Intercompany crossover

In comic books, an intercompany crossover (also called cross-company or company crossover) is a comic or series of comics where characters published by one company meet those published by another (for example, DC Comics' Superman meeting Marvel's Spider-Man, or DC's Batman meeting Marvel's Wolverine). These usually occur in special "one-shot" issues or a miniseries.

Some crossovers are part of canon—for example, JLA/Avengers, which has been made canon in the DC Universe[1] —but most are outside of the continuity of a character's regular title or series of stories. They can be a joke or gag, a dream sequence, or even a "what if" scenario (such as DC's Elseworlds).

Marvel/DC crossovers (are mostly non-canon) include those where the characters live in alternate universes, as well as those where they share the "same" version of earth (Indeed, some fans have posited a separate "Crossover Earth" for these adventures).[2] In the earliest licensed crossovers, the companies seemed to prefer shared world adventures. They took this approach to the first intercompany superhero crossover, 1976's Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, and followed the same format in 1981 with Superman and Spider-Man.

Besides the two Superman/Spider-Man crossovers, a number of other DC/Marvel adventures took place on a "Crossover Earth," but later intercompany crossovers tended to present the DC and Marvel Universes as alternate realities, bridged when common foes made this desirable. (The interest in overall continuity has become a major part of even crossover comic books.)[3]

Characters are often licensed or sold from one company to another, as with DC acquiring such characters of Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and Charlton Comics as the original Captain Marvel, Plastic Man and Captain Atom. In this way, heroes originally published by different companies can become part of the same fictional universe, and interactions between such characters are no longer considered intercompany crossovers.

Although a meeting between a licensed character and a wholly owned character (e.g., between Red Sonja and Spider-Man, or Ash Williams and the Marvel Zombies) is technically an intercompany crossover, comics companies rarely bill them as such. Likewise is the case when some characters in an on-going series are owned or to some extent controlled by their creators, as with Doctor Who antagonists the Daleks, which are not owned by the UK television network the BBC although the character of The Doctor is.

Contents

Published crossovers

Golden and Silver Ages

The Justice Society of America was created in this issue, combining National Comics' Doctor Fate, Hour-Man (as it was then spelled), the Spectre, and the Sandman, and All-American Publications' the Atom, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman. National and All-American, separate editorial imprints, shared the unofficial "DC" label due to joint publishing and distribution.

Unofficial

"The Monkey's Paw", a story from Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #42 (July 1963), featured a one-panel appearance, with his costume mis-colored, by the defunct Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel, who was not yet a DC character. The letters page of #113 (Oct. 1971) described it as "strictly a private joke" on the part of former Captain Marvel artist Kurt Schaffenberger. The story was reprinted in #104 (Oct. 1970) with the costume coloring corrected.
Writers during the 1960s and early 1970s sometimes engaged in a form of intercompany crossover with thinly disguised imitations of a competing company's characters, as opposed to parodies in satirical-humor stories. In this way, Marvel's superhero team the Avengers met a version of DC's Justice League of America (Squadron Sinister/Squadron Supreme) in The Avengers vol. 1, #70, 85-86, and 147-48. In Action Comics #351-53 (1967) DC's Superman met a villain called Zha-Vam, whose powers and name were derivative of Captain Marvel (then owned by Fawcett Comics) and of the magic word Shazam that gave Captain Marvel his powers. Superman similarly met versions of Marvel's Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Sub-Mariner (The Kookie Quartet, Cobweb Kid, and Sub-Moron) in The Inferior Five #10 (Oct. 1968).
In the 1970s, the annual Rutland Halloween Parade in Rutland, Vermont was used as the setting of a number of superhero comic books published by both Marvel and DC Comics. Costumed parade attendees in these books were often depicted wearing the uniforms of characters from the other company. In the fall of 1972, writers Len Wein, Gerry Conway and Steve Englehart crafted a metafictional unofficial intercompany crossover spanning titles from both major comics companies. Each comic featured Englehart, Conway, and Wein, as well as Wein's first wife Glynis, interacting with Marvel or DC characters at the Rutland Halloween Parade. Beginning in Amazing Adventures #16 (by Englehart with art by Bob Brown and Frank McLaughlin), the story continued in Justice League of America #103 (by Wein, Dillin and Dick Giordano), and concluded in Thor #207 (by Conway and penciler John Buscema). As Englehart explained in 2010, "It certainly seemed like a radical concept and we knew that we had to be subtle (laughs) and each story had to stand on its own, but we really worked it out. It's really worthwhile to read those stories back to back to back — it didn't matter to us that one was at DC and two were at Marvel — I think it was us being creative, thinking what would be really cool to do."[4][5][6] Other issues featuring the parade include Batman #237, DC Super-Stars #18, Freedom Fighters #6, Amazing Adventures #16, Avengers # 83 and #119, Marvel Feature # 2, and The Mighty Thor #207.

1975-1982

The first official intercompany crossover of recent decades. The villains are Doctor Octopus and Lex Luthor.
Superman and Spider-Man battle the Parasite and Dr. Doom, with the Hulk and Wonder Woman guest-starring
Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk
The two hottest-selling teams from each company battle Darkseid, Deathstroke the Terminator, and Dark Phoenix.
Superman and the Masters of the Universe

Unofficial

In DC comics' Justice League of America #142 (May 1977), writer Steve Englehart re-introduced Mantis, a character he had created in Marvel Comics' Avengers, picking up the plot threads from her last appearance there and renaming her Willow.[10]
In X-Men #107 (Oct. 1977), writer Chris Claremont and artist Dave Cockrum introduced the Imperial Guard, characters modeled after Cockrum's previous assignment, DC's Legion of Super-Heroes. Members included heroes with the powers of, and similar costumes to, the Legionnaires Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Timber Wolf, Wildfire, Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Star Boy and Shadow Lass.

