Rest of the Story
Crossover Madness! - Part Seven
Operation: Zero Crossover!

And so the crossovers rumbled on…1995 may have been the year that crossovers really reached their peak, thanks mainly to Marvel’s non-stop attack on the market. By the end of the year, consumers had had enough, and 1996 was to be – on the whole – a more sedate year, with a few notable exceptions…

1996: DC vs Marvel/Marvel vs DC

This was the one that comic fans had been waiting for for years; a full meeting of the two major comic universes – and a battle at that! Sure, some of the companies’characters had met before – such as in Superman vs Spider-Man and X-Men/Teen Titans, but never on such a scale. Each company published two issues apiece of the crossover, and fans were asked to vote on the outcome of a number of battles, such as Superman vs Hulk, Batman vs Captain America and Wolverine vs Lobo.

Essentially, the two universes are brought together by two plot-device intergalactic brothers, who created each universe and now want to prove which is best – to which end each world’s champions are forced to fight each other. As this happens, the worlds are merged leading to developments such as the Daily Planet and the Daily Bugle becoming one paper. Incidentally, the one major continuity snafu that happens in the series occurs here – Spidey at the time was Ben Reilly, who never worked at the Bugle since his return, and he had blonde hair not brown…but one error from two universes doesn’t seem so bad.

The battles themselves are for the most part pretty anti-climactic, with some even being settled off-panel; probably the best encounter comes between Robin and the X-Men’s Jubilee (who wore Robin-like colours when she was first introduced), who just decide that love is the answer…

At the end of the third issue, the two universes are merged, resulting in 12 one-shots (again, half of these were published by each company) under the ‘Amalgam’ banner – each issue contained amalgams of heroes of each universe; Super Soldier was Captain America meets Superman, Legends of the Dark Claw was Batman meets Wolverine and Spider-Boy was Superboy meets Spider-Man. The other nine issues were Bullets & Bracelets, JLX, X-Patrol, Magneto and the Magnetic Men, Amazon, Assassins, Bruce Wayne Agent of Shield, Doctor Strangefate and Speed Demon. Most of these books were, to be frank, not very good – you can only hope that the similarity to Image books of the time for many of them was deliberate and tongue-in-cheek.

In the fourth and final book of the miniseries, of course, the worlds were put to rights; only one new character, Access, could cross between each universe. He’d pop up occassionally in each companies, usually as a precursor to one of these big crossover things…

1996: Legends of the Dead Earth

In the tradition of the previous year or two, DC opted for a ‘united theme’ for its Annuals in 1996, the theme being ‘Legends of the Dead Earth’.

Each Annual took place thousands, sometimes millions, of years in the future across different planets. Earth was a dead planet, populated by legendary superheroes; these legends inspired the denizens of these future worlds to take up their identities and causes as their own.

A decidedly mixed batch, undoubtedly the best of the lot was the Power of Shazam! Annual. It introduced the latest heir to the Shazam legacy, Thunder a.ka. Cece Beck (an obvious tribute to original Captain Marvel artist C.C. Beck), with an aged Captain Marvel taking the place of the Wizard Shazam. The character was such a hit that she later joined the Legion of Superheroes for a period of time.

1996: Onslaught

Ever since the X-Men had returned from the Age of Apocalypse, there had been rumblings of a new villain called Onslaught. He had been receiving name-checks in a number of titles, and started making shadowy appearances in others – he appeared to be large and armoured, and rumour had it that he was a treachorous member of the X-Men.

Just how treacherous was revealed in Onslaught: X-Men that kicked off a huge Marvel crossover that affected virtually every title they were printing at the time. Onslaught was revealed to be none other than Charles Xavier himself – or at least his dark side, corrupted by part of Magneto he had absorbed way back in the Fatal Attractions crossover (plans originally called for Onslaught to be Xavier alone, but this was nixed by editorial as it would be too difficult to redeem him).

