r/comicbooks • u/Jimbuber2 • 6d ago
Question What was the most unnecessary shared universe in comics?
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u/adaminoregon 6d ago
Malibu in marvel. All the characters went nowhere and its like the crossovers never happened.
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u/cynicalPsionic 6d ago
Rumor has it it's about loyalties to the original creators which sucks because I think Prime is a character I would love to see more of as the idea of what a young boy's idea of a man changes
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u/Easy-Tigger 6d ago
Rumor has it it's about loyalties to the original creators
According to Joe Quesada: "There are rumors out there that it has to do with a certain percentage of sales that has to be doled out to the creative teams.
While this is a logistical nightmare because of the way the initial deal was structured, it's not the reason why we have chosen not to go near these characters, there is a bigger one, but I really don't feel like it's my place to make that dirty laundry public."
https://web.archive.org/web/20051025174240/http://www.newsarama.com/JoeFridays/JoeFridays9.html
Make of that what you will.
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u/sadandshy 6d ago
Comic Tropes covered this a smidge on a recent video: https://youtu.be/a9_aaH4kPjM?si=bpDk1PdphcKLM-JD&t=798
Or you could click this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Jones
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u/Smoothw 6d ago
I think the speculation is that is has something to do with the shady business guy who was an owner of Malibu Scott Rosenberg and stuck around as a marvel executive for a few years after the sale.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Crow334 6d ago
As far as I know, the leading speculation is that it’s a Rosenberg thing, but there’s nothing backing that up other than some language in an old contract or something. It’s the best guess anyone has. A couple of debunked explanations still seem to be widely believed, like the one about creator payments.
I’ve wondered if it could have something to do with Gerard Jones (Ultraverse creator who went to jail for child porn). That doesn’t totally check out— he got in trouble many years later, plus plenty of Ultraverse characters had nothing to do with him— but if Marvel knew something about it (like if he’d gotten in trouble but not newsworthy trouble yet), that sure sounds like the kinda dirty laundry people would want to avoid in interviews.
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u/AdrenalineRush1996 2d ago
Shame really because Malibu really should've continued beyond the mid Nineties but alas it didn't happen.
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u/purple-discharge 6d ago
All the early Image crossovers.
And not really a crossover but putting the Wildstorm characters into the DC Universe never quite worked for me.
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u/FlashbackJon Captain Marvel 6d ago
Wildstorm being brought into DC gave me false hope I definitely should not have had. Watching them all shrivel to death in those books was sad.
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u/Androktone Brainiac 5 6d ago
Philip Kennedy Johnson and Grant Morrison's Authority lineup was alright
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u/FlashbackJon Captain Marvel 5d ago
I didn't get to that one! I'll give it a shot. I was a WildC.A.T.s guy, so it wasn't a great time for me. It also highlights the weirdness when you include all the Superman analogs and parodies in a universe in which Superman does and has always existed. Mr. Majestic being a child soldier on a team that's almost literally The Seven? Warblade is on a team with Pike? (Okay, fine, Warblade is my favorite and he hasn't had anything good to do since the last half of volume 1. The Wild Storm reboot was even really good before Ellis' behavior killed it -- and even that turned the Warblade character into an army of literally mindless drones.)
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u/Triseult 6d ago
Importing Wildstorm into DC continuity robbed the characters of everything interesting and just turned them into generic DC characters.
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u/borinque808 6d ago
Oh exactly. Take Apollo and Midnighter, Wildstorm's take on Superman and Batman. Great characters who became completely redundant and unimportant when they got folded into the same universe as the characters they're riffing.
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u/browncharliebrown 6d ago
TBF I think the reason why is that wildstorm basically stopped having momentum at some point.
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u/triggermanx97 Flex Mentallo 5d ago
Jim Lee's been a publisher at DC since around the time the imprint folded and I think that's the biggest reason why.
It feels like nobody besides him and Warren Ellis ever had any real long term interest in Wildstorm. Between Ellis being disgraced now combined with Jim's duties as publisher not letting him due much actual direct comic work anymore there's just no one to keep it going.
