Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Todd McFarlane Draws the DC Universe

"Todd McFarlane Draws the DC Universe" from Invasion! #2 (DC, 1989) by Keith Giffen, Bill Mantlo, Todd McFarlane and Al Gordon
There are several things you can hang a company-wide crossover, and one of these is to combine everything in your shared universe that shares a certain meme. War of the Gods is an example of one such crossover  - combining all the pantheons in the DCU - that didn't work, and Invasion! - combining many of the alien races from the DCU into a single threat - was one that did. By having the Dominators, Khunds, Thanagarians, Durlans, etc. ally to attack Earth, the crossover had a credible threat AND afforded each tie-in with a certain amount of variety, both geographically (the Suicide Squad in Australia, the Flash in Cuba, etc.) and in the choice of opponent (Animal Man vs. Thanagarians being a favorite). It was also a way to tie the present day DCU with the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes, 1000 years hence. The aliens in their world should, after all, exist in today's universe. Invasion! also introduced the concept of the meta-gene, sort of a poor man's mutant gene, and look, Todd McFarlane drew a couple of issues before he was a star.

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