Crossovers should be good. Are they inherently bad?

[Shellhead]

When comics moved from mainstream retail outlets to specialty stores in the 80's, they lost a lot of readers. Although comic prices have been rising at roughly double the rate of inflation over the years, DC and Marvel still need to sell something like 18,000 copies of each issue to maintain basic economies of scale. For over 20 years now, the preferred method of generating those sales figures is the crossover event.

If crossover events are necessary, it would be nice if they were good, too. While I think that they tend to be bad, I am always hopeful, and apparently many other fans feel the same way, judging by the strong sales and the negative remarks online afterwards. Even if upper management at DC and Marvel didn't care about the quality of the crossovers, it seems reasonable to expect the writers to care.

Is it possible that crossovers are inherently bad? Maybe the sheer effort of coordinating so many creative people to get their stories in synch with the overall story arc is too much to expect, especially with monthly deadlines on the mainstream titles. Maybe the introduction of an invasive meta-story is too disruptive to the creativity of the typical artist-writer team on any given comic. Or maybe the scale of the stories that a crossover requires tend to limit the writers to a few themes that have been overused by now.

Agree? Disagree? Which crossovers did you like and why? Which crossovers did you dislike and why?

[Alan2099]

What bothers me is that crossovers have stoppd being an event and started being a status quo.

I mean the yearly big summer crossover was bad enough, it got almost unberable when decompression really hit in. You use to be able to have your stoyline then most of a year to show the results of that event and then rebuild things, but now a single storyline takes about half a year, so you get your event, then maybe a storyarc, maybe two, then it's right up for the next event.

Just about every marvel interview seems to always mention "which sets things up for the upcoming (insert name here) crossover coming out in a few months."

It almost always seems that these events are just in place to tear things down too, so you can't even rebuild before your start tearing it down again.

[stealthwise]

I agree with Alan, the decompression essentially ensures that readers get little to no break from the big "events," and that there's always something going on in the shared universe to force dedicated readers to fork out their hard-earned cash.

I think that the biggest failing of these crossovers is the talent involved.

Case in point, at no time should either Marvel or DC be giving huge assignments like House of M/Civil War/Infinite Crisis to guys like Bendis, Millar, or Johns.

Seven Soldiers was excellent, and it was only MORRISON working at it.

I'm thinking that Countdown will be a lot better than the aforementioned, simply because Dini will be doing it, although Didio's involvement will likely stink things up here and there.

Basically, crossovers suck because they are not coordinated properly, which might be the result of them being marketing-driven, and not creatively-driven.

[Shellhead]

I rarely buy into the crossovers. Of the ones that I've tried, I loved some and hated others.

Loved:

1. Crisis on Infinite Earths - this huge and unnecessary mess was still fun, because it was truly the most earth-shaking event ever in comics and the core story had decent writing and artwork. Better still, the aftermath saw a burst of creativity at DC that lasted years, as writers had fun working with new combinations of heroes and villains, especially in Justice League and Suicide Squad.

2. Acts of Vengeance - the core story was contained to just a few comics, and the crossover concept was easy for all the affected writers to work with. All they had to do was have the heroes fight villains that were normally fought by other heroes. The result was generally fun, with Punisher going after Dr. Doom, Spider-man battling Magneto, Dr. Strange versus Hobgoblin and the X-Men fighting Mandarin. Best of all, the core storyline featured some great interaction between several of Marvel's best villains.

3. Seven Soldiers - this was very nearly one of the greatest crossovers ever, sabotaged only by a chaotic and bewildering finale. Morrison should still take a bow, for coordinating and writing this epic story featuring re-vitalized versions of some forgotten heroes.

Neutral:

1. Secret Wars (the original) - Vastly overshadowed by DC's Crisis, this was a fun and lightweight story of heroes, villains and suddenly ambivalent mutants. It actually wasn't much of a crossover, in that the overlap with the monthly titles was minimal, but the effects were broad and sweeping. It was almost like Jim Shooter and Marvel's marketing department came up with a laundry list of changes designed to increase sales, and then ordered somebody to turn it into a 12-part story.