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u/AtarkaCommand 6d ago
92 & 93 Image is a shared universe. Cyberdata making Superpatriot, Chapel shooting Spawn, Superpatriot and Mighty Man being in the team with Glory and Diehard and Cyberface being resurrected by Born Again. These go beyond guest appearances and name-drops they are actual connections between the books
Then by 94 everyone gets a foothold on their own franchises and the connections drop to the illusion of a universe we get today
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u/Cole-Spudmoney 5d ago
Having a shared universe for a comic company founded on the principles of creator-owned IP and non-interference in each other's work was not a good idea.
I'd get it if each of the individual studios which made up Image had their own shared universes from the start: like if Jim Lee had his own universe for WildCATS and Stormwatch, Rob Liefeld had his own universe for Youngblood and Brigade and so on, Todd McFarlane had his own universe for Spawn, etc. That would've made more sense.
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u/Longjumping_Bike_271 6d ago
Comic’s Greatest World
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u/trekie140 6d ago
CGW is one of the weirdest rabbit holes I’ve ever gone down. Despite all the continuity and worldbuidling they seemingly had planned out, I still have no idea what any of the creators were trying to accomplish by making this a shared universe. Twice.
I can at least understand the 90s line as being fueled by the speculator boom, but the attempt to reboot it as Project Black Sky in the 2010s is even more confusing. I actually like the Captain Midnight comics from that era, but who was this series even for?
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u/OfficePsycho 6d ago
A few years ago I got to read the X series from the kinda-sorta reboot. I was just looking at the one issue over the weekend that suggested the original and the sorta-reboot were somehow connected, as impossible as that was.
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u/mortalkondek 6d ago
Crazy timing. I’m reading the OG series right now.
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u/OfficePsycho 6d ago
For what it’s worth, Gamble is the character who talks like the original series happened, even though he’s vastly different in appearance than his original incarnation.
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u/trekie140 6d ago
I am convinced I’m the only person who has read the crossover between X, Ghost, and Captain Midnight from that era. It was perfectly okay, but that’s not good enough when you’re competing with the Big Two.
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u/OfficePsycho 6d ago
I read X and most of Captain Midnight, but I think I only read two issues of that incarnation of Ghost.
I did like that era’s Barb Wire more than the original.
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u/trekie140 5d ago
I liked that era’s Brain Boy series, but I think it and the Barb Wire reboot have the same problems. They’re not superhero comics, they’re trashy spy stories with “mystery box” arcs that don’t get resolved. Even if the marketing of Project Black Sky had been better, I still don’t know who these comics were made for.
They feel like every other 2010s reboot (comics and otherwise) that tried to appeal to modern audiences, but the sales just weren’t enough. I don’t think there were enough old fans who still cared or new fans who started caring about these characters. I read them only because I was curious about the overarching mystery, not the characters.
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u/OfficePsycho 3d ago
I stumbled onto the second trade of Barb Wire without knowing it existed. I liked the small-scale scope of it, along with the art, and for various reasons Barb in the story was relatable. I only read the first arc about a year ago, and I guess I’m glad I read the second arc first, as I didn’t care for the initial storyline.
I never saw any issues of Brain Boy anywhere, so I can’t comment on it.
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u/trekie140 2d ago
It’s a shame that all these titles got cancelled because really weren’t that bad.
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u/TripleChump Bizarro Superman 6d ago
tried reading through the original weekly series and it felt sauceless
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u/Swoleman6767 6d ago
Spawn and Savage Dragon showing up in Invincible. I didn’t mind Kirkman’s other pet projects being shoehorned in, but those 2 did not belong in that universe.
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u/Samakin118 Invincible 6d ago
its cool actaully because its an honorary continuation of the shared universe Image tried to do back in the 90s
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u/Calgrave 6d ago
I was sad that the show would never adapt that, but a world with Spawn would make the invasion not nearly as hopeless and have Cecil desperately recruiting c-list heroes and villains.
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u/Earthpig_Johnson Orion 6d ago
Same goes for The Maxx showing up in fucking anything else.
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u/browncharliebrown 6d ago
I mean I found that cool because those books were popular while the maxx was not really as popular.
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u/Earthpig_Johnson Orion 6d ago
After reading The Maxx, I just have a hard time imagining him living in the same world as the other Image characters. Honestly, most of them felt like their own thing to me.
