Subject: Crossovers
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-08 03:12:00 UTC
How does one handle Marvel or DC in the Department of Implausible Crossovers? They have crossovers within their own story-lines. Also DC crossed over with "Mortal Kombat" and Marvel with "Street Fighter".
I think the Marvel and DC universes are both pretty immune to the "implausible" part of that department. The list of continua that have been crossed with one or both of them is pretty extensive.
Star Trek, Alien/Predator, Terminator, Looney Toons, Judge Dredd, Transformers, Archie Comics ("Archie Meets The Punisher"...no joke.)
If you find a badfic that has a crossover with DC or Marvel, chances are good that it is bad for some other reason. I would put it under the jurisdiction of whichever department handles that aspect of it.
-Phobos
-one? Something about how Marvel/DC canon is so convoluted and has had so much crazy stuff happen in it that most things could be plausible and it's really hard and arbitrary to determine what's a badfic. The wiki mentions it.
"But mom..."
"We have to get the groceries! Put your comics away!"
"Due to continuous retconning and a usually sliding timescale, sometimes it can be hard to decide on what is really canon in a fanfic set in the DC Universe. According to the PPC Manual, this has made most agents give up on it, but some still accept missions there." - Quote from here.
Meaning that is hard to determine what is canon, no what is badfic. (In fact, there's at least one mission for the Main DCU.) The major problem with the canon, is not if something is or isn't, is to try to figure out from which canon it comes from. Why? Fans tend to combine, confuse and fuse elements and facts from Live-Action Movies, Animated Movies, Animated Series, Live-Action Series, Elseworlds/What if?/Alternate timeline/universe comics and Mainstream comics in their fanfics, and badfics usually top it off with misleading Fanbrat speculative ramblings, which are almost always wrong. So, if you want to take on a DCU or MU badfic, no one is going to stop you, but it'll be a very challeging endeavor, that will probably require you to have some sort of encyclopaedia on your side to take on.
And that's why Shattered Sanity is the only one to ever take on a Main DC Universe badfic so far, and even then, she took only one.
The original quote (which was written by Jay and Acacia themselves!) is archived here:
Some continua are under monitoring from Intelligence, searching for a sign of some coherent canon to be enforced (most big name comic books fit in there... it's impossible to keep track of the continuity when the writers are changing it every six seconds). Until then, there isn't enough to police, so fans can go berserk there.
Take it or leave it as you will.
hS
There is just about nothing that you could cross DC and Marvel with that would be implausible. By the way, I have a friend who read Archie Meets The Punisher. She told me it was actually not that bad.
Because I'm having a hard time imagining Metropolis in Middle-earth.
You see, most of the implausibility coming out from badfic crossovers involving the DCU or the MU, is because of badly used elements from those universes. Like Gotham City existing within the Fire Nation, and The Batman's indentity still being Bruce Wayne. Things like that are highly implausible in the Avatar-verse. And yes, what I just described, some else wrote it already.
So, in short, while almost everything is plausible within superhero continua, that doesn't mean that it is plausible in the other continuum it is crossed over with.
That looks more like it might be up DOGA's alley. Clearly someone has misplaced Gotham City. Also, DOGA might like to do some recruitment in the Fire Nation.
I could actually see DC crossing over nicely with Avatar. Aquaman is clearly a Water Bender. Wonderwoman might be an Earth Bender. Batman is one of those Chi Bender guys that don't have any power except knowledge of energy movement in the body. Superman is, of course, the Avatar.
-Phobos
If someone took the city of Metropolis and dropped it in Middle-earth somewhere, that sounds like a job for disentanglers to me. See TOS 18, "Two Worlds," when Hogwarts ended up somewhere near Lothlórien. Jay and Acacia were in the DIC at the time, so they had to deal with it.
~Neshomeh
I am still not sold on "Gotham gets dropped into the Fire Nation" being necessarily badfic. Same goes for Metropolis into Middle-earth. There are plenty of reasons a location in the DCU could end up in another world.
And also, Bruce Wayne is misplaced too, again, with no explanation given.
But that wasn't the point, it was just an example of how a crossover involving a mainstream superhero continuum can go wrong, mainly by shoehorning an element from one, into another universe where it cannot exist or introduced with no explanation/justification. More examples?
- The Flash using Super-speed, in an universe with no Speed Force.
- A character receiving a Green Lantern Ring, when its personality clearly doesn't match the Ring's requirements (capable of overcoming a great fear).
- Making Adamantium and/or Vibranium deposits in places where there's no way those could have ever existed.
- Somehow replicating Captain America's shield... in an universe where the material of what it's made doesn't exist.
- Make Shazam/Capatin Marvel call down the lighting in a universe where the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon and/or Solomon don't exist or have never existed.
- Let any magical superhero/supervillian use its magic in an universe where its magic doesn't work that way, or doesn't exist at all.
And there are of course, the standards: awful grammar, unexplained OOC, unexplained character transplantations, a Replacement every once in a while, trivialization of canon events, etcetera.
So, yeah, there are many, many ways to get a DCU or MU implausible crossover.
There may be plenty of good reasons, but then there are also plenty of bad reasons, such as "the author felt like it." No good explanation, no plausibility. And then you have to look at the follow-through. Unless you're going with something like one of the comic book universe's god-like beings rewriting reality for a laugh, the sudden presence of a modern city in a pre-modern world should cause quite a stir. If it doesn't, it's implausible.
So, as with most things, it's all in how it's handled.
~Neshomeh
Several times, in fact. I think Superman might have become Thor for a bit, even.
-Phobos
He was fused with Thor once (Unlimited Access #4), and wielded Mjolnir another one (JLA/Avengers #4).