| Posted: 07 August 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | 8
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The Cracked article seems to take as its criteria the idea that the stories actually carry over from one universe to the other, forming legitimate crossovers. I don't specifically recall that Titans/DNAgents crossover doing that, and I did read both sides of it, way back when.
Here's the "other side" of that story, by the way.
If we're going to include the number of times that the companies have "borrowed" characters and concepts from one another to share a knowing wink with the audience, well, that's quite a list.
Just a few that I can recall off the top of my head:
There is of course the famous Aquaman story (#56) that concluded in a later issue of Sub-Mariner (#72), both having been written by Steve Skeates.
Roy Thomas sends the Avengers on a trip through time and the multiverse, having them encounter the Grandmaster's pawns, the Squadron Sinister (#69). Later, we're told that there is also a heroic counterpart to this team, making its home on faraway Earth-S, where the president is a Serpent Crown controlled Nelson Rockefeller (#85). Mark Gruenwald, the fellow behind the "Buried Alien/Fastfoward" snatch, saw great potential in the Squadron Supreme and decided to explore that in a twelve-issue maxi-series. The villains he'd intended to use were going to be close cousins to existing characters as well, but since this was now being taken well beyond a wink and a nod, becoming instead a title in its own right based entirely upon DC-owned characters, his was not allowed to use purely mimicked villains. Puffin couldn't just be a bird-themed fellow in a tux. He now had to inflate himself and look not at all like anyone named Oswald Cobblepott. Ape X couldn't just be a telepathic gorilla. Now she was a tech-savvy female ape in a wheelchair device. Wildcard, the laughing maniac who flew about on a playing card, well, sadly all that was left of him was a guy on a flying carpet who called himself Remnant.
DC, via Mike Friedrich, tried to muster a response to the initial volley fired by Thomas with a pathetic bunch of like-a-looks called The Heroes of Angor (#87). When the Squadron came back in their own book, the Heroes came back as well, in the Giffen/DeMatteis "Bwa-ha-ha-ha!" JL book. Later, DC would compound the whole mess by introducing a group of Marvel-inspired villains called the Extremists (JLE #15).
Marvel's Invaders (#14) and DC's Freedom Fighters (#7) each fought a team called the Crusaders, Marvel's (The Spirit of '76, Ghost Girl, Tommy Lightning, Thunderfist, and Dyna-Mite) looking a lot like the Freedom Fighters; DC's (Americommando, Rusty, Barracuda, Fireball, & Sparky) looked an awful lot like the Invaders.
Marvel's Imperial Guard is a blow struck against DC and Warner's corporate exclusivity of ownership of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Shi'ar and Shi'ar alike, as they say... :-)
Both companies have rampant parodies of one another's books in their humor titles Not Brand Ecch, What Th'?!, Inferior Five, and others.
DC continues to gain mileage from their Cyborg Superman character, currently a Red Lantern unless something's changed recently, but who remembers that the Cyborg Superman himself is just a parody of Reed Richards from a Dan Jurgens scripted Adventures of Superman issue (#465) in which a four-person team of explorers returns from space only to die of massive radiation exposure?
Dave Cockrum through an error sold the same visual for a character he'd designed to both DC and Marvel, making the Manphibian from the Legion of Monsters and the Devil-Fish from the Legion of Super-Heroes virtually identical.
Rich Buckler used the same design for his Demon Hunter and Bloodwing characters before bringing it to Marvel for Devil-Slayer. Arguably all three could be said to be iterations of the same character.
Howard Chaykin's Cody Starbuck, Scorpion, and Dominic Fortune all look very much alike, but there is much to differentiate them in their settings and backstories.
Steve Englehart left Marvel in something of a huff and took Mantis with him, changing her name to Willow when he wrote her into issues of the Justice League of America. Supposedly, "This One's" appearance changed as a result of her recent union with her husband, an alien plant being. In his Scorpio Rose series, she calls herself "Lorelei" and has a young son. Eventually, the character and her child find their way back to the MU.
Barry Allen and Iris appear on this Infantino-inspired cover of Marvel Team-Up in which Spidey battles the Speed Demon from the Squadron Sinister.
I'm certain there are a large number of similar instances I'm overlooking...
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