In the 90s, this approach reached critical mass and the abundance of crossover “event” comics was considered one of the major contributing factors in the industry’s implosion. When Joe Quesada took over as Editor in Chief at Marvel – one of the (real-world) events that mark the beginning of the comics industry’s climb out of the 90s mire, one of his initial reforms was that each Marvel series would largely keep to itself – no more crossovers.
The thing about universe-spanning crossovers is that arguably, there is no other medium that can do them – no way in which a story can be told on so many fronts simultaneously. The fact is that the Marvel and DC universes are some of the most widely-developed fictional universes ever devised, if not the biggest ever. We’re talking decades of stories monthly, running into hundreds of pages a week – you’d find it fairly hard to find any other common universes with so much published material.
This places Marvel and DC in an unusual position. As the only place where crossovers can happen, there’s a fairly good argument to say that they should – otherwise, why have a shared universe at all? With Marvel and DC now placing heavy emphasis on a shared, evolving universe rather than simply a common one (as in the 60s, where stories simply happen in the same world rather than interacting) and even now, hyping up the “exciting aftermath” of their latest events (read: the next crossover) you’d be forgiven for wondering whether crossover events ever going to go away again.
One substantial difference between modern crossovers and the ones that drove readers to despair in the past is that these days, you don’t actually have to buy every comic – the story isn’t interleaved from title-to-title, issue-to-issue – most current crossovers are structured in such a way that you don’t have to buy everything to understand what you’re reading. If you’re not interested, you can keep buying your regular titles and nothing will be interrupted.
As a Hulk fan, I enjoyed Marvel’s recent mini-crossover, “Planet Hulk” but I wasn’t interested in the peripheral series. I simply bought the main title and the “event” title and that was enough. I ignored far more of that crossover than I read, and the story worked. That’s proof enough for me, if any was needed, that you don’t have to read every title to get a decent read out of a crossover. If this model is adhered to in the future, maybe crossover fatigue won’t set in with the majority of the readership at all.
James Hunt will be back with another Alternate Cover next Monday. Read his last column here.
