Infinite Crisis or Civil War, what was the best of the bad crossovers?

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41

I guess I should say that IC did affect the A-listers… but not in a way that made people (especially casual readers) really care.

My friends who read comics way back when, always ask me for an update on what’s going on. I tell them about Batman leaving for a year, only to come back and find someone else fighting in his name.
I tell them about Spidey revealing his identity to the public, fighting against both Captain America and Iron Man in the war, and about his Aunt getting shot.
I also tell them about Captain America surrendering to authorities and getting assasinated, and then I tell them about Wonder Woman, turning into a Nick-Furyesque agent.
And they’re a lot more interested in what went on in Spider-Man and Captain America, then what went on in Batman and Wonder Woman.

42

We’re heading into the familiar old Marvel vs. DC arguments here, but I think we’ve been here before enough times that I don’t think we’ll ever come to a resolution.

I with box and Shengy, in that I just don’t understand what happened in Infinite Crisis aside from killing a whole bunch of D-listers and some miscellaneous B-list guys just to artificially pump up the EPIC level of the story, and as a launching pad for the insane cash grabbing of 52 and the pure sillyness of One Year Later.

Wonder Woman got completely revamped, I’ll give you that. That book is completely fucked up, but they’ve been out on the streets begging people to buy Wonder Woman issues for like the last five years, so they’re going to use every single opportunity they have to revamp this book anyway.

Batman’s got Robin back…I guess. But that happens anyway every two years - it’s cyclic. Someone dies or gets injured, Batman starts brooding listening to Linkin Park, getting darker, shuts all the supporting characters out, and then he realizes he needs them as a balance to his darkness…yeah, it happens every two years anyway. Nightfall, No Man’s Land, Bruce Wayne: Fugitive/Murderer, Infinite Crisis/One Year Later…nothing special.

Morrison’s run on Batman has been one of the worst things he’s ever done though - I can’t see how anyone can defend it. He just sleepwalked through that first arc - an out of continuity son, a completely mundane plot even for someone that’s not Morrison, and such half-assed dialogue and characterizations that I actually honestly thought at first that it was a clever parody of something. Ridiculously hammy, Mark Millar-eqse over the top characterizations where you are constantly hammered with “subtle” reminders that Bruce Wayne’s a playboy. I’m surprised he didn’t drop an outdated Paris Hilton reference in there as well.

And then the fucking prose issue, which was no doubt some cool attempt of a throwback to the time they did it in the 70’s or something…but that was the 70’s. And probably with the Denny O’Neil (who seems to have been involved in Batbooks for like two thousand years) who is a completely different writer than Grant Morrison (ie. The Filth). It was like when Chris Claremont wrote that Uncanny story a year or two ago with Arcade trapping them in his giant pinball machine…lifted pretty much verbatim from his run in the 80’s. I mean, it’s 2007…things work differently now. Just think about it - only fifteen years ago, a Rob Liefeld comic sold over a million copies.

Not to mention that the actually story was terrible too. The Joker blinking out HAHAHAHA in morse code? I mean…come on. It was like some fan fiction you pulled off the comic book forum on Gaia. And this is GRANT MORRISON, first ballot Comic Book Hall of Famer.

To bring that and 52 (the most watered down comic of all time) up as examples of good DC books and to say there’s absolutely nothing worth reading from Marvel…I just cannot agree with that.

And Amazing Spider-Man has probably been the best solo superhero comic in the last three years, right along with Geoff Johns’ runs on Flash and his current Green Lantern, and Robert Kirkman on Invincible. To say JMS is not a good, no, a fucking awesome writer is pure player hating from the P.Giddy, king of player haters.

43

I agree with Linty when it comes to JMS. He’s been too good on Spidey. Aside from The Other, everything else JMS has written Spidey-related has been good material.

Now, back to IC/CW: The thing with Geoff Johns is that he’s too much of a Silver Age/Golden Age fanboy. It’s cool and all because I always wanted to research the characters as well and this is basically all a stepping stone into those eras, but too much of it can be a bad thing at times. The way he brought back Hal Jordan was just genius. NO ONE could think of something better than that. But, he’s too hell bent on legacy being his main topic when he writes and IC was a direct result of that.

CW, on the other hand, tried moving the Marvel Universe forward. It wasn’t a bad idea, BUT it sure as hell was anti-climactic in the end. Civil War should have been the result of Initiative. Civil War should have been broken down between all of the major Marvel books like Captain America, Spiderman, Daredevil, etc. AND THEN have that one quick 4 issue story that deals with the events of Stamford and Tony Stark taking action and whatnot. They could have played this whole ‘Heroes rebelling’ thing as the most awesome thing. Either way you put it, the aftermath of CW is just executing so much better than DC OYL right now.