2. Lifeform - this was a decent idea, and the execution was good. An monstrous lifeform gradually mutates into more and more powerful forms, for a 4-part crossover that included such diverse Marvel titles as Punisher and Silver Surfer. However, the lifeform wasn't particularly memorable, and there were no lasting effects of the story.

Hated:

1. Secret Wars II - So bad that I stopped buying Marvel comics for 15 years, after 15 years of buying lots of Marvel. Lame, contrived, boring, and just annoying to look at.

2. Identity Crisis - A bad murder mystery, an offensive new take on the sattelite-era JLA, and a very poorly written fight scene starring Deathstroke.

3. Infinite Crisis - Until this mess, I enjoyed everything that Geoff Johns wrote. But this was poorly plotted and way too dark for the iconic heroes of the DCU. The four associated minis were not essential to the story and just seemed like a heavy-handed attempt to cash in. The out-of-continuity Justice series that Alex Ross is doing right now would have made a better crossover for DC in place of IC.

4. lots of other crossovers - there have been many crossovers that I skipped or only encountered through my normal reading habits, because I didn't like the concept, didn't like the writer, or didn't like what that publisher was doing in general at that time.

[Lorendiac]

A few months ago I was in a similar discussion on another forum. When we talked about "crossovers" there, we generally meant "story arcs featuring characters from different titles, and the story itself often jumping back and forth from one title to another, with different writers taking turns." So that's the type of crossover I'm criticizing in the material below, if anyone's interested.

To explain the context: Someone else had already said that yes, crossovers between multiple titles can be a nuisance, but the good ones have great stories that can outweigh any "inconvenience" involved. Here's what I said in response:

*******

Why does the inconvenience need to be there at all? Isn't it perfectly possible to take heroes from different titles, stick them together into one great story arc with a big impact, and still publish that particular story arc within the pages of a single title?

I like the fairly restrained way DC seems to have done it over 20 years ago, with "Crisis on Infinite Earths." The "main plot" of that huge crossover happened within the pages of the 12-part maxiseries written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by George Perez. If you read those 12 issues in order, or buy the TPB that collects them, you can generally understand what is going on from one installment to the next. (Although it helps a great deal if you are already generally familiar with the distinguishing characteristics of Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, etc., as they existed in the Silver Age and Bronze Age continuity of DC's multiverse.)

Other writers were allowed to draw upon the "cosmic" events of COIE for story ideas in other titles coming out at the same time, but their plots generally focused upon what their own regular characters were doing (in between occasional appearances within the COIE series itself, say), so that a reader apparently didn't need to read the newest issue of COIE, and then run off to read issues of Superman, Batman, Legion of Super-Heroes, JLA, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Infinity Inc., etc., before turning around and being able to read next month's issue of COIE and finally understand what the heck it was talking about!

(A few years later, DC did the "Millennium" event. The flagship of that one was an 8-part miniseries that came out weekly for two months. I own a run of it. At the end of Part 1, it listed a whole bunch of other DC titles coming out around that same time, and warned you that you better read them all to keep track of what was happening to DC's various heroes before Millennium #2. Then the final page of #2 would contain a similar warning to go read several more issues of other titles coming out at the same time before you read #3, and so forth. So the "Millennium" crossover ended up as a huge, bloated, long-winded mess that nobody at DC has ever felt the need to collect in TPB at all.)

Another problem is that these things can also be very difficult for collectors buying up back issues years later. Years ago, I had managed to get a complete run of the 1970s title "The Man Called Nova" (also written by Marv Wolfman, come to think of it). I had 1 through 25, so I figured I had 25 consecutive chapters of Nova continuity that I could sit down and enjoy. I was wrong! Around #12 of that series, I got the first half of a crossover with Spider-Man in the form of a murder mystery, and then there was a note telling me to run out and buy an issue of "Amazing Spider-Man" off the newstand so I could get the second half of the story and find out who the murderer really was! That was going to be awfully hard to do, a quarter-century or so after that issue of "Amazing" had been published!

