Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up an omniverse of fictional realities. We all love you, and your watchers on this journey are me Schmidto, me.

Rude Rob, Rude Rib, something like that.

I don't know what you're doing. I'm at least going for like, a knockoff of myself.

That's true.

Which will make sense in just a few minutes to all our listeners.

Well, before we begin that trip, gita, what's new in our little section of the multiverse?

Well, here we are, episode 97, three away from the big one. I'm 100 and a few weeks away from two years of this show. We have a lot of people listening who have not reviewed or shared.

Exactly.

I've tried appealing to kindness and generosity, but now I'm trying shame. So if you're listening to this and you haven't reviewed us everywhere, and you haven't shared us with three friends and posted on social media, then what are you waiting for? Because we are getting upset with you. But thank you for listening.

Hannah wanting, um, him with the shame bell to follow you down the streets until you post.

Exactly. But we do thank you for listening. We just have this goal of growing when we hit our hundred th episode, and you can help us get there in the next few. So thank you for reviewing, sharing, posting.

And if you are joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our journey today. Origins of the story, what inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.

Also, remember that you can support us on coffeedeerwatchers.com. Click join. We have more content there, including a spinoff series that we've taken a little break from. We're going to get back to and we're sorry to our patrons on there. Life is very busy as, uh, we approach 100 episodes and barely have time to record even just one. But you can support us, dearwatchers.com. Click join to learn more.

And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 97, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with our travels to today's alternate universe. Today, we head to an alternate universe of laughs.

That sounds like it's going to be a Joker reference.

That's true. As we journey to answer the question, what if the Avengers fought the Justice League?

OOH.

Uh, but in a parody spoof before.

It happened for real many years beforehand. So this is Earth? Well, this is Marvel classification Earth 89923, which is where a few of the what the, uh, crossover worlds are placed. It's not clear that they coexist, but whatever. We'll call it Earth 89923 part of the what the universe. And we'll talk more about what the is in just a few minutes. We covered one sort of parody issue back in episode 22 with the Fantastic Four in The Marvelous Land of Oz, though it was more straightforward. Our true parody spoof coverage has actually been in episode 61 when we did the what if, the Fantastic Four had reached the moon. And that was really jokey humorous. We've talked about trying to cover those humor what if issues, but we've never gone there. And then, of course, there's the world's funnest parody issue from the Else Worlds at DC. So we'll get to more and more humor over time. But this was a fun one to do for a few reasons. And before we dive into this alternate universe, rob, you are going to tell us a little bit about these parody comics. But to stop you from going on and on and on and on forever, you're going to focus in on Marvel.

Yes. Okay, so there's obviously lots of parody comics. Marvel itself has had a long history with parody comics, going back to 1953 Atlas. They published their first book, Crazy, which returned in 73. Reprinting Not Brand X stories and more on that in a second. Then that had the long run.

So what's wild is that's only a year after Mad.

Oh, yeah.

So they're pretty early in the game. They're just not known for it.

Yeah, I know. And then that title, Crazy, that had a pretty long run. 94 issues from 73 to 80. And big, big name editors. Marv Wolfman. Steve Gerber. Larry. Uh, Hammer. It also debuted such characters and mascots as Irving Nebbish and later Obnoxio the Clown, which people might know from the Spider, uh, man and the X Men versus Arcade Veto game Wolverine has to.

Be or Obnoxio the Clown versus the X Men. One shot from the 1980s, which is a great wild one shot that one day we'll cover, I'm sure.

The company that would become Marvel also published three volumes of Snafu in 1955 and 56. This includes the first appearance of Future Not Brand Eck mascot for Bush Man, and was primarily written by Stan Lee with art by John Severin, Bill Everett and Joe Manly. And then we have not brand eck. This is one of the titles that most people might be familiar with.

Are you thinking it's eck?

Eck.

You keep saying eck. So, you know he's making fun of DC by saying, like, not brand X. Right. Like a generic counterpart. So I always saw it as, like, not brand X. I think you have to get closer to the X sound, but it's like an X, but as if you're spitting at the same time. Right. That's what I imagined. Stan was going for something. Yeah, like x.

Well, NBE premiered in 67 for 13 issues. Its editors, or, uh, Roy Thomas and Ghostwriter co creator Gary Friedrich, they proposed a book that would poke fun at DC because, as you said, that was their nickname for DC. But Stan thought it would actually be better to lampoon Marvel's own output. So some of the characters were Dr. Deranged, a, uh, stand in for Dr. Strange, an Ironed Man, plus contemporary parodies, like, they put the Marvel characters into a version of the Sergeant Pepper's cover. Other contributors, including Jack Kirby, Jean Colon, again, the Severance, and then not brand Eck 2017 for a one off issue. Marvel also had Spoof, which ran for five issues starting in 1970 that was more of a direct Mad magazine style book. Again, the Severance as major contributors. Big theme here. And lastly, we have our main focus of today, which is what the which.