And you KNOW the death of Captain America is just a setup for bigger things to come. There’s no doubt about it. Fallen Son was released for a reason. And then all of this stuff with World War Hulk? Everything ties together.

44

Don’t forget about the arc dealing with the twins. Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn having an affair was definitely a low point in JMS’s run.

I agree on the Other. Mary Jane and Aunt May wearing old Iron Man suits. Yeahbuhwhat? I think Hudlin, David and Straczynski all share the blame for this catastrophe.

45

Ugh…Thank’s for reminding me. :sad:

46

I never said there was nothing worth reading at Marvel.

Quite the contrary, actually…I said I wanted to read Moon Knight, Astonishing X-Men, Young Avengers, and Power Pack.

But I said there’s so many DC Titles that I wanna read BEFORE THAT, that I can’t see any reason to pick 'em up.

that said, yes, Infinite Crisis sucked, which is why I’m saying “BAD!” Crossovers…Civil War sucked too…since, none of the action actually took place in the comic.

Fifty-Two is definitely watered down…can’t argue there…

DC is going through a transitionary period…being a DC fan, I am ‘weathering the storm’ as it were…things will get better (they always do), but things aren’t completely horrible either.

I ain’t pulling a Marvel Vs. DC here, I love the characters and histories of both companies.

I just like DC More.

47

I like both IC and CW. They both have their strong points and weak points.
For me, both stories started out strong, then towards the end kinda fell apart. I agree with Deathscythe about CW’s ending; that shit was hella anit-climatic for me. I guess that has something to do with the fact that during the whole CW–even now–I’m anti-reg:looney:

I never read COIE, so I was brought up to speed by my co-workers @ Midtown Comics. Prior to IC, I started reading more DC titles, and I also read Countdown, which was fucking AWESOME! IC was planned better than CW to me; all the set-ups for it were happening in all the DC books: Superman/WW/Batman/JLA-Sacrifice, Crisis of Conscience; Teen Titans/Outsiders-The Insiders, etc. Meanwhile, with Civil War, I think the set-ups were not as well thought out(felt kinda rushed). HoM was ok, though I don’t fully agree with the idea of reducing the mutant population, but we’ll see how that works out with XMen: Endangered Species.

As far as the art for both…I really like Jimenez, but McNiven blew him out of the water. Plus in the last issue of IC, because they were behind, the panels were not great at all. You could tell they were pressed for time. I did enjoy the ending for IC a little more(fucking SB Prime:rofl: ) than CW’s ending.

Both books made me want to check out the the other tie-ins a little, but I just took a peek here and there. It made no sense to buy them all when they’ll be available in TPB form in time:wink: I didn’t read all of the OYL stuff except for Teen Titans, though my co-workers believed that Detective Comics was the more better of the OYL stuff. I also got into WW as well, but the delays just make it impossible for me to enjoy; I actually LIKED her re-launch, but fucking Heinberg can’t finish off the damn 1st arc:annoy: While on the Marvel side, during CW, I was checking out Amazing Spider Man and Captain America. I checked out the CW:XMen stuff too, but was kinda dissappointed that it really had nothing to deal with the main CW story. CW:New Avengers was probably my favorite CW tie-in, especially the issues about Luke Cage and Spider Woman.

I guess my pick for the better crossover would be CWducks for cover

48

There’s no shame in liking one over the other, the only people I wanna stone are the ones who only read one, and voted for it, simply because they didn’t know the other.

I voted Infinite Crisis, not out of loyalty to DC, I admitted in the first post that I gave them both a fair assessment, IC just offered MORE…sure, the delivery was a bit lackluster, but the lead-ups, and tie-ins were far more grand, and had important ramifications.

Day of Vengeance: The Wizard Shazam is killed by the Spectre, Magic becomes broken, and a ragtag group of mystics have to reign in the most powerful supernatural force in the DC Universe!

how is that NOT exciting?

OMAC Project: Ted Kord discovers Checkmate is doing something, and pays for it with his life, meanwhile, Batman’s Paranoia causes him to create an invisible satellite designed to track superhuman activity across the globe, that is eventually hijacked, and used to raise an army with which to battle all heroes.

which, if you think about it, IS strange, since he can’t keep one clown in his cell, but he can stop the entire Justice League, but hey…this is comics, it doesn’t have to make sense.