So I tend to agree with BarcodeOnTheBac [the originator of the discussion thread on that other forum] that I shouldn't need to do that in the first place. The two-part murder mystery "crossover" story should have been published entirely in one title or the other, with Nova (for example) as the host character, and Spidey as the guest-star. There was no real need for the story to leap-frog between two titles!

[Expletive Deleted]

The core story was contained to just a few comics, and the crossover concept was easy for all the affected writers to work with.That's the key, I think. Small footprint, minimal detours, clear high concept. It doesn't guarantee a good crossover, but I can't think of one without it.

DC did a lot of those in the late '90s. There were some clunkers (DAY OF JUDGEMENT, GENESIS), but also some very good ones (ONE MILLION, FINAL NIGHT). Marvel doesn't do it quite as often, but they've put out some good crossovers with said formula (Acts of Vengeance, MAXIMUM SECURITY).

[Reptisaurus!]

I think they're inherently hackwork.

Great comics have content, meaning. Crossover stories don't. I mean you're not going to comment on the meaning of life or the nature of the human condition in the face of an indifferent God or whatever.

Unless y'count stuff like Seven Soldiers, which are all one writer.

And even beyond that, they seem really hard to write competently and a bitch to draw. So there's more of a chance for the creative team to screw up then in projects with fewer characters and plot-threads.

As much as I love team-up books, I'm generally not a fan of these type of stories and avoid them. Though I loved Seven Soldiers, and I thought Infinite Crisis (hardback version) was really well done; Multiple plot threads were maintained and it never surrendered to "All the characters sit around and spot expository dialouge" disease.

[Pól Rua]

Not inherently, no. Quite the opposite, provided we are defining 'crossovers' in the same way.
If we're talking crossover as any story where a character or characters from one series makes an appearance in another series, that's pretty inherently cool. Sure, it can be badly executed... look at 90% of fan fiction for example, but still, the IDEA of the crossover, whether it's Doc Savage, Tarzan and The Scarlet Pimpernel all coming from the same convoluted family tree, or Scrooge McDuck and Batman teaming up to stop Flintheart Glomgold from stealing that really big penny in the Batcave.
The IDEA is awesome.

On the other hand, hacked-out, money-driven shit IS inherently bad. Poorly crafted, badly written crap with a godawful story, shitty art, out of character portrayals of longstanding characters, inappropriate content... IS inherently bad.

[dancj]

Around #12 of that series, I got the first half of a crossover with Spider-Man in the form of a murder mystery, and then there was a note telling me to run out and buy an issue of "Amazing Spider-Man" off the newstand so I could get the second half of the story and find out who the murderer really was!
I think it's outrageous when they do that. I've still got a Starman story that I haven't read the conclusion of because it finished in The Power of Shazam. (aka Captain Marvel to anyone who gets irritated by trademark laws). I don't mind what they did in things like Final Night and DC 1,000,000 where there's a general status quo of the world and individual comics do an issue or two set in that status quo, but still have their own stories. When you have to buy an issue of another comic to get the ending (or beginning) of your story it's an inexcusable con.

[ubergeekette]

What I hate about crossovers is that you can't skip them nowadays! I'm a Teen Titans fan, in the year later event, made me had to read what the heck was going on. It was like: can I choose not to buy something???

[Pól Rua]

It was like: can I choose not to buy something???

You can ALWAYS choose not to buy something.

[Perry Holley]

What I hate about crossovers is that you can't skip them nowadays! I'm a Teen Titans fan, in the year later event, made me had to read what the heck was going on. It was like: can I choose not to buy something???See my sigfile.

[The Mirrorball Man]

What I hate about crossovers is that you can't skip them nowadays! I'm a Teen Titans fan, in the year later event, made me had to read what the heck was going on. It was like: can I choose not to buy something???

