7 Best Comics Crossovers, Ranked

Marvel and DC Comics have done a lot of things to get sales over the years, but the most fruitful was the crossover. Before superhero comics came about, there were character crossovers, but they’d become a much bigger deal with the large superhero universes that started developing in the Golden Age, with teams like the Justice Society, the Allies, the Young Allies, and the World’s Finest Team all forming the clay that would become the crossovers of the future. The Silver Age would see what we consider the first crossovers, as DC started opening up the travel restrictions of their multiverse and Marvel created the “shared universe” concept that made crossovers so much easier to set up. Since then, crossovers have become a huge part of the comic industry.

Crossovers come in three different flavors. There are the event stories that have their own series and tie-in issues all over the line, then there are the crossovers between issues, and finally there are the inter-company crossovers. There are lots of examples of great crossovers throughout the decades, but some of them stand above the rest. These seven are the best crossovers in comics, bringing together characters and universes for stories that fans have never forgotten.

7) Amalgam Comics

Amalgam Comics grew out of DC vs. Marvel/Marvel vs. DC (the titles are because each company had to publish two issues of the book each, and put their names in the front of the issues that they published). Amalgam Comics was basically the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe smushed together. There were two rounds of Amalgam Comics, with 12 different one shots in each round. Characters were combined together — so, Captain America and Superman, Wolverine and Batman, Superboy and Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Justice League, X-Force and the Doom Patrol, the Fantastic Four and the Challengers of the Unknown — and readers got to see what would happen if Marvel and DC crossed over to such an extent that they became one. It was an awesome crossover concept, and gave readers some amazing books (I’ve always been partial to Legends of the Dark Claw, Magneto and the Magnetic Men, and The Exciting X-Patrol). Amalgam Comics is a legendary crossover, and with Marvel and DC announcing all-new crossovers between the company, there’s a chance we can get another round.

6) Avengers/X-Men: Utopia

The Avengers and the X-Men have had some excellent crossovers over the years, but the best of them came from “Dark Reign” Marvel — Avengers/X-Men: Utopia. The story revolved around the Friends of Humanity coming to new mutant headquarters city San Francisco, with mutants and their supporters taking to the streets. This powder keg of a situation is made worse when Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers show up, with a plan to take the mutant situation well in hand, with Cabal member (and Cyclops’s girlfriend/co-leader) Emma Frost being given her own Dark X-Men team. However, Cyclops never met a situation he couldn’t plan his way out of, and it leads to the X-Men teaching Osborn a valuable lesson about minding his own business. “Dark Reign” was a tremendous time for Marvel, although the X-Men books weren’t the best (this was seemingly by design, as Marvel had begun the marginalization of the mutant side of things that would become more pronounced as the 2010s went on). Utopia is a highlight of “Dark Reign”, and launches many of the changes that would become a huge part of the X-Men books. It’s also an actual classic crossover, running through Dark Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, and Dark X-Men. It’s fantastic and doesn’t really get the credit it deserves.

5) “Mutant Massacre”

“Mutant Massacre” was one of the first major X-Men crossovers of the 1980s. Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants had been doing gangbusters business for the House of Ideas, and Marvel decided to use their popularity to tell a story that crossed through multiple non-mutant books. “Mutant Massacre” was born. The story’s premise is simple — Mister Sinister (who hasn’t appeared yet) sent the Marauders into the Morlock Tunnels to destroy the mutant group, with the X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Power Pack, and Thor getting involved in the battle to stop them. The X-Men would take some heavy hits from this battle, with several members of the team taken out of commission, and readers would get the first major Wolverine/Sabretooth fight from the story as well. “Mutant Massacre” was a hit with fans and quickly became an important piece of X-Men lore. Even nearly forty years later, it’s still an excellent crossover, giving readers a thrilled pack set of issues that will stick with them for years to come.

