Ask Erik: Episode Eight

Here at Ask Erik, we realize there are questions that are so important, so integral to our culture that they need to be addressed in a forum outside the public eye, where honesty can be delivered in such a way as to be able to infiltrate society, plant its roots, and start a revolution.

And then there's questions about nerdy stuff that are just there to have fun with.




To Erik: What are the five best crossovers between comic book companies?

Ah, crossovers.  Personally, I find it to be a miracle any time a character from Company X is able to meet a character from Company Y.  I can only imagine the legal disputes, how payment will be divided up, who foots the bill for printing and marketing, whether the writer needs to be paid by both companies or just one...what little I know of finance and economics and the law would make sorting out a situation like that a terrible headache.

And then there's the egos.  It's a long-held belief that, in order to make Who Framed Roger Rabbit, both Disney and Warner Brothers insisted that their characters get an equal total amount of air time (I can't really find anything to confirm or deny this rumor, and Snopes has failed me).  I'm relatively certain, however, that in a comic book crossover, no publisher wants it to be firmly established that one character isn't as "awesome" as another character.  It's for reasons like this we have the misguided moment in Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man where Spider-Man is able to beat up Superman (for just a moment, mind you).

"Kapoi" is actually a character from a Hawaiian folk tale.  I'm not sure what it has to do with the story.

Other times, a crossover just seems to be an attempt to milk two popular franchises.  Superman is a regular victim of this happening (either simply because he's the most recognizable icon DC had for decades or simply because people think that if the crossover is popular, his books will become more popular).  I can recall, without really thinking about it, that Superman has met Gen13, the Thundercats, the recognizable characters from Milestone Comics, the Aliens from Aliens, Madman, Savage Dragon, the Terminator, the Predator, Tarzan, the cast of Mortal Kombat...heck, he's met some of those characters more than once.

Of course, the most completely random one of all time will always be this one:

But, which ones do I think are the best?

Well, I'm going to have to qualify that answer.  For instance, I've never read the crossover between the Teen Titans and the X-Men (where they fight Darkseid and the Dark Phoenix, because why not?), but people have told me it's one of the best they've ever read.  I've also never read the issue of Ren and Stimpy where Spider-Man fights Powdered Toast Man.  God knows I want to, but I just can't find a copy!

So, limiting it to crossovers I've actually read, let's list five great ones in no particular order.

But first, a few honorable mentions:

Gen13 #13A, B, and C:  A multi-company crossover that was just wild fun, where Grunge meets characters like Bone, Archie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Wolverine, and Hellboy.

All-Star Comics #3:  The first appearance of the Justice Society, this does technically count as a huge crossover, since at that point the characters were owned by three different companies, and they just printed jointly under the "DC" logo.

The Wizard of Oz: Not technically a crossover with multiple characters, this was the first book that Marvel and DC jointly published, which opened the door for other books and deals to be done in the future.

There are some other great ones, but I might visit those again in a future column.  For now, the list!


#5:  Archie Meets The Punisher

I'll admit it, this was a purely guilty pleasure comic when I first picked it up and read it, and I dismissed it pretty quickly afterward.  However, going back and reading it again later, and having spent more time studying on the rules that the "Archieverse" operates under made me realize just how miraculous that a character who regularly saves people by shooting bad guys in the face and regularly engages in torture, brutality, and maiming his opponents would get to appear in squeaky-clean Riverdale.

Keep in mind that we didn't have a real relationship between a white person and a black person in Riverdale until just a few years ago.  This book came out in 1994, and it captures the characters from both universes perfectly.  Archie and his gang get to do some mild heroics that rely mostly on luck and slight athletic ability, Veronica gets to play the damsel in distress, and we even see the Punisher shove a gun in Archie's face!

If anybody who reads this ever finds a copy, read it, then mail it to me.  Honest, I'll take good care of it.

#4: JLA/Avengers (also: Avengers/JLA)

I am fully willing to go on the record as saying that George Perez is one of my top three comic book artists of all time.  The man's attention to detail, his love of characters both popular and obscure, and his ability to make a character in a background recognizable even if they're only a half-inch tall lead me to feel my hand reaching for my wallet any time I hear he's working on a book.

Add to that the writing styles of Kurt Busiek and every character who has ever been a member of both of Marvel and DC's flagship hero teams, and you have one of the biggest nerd holidays of all time.

The scale of the event was monumental and truly worthy of both teams needing to work together, the tidbits and throwaway jokes are superb (Darkseid having control over the Infinity Gauntlet being one of my favorites), and every character is portrayed in a realistic manner (with any discrepancies in behavior explained later in a satisfactory manner).

Plus, there's the fact that (last I heard) both companies considered this story to be in-continuity, and it was followed up in several JLA runs since the series came out (I don't really remember Marvel doing much with it, but it was theorized that this series was a big part of the Scarlet Witch's later mental breakdown).

