Listmania: THE TOP FIVE BEST AND WORST MARVEL COMICS CROSSOVER EVENTS

January 31st, 2008 | by admin |

Original Post here: Snikkkt!

It has been a long last couple of years if you consider yourself a true collector of Marvel Comics books, and have been forcing yourself to keep up with the large company crossovers like CIVIL WAR and WORLD WAR HULK. Now, there is yet another such multiple title, company wide crossover coming in the form of SECRET INVASION, which deals with the Skull infiltration of the Marvel U.

All of these crossovers made the staff at iF think about some of the crossovers that have made collector’s crazy, so here’s a quick list of the top five of the best and worst ideas that Marvel Comics has come up with to increase the sales of thei rcomic books.

THE BEST:

1. Onslaught (1996)

In the 1990’s when Marvel Comics was in the midst of re-vamping most of their books, including replacing Spider-man with a different version of himself that turned out to be a clone, it seemed that no character was safe. Enter ONSLAUGHT, a massive cross-over that spread across virtually every title in the Marvel Universe, in which the evil and hatred in Magneto’s personality merged with the buried feelings in Professor Xavier and gave birth to a super powerful mutant being that wanted to change the world as we knew it. In the end, many super hero teams including the Fantastic Four and the Avengers had been shunted into a new universe to start a whole new re-boot of short lived titles.

2. Amalgam Comics (1996)

The outcome of the Marvel vs. DC crossover of the 1990’s, this could have been a hideous failure, and some titles were better than others, but the single issues that were released of titles such as Dark Claw, Super-Soldier, or Spider-boy were just a huge blast of fun to try and figure out what characters from each universe had been smooshed together to make the new universe. The characters returned later in new titles for another round, but nothing quite captured that initial feeling of the first wave of Amalgam Comics.

3. Secret Wars (1984)

You would never think that comic book series that was basically a marketing campaign tie-in would end up being a really fun story filled with practically ever favorite personality in the Marvel Universe. Most of the Marvel heroes are packed off to a war planet by a cosmic being called The Beyonder to fight against their greatest foes for the lives of the various innocent bystanders that were also brought to this war world. One of the best outcomes of this series was Spider-man’s black costume which would eventually become Venom.

4. Marvel vs. DC (1996)

The ultimate battle of the fans, where ballots were available in comic and specialty stores and these votes were then compiled and each battle of the heroes in the two universes reflected the fan votes in the outcome. The biggest crossover that the two largest competing comic book companies have ever done and possibly ever will, but it was a really interesting and satisfying rip in the fabric of both realities.

5. Age of Apocalypse (1995)

An excellent crossover that was primarily contained in the X-Men titles, THE AGE OF APOCALYPSE was an alternate world storyline in which Professor Charles Xavier was accidentally killed in the past and Magneto was the leader of the X-Men. Apocalypse rose to power and wiped out a huge portion of humanity. The storyline in these titles featured a dark desolate world in which America was basically a huge concentration camp for humans ruled over by mutants. There was a two issue series X-Universe title that dealt with what all of the other non-mutant heroes were up to in this bizarre future.

THE WORST:

1. Secret War (2004)

Let’s just set aside that Brian Michael Bendis is one of my favorite writers and that the interior painted art work by Gabriele Del’Otto is absolutely stunning; this series is pretty much a jumbled confusion of non-linear storytelling and several half-starts and bizarre fights with super villains that are supposed to be dead. This whole storyline does tie into things like CIVIL WAR and I’m sure that this is also going to tie into SECRET INVASION, but as a storyline that crosses over into so many other things, it doesn’t work as well as it should have.

2. Contest of Champions 2 (1999)

A follow up to a miniseries crossover from the 1980’s, several super heroes are kidnapped and pitted against each other by what turns out to be the X-men villains The Brood. The story was craptacular, and had little or no repercussions or interesting outcomes in the rest of the Marvel Universe.

3. Infinity Crusade (1993)

CIVIL WAR before there was CIVIL WAR. After Adam Warlock had the Infinity Gauntlet he split into his perfect self, his bad self (the Magus) and his good self (the Goddess). Each of these two sides of his personality wages wars within the Marvel Universe, and the Goddess’ war was called the Infinity Crusade, where she wanted to save the Universe by pitting heroes against each other in a holy war that literally tore the Marvel Universe in two. A pretty flimsy crossover and definitely not worth all of the time spent in the entire tie in titles.

4. Secret Wars II (1985)

The follow up to the popular original Secret Wars title, had the Beyonder coming to Earth in a human appearance in an effort to understand humankind and to ultimately become a real person. This bizarre storyline had tons of tie in and the Beyonder having a crap in Spider-man’s bathroom. Not the strongest of sequel ideas and in the end the Beyond became a stillborn baby. Ugh.

5. Acts of Vengeance (1989)

Quite possibly the most ridiculous crossover in the history of Marvel. This was a shameless attempt for the company to make money and get fans to buy comics outside of their normal characters, by having all of the major super villains of the Marvel Universe switch heroes that they were fighting. Somehow Magneto was even in on this with the Kingpin and Doctor Doom, and they all obviously had nothing better to do than to swap foes and start new fights. Spider-man got cosmic powers, and that was moderately interesting and some of the fights were OK, but this was a really long and quite shallow crossover.

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