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Underground > Comic Books >

So is there just going to be a perpetual crossover going on with marvel and dc?

01:56 / 28.02.06

From what I can tell, there seems to be no stop to the crossovers. one crossover is leading into another. fuck crossovers. i have no intrest in this shit. the ammount of mainstream books i buy these days is far, far less than a year or two ago. fuck this shit.

02:18 / 28.02.06

^ fuck this shit

02:19 / 28.02.06

I increasingly feel that members either approach the board as a community, or they approach it simply as a venue for self-expression.

Lock and toss?

02:21 / 28.02.06

Time to move on, then.

I pretty much stopped buying superhero comics when I realized that I was no longer the target audience. Maybe I'd changed: maybe the industry had. More likely it's a little from column A, a little from Column B.

The Marvel and DC Universes are no longer for the likes of you and me, Orqwith. Leave them to those that enjoy them, and find something else to dig.

02:25 / 28.02.06

Yeah, lock it and toss it. Don't know why I bothered: it's easy enough to say "Stop whining and adapt," but really, looking again at that opening post, it hardly seems worth the little effort it cost.

02:44 / 28.02.06

Well...at least he or she put a lot of emotion into it.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:52 / 28.02.06

Or we could talk about the effect crossovers have on our buying habits; I tend to favour medium sized projects like SEVEN SOLDIERS to the INFINITE CRISIS. If a big crisis enters into a book I read, I'm more likely to skip over it or lose interest because I can't be bothered to keep track of everything going on. They tend to result in questionable fill-in artist/writer choices.

What would constitute a "good" crossover or company-wide event? How could "they" design such a thing to produce more positive results (artistically, they seem to do reasonably well off the money they make, but what do I know)?

I'm going to go off and think about this and post something more in depth, but what does everyone think about this all? Crossovers ARE a fairly central and all-consuming trend in comics, and we should discuss that. Crossovers don't, for example, occur very often on TV shows, but comics are ripe with them even when the moods of the books in question don't click (Gotham stuff mixing with cosmic?)...

10:56 / 28.02.06

Marvel, probably. But it looks like DC may let the crossovers stop for a bit. Has anyone heard evidence of a major crossover post-Infinite Crisis?

(And no, self-contained minis and oneshots like Brave New World or Battle for Bludhaven are not crossovers)

12:18 / 28.02.06

Am I missing something? Some of the comments on this tread just strike me as a bit harsh...

12:32 / 28.02.06

The thread started off with with some spontaneous vitriol from Orqwith. Several responded in kind, with Mr. Fear offering a wise and succinct slam. Papers is salvaging an otherwise superfluous thread by discussing the succession of crossovers and the buying habits of their readers.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

13:21 / 28.02.06

Yeah, rumor has it that Marvel is just getting started with Civil War for their even bigger event, whereas DC apparently is done.

I don't buy it, though. Realistically, the DCU has been one gargantuan crossover for the past two years and with 52 serving as this narrative lynchpin, flinging itself out across potentially every title they put out, it's not too much of a stretch to consider this intertwining approach the new status quo for DC. I'd say that would characterize it as one perpetual crossover, yes.

Marvel will most likely a) take a breather now and then and b) have high profile titles that will never have anything to do with the crossover (Astonishing, Daredevil, etcetera).

Cada uno a su gusto.

13:30 / 28.02.06

surely daredevil is actually the most civil war title that there is/ i was under the impression that daredevil-in-prison would be one of the conflict's catalysts.

jesus shit the bed, i read that spiderman issue last week, with the bullshit costume and the bullshit foreshadowing. this civil war could be areal stinker. still quietly optimistic about 52 though...

14:13 / 28.02.06

Mr. Fear offering a wise and succinct slam.

It really wasn't meant as a slam. I honestly feel for Orqwith, I do. because it's something I'm dealing with myself, and it's the source for much of my veneer of sneering contempt for today's comics industry.

It's kinda depressing to realize that you're no longer a target market. There's a genuine sadness and confusion that comes from knowing that you are no longer important to the business model, that you will no longer be catered to, that you don't matter the way you used to. That you've been replaced, made superfluous.

It can make you angry. Why do you think cultural conservatives are so pissed-off all the time? Because they know the world has passed them by, for good or bad, and they're not quite ready to give up being top dogs yet.

Do you remember when you opened Playboy and noticed that, for the first time, you were older than the Playmate of the Month? It's a little tiny gut-punch, that moment.

14:21 / 28.02.06

Out of interest Jack, what could mainstream comics be doing to keep you interested?

Gumbitch, yeah, that's pretty much my analysis of the DD situation. To my mind the DD shaped by Bendis is the most crossover capable DD we've ever seen. I really like the way, for example, he refused to keep super powers out of the comic , in the way that lesser writers would've done in order to convey *ahem* realism.
If DD can operate in a world that includes the FF and the Avengers then he sure as shit can crossover without damaging his street cred.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

14:27 / 28.02.06

Yeah but he's in prison. My friend and I were positing that if he does get "recruited" it would probably involve someone breaking him out, against his will and there'd be loads of faux drama with him wanting to be returned to his cell as "[It's] SOMETHING [he] NEED[s] TO DO!"

