In 2019, the final issue of DC’s Doomsday Clock teased the Secret Crisis: a universe-spanning Marvel/DC crossover in the not-so-far off future of 2030. Should such a future come to pass, it would mark the first time the two comic book publishers crossed over since 2003’s JLA/Avengers, a four-part miniseries by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez that capped off three decades of combined Marvel/DC crossovers dating back to Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man in 1976.
The intercompany crossover isn’t a new concept to Marvel or DC. The superheroes of the DC Universe have crossed paths with the likes of Spawn, Judge Dredd, the Spirit, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and recent collaborations include such Warner Bros.-based IPs as the MonsterVerse (in Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong), the Looney Tunes (in DC Meets Looney Tunes), and the animated characters of Hanna-Barbera and Adult Swim (in MultiVersus: Collision Detected). Marvel, meanwhile, has pit Logan and T’Challa against the Predator (in Predator vs. Wolverine and Predator vs. Black Panther) and the Avengers against Alien‘s Xenomorphs (in Aliens vs. Avengers) — synergistic collaborations between Disney-owned Marvel and 20th Century Studios.
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RELATED: DC vs. Marvel Superhero Crossovers Return to Print for First Time in Decades: Omnibus Overview
“Marvel isn’t all that interested in doing a lot of crossovers,” Marvel Comics VP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort explained in his Substack newsletter. “DC for the last several years has seemed much more open to doing them. But whenever Marvel does participate in one, there tends to be some reason for this internally, some objective that making a crossover helps us to achieve.”
The X-Men editor continued, “But each circumstance is different, so I can’t tell you why we do each and every one, nor which instances came from Marvel reaching out to others and which ones were the result of others reaching out to us.”
While DC has consistently published at least one intercompany crossover every year since 2015 — everything from Conan the Barbarian (Dark Horse) to Power Rangers (Boom!) and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW) — Marvel has participated in significantly fewer crossovers with outside companies. Especially when compared to the output of the ’90s and 2000s, when the Marvel Universe crossed over with the likes of X-O Manowar (Valiant) Backlash and Deathblow (Image), Witchblade (Top Cow), Invincible (Skybound), and Red Sonja (Dynamite).
Ultraman X Avengers and Ultraman: Along Came a Spider-Man, collaborations between Marvel and Tsuburaya Productions, hit stands earlier this year — a decade after 2014’s Avengers/Attack on Titan — and followed Predator vs. Wolverine in 2023 and Predator vs. Black Panther and Aliens vs. Avengers in 2024. Many of the Marvel/DC crossovers have returned to print for the first time in decades in the just-released first volume of the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus.
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Image Credit: Marvel Comics