49

Did you read Villians United and Rann/Thanananagaranaararrn War? …not so good.

…yeah, exactly - Batman created a crazy satellite that turned people in monsters. Isn’t that why the book was so wack?

It’s funny to me, because the same argument you’re using as to why the book was GOOD, is the exact same argument I’d use as to why the book as BAD.

At this point, we’re just coming from completely different places, and there’s not much else that can be said to convince the other. These are irreducible opinions, and we’ll just have to leave it as is.

Good thing my opinions are always 100% scientifically correct though. HOLLA!!!

Oh yeah, that story where it’s reconned that Gwen Stacy had babies with Norman Osborne…I’m just going to ignore it like I ignored Michael Jordan’s return on the Washington Wizards.

…that is…if he ever did hypothetically return on the Washington Wizards, which he did not.

I don’t think that Iron Aunt May craziness happened in Amazing Spider-Man, because I didn’t read it first hand, so I clear JMS of all blame and drop all charges against him. I only attribute that one single book to him - I’m closing my eyes to all the rest.

50

A bit OT but about House of M: I think it’s biggest problem is not the Mutant reduction thing, the concept of House of M was flawed. The entire thing, just to me, was a bad idea.

You can’t create a world where everybody gets what they want, it isn’t going to work, ideas are going to clash which other because a lot of people want the same things. That’s problem #1.

Problem #2 is that us fans have our own perceptions of what these characters want, if you don’t give that to us it just becomes very WTF. Wolverine married to Mystique and not Jean Grey or Mariko? Spider-Man married to Gwen Stacy after she found out he cheated on him with Norman Osborne? (PS every writer in the world, 616 Gwen Stacy is dead get over it this generation of fans doesn’t care about her trust me) Luke Cage living in a sewer? Thing still being a monster? I could go on and on.

Problem #3 is if you give the fans what they want it becomes boring because you know that Wolverine and Jean Grey will be together, it removes suspense. So the writers come off as either they know more about the characters than you do (and it didn’t seem like it at all) or we don’t know the characters at all which in many ways is just a slap in the face to long time fans. Not a slap on purpose, but it just comes off feeling that way.

Look at for example, Age of Apocalypse. It was very easy to recognize and accept that this is how the world would be like without Xavier. House of M, there are just too many things that are hard to swallow that this is what some of these people really want. You go into AOA signing on to whatever they say. House of M you go in scratching you’re head.

Perhaps if House of M’s execution could of been handled better like AOA it could of worked, but it really didn’t. Not for me anyway. Really, it was just the worst of all of the recent Marvel / DC Crossovers IMHO…

At the end of the day you can tell that Marvel put waaaay more planning and thought into Civil War than they did with House of M. Perhaps HOM’s lukewarm reception was a lesson to them, so I applaud them for turning things around even if the ending didn’t work for a lot of people, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. At least Civil War was a good idea on paper (heroes beating each other up that rocks) House of M just wasn’t.

51

OMAC was fun at first because you think, “OH SHIT! Batman created a satellite with a shitload of robots as an army to counter rogue heroes.” Ok. I can take that. It’d be dope as an Elseworld’s tale(i.e. Kingdom Come and the Bat-Sentinels). The downfall to it is that we’re all used to it being Batman by himself owning up on the heroes by himself. No assist needed other than his brain. To know that OMAC went rogue on him was great. But, it didn’t need to be a part of IC. That’s one of those things that writes itself an ending.

And building OMAC did pussify him a bit. Like I said, it’s supposed to be Bats vs. EVERYONE. Fuck the robots. And in the end, he’s killing people in the process. After all, Supes smashes one of those to pieces and then Batman goes emo to the tenth power since he doesn’t kill. So, it’s like, OMAC went against EVERYTHING Bats stood for, IMO. Batman never needed OMAC. OMAC at this point and time was just a plot device.

The BEST display of Bats’ paranoia was post-Identity Crisis when he found out what the JLA did to him when Johns was writing JLA to hype up Infinite Crisis. It was excellent. It was juicey. It was great. THAT’S how Bats should have been ruined and have him bow out of the JLA. Wonder Woman was handled well, too. She kills Checkmate leader(name escapes me at the moment) and then she bounces and is hated by everyone. Voila. Works great. Leads into awesome revamp. Supes was the cliche “What if I go nuts and fuck you up, Bats? What would you do?” Excellent. Distrust amongst the big three and DEAL WITH THAT. Fuck the external factors. Fuck Alex Luthor. Fuck Earth 2 Superman. Fuck Superboy Prime. Fuck Earth 2 Lois, bitch dies anyway.