I haven't read any DCU book (except Seven Soldiers) since "Countdown to Infinite Crisis", and I don't intend to buy any until the end of the big crossover that will follow "Countdown". I haven't bought any 616 Marvel book since "The Road to Civil War" and I don't intend to buy any until the end of "World War Hulk" or the following crossover, I'm not sure where it's supposed to end. You can choose not to buy something. In fact, you can choose to buy nothing.

Crossovers are not inherently bad, but they're almost always bad. For any fictional story to be satisfying, it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Really, that's not too much to ask. Those huge company-wide crossovers usually don't offer that because the "beginning" is dozens of hints and story elements randomly scattered throughout the entire line, the "middle" is another name for "all the comics released during the crossover" and there is no "end", just something that can be used to launch the next crossover.

Following a big comic book crossover is like trying to listen to ten concept albums at the same time: it's confusing, nerve-grating, and ultimately, pointless.

[suedenim]

A lot of interesting points here. I think the convergence of "decompression" as the default storytelling method with "the big crossover" is an important (and bad) development.

Look at Invasion! It told a big sweeping story of a real all-out invasion of Earth, and only took three (albeit "80-page special") issues to do it! And the tie-in books were pretty much "take it or leave it" types. If you didn't want to know what the Atom was up to during the war, you could skip his book and not miss much that was vital.

That raises another question for me, which is whether the story really has a scope which requires a big crossover. Does the story inherently demand or encourage monthly books to tie in with it? Or could it be told just as well as a stand-alone series or even just a storyline in Avengers or something?

BTW, one thing I love about the recent Marvel Essentials reprint format is that with "little" crossovers between two books, they generally put both parts in the collection, so you don't need to hunt down that "Part Two Continues in Amazing Spider-Man or whatever."

[Sijo]

Well, the *very* point of having series set in the same universe is to allow them to cross over sooner or later. It's a fun concept, when handled well.

The problem, I think, is when a crossover is forced on a title, rather than growing out naturally from the events planned for a series. DC in particular has been guilty of this.

In my opinion, a company should gets its writers together (not necessarily in person) to discuss their future plans, then figure out which series would have to crossover with each other due to the size of the events being planned. Then the format would be decided by the story requirements as well: A Thor story that spills into a great battle in Manhattan should be covered in those Marvel titles set in New York. Each series would cover a side of the events from its characters' POV, rather than have each feature events that you NEED to see to understand the whole story. A specific miniseries should NOT be created for a crossover unless it stars characters that currently have no series of their own. The idea is that the publicity should go to existing titles. This is how things were handled in the old days (Before Secret Wars started the whole crossover ball rolling.) (Yes, I know Contest of Champions came first, but that was so self-contained you can hardly call it a crossover.)

Also, crossovers (at least the BIG ones) should not happen all the time. Once or twice a year is enough. The whole "constant crisis" approach DC is taking these days, with one Event leading directly into another (Infinity Crisis->52->Countdown etc.) may be selling now but will likely peter out sooner or later.

[Lorendiac]

In my opinion, a company should gets its writers together (not necessarily in person) to discuss their future plans, then figure out which series would have to crossover with each other due to the size of the events being planned.

You reminded me of something: If I have this right, all through the 1990s DC was doing it that way on a small scale. Annual story conferences involving the writers of all of the regular Superman titles. They had to do it that way because the standard approach was to have all four titles taking turns telling weekly installments of the same "soap opera-style continuity." In the same crossover-themed thread that I quoted from earlier, I once said the following about that era in Superman storytelling:

***********

Looking back on this thread, I realize nobody ever mentioned what I believe was the biggest and longest example of multiple titles being published in what I call Perpetual Crossover Mode.

