Worst Comic Crossovers/Events

With Flashpoint and Fear Itself continuing through the summer, I thought it might be interesting to list some of the comic crossovers/events that just did not work for me (also due to reaction from a Marvel Facebook posting).  I applied my standard film list requirements to this list as well (had to have read the crossover in whole or as a part).

War of the Gods (DC Comics) – This 4 issue crossover was little more than a muddled mess that really did not seem to make any sense.  it is probably most noted for the return (and death) of obscure hero Son of Vulcan.

Civil War (Marvel Comics) – This event started with a great premise.  But, somewhere along the way, it became a substandard hero vs hero slugfest with many heroes acting very out of character.  Low lights of this series include the book’s lateness, which threw off distribution of tie-in books, the ridiculous revealing of Spider-Man’s identity (something that Stan Lee on Who Wants To Be A Superhero said he would never do), and the eventual assassination of Captain America in the aftermath.

House of M (Marvel Comics) – Again, a great premise in that the heroes of the world come together to deal with the Scarlet Witch who has become far too powerful and unstable, and the end with the near elimination of the Marvel mutant population was a bit of a shock.  The problem with this series is that after the introduction, it turned into an alternate reality storyline.  While I like alternate storylines (loved What If? as a series), I often get bugged when they are used as an event since there are often no ramifications to what happens in the story.  True, House of M did have M-Day, but they could have easily done this without the alternate timeline.

Armageddon (DC Comics) – One of DC Comics “annual events” (in which the various books annuals served as the crossover point) in which a traveler from the future comes to the past to find out which superhero will eventually become the villainous dictator Monarch.  This event suffered from the leaking of Monarch’s identity prior to the completion of the series.  DC Comics was sent scrambling to rewrite the conclusion, leading to the decision to replace Captain Atom with Hawk (of Hawk and Dove) as Monarch.

Shadowland (Marvel Comics) – It was reaction to this series that led me to write this blog.  In spite of reading nearly all the parts of this Daredevil centric series, I really could not seem to get a grasp of what Marvel was trying to do in the series.  As near as I can tell, the whole point of the series was to try to make Daredevil into a real bastard.

Countdown to Final Crisis (DC Comics) – with the success of 52 the previous year, DC tried to see if they could make lightning strike twice with this weekly series.  While there were some good parts to the series, like watching an alternate earth crumble into chaos (which serves as the origin of The Great Disaster of the old Kamandi books – a title that DC should put in their Showcase series), it otherwise remained an unremarkable story.

Deathmate (Image/Valiant) – This intercompany crossover deserves special mention, not because of the story itself, but because of the behind the scenes chaos.  Deathmate’s big gimmick was that the crossover titles were not numbered, but colored, and the order in which the main books were read was not set (you could read it as Red, Yellow, Blue and Black, or Black, Yellow, Red, Blue, and so on).  A novel concept except for one problem.  At the time, Image Comics had a problem with meeting deadlines.  While it was tolerable for their own books to an extent (seeing the Brigade #4 come out after the first issue of the second Brigade series – which referenced events in Brigade #4 – was a bit unnerving), in an intercompany crossover, it can be – and in this case, was – disastrous, especially when the other company involved was keeping to deadline.