The monster made short work of the X-Men, but soon the entire Marvel Universe was dragged into the mess – including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-Man, not to mention all the X-Men spinoffs. After a number of smaller skirmishes Onslaught launched Sentinels at New York (got to confess, I never really worked out why) and made a last stand there against the combined might of Earth’s heroes. By this time, Xavier had been expelled from the villain’s ‘body’ and he was entirely composed of psychic energy.

And how do you defeat that? You absorb it into the bodies of Earth’s heroes, of course (not the mutants though). This resulted in the Avengers, Bruce Banner and the FF apparently sacrificing themselves to defeat the monster. There was also a very morally ambiguous moment where young Tony Stark scoops up Dr Doom and takes him into Onslaught with them – essentially taking him to his death. Conveniently, the heroes and Doom popped up in a pocket reality created by young Franklin Richards and lived there for a while – in the Heroes Reborn books by Image creators such as Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Chap Yaep and Whilce Portacio. These books ran for thirteen issues each before Heroes Return brought them back to the Marvel Universe proper.

In the meantime, however, Onslaught had quite the ripple effecting the main Marvel Universe; Professor X was taken into custody and tortured by Bastion (who would become a major thorn in the X-Men’s side over the next year); the X-Men were even more feared and hated than before; the Hulk, freed of Banner’s control went on a rampage; Quicksilver, having lost his Avengers team mates, got a solo book; Ka-Zar returned to New York in his own series (and fought Thanos!); the Thunderbolts and Heroes for Hire rose to fill the places of the Avengers and FF – even though the T-Bolts were secretly the Masters of Evil; and Thor’s book was renamed Journey into Mystery and followed Asgard’s Lost Gods before turning into a title with a revolving lead feature.

Overall, it was an impressive crossover, let down only by editorial’s decision to wuss out and not let Xavier be Onslaught properly. Now that would have redefined the X-books for good – at least until someone brought a young Charley from an alternate timeline to lead them…

1996: The Final Night

DC’s yearly crossover mini-series rumbled on as the Sun-Eater started to devour the sun, forcing the Earth to face a Final Night. A streamlined 4 issue weekly series that crossed over into almost every other title they produced, The Final Night showcased everything that was good about DC; some books – such as the Superman books and the Legion of Superheroes (they were trapped in the 20th Century at the time) – wove in and out of the story seamlessly while others such as Green Arrow and Hitman looked at what other heroes would be doing as the Earth was gripped by an ice-age. Hitman especially was fun; the lead character and his friends sat in a bar and chewed the fat as the world cooled down. DC had the variety to be able to do superheroes right – even if they weren’t super and they weren’t heroes.

There were some high points in the crossover – Lex Luthor working with the heroes to save the world was one, whilst new Legion character Ferro leaving to sacrifice himself for the world was another, especially given how his counterpart in the original Legion continuity died in the same way. For me at least, however, the best part of the crossover was the fact that ultimately it allowed Hal Jordan – Parallax and former Green Lantern – to redeem himself and save the world even though it cost him his life. The scene where he rescues Ferro and tells him to return the Legion flight ring to its original owner as he knows ‘how important rings can be’ is just great, as is Hal reciting the GL oath as he reignites the sun.

The crossover had a nice epilogue in Green Lantern, featuring Jordan’s funeral – and forgiveness by many of his former allies. There were other ramifications – the most significant of which was that Superman lost his powers due to the lack of sunlight in the series, and stayed that way throughout his wedding and his honeymoon. When he did regain them, they eventually mutated in a…shocking way.

1997: DC/Marvel: All Access

Never two companies to worry unduly about delivering too much of an okay thing, DC and Marvel teamed up following the success of their last joint effort to produce the DC/Marvel: All Access limited series.

Access, introduced in the first mini, warns the heroes of each earth that their worlds are in peril again, etc etc. Much teaming up and fighting ensues, and then lo and behold, the two worlds are merged once again, and Amalgam returns!

The second wave of the Amalgam universe revisited many of the original properties in ‘new’ titles, such as Spider-Boy Team-Up, but they also brought new characters into the mix, including Iron Lantern and the Challengers of the Fantastic, but there was little inspiration to most of them.

