The Worst Marvel Crossover of the '90s

Last year, I finished reading The Complete Ben Reilly Epic, Book 6, which meant I had read, from beginning to end, all three of the Unholy Trinity of Bad Marvel ‘90s Crossovers:

• The Clone Saga
• Onslaught
• The Crossing

All three are terrible, terrible stories, produced at about the same time: around 1995 and 1996. That is, all three were churned out after the speculator boom of the early ‘90s and just as Marvel was heading into bankruptcy. (In fact, the Clone Saga ended with issues cover dated December 1996, the month Marvel filed for Chapter 11 protection.)

All three of these crossovers are terrible. Whether they were commercially driven abominations or horrendously misguided attempts to overhaul a line, or both, each had confused storylines and a deleterious effect on a line.

Which, though, was the worst? This is a question that people will argue about; I have a feeling most fans’ answers would depend on which abused character they like the most. Still, I think some characters received a considerably shorter end of the stick than the others. (The Fantastic Four avoided the worst of this, although it should be noted that Atlantis Rising won’t be confused for Shakespeare any time soon.)

Onslaught

Onslaught is the least offensive of these mega-crossovers. For those of you who don’t know, Onslaught was a psionic entity created in Professor Xavier’s mind after he wiped Magneto’s mind. After ominous foreshadowing and the resolution of the long-dangling X-Traitor plot, Onslaught burst forth, took over New York with the help of Sentinels, and … didn’t do much. There was muttering of conquest, but it didn’t go anywhere.

Length: Relatively short. The actual crossover itself is contained in four trade paperbacks, and one of those doesn’t even have any X-Men titles in it. However, if you throw in the lead-up to the actual crossover, you have to include another three trades. The lead up and crossover ate up about fifteen months; the crossover itself blew over in a summer.

Spillover: The actual crossover (and some of its foreshadowing) pulled in quite a few titles, including the Clone Saga (see below). Incredible Hulk, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Thor all got caught up in the crossover, which is a shame, given that all those series (except Hulk ended when Onslaught did.

Creepy dude moment: When Jean Grey explored Professor Xavier’s thoughts in X-Men #53 and discovered a repressed memory (a flashback to Uncanny X-Men #3) that Xavier had a crush on Jean from the beginning. Not standing so close to him isn’t going to help when he can telepathically crush on her wherever she is.

Damage: To the X-characters, not much. Professor Xavier was shuffled off the page — you know, because of his crimes against humanity and whatnot. The character itself wasn’t damaged too much as what Onslaught did can be considered separate from Xavier. Mutants were hated even more, although that’s par for the course.

The rest of the Marvel Universe was remade by Onslaught (at least for a year). The Avengers and its subsidiary titles were all canceled, as was Fantastic Four; Mark Waid and Ron Garney’s well-received Captain America run was axed in favor of a commercial stunt. FF, Iron Man, Avengers, and Captain America were all leased to Image creators for a year. Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios got the latter two, while Jim Lee’s Wildstorm got FF and Iron Man. The titles were rebooted, with almost 35 years of continuity being tossed out for a year. Also: Liefeld drew the weirdest Captain America.

Mitigation: Sales rose on those old titles; all of them, except perhaps Captain America, needed the added attention and sales. More importantly, Onslaught wiped out the damage The Crossing caused, and that’s almost a blessing.

The Clone Saga

Now we’re getting into the heavy hitters. In the Clone Saga — a sequel to a ‘70s story that had to be confusingly retitled The Original Clone Saga — a clone of Peter Parker returns to New York to confront Peter. The clone, who calls himself Ben Reilly, is followed by Kaine, another clone who hates Ben, and the Jackal, who created those two clones plus others … Ben and Peter argue about who’s the clone, Peter steps down as Spider-Man when he loses his powers and has a baby on the way, and then a figure from the past comes to take credit for everything that’s happened in Peter’s life.

Length: Interminable. The crossover ate up two years of the four Spider-titles plus ancillary titles like Spider-Man Unlimited and Spider-Man Team-Up. More than 100 issues were thrown at this story! The creators backtracked, laid false trails, changed their minds (OK, so it was mostly editors and the business people who changed their minds), and generally squandered months and months of Spider-Man stories. The fruit of their labors filled eleven trade paperbacks.