Ran for six, um, issues.

What the which is both a question mark and an exclamation point that ran for 26 issues from 1988 to 1993. It featured contributors such as the Severance. Once again, they were kind of involved in every parody book, it seems. Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Byrne, Peter David, Kurt Busiak, and especially Scott Loeb Dell, who wrote on a lot of the issues, and Fred Hembeck. And Hembeck actually closed out the final issue, asking the audience if they wanted to see more books.

And Hembeck, of course, being the king, probably, of the cartoon strip parody, especially.

At Marvel mhm, and what also prominently featured Spider Ham, who had already premiered, but he's in there.

And Spiderham 2099.

Uh huh.

Yeah. Or he's actually like, Spiderham 14 eight or something absurd.

Yeah. And the book was not actually published by Marvel Wink, but published by Marvel. And it also featured all fake ads in it, making fun of classic comic book advertisements from the past, like Charles Atlas and that kind of stuff. And there was also a YouTube revival series in 2009 that mostly featured Deadpool and Modoc. So that's a little I'm sure there's so much more information out there on humor books, and they've kind of gone away, it seems.

Yeah, what's so weird is it's such a cool brand, and Marvel does not use it. They've done, like I think we covered a story, actually, in the Waha. They did, like, a one shot Waha. And so obviously but that was even 15 years ago. I don't know why they haven't tried a revival again.

And I collect a lot of horror monster magazines and famous monsters of filmland had lots of humor. And there were lots of other monster magazines, too, that had humor and often used I forget the term, but have that photo. So not sometimes the actual art, but the photos with fake captions and stuff like that.

Yeah, Marvel did some of those Marvel books as.

Well. So yeah, that's more than a little bit of history. So gito it was a lot you, uh uh tell us. Oh, why don't we tell us? I'll talk a little bit about our background with what the and mine is basically zero other than knowing the title.

And even that probably actually came from me. You probably didn't even know the title before me.

You definitely see it in a lot of the cheaper bin. Not a dollar bin, but like a cheaper bin at comic book long boxes. I would see it when I'm going through, and it's like, what is this? The same thing with not brand eck. You would just be one of those ones where you'd go, what is this? I've never heard of this. And then kind of flip past it.

Yeah, I love what the, uh, obviously I have a complete run. It's easy to complete the run. Uh, I've had that run, actually, since they came out. I really read this in the late eighty s and early ninety s. I don't know what drew me into it so much. I don't tend to like parody a lot. I think there was just something so quirky about this. And because they were using the characters I loved, it just drew me in. And I don't even get I certainly then did not get most of the jokes. Even today, I don't think I get most of the jokes or a lot of the jokes.

Airplane and the Zucker Brothers movies where every frame has a joke in it and it's almost quantity over quality. Or it is that because they just are putting so much in there, and some of them you don't get, and some of them aren't funny. And then some of them are actually funny.

Yeah. Ah. So I don't know. I always loved it. I revisited it a few years ago. I was really going through just to look at it. I didn't read everything, but just taking it in because there are so many fun gags, there's so many fun ads. There's so many things I didn't even realize that they did. Obviously, there are two issues of what that are a little more on the expensive side, if you will. One, because it's the first female Wolverine, pre Laura Kinney, and, uh, I think Wolverina is what they call her, of course, and it's a parody, but people like it and she's on the COVID even of an issue. And then, of course, all the spider ham stuff. So there's a few keys, if you will, in what the but then there's a shocking amount of things that are overlooked to me, like the issue that we get into today. I don't know why it's not more valued or valuable. And we'll talk about why soon.

Well, there's a bunch of cockroaches coming out from this kitchen appliance. It's organisms of the Stovey.

That's fine. Oh my God.

Uh, transition.

That was so horrible. I don't know anyone's going to get that. But let's go right now on this very show.

You're going to get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago. It's hard because a lot of these, you have to actually read them in order to get the jokes, because it's all just slightly changing of words.

Yeah, uh, it's a lot of sight gags even with words.

It's true. For this origin of the story, we've decided not to dive into the many other parody issues, but instead let's talk crossovers. So since this is a remarkably a full on, uh, crossover between Marvel and DC, albeit with one half cooperation without.

One half, which I guess means there is one half also cooperating. But the more important part is one half didn't cooperate.

And we talked a lot about crossovers here on this show with a great discussion a few weeks back when we covered Heman and ThunderCats with Mike from multiverse of badness. But Guido is going to focus on Marvel and DC with a few surprising facts that I certainly didn't know.