DC and Marvel would team up one last time the following year, for DC/Marvel: Unlimited Access, but there would be no more of the Amalgam universe.

1997: Pulp Heroes

And so DC did the Annual theme again – this time it was Pulp Heroes; the annuals were done in the style of comics of old – thrilling adventure! Fine Romance! That kind of thing!

It was a neat little experiment and a few good ones came out of it – notably a western-themed Hitman annual (funny how that title keeps cropping up!)

1997: Flashback

Not so much a crossover as an ‘event’, Flashback occurred throughout the Marvel line (except for the Heroes Reborn titles) for one month in 1997. Each issue as numbered Minus One, and told the story of the heroes before they were heroes.

Your opinion on it probably depends on the Sliver Age style that many of the books aped – personally, I loved it! A young blind Matt Murdock fought to be accepted in law school, Peter Parker’s parents’ went on a secret mission, Wolverine encountered Sabretooth while working for the Canadian government and Charles Xavier appealed to his friend Erik one last time to join him in his dream of peaceful co-existence. There were plenty more, of course, and they were almost without exception fun. Recommended pick-ups if you stumble across them!

1997: Operation: Zero Tolerance

Another year, another mutant crossover, and not a particularly inspired one at that.

Bastion, introduced a year previously, has been building up a bit of an army to use in his crusade against the mutant menace. He attacks the main X-teams in a crossover spanning a few issues of most of the main books (Uncanny X-Men escaped as the team there was in Antarctica trying Gambit at the time), pretty much getting them on the ropes before they rally around and beat him.

About the only thing of interest in the crossover is that Bastion is actually a combination of Nimrod and the Master Mold, sucked through the Siege Perilous years earlier and reconstructed into one entity. It also introduced Cecilia Reyes – a New York doctor who turned out to be a mutant – and the Prime Sentinels, humans who had undergone procedures to become miniature versions of Sentinels, the mutant-hunting robots of yesteryear. Reyes hung around the X-books for a while more or less until Morrison revamped the teams. She last turned up in Weapon X’s Neverland camp, so we’ve probably seen the last of her for a while.

Overall, the story had some good points but they were few and far between. It would also be the last big crossover encompassing all the mutant books as well; future years would have smaller stories running between just two or three different titles.

1997: Genesis

So there’s this thing called the Godwave. On its first pass through the universe, it created the gods of various worlds and pantheons – including, apparently, the New Gods. On its way back through the universe, it seeded the worlds with the potential for superpowers – so it’s responsible for most of the superhumans running around the DCU. Now it’s on its way back to the Source, and its taking everyone’s powers with it. As Earth is a nexus for these kinds of events, an alien armada bears down on it to sort things out, adding to the trouble. Oh, and Darkseid wants to harness the Godwave for himself aswell.

A John Byrne-penned four issue mini-series, Genesis is yet another entry into the world-in-peril category. It heavily features Jack Kirby’s Fourth World characters – a series that Byrne was writing and pencilling at the time, but unlike the previous year’s Final Night, there are no nice touches here. Once again, its just a crossover by the numbers.

There are no lasting effects from the crossover either, although the idea of the Godwave spreading superpowers across the universe is quite a neat one. One question I do have is how on earth so many people don’t believe in aliens after one almost ate the sun in The Final Night, and another armada destroyed half of Australia in Invasion! a few years earlier – you can’t help but think that these humans must be dumber than they look…

As we’re rumbling on through the crossovers of yesteryear, I thought that I’d take this opportunity to acknowledge a few websites that have helped tremendously with my research:

Mitchell Brown’s Unofficial Crossover Index has been a great resource for filling in the blank spots of my memory on the big company-wide crossovers.

Spider-Fan has helped with Spidey crossovers and covers.

Uncanny X-Men.Net is great for X-Men information comics.org is a fantastic resource for covers!

And when all else fails, you can always find them on Mile High Comics!

As always…to be continued!