It’s hard to get across how much ink and paper was wasted on the Clone Saga. Spider-Man has always been a character who can support the one-issue story, but combined with many throwaway stories were the idiocy of the Jackal and Spidercide, Gaunt and Seward Trainer, Scrier and Judas Traveler and hosts of other villains who had no purpose other than to look mysterious and prevent any resolution to the story.

And when they went to wrap it up, all it took was a four-issue story. Just one month! Why couldn’t they have done that a year earlier?

Spillover: Relatively little. Spider-Man’s troubles didn’t affect other titles much. The clone, going by the alias of Scarlet Spider, kinda joined the New Warriors, and he appeared as Spider-Man in an issue of Daredevil. The Clone Saga also brushed up against the status quos of Punisher, Green Goblin, and Venom, but no one cared about the Phil Urich Green Goblin at the time, and the Punisher and Venom series are both best forgotten. I mean, the Punisher had a ponytail, and no one wants to acknowledge that.

Really, despite the crossover allegedly being so popular, no one else wanted to touch it.

Creepy dude moment: When Peter smacked his wife. It was portrayed as an accident, Peter lashing out randomly after learning he was a clone, but it happened. One moment of frustration and insanity labeled Ant-Man a wifebeater forever, but the same standard wasn’t applied to Peter hitting Mary Jane. This is for two reasons: a) The storyline in which Ant-Man hit the Wasp was good and not best forgotten, like the Clone Saga, and b) People actually like Spider-Man.

Later, Peter tried to kill Mary Jane, but he was being mind controlled, which is understandable and normal behavior for superheroes.

Damage: After two years, the creators realized how badly the entire idea was, and they tried to put everything back where it was while providing a satisfying conclusion. What they did satisfied few, except in the sense that it allowed everyone to put the clone nonsense behind them and forget about it.

The Clone Saga, in its blind grasping for sense and sensation, committed several sins that should be unforgivable. It brought Norman Osborn back from the dead as the architect of the Clone Saga. It killed Ben despite his potential because he was a loose end and a reminder of the Clone Saga’s sins. It caused Mary Jane and Peter’s daughter to be stillborn, then held out hope that the child was merely kidnapped. It made Peter do bad things to Mary Jane.

It made Peter Parker into a clone for a while, which was stupid. It told us, “Everything you know is wrong.” Everything we knew was published by Marvel Comics, which should have been a tipoff that Marvel’s output was not the most reliable source.

Mitigation: The crossover had many ideas that were worth exploring. Peter having a child and moving on isn’t a bad idea, but there’s no reason he had to be labeled the clone for the idea to work. Kaine wasn’t interesting at the time, but he has been used well in the last few years. Getting rid of Aunt May was long overdue; it allowed Peter to grow some. I even have some sympathy for using Kaine to get rid of some of Spider-Man’s older adversaries, although the new Doctor Octopus didn’t pan out.

Most impressive is Ben Reilly. Seeing a different Peter, one who had been lost for years and coming back to a different Peter who had grown but had also gotten a bit lost, presented the reader with an interesting contrast. (Ben wouldn’t have cut a deal to allow for uneasy coexistence with Venom, but he also might not have given Sandman a chance to reform.) Ben’s existence was wasted, of course — except in the M2 Universe, which picked up on some of these threads in Spider-Girl.

Avengers: The Crossing

Iron Man kills a few women to hide a secret: he’s been working with Kang for years to help Kang, Mantis, and their Chrononauts invade Earth and conquer it using his time-travel powers. Kang does manage to erase Vietnam from almost everyone’s memories, but that’s about as far as his conquest goes.

Length: A little longer than the core Onslaught crossover but much shorter than Onslaught’s foreshadowing. The Crossing took place over half a year, and its contents — a mere 25 issues — were reprinted in a single oversized omnibus. (You can pick up the omnibus for about $30 on Amazon, although two insane people gave the book three-star reviews. Three stars! Why not give the book a whole constellation?)

Spillover: None, as far as I can see. The number of titles involved was admirably restrained: only Avengers, Force Works (formerly Avengers West Coast), Iron Man, and War Machine were involved in the story. Thor and Captain America stayed the hell away from The Crossing, which shows excellent sense.

Creepy dude moment: Everything Iron Man does in this book. In addition to killing three unarmed women (and no men), he blasts Wasp so hard the measures taken to save her life turn her into a wasp-human hybrid. (She seemed fine with that, though.) He kidnaps a couple of other women close to him. I suppose you could make a case that this is the flipside to the charmingly predatory nature of Tony’s normal persona — he uses and seduces women — but this turn has the subtlety of an atom bomb lobbed through a store window.

