10 Missed Opportunities in DC/Marvel Crossovers, Ranked (Including the Clashes Fans Still Dream About)

Crossovers are a big part of the superhero comic industry, and they have been since almost the beginning. People craved seeing their favorite heroes together, which led to the Justice Society of America, the All-Star Squadron, the early Batman/Superman crossovers, Marvel’s Allies (which would later become the Invaders), and more. The Silver Age had more of the same, with characters crossing over constantly in superteams and in their own books. In the last 50 years, big event comics have become the order of the day, which Marvel and DC Comics giving readers huge crossovers that pit the heroes of their various universes in huge battles against threats that no one hero or superteam could handle on their own. Crossovers are an even bigger business than ever before.

Crossovers have also become rather contentious in the comic fandom. Some fans love them, but other fans focus on the missed opportunities, and how they could be better. This has become a problem with modern events. It feels like nearly every big event has at least one missed opportunity, things that could have made the events better. Some events themselves are missed opportunities, as DC or Marvel dropped the ball on the crossover. These ten missed opportunities in DC and Marvel crossovers never really made a lot of sense, and have caused their events to be looked up badly.

10) Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths

I’ve always been a fan of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, but even I have to admit that it was a missed opportunity. The problem with it is that instead of trying to do something new with the Crisis name, DC just made a boiler plate Crisis crossover. There were a lot of cool ideas going into it, but it just ended up being another character trying to bring back the old multiverse. We could have had something about the Great Darkness or maybe a revenge plot with Pariah. Instead, we got the same thing we’ve always gotten and this has caused a lot of fans to ignore the good parts of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths (and yes, I do think there are good parts) and focus on the weaknesses of the story.

9) The End of the Krakoa Era

The Krakoa Era was pretty great, but the ending was universally panned by fans and critics alike. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything good from “Fall of X”, but there was a lot of mediocrity. The problem with the end of the Krakoa Era is simple — Marvel decided to rush the ending. The popularity of X-Men ’97 made the company think that fans wanted a more basic type of X-Men status quo, so they cut six months out of “Fall of X”, forcing the creators to speed up their stories, which they had already plotted with the original length. The Krakoa Era should have gotten an amazing ending. Instead, we got something that was rushed and can’t stand with the amazing beginning of the era.

8) Flashpoint

Flashpoint is best known as the beginning of the New 52, but most people don’t remember that the way Flashpoint went isn’t the way it was supposed. So, to understand that, we have to go back to The Flash: Rebirth. Barry Allen had been resurrected in Final Crisis #2, and The Flash: Rebirth saw him clash with the returned Reverse Flash (who would actually be resurrected in Blackest Night, which came after The Flash: Rebirth, but he ran back in time). The book ended with a tease for Flashpoint, which still seemed to revolve around Reverse Flash changing the past, but it also seemed like it was going to different than what we finally got. We’ll never know exactly what Flashpoint was supposed to be, and that’s a huge missed opportunity because Flashpoint isn’t all that great, honestly.

7) The X-Men and the Shi’Ar Working Together in Infinity

Infinity is basically the halfway point of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers run. The story sees the Builders, the most ancient race in the Marvel Universe besides the Celestials deciding to destroy everything as the Incursions were happening. The Avengers ended up going to space and helping the Kree, Shi’Ar, Skrull, the Annihilation Wave, and the Spartax battle against the forces of the Builders. The story was sold as a major crossover, but we rarely got any crossovers outside of the Avengers comics. This was a huge missed opportunity when it comes to the X-Men and the Shi’Ar Empire. The X-Men brought the Shi’Ar to the dance, so it would have been cool to see them meet up again. Wolverine was even a member of the Avengers at that point (and earlier in Avengers (Vol. 5) got to hang out with the Shi’Ar in the fourth issue of the book), but him and the X-Men were taken down by the Black Order, and not included in the rest of the story. This was a mistake, and we could have gotten a better story that way.

6) Infinite Crisis‘s Aftermath

Infinite Crisis is a DC classic, and one of the best event comics from Marvel or DC Comics in the ’00s (I would call it the best if it wasn’t for Final Crisis). The story was the sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, and told the story of the DC Universe coming together to defeat the machinations of Earth-Three’s Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime. I honestly think the book itself is a nearly flawless event book, and wouldn’t change anything about it, but I think the aftermath of the book is the problem. Infinite Crisis was supposed to make the modern DC Universe into something more like the Bronze Age, pre-Crisis one, but it just never really worked out. It feels like DC was a bit scared to pull the trigger on the widespread changes they wanted to make, mostly because of the popularity of the post-Crisis DC Universe. Also, personally, I would have preferred if Earth-Two Superman survived the book at least for a little while, maybe having him join the Justice Society to try to find a way to resurrect Earth-Two Lois. Infinite Crisis‘s aftermath could have went way better, and its failure led to the eventual birth of the New 52.

