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Column: Variant Coverage   “Some Days You Just Can’t Get Rid of A Bomb” By Adam White Published: 05 April 2006

Why have colossal company crossovers made such a comeback lately? For a few good years there, companies avoided crossovers like the plague, mainly because readers were tired of having to buy every series Marvel or DC put out just to follow their regular books. So why the change in the readers? Does everyone want to buy every book Marvel or DC puts out every month now? I don’t, so I want to take an objective look at the mega-company crossover, as perpetrated by DC and Marvel Comics, as well as the good and bad that come with them.

Crossovers were initially fun meetings between all our favorite characters back when they didn’t interact very much and stayed mostly confined to their own books and supporting casts. Given their usual isolation, crossovers allowed characters to interact with others and form new bonds and make new enemies, therefore opening up new possibilities and making for potentially exciting storytelling. However, circa 2006, Marvel’s and DC’s characters constantly interact in their respective universes both in their own books and in (often multiple) team titles, therefore making the crossover interaction superfluous. We no longer wonder how Spider-Man would interact with Wolverine because they interact on a regular basis (Wolverine interacts with everyone on a regular basis — even Power Pack, for friggin’ out loud); we see how each character’s relationship stands with each other character month-in and month-out, so throwing them together in a crossover title is just more of the same.

Crossovers once had the ability to change the landscape of a shared universe or clarify continuity; now they take place in alternate dimensions or just generally screw things up. Although they created Crisis on Infinite Earths in an attempt to condense the DC universe into one coherent entity, DC spent the next twenty years messing it back up with crossovers like Zero Hour, Kingdom Come, the idea of Hypertime, and currently the aptly named Infinite Crisis. Every new DC crossover makes their shared universe more convoluted than the last, making it increasingly incomprehensible to established fans and impenetrable to potential readers. Marvel takes the alternate route, creating a new alternate reality for each new crossover — Age of Apocalypse, Heroes Reborn, and most recently House of M are all examples of new worlds trotted out by Marvel to allow sweeping changes to characters but always with the safety net of returning to status quo once the crossover is finished. Which all leaves even the most continuity-savvy reader scratching his or her head in disgusted astonishment.

The main reason for a crossover circa 2006 is monetary — companies simply make more money when they do crossovers. Read Wonder Woman? Well, now you have to buy three miniseries, four Superman titles, a Batman title, Green Lantern and possibly even Ambush Bug in order to get her full story. Like Captain America? A crossover mini series, video game miniseries, two new ongoings, New Avengers, New Avengers specials, Megamorphs, Iron Man, Excessive Spider-Man, and twelve random guest appearances just got added to your pull list. Comic readers are by nature obsessive completists and companies know that when they pull out a crossover that they can pull a fast one on their dwindling fan base and make some quick extra currency. I, for one, have limited funds, and having so many titles be required reading for certain characters is much more likely to make me drop a character completely than to try and keep up anymore, a shared sentiment which could possibly account for some of the reader drop-off over the last two decades. To be fair, DC is much more guilty of this than Marvel of late; DC claims that each title can still be read on its own, but they can’t. Marvel has been better at making their crossovers skip-able because of the whole alternate-universe thing; however, when ongoing titles do tie in it breaks up the flow of the series badly and leaves regular readers reeling and more likely to drop that title altogether.

I will admit, however, occasionally good things do come out of bad crossovers, albeit accidentally and due in no way to the quality of the crossovers themselves. Although House of M was possibly the single most egregious crossover in Marvel’s history, its aftermath spawned several excellent mini series including Generation M and Son of M, as well as opened some new avenues for old characters. Infinite Crisis may be a complete mess, but some of the “One Year Later” directions have revitalized certain titles, namely Catwoman, Aquaman, and the newly retitled Hawkgirl, as well as provided a jumping-on point for great titles like Manhunter and Firestorm. Again, the crossovers themselves do not create these gems, they simply leave such a mess that a few craftier creators manage to sneak in excellent work under the suit-and-tie radar in the guise of more crossover offal to peddle to the public. A back-handed compliment (to crossovers)? Yes. But still a compliment.

Large company crossovers have existed for little more than twenty years, yet they have run their course more than once and have been turned largely into money-making schemes devoid of creative ingenuity. I will say that from what I’ve read so far, Marvel’s upcoming Civil War looks like it might be the first crossover to have far-reaching effects on the actual Marvel Universe, and if they do it right then I may be singing a different tune come this fall. Regardless, I believe that, in its current form, the crossover is a dinosaur that has outlived its usefulness and should be bombarded with large cosmic rocks (possibly from Marvel’s excellent Annihilation titles, a sort-of crossover amongst entirely new books). Agree or disagree, say what you want — at the end of the day, I’m still right.

As a fitting end note, Brian Michael Bendis accurately described writing the crossover House of M as “‘taking a huge dump […] It’s not like writing a mini-series or an arc. It’s big. It’s a whopper’” (Richards).

Indeed.

Works Cited

Richards, Dave. “Secrets and Lies: Bendis Talks ‘The Illuminati,’ ‘New Avengers,’ and All Things Marvel.” Comic Book Resources.com. 13 December 2005.