So the big two have crossed over pretty, ah, large number of times, maybe, uh, countless, but someone could count it. It's just hard because some of us are subtle, the climate has chilled to a stop and we haven't seen a crossover other than maybe a drawn in panel. And we will talk more about that later. I've actually always dreamed of writing a guide to the big two crossovers. Maybe one day I will, but for now, here's a quick glimpse at, ah, some of where they started because it's cool when they were doing them unofficially. And then of course, the official ones are also really cool. So you have 1960 seven's Brave and the Bold. Batman is swinging around on a flagpole and says oh, I'm swinging just like that other web spinning Peter come lately. So there's a very early reference to Spiderman in there. I don't know if it's the first, but it's certainly one of the earliest that I've seen or found out about. 1971 then has a Batman issue where Robin is telling someone at a newspaper oh go hire that photographer Peter Parker if you want someone that looks like me. And so there's another reference. Probably the most famous birth of their crossover is of course the famous Rutland Vermont Halloween parade event. So it's an actual real life event. I'm not going to go into the history of it because we will cover those issues one day. They're so good, they're just not an alternate universe. So we'll have to find a way to get it in there. And so in 1970 there's the Halloween parade, then in 1971 they show it again. 1972, you then have these writers who know each other and editors who decide that they're going to actually do a crossover unofficially, informally. But the same plot actually does go from Marvel to DC books across three books. So that is definitely the first major story crossover. We had talked about actually with Lance from comic bookkeepers when we were a guest on that show, 1975 wizard of Oz which is the first co company crossover. So it's the first time that they're officially working together and as we talked about on that show. It's believed it was probably a trial run to see if they could do crossovers and how the business side of it would be. And that's why they did that because it leads the next year into 1970 six's Spider Man Superman, which has a sequel in 1981.

And that's one of the big ones, right?

Oh, yeah. It's the first superhero official one. Again, you have the unofficial Rutland. Yes. I mean, there's all sorts of interesting stuff. And mostly that stuff comes from the great research and slug fest. And we've talked about that because they would talk about the way even the number of panels had to be balanced and everything had to be very precise.

No one could the first punch or something because that would make that person the antagonist, all that kind of thing.

Yeah. So very cool stuff. The next year in 77, you get another one of those unofficial crossovers. The invaders at Marvel and the freedom fighters at DC both fight a team called the Crusaders. And that's because the writers knew each other and decided to do that. So stuff like that until 1981. Again, you get Batman Hulk, the next official crossover. 1982, you get the official one we did with Lance on comic bookkeepers X Men, Teen Titans. And that's actually it for the crossovers until you get to the if you're calling it an intercompany crossover. What we cover today, there's no more stuff in the 80s. There's a lot of stuff in the we'll talk about that in our third segment.

Well, it's not an official crossover, but Amalgam Comics, which we've covered a lot.

Here, that's ah, the 90s. So we'll talk about that in the third segment.

Okay, got you. And also I'm thinking there was one issue that we covered with Ethan from MakeMy and Amalgam. Also the 90s Queezer.

Okay, we're going to get to all of that. Right now, I focused only on the things that predate the what the that we're covering today.

Well, let us cover that with our next segment. Exploring multiversity will the future.

I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question what if.

And today we are asking the question what if the Avengers fought the Justice League in a parody spoof before it happened? For real? This is what the volume one, issue number seven from Marvel Comics from April 1990. And it's entitled us against them. Alternate title the Revengers versus just the ah, League.

So this is written by Scott Lovedell, pencil by Rurik Tyler, who also did the inks and lettered by Brad Joyce with colors by Kelly Corvisi. And it is edited by Terry Kavanaugh and Tom DeFalco. And again, this is an issue of what the which some of the stories might exist in a, uh, shared universe, but we're going to treat this as an isolated universe. And since what those are actually pretty hard to find and we're not going to assume that our listeners have read this story or if they did, that they remember it. We are going to actually give a bit of a summary. It's a short. So we're going to go page by page and talk about what is in this us, uh, against them tale.

Yes.

So it opens up on this page, a splash page, where there are indeed, as the joke is here, there are 30 characters drawn on this page. Left side you have The Revengers, which are the Avengers and all sorts of spoof versions of them. Right side, you have the DC, just a League characters and spoofs of them. And you have a few starting with the meta jokes, which are really common in what the where the Letterer? They actually joke that the letterer dies and then someone else fills in and then they put, like, typed font in it. And so you get the meta tone here, and you get an introduction to all these characters. Is there one that you liked a lot or one or two that you commented that you noticed?