Damage: Holy God, did this do a number on Iron Man. Iron Man had been corrupted by Kang and was working for him for pretty much the entire Marvel Age of Heroes, although the story gives him no motivation to do so. To protect his secret, Tony declared war on women. And this is the guy upon the Marvel Cinematic Universe was built about a decade later!

Because a series starring a traitorous murderer would have been a problem, Marvel killed off old Tony and replaced him with a teenage version from a different timeline. Teen Tony couldn’t be too different, though, so the fight that introduces him to the main Marvel Universe ends with him suffering heart damage.

The art is inconsistent and usually awful. Instead of giving the secondary titles a sales boost, The Crossing failed War Machine and Force Works so thoroughly they were cancelled two months later. Obscure, best-forgotten continuity is crucial to the story, and readers are expected to remember things like who Yellowjacket II and Gilgamesh are. The story has tons of forgotten and unimportant characters wandering through it; sometimes we’re even supposed to care about them. (The death of Gilgamesh is supposed to be momentous, and the story can’t get that across.) Mantis wanting revenge on the Avengers makes no sense, and Kurt Busiek retconned her (and most of Kang’s soldiers) into Space Phantoms in Avengers Forever. Adult versions of Luna (Quicksilver and Crystal’s daughter) and the Vision and Scarlet Witch’s kids run rampant throughout the story, working for Kang, and no one can figure out who they are. War Machine has a horrifically ugly suit of armor. (I wonder what happened to it …?)

Mitigation: Onslaught / Heroes Reborn and Avengers Forever cleaned up so much of the mess from this crossover that we don’t have to remember it any more. Otherwise, this book had no redeeming features.

Verdict

The Crossing is the worst of these; it’s so bad, the omnibus should be marked as hazardous waste. Still, it doesn’t have much of an effect on modern Marvel continuity. The Clone Saga gave us the returned Green Goblin and Kaine; Onslaught briefly ended decades of continuity in tangentially related titles and really launched the “Professor Xavier is a monster” idea into the wild. Again: The Crossing was published in 1995. Iron Man came out in 2008. In 13 years, the worst storyline in Marvel history was wiped from the timeline as thoroughly as Kang wanted to wipe out the resistance to him.

Essential Avengers, v. 6

Collects: Avengers #120-40, Giant-Size Avengers #1-4, Captain Marvel #33, and Fantastic Four #150 (1974-5)

Released: February 2008 (Marvel)

Format: 576 pages / black and white / $19.99 / ISBN: 9780785130581

What is this?: Kang tries to decide who the Celestial Madonna is; Mantis, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch learn their origins; Zodiac and Thanos attack.

The culprits: Writer Steve Engelhart (with help from Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway) and art by Sal and John Buscema, Bob Brown, George Tuska, Rich Buckler, Don Heck, Dave Cockrum, and Tom Sutton

Having bought GIT Corp’s DVD-Roms of several Marvel series — Fantastic Four, Uncanny X-Men, Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man — I don’t have much use for Essentials featuring these characters. Which is fortunate, because Marvel seems like it isn’t all that interested in putting out new Essentials.

Unfortunately, these DVD collections, which have more than 40 years of comics and annuals, have one major flaw: they don’t include the Giant-Size series Marvel put out in the ‘70s. Now, I’ve read most of the Giant-Size Spider-Man, and there’s nothing that essential in them (although they can be enjoyable). And all you really miss in the Giant-Size Fantastic Four is Madrox the Multiple Man’s origin in #4. Fortunately, Giant-Size X-Men #1, which has the debut of the All-New, All-Different X-Men and is probably the most important Giant-Size issue, is included with the X-Men DVD-Rom. But the Giant-Size Avengers are important too, and they are left out of 40 Years of the Avengers.

So I purchased Essential Avengers, v. 6, which included all four issues of Giant-Size Avengers. Avengers, v. 6, also has another distinction among Essentials that makes it, if not unique, then very unusual: the issues collected in this book make up one storyline. That is, Essential Avengers, v. 6, makes an acceptable alternative to the Celestial Madonna Saga trade paperback, and it gives almost a year’s worth of issues that precede Celestial Madonna and a half year’s worth that follow the storyline. For these extra issues, you sacrifice color, but that’s a small price to pay.