It's one of my favorites, and should be on any true nerd's comic book shelf.

#3: Godzilla vs. Barkley

No, seriously.  I'll admit, this book has a ton of flaws, and it makes no damn sense whatsoever, and it's based on a Nike commercial (see? a crossover between Nike and Dark Horse, that counts, right?)...but damn if I don't love this book for one simple reason:

Outside of a 30 second ad for shoes, nowhere else would you ever see one of the biggest names in basketball fight the king of all monsters.  Not in movies, not in television, not even in video games (and keep in mind that video games once featured Shaq entering a fighting tournament in an alternate dimension run by an evil mummy).  Only in comics would the solution to "Godzilla is destroying the city!" be "well, let's turn Charles Barkley into a giant and have him deal with it."

It's also my favorite reminder, along with Archie and the Punisher chasing Archie's evil double across Riverdale, that you really can't take comic books too seriously.  So they reboot a series, or change a character, or erase the past 30 years of a character's background.  You know what?  Godzilla once fought a guy who hung out with Randall, Dante, Jay, and Silent Bob in the Clerks cartoon.

Plus, this comic has what I'm sure all future historians will call the greatest single comic book panel that mankind was ever able to produce:

 

That's pure art, right there.

#2:  The Batman/Judge Dredd Crossovers

I only picked this book up recently (to get more reference material for my Judge Dredd movie comparison, actually), and I fell in love with it so quickly.  It gets both characters right in so many ways, and somehow manages to take a man who loathes guns with a passion and chooses to run around dressed like a bat and mesh him perfectly well with a future cop who will deliver final justice in the form of a bullet to your face without any outside court ruling your innocence or guilt.  The two don't like each other, they first meet when Dredd arrests Batman for having concealed weapons ("But he's not from our world, he didn't know!"  "The law's the law."), but somehow it all works.

My personal favorite part of the whole thing is when Judge Dredd shows up in Gotham out of the blue, no explanation given, and simply picks a fight with Batman.  This is a fight that was building in the interactions the characters had before, and it seems that this is simply an excuse to watch two people beat the tar out of each other to learn which one comes out on top.

However, you learn that Dredd came "back in time" to that exact moment to fight Batman because he found a headline saying that Batman dies that day, and he knows that Batman would be needed for some huge event in the near future.  At first, Batman is amazed by this...and yet, he's still frustrated because Dredd acknowledges that Batman died trying to save children and, well, who cares about them?  Acceptable losses.

I won't spoil how it ends, except to say that the two men are able to call an overall truce towards the end.

#1:  Marvel Team-Up #14

This crossover managed to sneak up on me, and when I saw it I knew I had to read it.  Robert Kirkman's Invincible was (and still is) absolute fun to read, taking the "what if Superman had a son with powers?" idea and making it into a truly unique and interesting character and one of the better books to regularly come out during that time period.

At the time this book came out, Invincible was fighting a villain (who happens to be holding his mother hostage) who had the power to open portals to alternate worlds, hoping to wear Invincible down before being able to kill him.  One of those worlds just happened to be the Marvel Earth, where he met the poster child for "with great power, something something."

I've only really heard the phrase once or twice, it doesn't get brought up much.

The book has some fun moments, like when Invincible meets the Avengers, or the fight the two heroes have with Doctor Octopus, but the best moments come when the two characters are able to lay it all out and explain why they do what they do, and what hardships they've had to overcome.  It's a genuinely touching moment between the two, and the fact that the only reason why Spider-Man didn't become a regular in the Image Comics universe was that the portal closed before he could leap through to help, along with Invincible not even doubting he'll go back to save his mother no matter the cost, shows that these two are true heroes that didn't need a huge event, cosmic threat, or other ridiculous set-up to have them meet.  It was simply two good guys bumping into each other by chance, chatting, and reaffirming what they know about themselves.

In other words, a good read.

Now, I know some people want to know what the worst crossovers of all time are, but that would be a much more involved list, because for a while every single terrible book of the 90s and early 00s was crossing over with every other terrible book.  Mostly these were the "edgy" books, with the "bad girl" casts or characters that didn't even pretend to be "noble" heroes.  Because why wouldn't you want to see Lady Death meet Vampirella?  Or Hellina (?) meet Catfight (??)?

Believe it or not, that's the "clean" cover.  The one that shows up in Google the most has them naked.

You know what?  I actually need to amend my earlier statement about Superman's best crossover ever.  Clearly, it was the following, for obvious reasons:

So remember to keep asking questions, either in the comments below or tweet me at @ErikAtTheGates!  Coming soon will be a dedicated email for this blog, and perhaps even a Facebook site depending on when I get around to it.