The whole point was trust amongst each other and they fucked it up by giving us something else that was almost pointless. And that’s where CW’s premise shines through. Ironman doing some crazy shit and going against Captain America…THE EMBODIMENT OF THIS FUCKING COUNTRY!!! So, obvious distrust there now. And now EVERYONE hates Tony Stark(the anti-regs at least).

That’s what I started to dislike about IC after giving it a good thought. The issue was trust that began ALL the way back with Identity Crisis and next thing you know it becames a parallel Earth catastrophe because all of a sudden Earth 2 Superman doesn’t like the way shit is going down. My entire thought process reading it was this: “Wait…Earth 2 Superman wants EVERYONE to smile? Fuck outta here with that shit.”

And Jason Todd being Earth 2 Robin would have been doper than Jason Todd himself. That would have made IC much better from that aspect. Bringing him back to life with a fucking continuity punch…WTF?!

52

Oh and yeah, overall JMS on Spidey is hot and cold with but things are still much better with him on board than they were before. Remember the Clone Saga oooh…

Don’t care for his hatred of Venom plus the fact that he can’t create a decent Spider-Man villain to save his life. The Other blew and so did the Norman / Gwen kids thing even though it helped clear up the Norm ressurection ordeal. Back in Black is an OBVIOUS Spidey 3 movie tie in, it’s the same exact freaking story so I can’t judge him too harshly because that’s just one of those business things you have to roll with sometimes.

But there’s the 9/11 issue, the fact that he repaired Spidey & MJ, had Aunt May find out his identity, making him a teacher, putting the scientist back in Spidey along with the comedy that was missing in the book and Ezekiel plus the new twist on Spidey’s origin. Ultimately he’s done more good for the character than bad. Plus it’s next to impossible to truly hate on the man that wrote all of those great Real Ghostbusters episodes.

53

Hey, I still fuckin’ liked OMAC Project.

there wasn’t a single “Countdown to IC” mini I didn’t like.

54

I just want to point out that the omac robots were not created by batman, they were created by the omac satellite when it became sentient and then was corrupted by Max Lord. Batman only (willfully) created an awesome satellite in order to keep track of all the metas.

This is just one of the many comic book-related things we will have to agree to disagree on. Villains United was one of the most fun limited series I have read outside of a slott book in years. Add to it the VU IC Special that bookends it and I think it succeeds on all levels. Rann/Thanagar was the weakest of the 4 but works well as a sequel to Adam Strange Planet Heist. But yeah, VU rocks.

And ignore “The Other” and, well, all the rest of crap JMS has done with old man schoolteacher Parker.

55

Thanks for the edit.

I’d also like to point out that, even though Bats didn’t create the robots, he is still responsible for OMAC’s actions. =p

56

yes, and I would say his reaction to WW’s actions regarding Max Lord was one of the only missteps in the book. I chalked it up to more of an “asshole-bats” reaction than a “human life is so sacred” one.

57

That’s so not true it isn’t funny.

They were supposed to do WWHulk over last summer for it’s event, instead they came up with the idea for Civil War on accident, threw together a summit, and gave a slow artist 3 months lead time to do 7 issues (without telling him he was on it with no fill in artist).
This led to entire lines being delayed and a story that would have worked (had they gotten it out on time) to get too much of a gap between issues, making everything that happened fall flat.

Tie in issues were shoe-horned in and the same scene was written completely different outside the main mini causing mass confusion and editors to do columns after each issue just to make sense of it all.

Even the new “Civil War: Chronicles” they’re putting out has editors notes in it.

House of M may not have been well received, but it put a “genie” back in the bottle with the mutants and that was something Joe Q claimed he planned for a long time.

Civil War was probably the worst planned event in the last 5 years.

58

That’s execution, not planning. Or at best, you mean things planned for the comics themselves which I just label execution and not storyline and long term ramifications which is what I’m talking about, or am trying to get across and will probably just end up talking a lot of gibirish, sorry… :sweat: Things happen to go wrong during the execution fast, the pacing for comics sometimes doesn’t help things. It’s known that the last issue of IC was rushed, 52 and OYL are evidence that the event was well planned.

