Chapter 131: Decemberian Crossover
Comic books are a magical realm, where anything can happen after all. Unlike in movies, comics are often free to explore the most bizarre possibilities from all corners of the writers' imaginations.
More often than not, this means comic creators throw together as many popular characters as they can get their hands on.
It's good business to throw characters together that no one expects to see sharing a page; companies as adversarial as DC and Marvel have been known to join forces for a good, crazy story.
This has led to more than a few fantastic crossover stories over the course of comic book history.
Justice League of America against the Avengers, Archie Meeting Punisher and makes him a bodyguard chaperone, Star Trek with Doctor Who or Star Trek with the X-men, Sups and Bats against Aliens and Predators, Bats with the TMNT, Heroes and other comic characters teaming up with Scooby-Doo and his Mystery Gang, Batman against the popular band The Beatles, Aquaman versus the Submarine to redeem their uncool fishy heroism, while there Sonic vs. Megaman in the game slash comic book front.
These are just among the top intercompany crossovers that were done well and achieved great results when it was put out into the market. Alexander could list out some more from remembered crossover titles in his memories but they are mostly crappy in execution and bent the characters way too much.
Comic book crossovers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are bold and ridiculous, while others take themselves deadly serious. No matter the tone of the story, though, the best crossovers are the ones that perfectly bring together the traits that make individual characters worth reading about.
It had to be said that the success of DC and Marvel itself comes from crossing over many and different characters into one continuity.
Marvel is already making sure of that through their Avengers and X-men storylines with the grand conjunction of Secret Wars and onwards.
Meanwhile, DC is still the one with the messiest and jumbled crossover stories at the moment and the future Crisis on Infinite Earths hope to change that up.
Of course, everything still unravels to messy misses and seldom hits after those as those companies took crossovers way too far while also taking into account the personal fantasies of their egotistic writers and artists.
Alexander had Creed Comics put out crossover specials to tap into the potential of crossovers but not overdoing it way too much so that it won't destroy much of the Creed brand's integrity with continuity.
What came out were silly moments and unexpected highlights that no Creed fan has expected. It all ranges from silly meet-ups to overt fun and onward unto great plausibility.
There wasn't even a reasonable explanation to how they met up and that brings up much more topics for debate amongst the readers.
Alexander didn't want to dive much into multiversal portals and reasonable reasonings as it was just a limited and finite issue that was all about explorative and clashing lores.
Mumm-Ra meeting up with Decepticons to talk about the prospects of his mecha army taking over Thundera seems plausible enough to be cannon and it intrigued the audience of both stories.
Perhaps RoboCop against Predator was the one with the most possibility for expansion as the top hunting Yautja should surely still hunt the top law enforcer of future Earth.
If the people on the surveys would request on it further, then the cyborg and alien rivalry might be something that can be explored further. The chances of silly crossovers becoming a staple rivalry are incredibly high after all.
6 turtle-themed characters were all about shells and martial arts jokes, Snarf and Pu'ar took silly cuteness into We Baby Bears level, while Girl Talk is mostly about girl gossip and mirrors how girls of the age huddled together.
What was much appealing about Girl Talk though is the dynamism and reactions towards how the different popular girls live their lives and enjoy their adventures.
Even Milla can't help but be immersed in the Girl Talk series as she truly felt herself being connected with her teen character.
Apparently, it was some characterization assignment she was given from her Saturday acting classes.
She probably isn't the only one enjoying the Creed crossovers as the chances of the issues reaching the 'sold out' point has been hastened than usual.
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As much of an over-the-top final chess move the crossover single-issue releases were, it was still a move that put Creed Comics into the industry spotlight once again.
Perhaps even Alexander as the main idealist of the crossover issues had underestimated the effect of the special releases.
People who are loaded with Christmas cash were already snagging it up as they saw the fun of it and never really took the messy character and story integrations into consideration.
As amusing, limited, and nonsensical as the new single issues were, everyone who always has an eye for comic book rarity and Creed-related merchandise doesn't want to miss out on it.
Of course, aside from buying it as a cheap, below-the-dollar print, they also took into account the specialness of the release as it probably is a seldom thing to occur.
Rarity, seldomness, and specialness blended in on each other to make the crossover specials much more enticing than how their colorful contents already are.
There was no denying that speculators would probably balloon the limited single issues in the future and it was still a low-level investment to make on the side of their Christmas buying spree.
It may also serve to help the comic book shops gain much importance as the mall and toy shop retailing endeavor might sour the established exclusiveness of Creed merchandise.
Volume Books and Creed Toys can be sold at other places for all they care and limited-ly finite single issues might only be their advantage over the major retail players.
Those are product organizations and important deliberations to be made into the future though as Alexander and Creed companies still had their attention towards the Christmas prospects of the present month.
They were pretty much just celebrating the success of everything and hoping to enjoy the Holiday season with the great market feedback that they've achieved.
In any case, the horror tradition of Octoberian release might have its follower as a Decemberian crossover tradition should probably be in their scheduled agendas.
Monthly and holiday highlights are slowly but surely being filled up and the spotlight on the Creed companies is higher than ever.
The brand's visibility was steadily increasing and expanding as the success stories became apparent and prevalent over the others.
Potential customers are set to improve the market's overall numbers and trouble is sure to come with all that attention.