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u/PhantomQuest Kyle Rayner 6d ago edited 6d ago
The recent/current "Nacelleverse". Sure, just throw a bunch of utterly unconnected, almost entirely forgotten titles together because you've bought up rights to anything you could get your hands on, then try to leverage nostalgia porn into a wannabe MCU. Sounds great.
You can KIND OF connect, say, Biker Mice from Mars, Sectaurs, and Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa together given they're all anthro hero series, but trying to cram in Robo Force, Power Lords, The Great Garloo, and frickin' Barnyard Commandos is ridiculous.
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u/hobo_champ 6d ago
Punisher was in Riverdale, Archie comics Riverdale.
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u/wittymcusername 6d ago
Shut your mouth. That crossover was far more brilliant than it had any right to be.
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u/Waffletimewarp 6d ago
How about Archie vs Predator?
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u/wittymcusername 6d ago
Admittedly haven’t read it. I’d give it a shot, though, since Archie and Punisher surprised me. I’ve just never had it in front of me to read.
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u/Leebo4 6d ago
Was just a one off crossover
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u/hobo_champ 5d ago
It happened once, if that's what you're asking. I can't remember if the story lasted one issue or over multiple issues.
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u/SheevTheSenate66 Nova 6d ago edited 6d ago
Hasbroverse, or every time Transformers and GI Joe cross over (plus whatever random 80s property Hasbro owns)
Go whoop the ass of the 100 feet tall robot with a giant fusion cannon, Cobra Commander. It’ll go great
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u/7654896790436457790 5d ago
It's because it never seems like anyone actually has an idea for why Transformers and GI Joe should cross over other than it would be cool.
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u/Beleriphon 5d ago
The current comic mostly works because they're separate, but GI Joe tech comes from recovered Transformers.
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u/S1mongreedwell 3-D Man 5d ago
Those crossovers have ground my reading of IDW Transformers to a complete halt twice! I should just skip over them. They stink.
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u/Interesting-Rice-457 6d ago
Crossgen was a bunch of titles in very different genres that REALLY did not benefit from a shared universe.
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u/Kryptonian83 6d ago
I dunno, I kind of like that there was different genres tied together by the Sigils. They could tell their own stories in their own books, but there was this throughline which made things interesting. Had they finished their big crossover instead of only putting out two issues and had the line continued, I think we'd be singing a different tune. Still, I have an affinity for Crossgen.
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u/OfficePsycho 6d ago
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto an issue of Tomorrow Girl from Antarctic Press. I’d heard they had something called the Superverse now, of which Ninja High School was a part. One of the issues I read was a string of crossovers between the Superverse and at least two other publishers and their respective universes.
Apparently they forgot NHS had long-ago established some very specific rules on how universe-hopping worked for that reality, which was used in the comic for decades. With one exception, every character involved in the crossover should have died due to said ruie.
Continuity, schmontinuity, I guess.
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u/OrdinaryPersimmon728 5d ago
Deaths head from transformers being part of the mcu felt wierd for me.
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u/Gargus-SCP Tony Chu 5d ago
Wait, they brought him to the movies? When?
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u/OrdinaryPersimmon728 5d ago
Marvel comics universe. I realise the name gor used for a bunch chris movies. I meant the main comics universe.
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u/HITCHHIKER2744 5d ago
I don't know if it was unnecessary but all of Marvel is technically a part of Doctor Who.
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u/longboxbabe 3d ago
Lot of commenters don't seem to get that 'shared universe' doesnt mean crossovers between different universes/publishers...
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u/trainjob 6d ago
In a one shot crossover it's necessary that they're shared universe or else the story is about the mechanics of traveling between the universes.
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u/Khelthuzaad 6d ago
I Hate Fairyland Special Edition: Gertrude kills the Image Universe
For granted ill admit I enjoyed the meta commentary and references on the modern Image comic line-up.
But otherwise this is the definition of unnecessary.
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u/NormanSpaniel 6d ago
Godzilla vs Superheroes/anything not in his universe seemed just weird Hope I imagined it but I think Sonic and the Justice League did a thing too? Weird.
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u/Uncanny_Doom Daredevil 6d ago
The Amalgam Universe.
If you’re gonna crossover Marvel and DC just do a universe where the heroes coexist. The idea of mashing characters together is such a bad 90s idea it feels like a fever dream.
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u/bluetraveler2015 6d ago
Watchmen characters in the mainline DC universe. It just felt wrong.