I think Thor, for Thor's name, it just makes me laugh because it's just kind of weird and kind of gross. And I like, wet, man. I think he's dead. Is that dead man? But he's wet, man.

I don't know what he is. He's like a wet man.

Uh, a wet man, but he kind of looks like Dead Man.

I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, they're all really silly. And it's the drawings actually that are I think that's a stand out here because you have, like, hawk mensch and it looks like a person wearing Tweety Bird on his head. Totally. You have Mr. Bat mom, who has these really long, uh, bat ears, bat antlers, whatever you call those on Batman's cowl. And that is a recurring joke. In this one, they're actually poking Flash in the eye.

The other one, though, is hitting Superman in his chin. But Superman has a strong chin that.

Is breaking it breaks the ear, yeah. And then you have just for fun in the Avengers side of things, you've got the professor and Marianne. And over in the Justice League side of things, you've got Cindy, Jan, and Marcia. So just having a fun time.

And our secret villains, but we don't know who they are. Maybe because the artist was too lazy to draw them.

That's what it says.

And then on our next page, we have Captain America arriving at Avengers headquarters. Of course, this is not Captain America necessarily. It's Charlie America. And he is assembling all of the Avengers. And we see them all come in. My favorite here being Wonder Man with Charlie Brown's head for some strange reason.

I don't know why. And his name is what a man. But I don't know why. It's Charlie Brown.

Then we also have a bit of a battle here in the editor's notes because Scott Lam Deer, uh, is explaining something. But then the other editors say, no, that's why we already just did that other page to show everybody they battle it out. And one of them actually gets shot to death via kind of a grip.

So there's the second death of the book because the letterer died on the first page. Exactly. I think these are the things that I love about this book, though, are these very meta jokes. Because even there's the one caption box that says, from all over the Marvel universe, they come from their own series, from canceled series, from series that should be canceled. So all that kind of stuff I find really clever. And I think that's why I was so into it. So, as the story continues, Cap says, you're probably all wondering why I gathered you here today. Which, uh, leads to a few funny jokes. Like Mr. Fantastic thinking they're going to direct sales only. Or Wonder Man thinking that they're now going to create a South Pole Avengers title. And that beast is saying the last issue is now going to come out as a trade paperback. So you really get funny jokes about the market at this point already.

Those are like the kind of references that if you're just a casual comic book reader, you're probably not going to get. Like you need to be into the world of comics for those too. They're very insider baseball kind of thing.

Yes. But it turns out Caps gathered them because they're doing a membership drive. And they first encounter a Marvel sales rep who tells them that to increase sales, they would need to put Mutant in front of their name. And instead, they're going to do a membership drive. And the page closes with them doing a super thon where they're trying to get people to join.

And then at the bottom of that panel there, we get two non superhero characters. It's Sammy Davis, Jr. And Jerry Lewis. Because, of course, the famous thing is the Jerry Lewis telethon. And Guido Jerry Lewis is singing when you fly through a Storm. And that is the song you, uh, Never Walk Alone, which was his theme song for these. And that we just heard. Because Gideon, you and I watched Eurovision. And that was the big final song from Eurovision.

Uh, maybe my brain had that information encoded in it. So after we watched Eurovision, I knew this issue was the one we had to cover. But I don't think that's the case. No, I don't think so.

Moving right along, then we meet our villain, which is Kang the Conqueror, or in this case, Cranky master of time.

And he looks kind of like and you'd be cranky too, if you couldn't remember if you're coming, going, or went.

He's drinking Kang cola. And he thinks, well, because this team is getting bigger, he needs another villain to team up with him. So he's going to look in the phone book to get another villain. And meanwhile, the Justice League is also auditioning new members and they're actually auditioning superhero versions of the Three Stooges.

I know, I didn't even realize this, even though I see that one is going yuck, yuck. And I guess there's Larry. That's why he has the L on his ah, map.

Wise guy. A, that was one of one of.

The C is Curly. Yeah, all right, I get it. Yeah. But who cranky is going to call his fellow villains before we cut to the Justice League, which offers a fun joke that you mentioned was timely when we were, uh, previewing this.

Of course. So Cranky is looking in the phone book trying to find these villains and he says, m let's see, doom, Donald Trump, DeFalco.

Yeah, quite a list. Quite a list of villains. There doom Donald Trump and poor Tom DeFalco being added to that list.

I know. And good to see that people were still on to that, uh, BS back when this came.

