As Joe Quesada left the position of Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief, people began to wonder: will we see another inter-company crossover between the Big Two anytime soon? If you were not aware, someone at DC (Bob Wayne, if I remember correctly) said that they would not crossover with Marvel until Quesada was out of the big chair way back when.
Of course, such a crossover would primarily be a cash grab, so we would most likely just see the standards involved: Batman, the X-Men, Spider-Man, and so on and so forth. We can always dream that the good folks at DC and Marvel might give us one or two titles featuring characters that otherwise would have been passed over. Follow the cut for some of my ideas of what DC and Marvel characters could make for an interesting crossover.
I may be the only one who would buy this, but I don’t care. I have made it no secret that Renee Montoya and Jessica Jones are two of my favorite characters in superhero comics, and I think the two would interact very well. I feel the two make an interesting contrast: Renee spent a while working with superheroes before she eventually joined their ranks (though not as a metahuman); conversely, Jones started out as a superhero before trying to return to a normal life. Additionally, they both have investigative-related backgrounds, leading me to think that the two would work well in a detective sort of story – maybe with a paranormal twist, as that seems to be the direction DC is taking Renee.
Here’s the big question, though: should Greg Rucka or Brian Michael Bendis write this book? Bendis created Jessica Jones, and Rucka has more or less defined Renee Montoya since she was introduced to the mainstream DCU. It is difficult to think of either of them not writing their respective character in a book that features them. I’m not going to cop out with a “they should co-write!” sort of thing, though (as interesting as that might be). No, the prize goes to Bendis. Now, I’m normally more of a Greg Rucka fan than I am of Bendis (no disrespect meant; Bendis is great too). Even so, for whatever reason I am more interested to see what Bendis could do with Montoya than what Rucka could do with Jones.
What about art? Well, once again both choices are based off of people who have previously worked on the character. Were Bendis to write it more gritty, I would love to see Michael Gaydos return to Jessica Jones, and would particularly be interested in seeing how he would draw Renee. The more supernatural the story, though, the more I would want to see Cully Hamner on art. I’m not saying that Hamner’s art is particularly fantastical in nature – in fact, I doubt a comic with these two characters would ever quite fit that description. Hamner did a wonderful job on the Question co-feature in Detective Comics, giving the comic a bit of the roughness that was in Red, while keeping a sort of cleanness that allowed the comic to remain in the slightly-brighter-than-our-world DCU. I feel that the closer the crossover sits to being more of a superhero comic, the less it needs the grit Gaydos brings; though, with these two characters, it still needs a little bit. Cue Cully.
Teen Titans/Young Avengers
The Teen Titans are obviously pretty mainstream, but the Young Avengers don’t quite have the same level of exposure. They both come from a similar place, though: the majority of each team began their costumed careers modeled after one of the older, more iconic heroes, but have since become unique in their own way. Both teams have a lot of strong personalities that would clash in interesting ways, but that’s exactly what I want to see in these sorts of crossovers: character interaction!
The obvious choice would to write this would be Allan Heinberg. After all, the Young Avengers franchise is his baby, while the current generation of Teen Titans doesn’t have too much of a “definitive” writer that keeps coming back to them. I’m not sure if I would like to see him dip into the Teen Titans pool, though. I love his work with the Young Avengers, but I that it is great because he has something specific in mind that he wants to do and that he is working up to. Instead, I’d like to see Christopher Yost write this hypothetical miniseries. Yost did a great job writing the Young Avengers in their Secret Invasion tie-in that was shared with the Runaways, and just seems to do well with groups of young characters, so I’m sure the Teen Titans would be no problem for him. Plus, since he would be working within restricted continuity I doubt he would be able to kill any of them.
Continued belowBack when the Runaways and the Young Avengers first crossed-over during Marvel’s Civil War, the mini they were given was illustrated by Stefano Caselli. In most circumstances, I love Caselli; however, I didn’t like the way he drew the Runaways. Luckily, I loved the way he drew the Young Avengers, and I think he would do a killer job with the Teen Titans. Can you imagine a Caselli-drawn Kon? Caselli has done great work in everything he has done so far, and I can see him and Yost working together incredibly well.
The New Gods/The Eternals
Okay, this one is just a pipe dream. The Eternals and The New Gods were two of The King of Comics’ (that’s Jack Kirby, to the heathens in the audience) greatest creations, and they stemmed from very similar ideas. A story involving the two groups interacting could be mad cool, but the only person who could do the story justice would be the late Kirby himself, which is obviously out of the question. Still, it’s fun to dream. If I had to assign a team to the book, though, I would probably choose Grant Morrison and Dale Eaglesham. Morrison is my second-favorite writer of the New Gods (though I know that some will disagree with that), and Eaglesham is often hailed as Kirby-esque without being an imitation. Even so, I feel it would be doing Kirby a disservice to have anyone but him do this. After all, “The Kirby tradition is to create a new comic.”