5) Secret Wars (2015) Rebooting the Marvel Universe

Secret Wars (2015) is another crossover that on its own was pretty amazing. It was easily one of the best Marvel event comics ever, and I would go so far as to say that it is probably the best. Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s story was epic, one of the best Doctor Doom stories of all time, and it truly matched the scale that Hickman had set up for it in his previous runs on the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. It ended with the Marvel Multiverse being recreated, but Marvel could have went much further and rebooted their entire comic universe. You can make an argument for why Marvel didn’t need a reboot, but it honestly could have been pretty great. In fact, Hickman did some rebooting with the story, as some things that had happened in his Avengers/New Avengers run were retconned out. Secret Wars (2015) is wonderful, but I think not rebooting Marvel afterwards was a huge missed opportunity.

4) Countdown to Final Crisis

I love Final Crisis. Grant Morrison is the greatest superhero writer ever, in my opinion, and their work on Final Crisis was the perfect word on what superheroes meant. However, there’s a problem with Final Crisis and that’s Countdown to Final Crisis (I mean, there’s also the fact that Superman Beyond 3-D wasn’t a part of the book, but we can talk about that some other time). Countdown to Final Crisis came right after the massive success of the weekly series 52, and fans expected more of the same from Countdown. However, there were three big differences between the two. The first is the creators involved. 52 boasted Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, and Keith Giffen (who did art breakdowns for every issue, meaning he did rough versions of every weekly issue, and other artists drew it, which is an insane amount of work and proof of why the late, great Giffen is one of the best creators ever), and while Countdown to Final Crisis had some great creators involved, none of them were the caliber of the 52 creators. The next is that DC head honcho at the time Dan DiDio wanted more editorial control over the book, robbing those creators of the freedom the 52 creators had. Finally, Morrison wasn’t forthcoming with what they were doing for Final Crisis, meaning the Countdown creators had very little idea of what they were setting up. Things could have been so much better if any of these things were different.

3) The Deaths from Fear Itself

Fear Itself was a huge disappointment. It came after the ’00s run of mega-popular Marvel events (Secret War/House of M/Civil War/World War Hulk/Secret Invasion/Siege was quite a run) and was Thor focused. It boasted Matt Fraction writing and Stuart Immonen on art, and had a cool premise, with evil Asgardian hammers making heroes into monsters, Sin becoming the new Red Skull, and Thor having to deal with the God of Fear the Snake. However, the book never really came together as anything but a boilerplate event comic. The book did boast two major deaths, and that’s where the problem comes in. It looked like Bucky, then Captain America, was killed. However, it was later revealed to be a Life Model Decoy. Thor was also killed at the end of the book by the Snake, but that death would be quickly undone. These deaths had so much potential, but Marvel didn’t let either of them mean anything, which was a huge missed opportunity.

2) Brightest Day‘s Aftermath

Blackest Night was an awesome crossover, ending the War of Light storyline that had been brewing in the Green Lantern comics since 2007. The battle against the Black Lantern Corps ended with a group of a dozen characters, heroes and villains, being brought back to life for a mysterious purpose, which was revealed in the bi-weekly series Brightest Day. Brightest Day was spectacular. It was written by Geoff Johns and Pete Tomasi, had art from Ivan Reis and Fernando Pasarin (among others), and starred some amazing characters. The book ended with the return of Swamp Thing and John Constantine, and it was great. It seemed like the DC Multiverse was about to enter a new era… then Flashpoint happened and the New 52 undid it all. DC wanted that sweet reboot sales bump, and threw away a lot of great ideas. It’s a huge missed opportunity for fans of DC, and we’ll never get to know what could have been.

1) The New and Mighty Avengers Finally Facing Off in Secret Invasion

After Civil War, we got two teams of Avengers — the New Avengers, consisting of Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Fist, Ronin, Echo, Doctor Strange, and Jessica Jones and the Mighty Avengers, consisting of Iron Man, Ms. Marvel/Captain America, Ares, Black Widow, the Sentry, Wonder Man, and the Wasp. Marvel teased lots of fights between the two teams, but it never actually happened. Then Secret Invasion happened and we got both teams going to the Savage Land to investigate some Skrull related activity. The two teams faced off, we got a page or two of them tangling, then a bunch of heroes and villains appeared, saying they were captured by the Skrulls. Then, this being the Savage Land, a bunch of dinosaurs showed up to mess everything up. We never got to see the two Avengers teams get a real face off, and that’s a massive missed opportunity.

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