So then we have the Justice League in a theater auditioning people on a stage. Of course it's mostly men, as was the case with the Justice League. It was the case, frankly, with the Avengers two, though not at this point. And they are auditioning someone in a bikini whose name is Ivory. It's kind of a joke about soap. I don't know who it's supposed to be. She looks a little bit like both Fire and Ice. Maybe they're just turning her into some sort of generic saying that the heroes being drawn at this time always had to be sexy and sultry. Which of course is what Black Canary is complaining about. And she says, there is just no way that this is going to undermine our integrity as a team and we're not going to fall for this. And then of course, all of the male heroes run after this character.

Ivory. Blue Beetle is supposed to be Sonny Bono. I don't know why.

Maybe I'm, um, not I don't know. No, I bet it's supposed to be someone at DC. I doubt Sonny Bono.

Is the Blue Beetle very popular during this time period?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially in the bullpen, I think.

Yes, totally. Yes. Everyone had a mustache. Then on this next page, we get our other villain, or Dewey. It is Leaks Luther, and he's watching all of this unfold, but then he is interrupted by the poker, which is the Joker, and he says, sorry Leaks, you've been replaced. Seems like I'm still red hot from the movie. So the movie, the Batman the movie.

You know the one I mean?

He says, uh, I like exactly. So unfortunately, Leaks has to storm off and the Poker gets the call from Cranky and they're going to team up and then we actually cut.

Uh, did you notice what's? On poker's desk. What book he's reading? He's reading Trump's book there.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow. So lots of anti Donald Trump jokes here in this 1990 comic from Marvel.

Very prestigious.

Well, no. It's probably Rourick Tyler. A lot of them are drawn in that one.

If only people had read this issue, the world would be a different place. And speaking of the world, we actually cut to a different world. It's now our meta moment, where we're in the marble, quote unquote.

No, we're in the offices of Dem Comics because DC notices that, uhoh, this is an unlicensed crossover with marble. So there is stuff that we should have milked from this. And then we zoom out into, like, a very meta moment and get then the Marvel office looking at themselves, drawing the DC office. And, uh, that's where you get these layers upon layers.

In the next page, at the top of that next page, we even get the viewer, the reader, looking at all of this and they're looking at things. So it keeps going and going. Yeah.

And they say, I thought it'd be a ride if we pulled away farther to show the reader spying on us. And then that's impossible. Stop stalling and get back to the story. So a fun break. And back at the story, we have a warehouse under attack, and Cranky and Poker have discovered that this is happening. They make a fun joke about Earth One, Earth Two, or Earth Fred. I don't know what that means, but they are just making a joke about the multiverse, which is fitting for us. And the two teams arrive. So the Justice League and the Avengers arrive to the warehouse for the trap. We find out that the revengers call out phrase is revengers reventilate.

Yes. And one of them says, as they're arriving, everyone keep alert. This may be a hackney plot contrivance by the same thing.

Yeah, and they end up in battle together, which is where we then just get fun panel by panel battles. So let's talk about who we have here.

Okay? We've got Thor versus Superman or Sore versus Superman. Superb man and sor says, thou canst defeat a god who was once rendered by a mortal named Simonson. And Superband says, on the contrary, you cannot defeat a mortal once rendered by a god named Byrne.

Yes. So lots of there. So, uh, I guess John Byrne is superior to Walt Simonson. Is the joke there?

Then we've got Charlie America versus Mr. Bat mom. And Captain America is talking about a Broadway play that he's going to be.

In, which we're arguing about who's more popular. But he does say, someday I'll get the Broadway play. They've been promising mhm and, you know.

There was also a Batman musical that Tim Burden and Jim Steinman were working on, and that might have been announced around this time, too. So maybe they were battling out for Broadway. And of course, now we have Rogers the Musical. So it's all come.

To fruition. True.

Then we got Iron Man versus the Marshmallow Manhunter. And there's, uh, some jokes there about Iron Man being a heart transplanted recovered alcoholic paraplegic with a hangnail.

We have black and blue panther versus Visine, which is black panther versus Vision. And it says, Oops. In the excitement of the battle, they got carried away. We have a really great panel of Mr. Elongated man or Elongated Man versus Mr.

Fantastic.

And they're just them and their word bubbles. And the caption boxes are all, like, intertwined, as if they're all rubber and wrapped around each other. So that's very cool. And we close out with this page of battle with Wonder Man versus Wonder Woman. And it is just censored over and over and over again. And we see that Wonder Man is out of his boots. So don't know what's happening on that panel or why it's happening with the only female depicted, but there's another female coming up. Uh oh, yeah, that's true.

Then we've got Drew versus dr face, dr, druid and dr. Fate. And I like that. Drew says I'm not supposed to fight anyone stronger than Aunt May.

I know. Check my contract. It is funny because he was a weird Avenger, uh, at that time.

