reboot their universe. They should have done that when they introduced the Ultimate Universe, THAT would have been a good canonical change.

I rail against a lot of stuff in Civil War, but the heroes fighting each other isn't part of it. Pretty much everything beside the heroes fighting, in fact.

I miss the days of "done in one" or "done in two" stories. Have writers lost the ability to tell stories in anything less than 12 issue blocks?

I hear you on both points. Although I don't mind the events per se, I do believe they are coming too damn quickly, and therein lose their effectiveness. Just look at the push for Inhumanity, leading to the Inhumans push this year, which just got swallowed by Original Sin(there's another I loved) and Joe Maduiera's glacial pace.
The other point that concerns me is...How does Earth 616 continue to exist ? The amount of cosmic and global disasters which befall it seemingly monthly defy the ability of our population, let alone the planet itself, to survive...surely.

But as stories...I'll give most a go.

Yo pak, you have the right spirit. Enjoy the ride. Steve will be back eventually.