1987-1989

With Cerebus
With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cerebus
With Flaming Carrot
With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
With Leonardo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
With Wolff and Byrd, Counsellors of the Macabre

1990

With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

1991

1992

With Cerebus

1993

With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Deathmate: Preview, Deathmate: Prologue, Deathmate: Red, Deathmate: Blue, Deathmate: Black, Deathmate: Yellow, Deathmate: Epilogue

1994

Superman: The Man of Steel #35-36, Hardware #17-18, Superboy #6-7, Icon #15-16, Steel #6-7, Blood Syndicate #16-17, Worlds Collide #1, Static #14
With Scott and Jean Summers of the X-Men and Beavis and Butt-head

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Miscellaneous crossovers

In video games

The concept of intercompany crossovers has also been explored in video games, usually in the form of having one video game company licensed out its characters to another (or vice versa).

Arguably the earliest intercompany crossover game was 1992's Battletoads & Double Dragon, although it should be noted that Double Dragon developers Technos Japan were barely involved in the production of the game outside of having the series licensed out to Tradewest, who also had the Battletoads license at the time as well.

One of the most popular sub-franchises in fighting games is the Marvel vs. Capcom series, which originally began in 1996 with X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Each subsequent game in the series expanded the character roster to include characters from both companies' entire lineup, not just X-Men and Street Fighter.

Capcom followed this act by teaming up with rival fighting game developer SNK to produce the SNK vs. Capcom series in 1999, which resulted in four different fighting games by the two companies and a trilogy of card games (the SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash series) by SNK.

Other examples of cross-company crossovers in video games includes the Tactical RPG Namco x Capcom and DreamMix TV World Fighters (a Hudson Soft-produced fighting game which included characters from themselves, Konami and Takara)

Nintendo created the Super Smash Bros. fighting game series where various Nintendo characters (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Fox McCloud, Samus Aran, and others) from various Nintendo franchises (Star Fox, Kirby, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Metroid, and others) battle each other. The first game, Super Smash Bros., was released in 1999. The second game, Super Smash Bros. Melee, was released in 2001. And the third game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was released in 2008. The third installment in the series featured two third-party or non-Nintendo characters: Solid Snake from Konami's Metal Gear series and Sonic from Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog series.

Midway Games' Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe pitted characters from Midway's Mortal Kombat video game franchise against DC Comics characters Superman, Batman, The Joker, and others.

Collected editions

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Brady, Matt. "AT PLAY IN THE DCU: KURT BUSIEK TALKS JLA" Newsarama, 14 July 2004.
  2. ^ Christiansen, Jeff. "Earth-Crossover," The Appendix to the Handbook of The Marvel Universe. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
  3. ^ Timeshredder. "Superman and Spider-man," Everything2 (Apr. 12, 2004). Retrieved August 12, 2008
  4. ^ Larnick, Eric (October 30, 2010). "The Rutland Halloween Parade: Where Marvel and DC First Collided". ComicsAlliance.com. Archived from the original on December 5, 2011. http://www.webcitation.org/63ia1MoQZ. Retrieved December 5, 2011. 
  5. ^ Cronin, Brian (October 1, 2010). "Comic Book Legends Revealed #280". ComicBookResources.com. Archived from the original on December 5, 2011. http://www.webcitation.org/63iZZ9PQQ. Retrieved December 5, 2011. 
  6. ^ Amazing Adventures #16 (Jan. 1973), Justice League of America #103 (Dec. 1972), and Thor #207 (Jan. 1973) at the Grand Comics Database
  7. ^ DC/Marvel Crossovers Volume 1
  8. ^ McAvennie, Michael; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1970s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. "The tale was written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru, both among the few [at that time] to ever have worked on both Superman and Spider-Man...The result was a defining moment in Bronze Age comics." 
  9. ^ Manning, Matthew K. "1980s" in Dolan, p. 195 "Written by Len Wein and illustrated by José Luis García-López, the comic saw...Batman and the Hulk doing battle with both the Joker and Marvel's ultra-powerful Shaper of Worlds."
  10. ^ The transplanting of Mantis/Willow was acknowledged in the letters page of Justice League of America #146 (Sept. 1976)
  11. ^ Cowsill, Alan "2000s" in Dolan, p. 311 "[JLA/Avengers] was an event that...proved to be one of the biggest and best of the DC and Marvel crossovers, incorporating many of the two companies' greatest heroes and villains."
  12. ^ DC Comics
  13. ^ Newsarama.Com: Dc Previews: The Spirit, Scalped, S&Bva&P
  14. ^ Oeming, Rosemann On Spider-Man/Red Sonja - Newsarama
  15. ^ WW: Chicago - Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash Coming in November, 12 August, 2007, Newsarama
  16. ^ MANO-A-MANO-A-MANO: "Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash", August 21, 2007, Comic Book Resources
  17. ^ Ron Marz And Michael Broussard On Unholy Union - Newsarama
  18. ^ "Long Live the Legion...and Prosper! Writer Talks TREK/LSH". http://www.newsarama.com/comics/chris-roberson-stark-trek-legion-110927.html. 

References

External links