Then. We've got a quick sliver, though. Gosh, that one doesn't even really read. Quick sliver versus flash in the pan. And they're just playing tag. Silas mariner versus a wet man. And this one's actually quite funny. So then there let's see, the Aquaman character says, so how is your things in your royal city of Atlantis? And some mariner says, Fine, thank you. I think I've been dethroned again. I can't keep track how's the wife? And Aquaman says insane. How's yours? Some mariner says dead. I had to kill her after she went insane. And then Aquaman says, we really should be we really should do this more.

Often. Um, panel. Then we have Tigra versus Hawkman. And Tiger has eaten him, so she just has some feathers.

Actually did laugh out loud.

This was, uh then we have the Beast versus Blue Beetle. And for some inexplicable reason, they are both performing like vaudeville. And they have top hats and canes and are saying, you say mutant, I say mutant. Mutant. Mutant. Tomato, tomato. Let's call the whole thing off. Don't know why that's happening, but it's fun. Then we have Jarvis versus Oberon. And Oberon is calling him the third rate Alfred Clone. Jarvis and so they have some fun jokes about Janitors there. And then we get to the big page.

Big page, big double page, double page. And it's with all everyone fighting together, and it's actually really cool art. And we've got like, a long, great Easter eggs kind of coming in there. Yeah. And one of my favorites, which I didn't even notice you had to point this out to me because I am a huge Friday the 13th fan. And we have Iron Man with the Jason Voorhees hockey mask on and a shirt that says Jason Lives. I have no idea why because Iron Man really has nothing to do with Jason.

And he has a machete and looks like he's about to kill Joker. I don't know why. And then, yeah, we have, like, Hobbes chasing Tigra, uh, which Melvin and Hobbes little sense. Yeah. And otherwise, it's the characters we've gotten to know all engaged in different battles. And then at the end, we have, uh, the Marvel DC. Business folks calling down at the corner saying, stop this senseless. Violence must end. And we get to our conclusion of the story when these business folks say, like, that's it. We need to set a good example. We have to learn to start getting along. And success isn't measured by who's stronger or powerful. The true measure is how well he gets along with his neighbor. But then they have someone run in and discover that the projected sales figures for this issue are so high that they now want to do more and more and more battles and crossovers because they're talking early retirement and they want an X Men watch watchmen crossover written by Moore, penciled by Burn, inked by Sinkovich. It's just wild. I just have to pause there because, uh, could you even imagine I know it's a joke, and it's a funny joke because it so would never have happened. But my God, I like to imagine it now.

And it's, of course, the X Men and the Witch Men here.

Yes. But more Byrne and Sinkovich are name checked for real. And so, uh, now the editors are trying to get everyone to fight, and Terry Kavanaugh, Marvel editor, is cleaning out his desk. And it closes with I knew this was a dumb idea for a story. And that is our Avengers versus the Justice League spoof from what the so did you enjoy reading that?

Yeah, it's fun. It's so funny to me that there's so many jokes that really would apply mostly to people who were probably really closely following the industry. Like that stuff where it says, oh, we're going to go to direct sales and we're going to become a collected edition, all those things. It's like, well, yeah, casual reader who's just picking this up or a kid who's just getting it because this looks funny are not going to get that at all. And kind of going back to what I was saying earlier reminds me of those Zucker Brothers movies or Mell Brooks where there's just lots of jokes. They don't all work. Some of them probably haven't aged too well. But the sheer quantity of them, you know that at least a percentage of them are going to be good.

Yeah, agreed.

And I think Warwick, uh, Tyler's art is actually pretty great throughout, especially that big splash page and that first page where we see all the people's, the roster of all the characters. I think both of those are actually really well done.

I agree. I love his art here. And why I like it is because I'm not a huge fan of Fred Hembeck's art just because I didn't grow up with comic strips or even underground comics as my comic book aesthetic. So this art is like, cartoony enough that it works, that it's a parody, but it still looks like comic book art. So I like his art and depiction here a lot. And it's just so fun to see what characters they wanted to play with, what jokes they wanted to make, and, um, who they wanted to match up and why. Because, of course, at this point, the JLA Avengers was a fantasy. And I'll talk more about the reality in our next segment. But it's fun to see what they were imagining would be because even though they're making jokes, it's fun that they decided Kang would be who would go well with Lex and Joker. The decisions are interesting to me, even though they're trying to get a few jokes out of it. Clearly, Wonder Man and Wonder Woman. That makes a lot of sense to pair them up based on the name. So, yeah, it's just cool to see how they constructed this, how Scott Libdell constructed.