One would expect a story that features the “Celestial Madonna” to have a long-lasting effect on the Marvel Universe — or at least the Avengers. But the most important event is the marriage of the Scarlet Witch and Vision; admittedly, that’s a pretty important moment, but neither of them are the Celestial Madonna. That honor goes to Mantis, a Vietnamese orphan who is trained by pacifist Kree monks after her uncle kills her mother and blinds her father. As with most storylines that revolve around the birth of a child unconceived, there has been little to no payoff from Mantis’s role. Mostly, the Celestial Madonna story is a time war vs. Kang, who returns again and again to kidnap Mantis and mate with her.

Oh, Kang. It doesn’t take much to get bored with Kang in this volume, despite writer Steve Englehart’s efforts. Why? Because Kang is the master of time, and his answer on how to use this temporal advantage is to steal dead heroes and villains out of the time stream and bring them to Limbo. Why use dead people? Who knows? Since he gains mental control of his new warriors, he could choose anyone — he could even steal future or past versions of the Avengers out of the time stream, which would at least make it an even fight. But no, he decides to create his Legion of the Unliving, none of whom, strangely, had died in their personal timelines yet. Kang’s other gambit include superrobots, Avenger-powered superrobots, and invading the present from several different points of his personal timeline simultaneously. This last is, at least, a good use of his advantages, but since his other versions seemed to have invaded from his Girl Scout days, anyone can beat them.

Once you get past a baby that won’t be born until after the book ends and a Kang who literally cannot even beat himself in a fight (and how could he, since he was outnumbered by himself two to one?), what do you have? Well, Giant-Size Avengers #4 has one of the oddest endings of any Avengers story outside Avengers #200: a half-Vietnamese, half-German girl who always talks of herself in the third person marries an alien tree who’s taking the form of her dead boyfriend, which takes her into space and will later impregnate her with the universal Messiah. Meanwhile, in the background, a mutant marries an android in a double marriage ceremony officiated by the future version of the supervillain the team just defeated (who also does not seem to have any real credentials that would allow him to perform marriages).

I wish I could say there were other parts of the story that rose to those heights, but that’s it — it’s hard to get that strange consistently, but other than the Legion of the Unliving, Essential Avengers doesn’t consistently rise to any notable level of insanity, nor does it get that exciting. “Celestial Madonna” is not exactly a disappointment, but it’s not a seminal Avengers story, despite its memorable name. The romantic tangle between Vision, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, and Mantis is predictably resolved. This volume is also notable for the beginning of Vision’s confusing backstory; his body is that of the World War II android the Human Torch, a revelation that utterly fails to be interesting. The Scarlet Witch has an odd subplot with developing her “magical powers.” The Avengers have no problem operating in South Vietnam, which is a bit disorienting, but the issue was published just before North Vietnam won the war and unified the country under Communist rule.

The material that precedes the Celestial Madonna story is interesting as a snapshot of early Bronze-Age Avengers. The stories feature Zodiac, the revelation of who the parents of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are (later revealed as false), the marriage of Quicksilver and the Inhuman Crystal, and the bizarre beginning of the Scarlet Witch’s training in witchcraft by Agatha Harkess (based, apparently, solely on the Scarlet Witch’s name). A battle with Thanos is a distraction —Captain Marvel #33 includes literally three pages of dense recap on Thanos’s history, which isn’t conducive to narrative flow — that comes to nothing, especially since it doesn’t end Thanos’s story as definitively as it pretends. And what comes after the Celestial Madonna heads into space is interesting as well; the introduction of new members Beast and Moondragon gives the team exciting new dynamics, despite the return of the slappingest, insanest Avenger, Hank Pym.

The art in Essential Avengers, v. 6, is top notch. The Buscema brothers provide the plurality of the art, with Sal penciling more than his brother John. Other pencilers include George Tuska, Dave Cockrum, Bob Brown, Don Heck, Rich Buckler, and Tom Sutton — a distinguished roster that needs no praise from me, however much it deserves it.

Despite the many interesting parts of Essential Avengers, v. 6, I think the main appeal is getting all four Giant-Size Avengers issues in one volume. There are other attractions — and I have to emphasize, the book is drawn by a lot of great artists who do not clash in style — but Marvel’s Giant-Size line is sadly neglected in reprint form. Englehart fans will find much to enjoy, as will those who like comic-book weddings — three in one volume, none of whom are married today!

Oh, and those who enjoy the thought of alien plants having consensual sex with human women will also find this appealing. You know who you are.

