Superman vs. Spider-Man Review

[katefan]

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I look at this iconic crossover from '76

[K7P5V]

Awesome! My favorite DC/Marvel crossover ever:




Also, it was nice to see Lois meet MJ:

[katefan]

It's crossovers like this that do make me wonder how much more interesting the comic landscape would be if everything took place in the same universe. But then again I feel competition is important to any industry and consolidating the big two would be bad for business. So it's best to leave things to the occasional crossover. Sady except for Batman/TMNT I don't think there's been a crossover for years.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The original crossover was a huge deal. It was a big success, and brought a lot of readers to Spider-Man, and so on. People who read Superman comics, or people who knew Superman from TV shows, from their childhood and so on, who maybe had heard of this Marvel thing, became interested in this. I don't know if the crossover helped Superman more than Spider-Man (my sense is it probably didn't) but it was the biggest thing to happen to Spider-Man since the Spider-Man cartoon and the second biggest thing to happen to him after AF#15.

That comic confirmed the following stuff that we know to be true but was in fact radical at the time:
-- Spider-Man was in the same sentence as Superman and Batman in terms of proverbial superheroes known to civilians. This despite being a character less than 15 years old in publication history. Think about how young Spider-Man is as a character and how quickly he became a "made" man and part of the big three. Remember at the time, Batman was treated second banana in team-ups with Superman, well before Frank Miller. But in this comic, Spider-Man is treated as an equal to Superman. Not in terms of powers but in terms of a character.
-- Marvel was DC's main rival and equal.
-- Spider-Man was Marvel's biggest character and company mascot. If the project came a few years before, I think it would have been a Fantastic Four and Superman crossover.

Basically if you want one title that marks when Spider-Man went from being this title spun out of a defunct anthology title to becoming the representative character of Marvel...this crossover is it. It marked when Spider-Man became Spider-Man.

DC remember never did intercompany crossovers with Fawcett Comics (they in fact drove them out of business), nor with Quality comics and so on. But they did it with Marvel. So it was a huge deal.

[Hypestyle]

I'd like to see a reprint done larger tabloid style, on glossy paper.

I'm surprised that an animated special was never made of this. I imagine the anxieties and assumptions about legal wars between attorneys would come into play. But they at least made it happen for the comics. Now, with Marvel owned by Disney, it would be yet another layer of hurdles with Warner Bros. owning DC.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'm surprised that an animated special was never made of this. I imagine the anxieties and assumptions about legal wars between attorneys would come into play.

The right time to have made it happen was the '90s. That was a time when Marvel was a relatively independent company that licensed stuff to studios. They even allowed Kids!WB, a WB subsidiary the rights to do the X-Men. So there was no sense of them being anti-WB and so on. At that time, Marvel had success with animation on Fox, and DC likewise had Timm's Batman and Superman stuff. So that was the only time it could have feasibly happened.

But the moment passed.

But they at least made it happen for the comics. Now, with Marvel owned by Disney, it would be yet another layer of hurdles with Warner Bros. owning DC.

The last big Intercompany crossover IIRC was JLA/Avengers by Busiek. And that was Pre-Disney. There hasn't been to my knowledge inter-company crossovers Post-Disney merger.

So I think that might be a thing of the past.

WB and Disney did co-operate for Who Framed Roger Rabbit of course, and as part of that agreement Donald and Daffy, and Mickey and Bugs could appear together but the mandate was that both had to appear together, have the same number of lines, and same number of frames. So that no one was made to appear better than another.

I think Sony Animation can conceivably do it. It's a third-ish party between WB and Disney. And they can do a niche crossover in the style of ITSV and that would be a crossover. You could do a younger version of Peter B. Parker mixed with say, George Newbern's Superman, Dana Delany's Lois, Clancy Brown's Luthor. For Ock, you get Molina to voice him, or you go with Liv Octopus.

[katefan]

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The second part of my recap of this series.

[Mister Mets]

I didn't care much for the story (the recap covers the reasons why), but it might be some of the best Spider-Man art of the bronze age.