This. Well, let us talk a little bit about those future mashups crossovers that you mentioned with our pondering possibilities. Will the future you describe be averted? Diverted? Diverted? Well, gito some of these I mentioned accidentally earlier. And of course, I know that there was a DC Marvel crossovers at some point. So, uh, what are we talking about with our pondering possibilities?

Well, there's so much, and we just wanted to read this story for fun and share it with our listeners because we thought it was a lot of fun. So I figured we'd pick up the back end of our history of crossovers and talk about the crossovers that followed this issue in 1990 and then speculate on future crossovers. So after 1990, I'm leaving out the Wild Storm crossovers like Wildcats and Gen 13, though ultimately, those are now part of the DC universe and, um, even canonically. So technically, I should include them. But later this year, 1990, is when the quasar unofficial crossover with Buried Alien, buried Alien, Barry Allen happens. And we covered that on episode 55 with Makemin Amalgam, Ethan. And, uh, then there's a little bit of a gap more, uh, one shots follow. So 1994 sees the first one shot in a while. Punisher Batman. You get then Galactus dark side following Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, Spiderman, Batman. There's two of those. And Captain America Batman. And then that hits 96, which is where we get the finally official Marvel versus DC DC versus Marvel crossover with the Amalgam spinning out of it. So that's 96, 97 they revisited, of course, in all Access, unlimited Access.

Those were definitely right at the heart of my comic book buying those Amalgams, which we've talked about a lot, but also the Marvel versus DC, which we haven't really talked about.

We have not covered the crossover. We haven't covered a lot of these. I expect that we will if we record another 100 episodes. We'll get to all of these eventually. And I think that it is time in our three digit episode count to get to the Marvel versus DC actual crossover.

I guess along with the Nightfall trade paperback, this Marvel versus DC was probably the other, uh, first trade paperback I had because I just read the heck out of that.

Yeah, well, it's so rare because they refused to reprint it. So it's quite a rare trade paperback with value. Uh, so then after the Amalgam stuff in 97, you get Silver Surfer, Superman, Daredevil, Batman, which also has a sequel in 2099. You have Fantastic Four, Superman, Hulk, Superman. And then, of course, the big one is finally Avengers JLA, which had been in production, or at least in thought since 1980. There's actually some drawings from the early 80s. It was being worked on. And then finally 2003 is when it's done and that miniseries comes out. And that's it for official crossovers. Of course, it was a huge deal. About a year and a half ago, they reprinted Avengers JLA as a hero initiative fundraiser. But otherwise, none of these books continue to be in print. They don't reprint them. And they haven't had another official crossover. There have been, as I mentioned, a few sort of on panel Easter eggs, especially in Spiderman with the Spiderverse stuff. They'll put like the amalgam spider boy in there with his arm showing or something like that. But there hasn't been anything explicit. So there are continually rumors that there is going to be something explicit. So let's talk about both comics crossovers for Marvel DC, what we want to see or think we could see. And then we can talk about movie crossovers because James Gunn recently made some interesting comments about that.

Well, a lot of these that have already happened, I actually haven't read, but definitely, uh, make a lot of sense. And I wonder if it would be make sense to revisit them. Punisher Batman as the vigilantes. Daredevil Batman as the also vigilantes. The Hell's Kitchen, Gotham City. There's a lot of connections there. So I could totally see those kind of characters. I feel like it works best with maybe those singular characters as opposed to teams because teams can get very it can be a lot happening. So, I don't know. Certainly would require more than, I think, a single issue if you were to put the X men up with whoever, the Doom Patrol.

I don't know how we haven't seen that yet. Um, I think the other thing I'd like them to do is when we get more of these, which I expect one day we will, uh, maybe the corporate overlords won't allow it. I have no idea. It seems like a stupid refusal, uh, to make money just for the sake that there's a lot of business and legal stuff that would have to be ironed out. But one day when we get these again, I'd like them to pull deep, deeper from the bench. Uh, I think that they used the really main characters, but some of the fun in the Amalgams are seeing the characters that you don't expect to encounter each other.

Even.

I know Ethan is a huge fan of the Robin Jubilee romance that comes out of the Marvel versus DC. So I think it would be fun to see other characters other than real.

Big ones, like A Plastic Man and Ms. Marvel having the stretchy people, but he's a former criminal and she's kind of an upstanding young teen. That could be a fun odd.

Yeah, I think there's so many fun ones to fantasize about. If you're listening and you have an idea, please post and tell us what your fantasy crossover is. Not amalgam crossover. Ah, because I think there are lots of fun ones, both by power set, like you just did, or by personality. I can imagine a lot of interesting.

