"How do you make a dead baby float?"

I shouldn't laugh, but my god, that was one funny joke...

And one more nail goes into the coffin.

I strongly agree that the small notes of interconnectivity really have a huge positive impacton the books (at least to me). The effect that the Simonson Thor story being noted in all of, or at least many, other books was a great touch to me. The tie ins-to Secret Wars was very well done. That sort of connection being lost is a real loss for me as a reader. In fact, I can look back and see stories where I wish the books were even MORE connected. JB mentioned the cameos of Doc Strange, Spidy, and the Surfer reacting to Dark Phoenix. Here is an example related to that that I would love to have seen....we see the Beast taking off from Avengers' Mansion when he sees the alert regarding the X-Men. Did he ever take any shit from the other Avengers over that? I can completely see Cap or Iron Man having a cow. What if another Avenger stopped by half an hour later and assembled the team to investigate? Imagine the X-Men AND Avengers were all beamed up to fight the Imperial Guard. They would have made short work out of the IG and Jean may not have reverted to Phoenix during the battle. It would have made a good what if.

(A quick question for JB here...did you have to coordinate the Hank's appearance with the Avengers crew at the time, or was it just a free form kind of thing? During the spring of 1980 issues 134-137 the Avengers were fighting Red Ronin and Taskmaster).

I liked how the storylines from Mutant Massacre, Inferno, and others added flavor to the the background of many stories in other books without trampleing on them.

I love crossovers that are done well. Some people say that it is just a ploy to suck you into other titles, but I have been glad to get sucked into many of them. Here is what I hate. They make an 8 part story running through four titles over two months and part 3 and 7 are a book that you have no interest in, but you get it anyway for the complete story. That part is no big deal. BUT when part 3 is completely unrelated to the story except for the last page, AND the pook overall is just horrible. A case like that was a few years back M did a Thor (a book I liked) crossover with Silver Surfer (another book I liked), Warlok and the Infinity Watch (a book that was kind of boring but at least had ok art) and Warlok Chronicles (a book that was just as boring but had TERRIBLE art). It was called Blood and Thunder. I read the first two issues, and the second one ended with Adam Warlok appearing on the last page to confront Thor. So I followed the directions and the next week I picked up Warlok Chronicles, even though I really wasn't interested in it in the slightest outside of thhe crossover. I read it, and it ended with the last page leaving me at that exact same sceen. So the issue was a COMPLETE bait and switch intended to sell an extra issue of a crappy book.It was just wrong. On the other hand, I like a lot of other crossovers (most actually), if they are done on the up and up.

A comedy show on Fox did a riff on Casper some time ago, called Casper the Friendly Boy, where a smiling kid (pretty young) runs around saying hi to everyone, runs off camera... and cue the screech of car brakes.

And yeah, where are the fundamentalists about Hot Stuff and Wendy the Good Witch?

QUOTE: I can only ask: in your own lives, day to day, how many times do you find yourself referencing your past conversationally? How many times do you find yourself mentioning things that have happened to friends and co-workers? When do you ever find yourself speaking (or hearing) the real world equivalent of "Why, Captain Fonebone! I haven't seen you since we battled Dr. Rotcod for possession of the Carbunkle Cannon!"

If something major happens to one of my friends we do mention it to one another. "Hey I heard Bill came into some money. Im glad for him because he was having a rough time."

Or my friend might say " Victor just got done moving. He's better off because he's in a better location." 

Now of course its not going to dominate conversation, but it would warrant a passing reference.

Doctor Rotcod's a robot, so no snot. Any trufan would know that.

I've always assumed the crossover idea is to encourage people to buy issues of the other titles when they wouldn't have normally. If the other title's any good, they might continue to buy it; if it's not, it's a one-off boost. Is the extreme frequency of crossovers now an indication that there's not a longterm effect (the books don't retain the extra readers)?

The price of comics these days means that I won't follow a crossover just for the story; I might pick it up eventually in a collection. When I was younger, following Secret Wars only taught me that comics aren't equally good.

If I were creating, I wouldn't really want to be required to have my lead vanish in the Sheep Meadow, even if he returns next issue, because it links my work to someone else's which might, for all I know, turn out to be embarrassing. I feel much the same way about One Year Later (or whatever it is): what's it got to do with John's story?

IMP.

sigh