Rating: (3.5 of 5)

Avengers / Thunderbolts, v. 1: The Nefaria Protocols

Collects: Avengers (v. 3) #31-4, Thunderbolts #42-44 (2000)

Released: March 2004 (Marvel)

When Count Luchino Nefaria begins a plot to change the world, who’re you gonna call?

The Avengers! And the Thunderbolts!

The 2000 crossover between the two titles was tied to ionic powers, which are … well, you see, their bodies … it alters the … Hmm. Ionic energy makes people glow odd colors, seem to have a corona and leak energy from the eyes, and allows them to be superstrong and fly (eventually) and come back from the dead (also eventually). Possibly there are other powers in there as well.

Now in the X-Books, that alone would be enough for a 12-part crossover. But that’s not enough for Avengers writer Kurt Busiek and Thunderbolts writer Fabian Nicieza. So not only does Avenger Wonder Man and Thunderbolt Atlas have ionic powers like Nefaria, Nefaria’s daughter, Madame Masque, was a former lover of Iron Man, one of the Avengers. Add in Nefaria and Masque’s ties to the Maggia, an organized crime syndicate, plus the Grim Reaper, brother of Wonder Man and the Vision (kinda), who’s working for the Maggia … well, you’ve got seven issues jammed full of plot.

That’s not to say there aren’t fun moments or characterization. Seven issues is more than enough time to allow the characters to act like themselves, have fun little moments (like Vision asking teammate Warbird out to dinner, while his ex-wife the Scarlet Witch watches), and otherwise act as if this another chapter in the characters’ lives, rather than “event.”

For the most part, The Nefaria Protocols is a fun ride, although it is occasionally extremely dense to the point of requiring decryption. The difficult part to read is the Thunderbolts issues. While the Avengers issues are wonderfully self-contained — except for following Dr. Pym’s swashbuckling alter ego as he runs around, starting bar fights with science nerds — the Thunderbolts issues are knee-deep in their own subplots. On one level, this is admirable, both from Nicieza and Marvel; Nicieza rewards readers of Thunderbolts and does a wonderful job of avoiding forcing his readers into buying the entire crossover, and it wasn’t long ago Marvel would quash subplots during crossovers (Peter David quit X-Factor for just that reason). However, I’m on a different level: that of someone reading the trade out of sequence of the rest of the series.

It’s easy to see the contrast in styles between Busiek and Nicieza in The Nefaria Protocols. Both will mine deep in past continuity and refine it for storylines. Busiek will occasionally sacrifice pacing for comprehension, although I don’t think he does in The Nefaria Protocols. Sometimes, however, Busiek’s stories read as if their primary purpose was to wrap up loose ends (Avengers Forever, for example). I’m not sure whether it’s laudable or condemnable in artistic sense. I enjoy those types of stories, especially when they seem well researched and heavily footnoted, but it does make the stories difficult to read sometimes. In this TPB, Avengers #33 seems the strongest example of this: assembling all the threads of Madame Masque’s life and tying off the loose ones.

Nicieza will skip the detailed explanations and draw out the suspense, so we see several plotlines running in the background: the Scourge, who Techno has in the tubes, what Andrea Sterman is going on about, what’s eating Moonstone, etc. I don’t know if Nicieza planned these as trailers for Avengers readers who were crossing over, but they read like spare cogs and wheels bouncing around inside the engine block in the trade. (Not that I want them taken out; when I buy a reprint, I want all the story reprinted.) Nicieza seems occasionally use obscure characters and plot points because he enjoys obscure characters and plot points. I mean, he resurrected a Humus Sapien, a character that won a Marvel contest but never even saw print, in Thunderbolts #55.

Art is provided by George Perez on the Avengers issues and Mark Bagley on the Thunderbolts. Both are accomplished superhero artists, able to tell a story with a great deal of action, and Perez, the veteran, shines in his Avengers finale. Normally, I enjoy Bagley’s work, but he clearly comes off in second place here. Thunderbolts #43, for example, has the characters standing around a great deal, which doesn’t exactly play to his strengths. All his females have the same exaggerated curvaceousness — a staple of the superhero genre, to be sure, but with so many women in spandex, it becomes monotonous and distracting, especially when you see how Perez draws them. Some might say there’s a bit of sameness in his faces as well. Still, it’s much more than competent, so there’s little real room to complain.

Unfortunately, this book appears to be out of print or on the shadowy edges of OOP that Marvel’s printing policies creates. Still, copies are available on E-Bay, and it’s well worth your time hunting it down.

Grade: A-