People, and I think it's interesting because I see it both ways. I think the argument that a lot of people make now is, well, this is even bigger IP than it was before, so we're not going to see them cross over because people are so protective of it. But the thing I would say, and I think this especially came out reading Slug Fest, is when they were first doing this, people were very protective of their house because you had people like Julie Schwartz, who came from the house. He was the house of DC. And he was not going to do something with Marvel and all that kind of stuff. Now I think it is so much more corporate. I don't think people have that affinity where, oh, I am just a DC person, and I'm not going to let Marvel touch this. Now we have this kind of big corporate overseeing.

Well, I am curious, because let them and Slug Fest has slugfest gave some insight. But even just other things I've read over the years of reading comic book history, that a lot of this, uh, including Marvel versus DC, really did come down to just people who got along and the personalities of the people. And so I think you're right to wonder if that variable has been removed because it is a corporate decision now. It's not at the whims of individuals.

And even the individuals, I think, are probably getting along better now because there's so much more writers right, that are moving between things. Uh, it has to be, because in order to keep the industry alive, where it used to probably be a lot more, you did not leave your home base, kind of thing. We are marvel or die. And even for the fans, too. I think there's a lot more crossover.

To use that word. Yeah, for sure. So then on screen, of course, I think that people have been, since November, speculating that James Gunn being at DC would open the door in part because of what you're saying. Because then you do have the personality. He has the relationships. He knows the people at Marvel. He knows the world, the story, what it takes now, leading DC films, that could really open the door. But he did confirm just last month that discussions have happened. He m said, I'd be lying to say that we haven't discussed it. All discussions have been very light, very fun, and that's many years away. So it's cool, though, to know that they talked about it. I want to know what they talked about. Like, who knows? That could have even just been, like, James Gunn and Kevin Feige joking around about Miss Marvel and Elongated Man or Plastic Man or whoever you said. But it's just cool because it makes me think it will happen one day. Yeah, maybe in our lifetime.

He's obviously so key because he's worked now for both of these companies. The other person that I was making me think is who just recently got a big promotion to oversee really the building of the DC brand is Jim Lee. So he went from being just the publisher to the president. And, of course, Jim Lee had a long relationship with Marvel.

Writing the biggest though that might be an example where the soiled relationship might prevent it.

Uh, it could be. But I was thinking, oh, there's another super powerful person who's now being given a promotion and really given a role to really expand the DC characters which we know have not done as well as the Marvel characters. So a perfect way to do that, whether it's in film or in comics, a mashup, a crossover of these two would just I can't see how it would not make money. Just not make money, literally print money.

At the box office. And it could be awful. It could be horrible. It could be the worst thing ever. And it wouldn't matter. It would make billions of dollars.

No, I don't see how it cannot. Uh, Tom Holland meets whoever will be playing Superman.

Do you think that they could ever do an on screen TV or film? Like, what the version? Do you think a parody would ever work? And not an unofficial parody, not like those porn parodies or anything like that. But do you think that this tone almost, um, like a SheHulk TV show tone, but maybe amped up a little, would work to cross them over?

That's a good point. If they're too afraid to really bring the characters together for real, for whatever reason, the way to get around that would be to do some kind of parody crossover where you're not okay. It can be Captain America versus Batman because it's not really Captain America. It's not really Batman. I could maybe see, uh, well, you know what started yeah, I was just thinking the same way that amalgam could make sense is because okay, we could amalgamate these characters because it's not really having both characters in both ways. It kind of gives them a little bit of an out.

That's true. I was going to say that. What you're making me realize is that the one franchise that has slightly done that with a few funny jokes and could be the door opener, though I don't think it will be next year, but in the future. Beyond is deadpool.

Totally.

Deadpool has had a few jokes about DC movies in it, and so it essentially was acting as a what the and so I could see Deadpool. If it has some fourth wall breaking meta humor, which it surely will, maybe that becomes the doorway to doing this down the road. Totally. Not again, this is not speculation for next year.

And on the DC side, maybe the Harley Quinn animated show as well, if that keeps going.

And like right now, there's the miniseries coming out, harley screws up the multiverse, and it's a cute series where she just jumps around and is messing up the DC multiverse already.

We're bringing in real people. Like they had Brett Goldstein as himself, as a version of himself.

Yeah, that's true. In m the cartoon characters. Yeah. So a lot of fun to ponder. We'll cover all these crossovers in our next hundred episodes and hopefully more. What the because I also love that title. So for now, though, that is a wrap. Dear watchers. Thanks for listening. I have, uh, been Schmidto again. The knockoff Guido.

I don't even remember what I said. Rude rib.

I don't know why the reading list is in the show notes. You can follow us, talk to us, tell us what crossovers you want to see on all social media at Deer Watchers.

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In the meantime, in the words of Terry Kavanaugh, I knew this was a dumb idea for a.