By Todd Allen

A little more information on the various crossovers has emerged over the week.

Batman/Night of the Owls

Over at Newsarama, Scott Snyder has shed a little light on this Batman Event that’s spawned its own back-up feature.

Snyder: It’s all about the battle for Gotham, so it’s going to touch a lot of the Batman titles. It’s going to have an impact on Batgirl, Nightwing, on Damian in Batman and Robin, and on the Birds of Prey. It will even touch Catwoman and Batwing. And in Red Hood and The Outlaws, with Tim being a big feature in that.

The Court of Owls will also apparently show up in All-Star Western (i.e., the Owls as they were in 1880 Gotham).  So add in Batman and that’s either 8 or 9 books, depending on how you view All-Star Western.  That means Detective Comics and Batman: The Dark Knight will both be doing their own thing and not participating.  This makes a bit of sense with Detective having major success being its own thing and Dark Knight would probably need a larger amount of lead time to change direction, with it joining Batwoman in the work having started pre-relaunch.  It _does_ make you wonder what the greater purpose in a Two-Face backup in Detective is, though.

Snyder is swearing up and down that you don’t need to buy every book in the Event.

No, no, no. You don’t have to buy them all. We’re doing a different format of a crossover. What DC is doing is, we’re trying to create stories that overlap with other books, but that don’t necessarily depend on you reading one book to understand the other.

The general idea being there will be repercussions in the crossover books, I guess.  The idea seems to be I don’t need to be reading Birds of Prey to follow the story in Batman.  The question will become, if I’m reading Birds of Prey, is all this business about Owls confusing me if I’m not reading Batman? And then we’ll see how this is handled in the book format.  Will it be a multi-volume Night of the Owls set, like No Man’s Land or Contagion?  Will it be Batman: Night of the Owls in one volume and then all the other books as satellite volumes like Marvels numerous <Insert Character Here>: Civil War/Secret Invasion/Siege?  DC _usually_ puts a little more thought into how these things get reprinted and that will tell us how independent the titles really are.

Animal Man / Swamp Thing

In the same interview, we get more confirmation on the extent to which Animal Man and Swamp Thing will be crossing over.

Now I say that, and then we’re going to get to Animal Man and Swamp Thing in a year, and that is going to have a couple issues that actually do kick off the event and do cross over from one book to another.

I think that’s the most definitive statement on how this will go down.  It’s been obvious that would be the case since the first or second issue of each title and it’s since been acknowledged over at DC that there would be some crossing over.  Interestingly, Snyder phrases it as “kick off the event.”  I’ve wondered if that wasn’t going to be part of a larger Event and now I’m wondering a little harder.

Still, should we really need to be getting all these clarifications from Snyder?  DC ought to outline which books are in the Event and how it’s going to work when it’s announced.

Spider-Man / Daredevil / Punisher

Over on the other side of the park, Marvel very clearly spelled out a small crossover called “The Omega Effect.”  Three parts: Avenging Spider-Man” #6, “Daredevil” #11 and “Punisher” #10.  Regular Daredevil and Punisher writers Mark Waid and Greg Rucka will collaborate on the Avenging Spider-Man issue.  Marco Checchetto will draw all three issues.  If you haven’t been reading Daredevil, and you really should be, ‘ole Hornhead has come into the possession of a very special hard drive with the fiscal details for a whole bunch of terrorist organizations.  The terrorists want it back.  The Punisher would like to put the drive to good use.  Reed Richards invented the drive that was re-purposed for this and sends Spidey to fetch it.  There’s a whole bunch of terrorists who want to get the drive back before their bosses find out.  Explosions likely ensue.

1 COMMENT

  1. If you think DC always puts thought into their trades, you should try to read the Blackest Night trades some time! Something like six volumes originally all in hardcover, none of which had a complete story.

  2. Snyder also spoke about the event on IGN.com and he stated there that Batman: The Dark Knight was indeed part of the event. Only Batwoman and Detective Comics are sitting it out among the bat-titles, the other 9 titles are part of it. Adding All-Star Western, it’s a total of 10 titles involved.

  3. This is exactly why DC should just put the cards on the table and hand out a checklist. Poor Snyder is trying to remember everything off the top of his head and with that many books, it’s no wonder one would slip his mind.

  4. The recent crossover in OMAC and Frankenstein worked quite well, I thought. You didn’t need to buy both comics to understand the story yet they still joined up nicely. I presume that’s the ‘style’ of crossover they have planned for the Bat-books.

  5. From what I can understand, my feeling is that it will be much like Batman RIP, with a main story in the Batman monthly, and repercusssions and background in other bat-titles.

  7. In some ways the Swamp Thing/Animal Man crossover has already started…the last issue of Animal Man ended with Buddy and his family going to search for Swamp Thing to fight the Rot together.

  9. Yeah, I’m with royd_9. I was thinking it will be like Batman RIP ….. or at least I hope it will be!

    Although this is starting to seem like a loooooong story. I mean it did start in Batman #1. Where are the done in 1 stories these days. This is turning into a year long arc!!!