crossoVers

Yesterday's Year in Review got me thinking about crossovers. Everybody's always whining and complaining about crossovers. "Crossovers are too sensational." "Crossovers only kill characters who are going to get brought back in two months anyway." "Crossovers cost too much." Yeah, well, when done right, crossovers are also awesome. You don't hear many people proclaiming that, but they sure say it with their wallets. And I'd like to posit that crossovers aren't done wrong any more often than single issues or single arcs are done wrong. It's just that when crossovers don't work, it's a lot more apparent, since four or five books on your pull list become a chore to read (yet you are unable to bring yourself not to buy them because you, like me, are pathetic).

To that end, let's look at a few of the bigger crossover events of the past weeks:

Green Lantern Books: Sinestro Corps War



Here's an example of an awesome one. I go into detail about why the "Sinestro Corps War," especially the finale, is so effective in this review, but I'd like to also point out that, as far as crossovers go, this really didn't feel like some big "event," even though it was a huge one, because it was such a natural progression of the stories of both Green Lantern and Green Lanter Corps. It was an organic fruition of months of planning in two well-integrated titles. As opposed to...

Bat Books: Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul



...which was, well, not so good. I think a big part of this, aside from the relative irrelevance of Ra's Al Ghul's return (the demise of whom was, what, a mere three years ago?), is that the Batman books aren't a cohesive unit any more. You can't have a return to the No Man's Land era old school Bat crossovers if, outside of the scant spin-off books Nightwing and Robin, the two remaining Batman-centric titles are admittedly presenting different versions of the Dark Knight. Both Detective Comics and Batman are at creative acmes, piloted by two of the industry's finest writers, but they're not playing in the same sandbox. I think it's great! I love that there's a place to get a series of done in one detectiving fixes. I love that there's a place to get, uh, whatever the hell it is that Grant Morrison's giving us. But these two takes don't gel with each other, and they certainly don't gel with whatever's going on with Tim or Dick in their solo titles. Sometimes when you put Grant Morrison together with equally talented writers (like, uh, with 52) the fruits of the collaboration are as nectar to the gods, thanks in no small part to the even playing field they all come in on. But other times when you put Grant Morrison together with some equally-to-pretty talented writers so that they might synthesize some kind of joint venture out of four existing storylines... the results are what you get here. An unevenly paced jaunt to Nanda Parbat where the stakes aren't high enough, the action is thin and spread over too many issues and the finale falls flat. If you're looking for a Batman crossover event that's good, check out Frank Tieri and Jim Calafiore's Gotham Underground, which is "Where the hell did this come from?" good and, in only three issues, has run circles around Resurrection and seemingly resurrected a far more surprising character.

This is not to say that the Bat books need to all function in congress. They don't. Batman's solo titles are great as they are, both givens on the pull list every month, and if Nightwing or Robin were given similarly stable and capable creative teams (as it appears at least one of them may be getting), they'd be equally worth picking up. But they don't operate as a single unit. As opposed to...

X-Books: Messiah CompleX



...which has been probably the greatest straight crossover I've ever read. Seriously. And it ain't even done yet. There is a gorgeous over-arch to this series. It is well thought out. It's been in the works on some level since House of M. It had months of set-up in the "Endangered Species" back-up stories. And now that it's happening, there is no exposition. There is nothing else that needs to be explained. It careens at dizzying speeds. Something huge happens in every issue. Every creator involved is bringing his A-Game. The anticipation for a good story was earned through months of set-up in the books, and that anticipation is paying off thanks to months of planning behind the scenes.

The moral is that crossoVers should be treated like any other kind of story, albeit on a larger scale. You make sure the story will result in worthwhile change. You make sure that everybody in the story has a reason for being in the story. You make sure that everybody writing and drawing the story has a reason for being involved in the story. And you make sure that it's fun to read. Generally speaking, when it comes to event comics, they probably are more inclined to make sure things are well planned out since the stakes (not in terms of how many lives the superheroes are saving, but in terms of sales dollars and street cred) are much higher. In my unscientific poll here, two out of three did it right. Come to think of it, that may be a better record than would be enjoyed by a random poll of three non-crossover comic book stories.