I really hope he stays out of this whole thing. The best Marvel sutff these days has been the autonomous stuff, but considering the news about Runaways/Young Avengers: Civil War, there's little hope that anyone shall emerge...UNSCATHED.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:35 / 28.02.06

Are there any good crossover installments in a regular series? You know, where the writer and artists take the idea and do something effectively with it without damaging their ongoing momentum?

Peter David's X-Factor is a good example of using the crossover after the fact, I suppose, if you consider it the sequel or extension of the Madrox mini from a while back...he's taken the M-Day and run with it, although it already looks like time travel and Layla Miller might be leftover bits that ultimately bring the title down. I have a hard time telling in between the art being inconsistent. Though, I don't know how much of the time travel thing was from before, as I think Singularity was around in Madrox, right?

I remember there was a certain...glee to Infinity Gauntlet, at least, before the sequels -- I was wee at that point, and enjoyed seeing Thanos kill all the heroes in such weirdly creative ways, but all I remember of the non-main parts was the Infinity Watch series that followed as a spin-off.

15:08 / 28.02.06

Out of interest Jack, what could mainstream comics be doing to keep you interested?

Mainstream comics isn't supposed to keep me interested. The minute it does, it ceases to be mainstream.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:15 / 28.02.06

OMFG Yes. Infinity Gauntlet totally shaped my tiny little brain. I was actually kind of stunned to find that it was Lim and not Perez who drew that balls-out Everybody Dies, Thanos fight. My brain had remembered it with the loving pencils of Mr. Perez.

Good times. I also read Infinity Watch for a while. Yay, Pip!

I was quite fond of the Generation Next issues of Age Of Apocalypse. It was some of Bachalo's best supedup hero work and it was pretty grim as well. I honestly can't think of a great crossover story that retained its indepndence and built nicely off of the main story, at least in the past few years. Everything great I remember is like Inferno-era stuff.

17:37 / 28.02.06

Mainstream comics isn't supposed to keep me interested. The minute it does, it ceases to be mainstream.

So, are you saying it's impossible for a work to have mainstream appeal and Jack Fear appeal? Seems like an extreme position to me.

This probably isn't the place for this discussion.

20:40 / 28.02.06

I dont mean to speak for Jack Fear but I suspect he's just messing with us by taking extreme positions like he generally does.

I laughed when I read it imagining him saying it in a gruff "I DEFINE THE POLES" sort of way. So I doubt there's even a need for a discussion about that here.

I'm a bit surprised at the thread however. I dont see Barbelith being the place for fanboy (and I dont intend it in a disparaging way) meltdowns of any sort.

21:10 / 28.02.06

Are there any good crossover installments in a regular series? You know, where the writer and artists take the idea and do something effectively with it without damaging their ongoing momentum?

Two I can think of are in Ann Nocenti's late-80s Daredevil run. She wrote some very good stories for the Inferno crossover that actually considered the emotional ramifications of having demons running all over New York City. Given her interest in the good/evil dichotomies of Christianity, this wasn't too much of a surprise. It was certainly a nice change from every other title in that crossover, which just switched from beating up supervillains for the month to beating up demons instead. The policeman/dentist/dentist-drill hybrid in issue 262 or 263 (I forget which) was genuinely scary.

Her Day of Vengeance crossover (DD 275-6) was also pretty good, telling a great story of personal conflict using Ultron as the foil for that conceit.

And now that I think of it, there was also a one-issue crossover with that X-Men thing where Apocalypse made Angel into Death for his four riders. Fall of the Mutants - that's what it was called. That was issue 252.

The thing that made them work was that they told stories from the perspective of the little people who had no idea what the bigger picture was, and that included Daredevil. This approach allowed Nocenti to incorporate those ideas without derailing the larger stories she was telling for herself in those story arcs.

21:26 / 28.02.06

Good part sof a crossover that I can remember include:

whatever Robinson did during I think two or three of them during his tenure on Starman.

the 'Invasion' issue of Animal Man.

More recently, Brubaker's House of M Captain America alternate history was really pretty good (and moving! a bit.)

Crossovers are an appealing notion to me still; that absolute smorgasbord of everyone in whichever fictional universe interacting, getting stuck in. But it's like too many sweeties, really. Actually, it's like a packet of Revels where most of them are coffee, generally.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:20 / 28.02.06

The only offshoot - or piece of, really - Inferno that I've read was the two issues of Excalibur which were really more of the same zany sheninigans as usual. It set up some of the soulsword stuff that nobody did anything with for a long time. I mostly remember that it did something passingly interesting with Rachel Summers (Yes? That's her name, as opposed to the soulless Rachel Grey automaton), where she was changed by magic into a mannequin -- it nicely riffed off the ongoing themes and recurring plot of everybody being after Phoenix, with the bad guy in question being such a low-level demon with little part to play in the greater scheme of things...Kitty was given a run through multiple film genres, hunted by Captain Britain - it gave a nice little warm-up to the eventual Cross-Time Caper madness.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

17:53 / 05.03.06

I loved the old Excalibur! That Inferno crossover was great, with Meggan as the Goblin Queen and Cap as her S & M gimp that she sicced on Kitty. I have all of the old issues in a box somewhere. I'm going to have to go dig for them. That comic may have been culpable in twisting my impressionable little mind. Love it.

As far as other crossovers go, I think there was some quality Lex Luthor action in the Final Night mini, and the fact that I remember it means that it must have been passable in some respects.