You’re talking about direct contradiction with the Batman-brother bit, though. There are different levels here. For example : Bruce Wayne is in a bathrobe in one panel, on the phone. In the next panel, he’s in the same room, but dressed differently, telling Alfred he’s going out. It’s reasonable for us to assume that sufficient time has elapsed for Bruce to finish dressing. Even if that fact isn’t printed on the page, in the story. Or if Batman laments the lack of a cutting torch in his utility belt in one issue, and produces one in the next - it’s reasonable to assume he added one.
One of my biggest pet peeves with movies and other media is the need to show us every single little thing. They can skip a bit, save everyone some time.
The tiara and the hammer don’t directly contradict one another. It seems the tiara is more effective. However, we have no idea how severe that neck injury was. We have no idea how much those hammer blows hurt, how much force was absorbed by skillfull maneuvering, etc. We don’t even have a definitive cite that says the hammer should be considered as hitting with “magical force” - and that was enough for Busiek to give the Man of Steel a pass.
I read the Life of Reilly articles about the Clone Saga, and they seem to have addressed the High Evolutionary point, at some point.
As I recall, generally a story who occur where Green Arrow and Supes would be transported to some planet where magic ruled, or some such similar situation. A foot note was usually scene at the bottom explaining that Supes was vulnerable to magic, to explain why he was transported against his will, or why he didn’t just make a glass bubble from sand, and get himself and Green Arrow the heck back to earth. No, since the foot note simply said “vulnerable”, most fans/writers took that to mean “vulnerable”, period. Why would they read it any other way?
That’s just it though, there is enough contradictory evidence to question the crossover, to say “hey, that’s not how it should be”. Evidence in Superman’s own comic that suggests the writer was wrong in his interpretation. Had he gone the other way it would have been a very short fight. His rationale for saying the hammer was not a magical attack was that the hammer was not enchanted to “hit harder”. WW’s tiara wasn’t either! Busiek’s position is valid insofar as he believe it was backed up by evidence and he made a judgment call so he could writer the comic. Arguments to the contrary though are just as valid as the evidence supports that point of view as well. You may not like that but that’s the nature of reasoned debate and discussion. There is ample evidence to suggest that Mjolnir is a magical attack that should have leveled Superman by obviating his personal force field. We can agree to disagree but to dismiss the argument outright is logically untenable.
And that is still the case. The crossover is not canon and is simply one writers’ interpretation. Mind you, it’s the best crossover I have ever read but that’s beside the point. There is ample evidence to support the contention that Mjolnir is a magical attack. The crossover hasn’t changed that. It’s still a reasonable debate to have.
Except the crossover IS canon. And you’re welcome to disagree with the way Kurt chose to settle the issue - what you can’t do is assert that he was factually “wrong” to settle it that way.
Because in the post-Crisis period Superman’s vulnerability can be broken up into two categories:
Versus Spells. Mind control, transformation, involuntary teleportation, whatever. They don’t directly damage the Man of Steel, but he has no superhuman reistance against them (indeed, in some rare cases he seems extraordinarily vulnerable to magic influences).
Versus Magic Attacks. The crux of the arguments here. Thor’s hammer, Diana’s tiara, Captain Marvel’s lightning and fists. Superman sometimes seems to have no superhuman protection against them, sometimes seems more vulnerable to them (but still less so than a normal human, Captain Marvel’s lightning would have fried you or I), and sometimes seems to affect him no more than a “mundane” attack of comprable force.
Since Category 1 seems to have carried over intact from pre-Crisis, I was wonder what Superman’s reaction to Category 2 was, since I don’t recall ever seeing him face it directly.
As a footnote, Category 1 got a partial downgrade. One of the arcs a few years back had Superman learning to practice and hone Kryptonian meditation techniques that made him more resistant to mental influences. I don’t recall any specific instances of magical mind control during the period, but he became less susceptible to mind control in general. (Which, frankly, he’d always been vulnerable to, magical or not, it seems.)
It’s not canon in the MU so it is not applicable. It’s just not canon. I do disagree on how the issue was settled though I do respect the process that the writer went through to reach an informed decision. There really is enough evidence though to go the other way and there are others within the industry who agree with that assertion. Nothing has been settled which is why the debate still rages.
I liked the crossover a lot. What crossovers do you think are better?
Of course, I’m crazy too. Which is why this thread has brought to my mind a question. Is there any reason Supes can’t learn magic? So that he could toss off a counterspell or something when going against a magical opponent.
It’d probably overpower the guy even more than he already is, so from a storytelling perspective it may not be the best idea in the world. But if that were one of my big vulnerabilities, I’d look into it.
I’m gonna quibble with this. The recent JLA arc by Busiek vaguely sorta referenced the crossover, but just like we don’t know from the vantage point of the post-crisis heroes what they remember about their version of the Crisis, Busiek was very careful to tip-toe around what happened in the crossover or even if there was one from the JLA’s POV–we don’t know for sure how “our” JLA got the object–and the mere presence of the egg isn’t enough on it’s on, IMO.
And given that traditionally Marvel/DC crossovers tend to happen outside of continuity* (standing joke: they happen on “Earth-Crossover”) I think there’s at least some doubt that the crossover events happened to these characters. If, outside of the object (the egg-thing) there were any references to the crossover (Superman talking about how sore he was from the fight with “That big viking guy” , for example), I’d agree it was cannon. But given that most other crossovers have happened on “Crossover-earth” or were otherwise out of continuity, I don’t think that’s an entirely safe assumption to make.