As relayed by Marvel themselves at the 2006 NY Comic Con (also restated by Joe at the 2007 NYCC Q&A) that summit was to find their next big storyline. There were lots of ideas on the table that we will never know about that no one could agree on (Spider-Ham was mentioned lol) until someone came up with the idea of “When I was a kid I used to to love to have my Hulk toy fight against my Spider-Man toy.” From this idea, a bunch of ideas sprang up, everyone got excited and they came up with Civil War. Yeah, I’m aware this could all be PR BS but there’s no real way for me to disprove any of it so I’ll take it at face value. Maybe I just don’t want to believe that an event as big as Civil War was thought up when a guy was sitting on a toilet and he crapped out ideas the same time he… well crapped but you never know I guess. :rofl:

This excitement, brainstorming, ideas and everything that came out of Civil War is what was lacking with House of M. In many ways it’s obvious because except for Wolverine no one is really doing anything with HOM, it’s just a foot note on how Mutants lost their powers and that’s it.

Heck you can see how CW’s ending was planned so far in advance hence just about every other Marvel comic on the stands right now. By contrast, you’d think things like Spidey getting over him being married to Gwen Stacy would have major effects on the guy and his marriage instead of just being mentioned in one House of M related comic that’s not even a Spidey title by him saying “Oh nooos it can’t be true” and forgotten by everyone involved with Spider-Man comics. This is kind of what I mean by planning. Not execution because again, things happen.

Joe Q has things on his mind all of the time, as does Didio I’m sure. For example, JQ wants to undo Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s wedding. If that does happen after Spidey One More Day you can’t say that it is a story that’s been planned for 4 years. JQ didn’t know in '03 that Iron Man and Spidey would be enemies, he’d be wearing a black suit, Aunt May would be shot, etc. Sometimes ideas are in place before the story, it’s not necessarily planning very far in advance.

59

Wait, so none of DC’s books weren’t delayed when they were whoring out IC? They both dropped the ball on that aspect.

World War Hulk WITHOUT CW happening would have sucked. The setup for WWH is so fucking braindead it’s ridiculous. EVERYTHING is mainly planned ahead, it’s just that the order is switched around for some reason or another. All comic books are planned a year ahead. HoM was the worst shit to be planned ever. It was a mid-tier Xmen/Avengers crossover that could have been handled between those two books. No fuss, no muss.

CW did execute poorly, but it doesn’t mean that it was planned poorly. After all, the end result is being felt in the other monthlies now and is leading up to WWH. It all ties together. IC on the other hand, awesome build-up into the first 3 great issues of IC, and then it all starts dying out quickly and the OYL stuff is sub-par. Green Lantern being the only good book out of the bunch. And most of the books just going back to some sort of “normalcy”. IC was really a crappy attempt at retconning a universe that still wasn’t retconned. Why? Multi-verse coming back? As much as I love the concept, it’s pretty pointless at this date and time. You’re only really gonna hurt the new readers that have no clue about the Multi-verse.

In any case, Marvel is dealing more with their characters while DC is trying to revive a gimmick. That’s my take on it. =/

60

(This goes to both you and Sano, but Sano writes too much so I didn’t quote him :P)

I don’t care about IC because I don’t read DC/know anyone that works at DC at all.
So I don’t comment on it.

I got my info from a combination of word of mouth in the industry and what I saw unfold, and I trust that over press releases any day.
(which didn’t help dissuade me in the least.)
They basically eluded in various releases that someone just brainstormed it and they ran with it.

The ending wasn’t planned.
They’ve always said Joss Whedon came in and saved the day, that they got to the last battle and had no way to resolve it.
The premise behind all of it was sound, and future storylines just fell into place as a result. “Braindead”, I think is the right word for it. Once you have a good idea with a bunch of good writers that just tends to happen.

I look at their planning and execution to be one in the same. Had they planned better, their execution would have worked better. They didn’t leave themselves any wiggle room if something came up. It really seems like they banked too heavily on everything working perfectly.

But they wanted to rival DC for the summer’s event and because their planning wasn’t sound, it bit them in the ass when the artist couldn’t keep up, issues outside of the mini had to be delayed, and holes had to be filled.

Planning almost their entire line around 1 mini series with a slow artist (that had no lead time) is just piss poor. That’s what made the execution fall apart, in my eyes.

But I do agree that WWH without Civil War would be dull. However, I just chalk that up to a happy accident.

The after effects of HoM not being dealt with just seems like poor writing to me. They should have addressed that stuff, but just didn’t. You can’t not address all superheros having to register or be hunted by other heros. =\

I think Joe Q KNEW what he wanted to do, and just waited for the right opportunity to do it. Like HoM with the mutants and possibly Spider-Man One More Day. He may not have known they would be where they are now in `03, but he sure knew what direction to push them in in order to get it there.