The various Superman titles, all through the 1990s. I'll just reminisce for a moment about how it all fit together, as I understand it. Something like this:

At the start of 1990, there were already three regular monthly Superman titles ("Superman," "Action Comics," "The Adventures of Superman") and by that time all three of them were "linked together" so that if a three-part story arc began with Part 1 in one title, Part 2 of it would be released as the next issue of the second title, and Part 3 would come out a bit later in the third title, and then any ongoing subplots that still needed to be addressed would be developed further in the next issue of the "first title," and so forth. In 1991, a fourth title was added to the mix: "Superman: Man of Steel," and now each month saw the release of four weekly installments of a single ongoing serial drama about Superman's life and times, much like a weekly television show! I believe that lasted for at least a decade. Sometime in the early 2000s it started to fade, although I believe that such story arcs as "Return to Krypton" and "Return to Krypton II" were published that way, in weekly installments featuring the efforts of several different creative teams as you went along.

I've always been impressed by the editorial diligence that must have been required to make sure that different scripts, being turned in simultaneously by at least four different writers each month according to previous plot outlines applying to the efforts of four titles at once (sometimes five writers and titles -- long story), were well-coordinated in moving the ongoing plot lines further forward without getting everything all tangled up in dozens of internal contradictions.

On the other hand: I've often wondered if all that effort was really necessary. (Sometime in the last several years, DC's editorial staff apparently asked themselves the same question and reached the conclusion that the answer was No!)

I admit that there was something to be said for the idea that if you were going to "kill" Superman in 1992, and go several months before finally bringing him back in 1993, then maybe you should have all the Superman titles carefully synchronized at the time. The alternative being to implicitly admit that since he was "still alive" in other titles, those stories were probably happening immediately after he recovered from his "slight case of death" in just one of his four ongoing series!

But I tend to see that as a special case, and anyway, the problem of having him "dead" in one title and "very much alive" in others is only a "serious problem" in a handful of rare cases, such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man, each of whom have multiple titles exclusively dedicated to themselves. Most other characters just have one solo title, or are members of a team in one group title, and if the writer of the only title that regularly uses Character X wants the guy "missing in action, presumed dead" for the next six or twelve months, he can presumably just send a memo around to everybody else saying, "Please don't touch Character X at all until further notice -- he's going to Mysteriously Vanish for awhile and I don't want anybody confusing the issue of whether he's really 'gone' or not by having him guest-star elsewhere! Okay? I'll do the same for you someday!"

[Sijo]

I've always been impressed by the editorial diligence that must have been required to make sure that different scripts, being turned in simultaneously by at least four different writers each month according to previous plot outlines applying to the efforts of four titles at once (sometimes five writers and titles -- long story), were well-coordinated in moving the ongoing plot lines further forward without getting everything all tangled up in dozens of internal contradictions.
Yeah, whether you liked the idea of the four Superman titles telling the same story or not, one has to admit that it was done well, and in time. Which is why I find Marvel's moanings about how hard it was to coordinate the continuity between Civil War and its tie-ins hard to swallow. It was painfully obvious that Millar, Jenkins, Straczynski and other CW writers were NOT on the same page regarding major points of the story, and their later efforts to cover it up (for example, with the excuse that the much harsher 42 prison seen in CW: Frontline was actually a section that still didn't have the comforts they were supposed to have installed yet) came across as lame.

[stelok]

2. Identity Crisis - a very poorly written fight scene starring Deathstroke.


.

Well, I thought the JLA/Deathstroke battle was decent.



Crossovers I loved:

Crisis on Infinite Earths: I absolutely loved it. Plenty of definitive character moments and well-paced character development plus col battle scenes.

Infinity Gauntlet- The storyline was....cosmic. I loved how Thanos thrashed the Marvel Universe.

Batman/Predator by Dave Gibbons and Andy Kubert- The creative team did a good job of having the Batman kick Predator's ass. They also depicted Alfred's characterization very wonderfully well.

Batman/Captain America- It was great and cool seeing two iconic characters team up to fight a common enemy. I appreciated how John Byrne kept the characters properly in character.

Crossovers I hated:

Secret Wars: The chemistry between several characters could have been written better. The battle between Captain America and Dr. Doom could have been written better. But noo Jim Shooter's riting sucked bad.