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4) Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine is a six issue miniseries teaming up Marvel’s two most popular characters. There are some out there who would say it isn’t technically a crossover, but a team-up book, but crossover is a phrase that is often in the eye of the beholder. At their core, crossovers are just team-up between characters, so I would say that Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine is definitely a crossover and one of the best ever. The two characters end up getting thrown through time and space, forced to figure out exactly what’s going on and how to deal with it while being forced to work together. What makes it so amazing isn’t just the deft writing, great villains, mindbending plot, and some of the most gorgeous art of superstar artist Adam Kubert’s long career (Wolverine with the Phoenix Gun vs. Doom the Living Planet is everything you could ever want from a superhero comic). What truly makes it so great is the impact that it had on Spider-Man and Wolverine in the years to come. Up until this point, Spider-Man and Wolverine had been Avengers together for years, but weren’t exactly friends. Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine saw the two of them finally understand each other as people, getting to witness each other at their lowest moments, and become the best friends they are today. It’s an amazing story on every level and is a perfect crossover experience. Seriously, go buy and see. It truly lives up to the “astonishing” in the title.

3) “Inferno”

“Mutant Massacre” proved that the X-Men could be the engine behind big crossovers, and that led to 1989’s “Inferno”. It is related to “Mutant Massacre”; Mister Sinister’s machinations are a large part of the story of “Inferno”. Cyclops’s wife Madelyne Pryor, created by Sinister and driven insane by the villain trying to get his hands on her son Nathan, breaks bad, becoming the Goblin Queen after years of learning everything in her life was a lie and teaming with N’astirh of Limbo. They invade New York City, all in an effort to get their hands on young Nathan and sacrifice him. “Inferno” lit the summer of 1989 on fire, crossing through Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, X-Terminators, Excalibur, The Avengers, Daredevil, Power Pack, Fantastic Four, Cloak and Dagger, The Amazing Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Damage Control. “Inferno” is a blockbuster, especially the X-Men-centric books. “Inferno” has become massively important to the history of the X-Men, closing out the Madelyne Pryor storyline that Claremont had begun earlier in the decade, and leading to the end of his blockbuster run in the years to come. It’s still amazing all these years later.

2) Infinite Crisis

Infinite Crisis is one of DC’s most important events, an ambitious reset button that undid a lot of the popular changes made by Crisis on Infinite Earths twenty years before. Infinite Crisis had its focus in an event book, but it was also a massive crossover story that started months before the book dropped. DC laid seeds for the book over the ensuing years, and the story of Infinite Crisis ran through basically every book that DC was publishing. There were multiple tie-in miniseries, and the story that built up Infinite Crisis was truly a crossover in every sense of the word. While you could read Infinite Crisis without reading the rest of the crossover, reading it all gives readers a full 360 degree view of the story, and showing off just how well DC had planned the story. Infinite Crisis is a brilliant example of the linewide crossover story, using its multiple parts throughout the publishing line to fully flesh out its excellent story.

1) JLA/Avengers

JLA/Avengers is the best crossover in comic history and it’s honestly not even close. The story had first been planned in 1979, with Gerry Conway and George Perez getting started on a crossover between the two teams. However, it never really came together, and all fans were left with some amazing Perez art. It was the Holy Grail of comic crossovers, and eventually, readers gave up on getting it, especially once the X-Men and New Teen Titans took over the sales charts. The Avengers and JLA got popular again in the late ’90s and Marvel and DC decided to finally pull the trigger on JLA/Avengers. Writer Kurt Busiek was teamed with Perez, who was the only person everyone agreed should be allowed to draw this most important story, and readers got the ultimate Marvel and DC crossover from September of 2003 to March of 2004. Everything about it was perfect; the story was the perfect melding of Marvel and DC’s different styles of superhero storytelling, and the art was just as fantastic as well figured it would be. JLA/Avengers is a brilliant story, and maybe Marvel and DC’s new partnership will see it brought back into print.

What are your favorite crossovers? Sound off in the comments below.