Chapter 186: Alliance Cliches

The decision to form the Anti-Creed Alliance was quite a surprising turn of events. It had to be said that some of the corresponding members have many aspects of themselves which could grow or break their entirety.

Anyways, the alliance also wasn't anything special in itself as it was just a bigger business cooperation for the established companies. For the much smaller groups, it is sort of a chance to join and gain big backers.

Either way, the Anti-Creed Alliance wasn't all about the mergers and business deals. 'Anti-Creed' already speaks for itself as its entire purpose is to get on and bolster their previous initiative to weaken or hopefully destroy Creed Comics and hopefully... it's partner companies as well.

In any case, that may be on a much later agenda as the entire alliance has to go through the cliche phases of team development that every other alliance has to go through.

Whether the alliance's intention is heroic or villainous, it is still a process that would inevitably be done.

Some of it may not be in order but the process is more or less the same.

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First among the cliches is the 'meet-up'... mostly concerning the location and all the whatnots that make alliances happen.

The X-Men had Xavier's family estate, the Justice League was during the major crises, and the Avengers was mostly facilitated by Shield for most of its versions.

Those were just the notable few but the Anti-Creed Alliance had it much more shabby and secretive. Their goals weren't exactly conducive to be done in a high-profile manner after all.

With the intention of pooling their strengths and weakness to deal with a common threat, the eventual members of the alliance agreed to 'meet up' to discuss everything in full and collaborative discretion.

The venue wasn't anything that grand as the Hall of Justice or the Stark Tower though as they just chose to secretly do their collaborative effort in DC's conference hall.

It was spacious and fitting enough for their necessities.

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With the 'meet-up' part scheduled, a non-essential but also somewhat integral alliance cliche was the 'individual introduction'.

This was where every member's strength, weakness, backstory, personal vendetta, and goal for joining was scouted out.

My Hero Academia's Quirk Narration and something like One Piece whose every other episodic arcs are dedicated to exploring an eventual team member's habits and whatnot.

In any case, that part wasn't too hard to digest for the Anti-Creeds as every member more or less knew each other and their reasons for joining.

The specs of the corporate business members were clear for everybody who wanted to study them while the small members like the Mirage duo, Predator-writing duo, and the RoboCop writing duo were just a matter of profile compilation for the big players.

What matters for all members is that they had atrocities and beef to hand out to Creed Comics and that was all that mattered.

Of course with 'meet-up' and 'individual introduction' parts being out of the way, everything just needed to fall into place.

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The scheduled day did arrive and the members representing big and small forces gathered with their representatives.

With their DC venue being used, DC Comics also played as host and impromptu leader for the most part. There was no doubt that they were the most vocal and spearheading attacker of Creed before any "united front" had appeared.

Hopefully, their failures would prove insightful for this "united-er" Anti-Creed Alliance.

Of course, to even the playing field, every big player only needed to send some handful of representatives and discussingly coordinate everything from that.

With everyone settled in on their respective seats, the team distribution and respective representatives of the alliance members are already set.

For the DC camp, a representing executive coordinated everything whilst the rest of his crew were mostly DC directors whose allocations and expertise would most likely be needed in their current situation.

Of course, sighing editor was handpicked to be a part of the team as he represented the comic book-making department.

Ever since devious editor was sacked, sighing editor's days in the company were mostly better than what it had been. Either way, his input may or may not be needed, depending on how the alliance's discussions would go.

In all honesty, sighing editor's semi-chief editor level was just pulled out so that DC could have a response to Marvel's move in which they had their Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter lead the Marvel team.

Of course, for the Marvel camp, the choice to go with Jim Shooter wasn't anything scheming or whatnot. Since it was Jim Shooter who was adamant about pulling through with the trigger against Creed Comics, it was up to him to clean up the mess that came as a consequence of it.

Some Cadence representative was still there to help out this Marvel subsidiary of theirs during this alliance but Cadence had pretty much been irked by Shooter's haphazard decision.

For the Hasbro camp, it was Alan Hassenfeld himself who led his Hasbro representatives over. It can be read from this that the man took this alliance quite seriously. The Creed Toys agenda aside, this was also his chance to bolster cooperation with these alliance mates who could be considered as treasure troves for toy-adaptable comic characters.

For the smallish medium players such as Archie Comics, the near down in the dumps Charlton, and IPC media, they sent out their representatives as well. As much as they had regretted being part of the earlier siege, they were already at the crux of the Creed crisis reversal storm, and being part of this alliance is necessary.

Of course, there were the very small players like Mirage Studios and the screenwriting foursome in this alliance conference as well.

Their input may not be too large compared to the others or they might be disregarded overall. However, they were just small players that had been enticed and egged by the chance that was given by these big players.

Essentially, they were pretty much on the whims as they just need to follow the decision that this coalition would go for. Since the big players were the ones funding most of their lawyers and copyright battles, why not just go with it?

In any case, the 'gathering' alliance cliche was somewhat achieved. It may not be anything different from 'meet-up' and 'individual introduction, at least, the alliance was now in the position to convene and act out whatever they intend to do.

The problem is that any alliance wouldn't run as smoothly from just that.

The Justice League didn't become the powerful Justice League in one go. The Avengers' road to dealing with Avengers-level threats isn't too smooth sailing. The X-Men and Fantastic 4 had their fair share of un-team-ly beginnings as well

Even the soldier-heavy G.I. Joes must have done a lot of training to get to the squad skills that they had.

In a clash of egos, grudges, differing opinions, unbalanced power dynamics, varying methodologies, and un-synchronized ethics, the Anti-Creed alliance is bound to have a shaky start.

After all, a 'shaky start' is an alliance cliche as well.