Mighty Mash-Ups

In the weeks leading up to San Diego Comic Con 2018, taking place this week, publishers including IDW, DC Comics, and Oni Press have announced crossovers pairing two or more licensed properties. Such mash-ups are often limited in quantity and typically extend over a short arc, with three to six issues being a common length. The configurations vary, with publishers:

• Pairing two licensed properties for which they already hold rights. At Comic Con, IDW announced a crossover between CBS Consumer Products’ Star Trek and Hasbro’s Transformers; it has long published both properties separately. Dynamite Entertainment once paired Vampirella and Dark Shadows, both of which it already published as well.
• Combining a license with one of their own characters. At Comic Con, DC Comics announced it was expanding its successful crossover between the DC Universe and the classic Hannah Barbara characters, licensed from its sister company Warner Bros. In one example, Top Cat meets Superman. Archie Comics combined the Archie characters with Twentieth Century Fox’s TV series Glee during the heyday of that show, with the two properties having their high school settings and music in common. Archie Comics has also done crossovers with the likes of The Punisher and KISS.
• Acquiring rights to new characters to pair with existing licenses. IDW secured the rights to The Green Lantern from Warner Bros. and DC Comics in order to add the character to its long-running Star Trek franchise.
• Becoming licensees of broader cross-licensing programs set up by two licensors. Paws Inc. and Grumpy Cat created a joint program for their two felines last year, with Dynamite Entertainment, already the publisher of Grumpy Cat comics, signed as the first licensee. Also last year, Sony and Nickelodeon created a Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collaboration; IDW, who was the licensee for both properties already, published the comics for the licensor-led pairing.
• Joining other publishers to combine two of their respective licenses. This spring, Oni Press and IDW announced that they were partnering on a crossover series, debuting in August, involving Cartoon Network’s Rick and Morty (published by Oni) and Hasbro’s Dungeons & Dragons (IDW), in which the two characters find themselves inside of a D&D game.
• Creating crossovers between two of their own properties. This is the technique that started the crossover craze in comic books’ early days, decades ago, and it continues today. DC Comics recently brought several of the characters from its Young Animal imprint into the broader DC Comics Universe through a crossover with the Justice League and Wonder Woman called “Milk Wars.”

While publishers have been creating crossovers between disparate characters almost since the beginning of the comic book industry, the technique is—in keeping with the penchant for collaboration throughout licensing in general—as popular as ever.