Top 5 Fridays: Top 5 DC Intercompany Crossovers

Since I've been hyping up Batman '66 Meets The Green Hornet for the past month, I figured that since it was released this week to your local comic book shops we'd take a look at other intercompany crossovers that made our childhood, teens, and even adult lives a little happier.  Now I know as a comic reader we really don't have to mingle two different universes together to get a sense of satisfaction from our books, and being a continuity snob it can be a little irksome because it really doesn't matter in the end what happened in any particular story.  But these stories nonetheless have captured are imaginations since the beginning of comics
and the idea of separate publishers taking their heroes and combining them together is just pure fun.  So let's take a look at what we at Weird Science think of as the Top 5 DC Intercompany Crossovers, that hold a place in our hearts.  Let's check it out.


#5.  Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man

Here's a story that came out in 1976 putting the biggest names of DC and Marvel together for the first time.  Not only was it was the first time the two companies put any of their heroes together, but set in motion decades of fun for us fanboys that will cross the Multiverse with smiles on our faces.  Now this late Silver Age tale has all the classic stuff you love about that time in comics.  Maniacal mad scientist Lex Luthor teams up with Doc Ock so the two can finally take down their arch enemies, and finally take over the world.  So of course our heroes after fighting a bit get their acts together to stop the villains.  We've got a awesome bit where Lex Luthor shoots Spider-Man with a ray gun that makes his costume emit red sun radiation, as to weaken Superman whenever he's around the wall crawler.  We also have teleportation beams, weather machines, secret satellite headquarters, etc, etc.  It's like I said just an awesome Silver Age story that everyone can get behind who's a fan of this era of comics like I am.  Hell all you really need to see in this story is Superman tearing off two of Doc Ock's tentacles to fulfill all your nerdy needs.  So much fun.


#4.  Green Lantern Versus Aliens

For those of you who actively read these Top 5 lists here at Weird Science, you'll know that I'm a huge Kyle Rayner fan and back in the 90's and early 2000's I would read any Green Lantern material I could get my hands on.  With that knowledge you also need to understand that I'm also a huge horror buff, and once I saw this story come out I was all over it.  Now I don't want semantics about how Alien is sci fi flick, because it's a goddamn slasher flick with an alien.  That being said I was 17 when this story came out in 2000 and I immediately loved it, not only because of Kyle Rayner but it was also about how Hal Jordan had stopped these Xenomorphs and instead of killing them he placed them on Mogo so they couldn't hurt anyone.  Now jump ahead to Hal being dead and Kyle rocking the ring.  A spaceship crash lands on Mogo and Kyle has to take care of the horror that Hal left behind ten years prior.  It's a good thing that in the end Kyle eradicates all the aliens, with GL headquarters being on Mogo now.  We'd have a lot more Green Lantern chest bursters going on than the one we saw in this comic.  Now maybe you didn't like this crossover but as a teenager it was right up my alley and I loved it.


#3.  JLA/Avengers

Now we look at a over the top story that began in 1981 and wouldn't see the light of day until 2002.  The crossover story that everyone can get behind, JLA/Avengers.  The hub bub of this story sees Krona crossing universes and destroying them in his wake looking for the source of creation.  Seems legit.  Well his plan was going all fine and all until he stumbled onto the Marvel Universe and meets the game crazy Grandmaster who proposes what else?  A game to save the universe.  Now the fun of this story is it's like DC vs. Marvel but reversed.  Krona chooses The Avengers as his champions and The Grandmaster has The JLA.  Do you get it yet?  If The Avengers want to save their universe they have to lose the game.  Yeah it's fucked up and awesome.  Well then we get to the meat of the story where they have to find artifacts and yadda yadda fight bad guys yadda yadda and save the day.  But save the day with Superman wielding Thor's hammer, and Captain America's shield.  I need to see a tattoo of this somewhere because that's awesome.  As great as this story was it would be the last time that Marvel and DC would do a crossover, and I doubt we'll ever see it again.


#2.  Uncanny X-Men And The New Teen Titans

This is the shit here people.  When I was a kid there were few things I liked more than the X-Men and side kicks.  Yeah I know my love for side kicks is odd, but they're a lot easier to imagine yourself in their role then the big boys of DC.  So what better a match to put together than the misfits of the Marvel Universe and the young heroes trying to get out of the shadows of their mentors.  This story sees all the shit you'd want to see in a crossover of this magnitude.  You've got Darkseid still trying to get past the Source Wall, but this time he figures he'll try to use the raw power of the Phoenix Force to do it.  Yeah that sounds like a good time.  Now add some fights with Deathstroke, and the X-Men taking on the DC baddies, and have Jean Grey sacrifice herself to save everyone again.  You've got yourself one hell of a comic.  Too bad that this story never got the sequel it deserved and which had been planned.  Just the two titans of comic book companies bickering about nonsense and leaving the fans to pay the price.  Fanboys and fangirls wouldn't see another Marvel DC crossover for another twelve years do to them just not getting along.


#1.  DC Vs. Marvel

Now everybody who dug comics in the 90's remembers when Batman had his back broken, when Superman died, but few things grabbed our attention like this monumental event.  DC Vs. Marvel was the event where all of us Marvel kids, and all of us DC kids could finally have our fanboy questions answered and bitch about who won or lost.  People give the 90's a bad rap for ruining comics, but it was a grand time to be a comic book reader, and I couldn't wait to be transported into this gigantic fight between the heroes of the most popular comic companies in the world.  So it might be a little obvious that this would be my #1, but who wasn't jumping out of their skin when Wonder Woman picked up Thor's hammer, or when Aquaman finally proved his badassery with his epic fight against Namor?  Hell I was even into Tim Drake and Jubilee falling in love.  Yeah I'm a big old sap, and I'm still bitching today about Superman beating The Hulk.  Now I may be all about DC, but that's bullshit.  If Doomsday could beat Superman to death there is no way that The Hulk couldn't do the same.  You see I'm still talking about this epic event, and that's why it makes the #1 spot for this week's Top 5 Fridays.

An honorable mention I'd like to throw out here is Spawn/Batman that almost made the list just because I was a huge fan of both characters when I was a kid and when that came out I was all about it.  But not all things hold up over time and not all things can make a Top 5 list.  I hope you enjoyed this week's Top 5 Fridays, and make sure to get inspired by it to go out and purchase the Batman '66 Meets The Green Hornet.  While I felt issue #1 was slow, I expect the series to pick up in a big way.  See you in seven.  Boosh!