Fenris
*One unremembered crossover was Mantis leaving Earth 616 with her space-tree hubby in Avengers Annual 4 and ending up in JLA 142 with a name change to “Willow”. In JLA, she made several snarky comments about the fact that Gerry Conway’s (who kicked Englehart off the book so Conway could write the big 3 titles: Spidey, FF and Avengers) Avengers didn’t sound anything like the real Avengers (“This one’s friends have changed. They are no longer the people she once knew”). She was preggers with her messiah-like space-baby (Mantis was the Celestial Madonna, remember, Willow’s baby would “Lead mankind to the stars”) and an Ultron type (The Construct) was trying to get her. Apparently then she went to some Englehart written Eclipse title (Coyote, maybe? Or Scorpio Rose?) to actually have the baby, and referenced the JLA and Avengers both–I haven’t read that one. Then, when Englehart took over Silver Surfer, Mantis reappeared, the baby already having been born, etc. How many other characters have had major plot developments on other earths?
Not to jump in on the debate, but it is canon in MU as well. It was mentioned in FF. Franklin was playing with a Superman doll and mentioned how his mom and dad met him once.
I believe Franklin was refering to the Fantastic Four/Superman crossover rather than the Avengers/JLA crossover. That crossover just isn’t canon in the MU or even in the DCU.
On Earth-1, he phyiscally couldn’t learn magic. In JLofA ~161-3 or so, we learned that to do magic, one has to be a divergent branch of humanity called “Homo Magi”. Apparently when Australopithecus was ‘evolving into us’, we split into two branches–one (Homo Sap.) that made fire by banging rocks together and one (Homo Magi) that made fire by twiddling their fingers. Because of interbreeding, all humans have some trace of Homo Magi genes in our systems, but Kryptonians don’t have any of those Homo Magi genes, which is why they’re vulnerable to magic*
Fenris
*Why aren’t other aliens equally vulnerable to magic? It’s a Gerry Conway story. I doesn’t pay to think about it. How do you explain things like Xerox the Sorcerer’s World (which, pre-Crisis, wasn’t an Earth colony?) It’s a Gerry Conway story.
PS, Max–That was a different crossover that Franklin’s referring to, IIRC: the Avengers/JLA one was last year. The Franklin scene was ~2000–it was early in the current run, maybe a Claremont issue, wasn’t it?
Come to think of it, I believe that Franklin scene might actually have been in that FF/Superman giant sized crossover, and Franklin was referring to the Marvel Vs DC mini series, which IS canon.
Confusing about that (to go off on a tangent), the Batman/Spider-Man x-over with Carnage and Joker read like any other non-canon story with the characters not surprised to run into each other and seeming to know a little of the other characters’ backstory. However in Marvel v. DC, Joker notes that Spider-man has changed his costume since last they met (since it was actually Ben Riley in the Vs x-over.) If MvDC is canon, then Batman/Spider-man must be as well.
So what x-overs are canon?
Marvel vs DC
Green Lantern/Silver Surfer (since Access is in it)
Batman/Spider-man (debatable)
FF/Superman (debatable)
JLA/Avengers (hotly debatable )
Well it’s not really that debateable. Avengers/JLA just isn’t canon as it is not mentioned at all in the MU and barely mention in the DCU.
Since when did Marvel v. DC become canon? So the “brothers” are now the most powerful beings in either universe? So Wolverine really did beat Lobo :rolleyes:
Unless you count that six-month run in JLA involving the aftereffects of Krona’s assault on the anti-matter universe. Yeah, they didn’t explictly mention the Avengers, just everything else that happened in that miniseries. Between copyright, professional courtesy, and simply not wanting to adverstide for the competition, I’m not sure what else you can expect.
Bingo. It was even promoted as a follow-up to JLA/Avengers. It was written by Kurt Busiek. It referenced the collapse of the Crime Syndicate’s Earth that we saw in JLA/Avengers. Metron popped by to check on the freakin’ egg.
It’s in DCU canon. To say otherwise is an exceptional claim.
There was a solid Green Lantern/Aliens a while back; Batman vs. Predator - at least one of them was a solid read, but I can’t remember which; and personally, while the Amalgam bookends weren’t all that hot, the melded-universe forms of the heroes showed some sparks of creativity that I thought long dead at both companies.
JLA/Avengers is good, but it fell into two traps. One, “colossal huge universe-shattering menace” - which, given the two teams involved, was almost unavoidable. Two, “written by committee” - if you have the deluxe edition of JLA/Avengers, they go into the backstory behind the crossover, how it took them more than 20 years to get it going, and all the effort taken to satisfy both Marvel and DC so that neither would pull the plug on the crossover. So it comes out kind of bland. And the inclusion of everyone to ever join either team made for some compressed storytelling in the fourth issue.
I’d love to see a follow-up though, that could at least avoid the necessity of featuring everybody from both teams, with a little less reality-falling-apart.
I have no problem with that. It is not, however, canon in the MU and it is unlikely it ever will be. The fact that Busiek referenced it himself is more than a little self-serving to be honest.
, for example), I’d agree it was cannon. But given that most other crossovers have happened on “Crossover-earth” or were otherwise out of continuity, I don’t think that’s an entirely safe assumption to make.
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