Crossing Over

Cinematic Universes are the big thing these days. Or they're trying to be.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is expanding to further-flung corners all the time: I couldn't believe some of the "cosmic" characters who appeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2. Characters I would have thought were much too "out there" or silly for mainstream movie audiences showed up for little cameos that thrilled me greatly, as an old comic fan. I shouldn't have been too surprised, after seeing Howard the Duck in the post credits scene of Guardians volume 1!

DC comics has been doing its own movieverse, too, and Wonder Woman is getting great reviews and is a big ol' hit.

Everything from Ghostbusters to Footloose wants to do an expanded universe! Okay, maybe Footloose isn't. Yet.

Of course, the original movie-universe was the Universal Monsters, from back in the 30's and 40's. That predated even the Marvel and DC Comic Book Universes! Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man were big hits and the characters eventually met in various sequels, like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the House of Dracula, and The House of Frankenstein, and finally, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Other "shared universe" movies came later, either as one-off jokes or sometimes more: Kevin Smith put all his early films into one "Jay and Silent Bob" universe, for example. Isaac Asimov connected his various novel series into one timeline, sometimes separated by tens of thousands of years. "The Dark Tower" connected several of Stephen King's novels into a "Multiverse", which had already been a thing in comics for many years by that point.

The Monster-Universe is attempting a return right now, with "The Mummy" intended to be the starting point for an interlocking series of classic monster updates who will eventually meet.

It's surely a massive undertaking to try and do this, and most of the attempted Universes are facing some…uh…slight bumps in the road, to say the least. It remains to be seen if the "Dark Universe" will be successful enough in its first couple films to reach its big "Avengers-style" Monster Mashup.

The monsters are back

For my part, I've only done one regular comic. But some of the most fun I've had writing comics has been crossing over with other creators here on DD.

Some characters from Jay's Internet Fight Club by jerrie showed up in my comics, and I did a little reference to Kimluster's The Godstrain and she was goodly enough to feature a character of mine on a series of pages. So cool!

http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Jays_Internet_Fight_Club/

http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Godstrain/

Do you have your own comic Universe? Have you ever done a crossover between your comics or with another creator's work?