The Marvel/DC Collection - Crossover Classics, Vol. 3 Paperback – May 1, 2002

Good condition then I thought

Seeing Daredevil and Batman in the same panels together, has to be the single most awesome thing I ever seen! Collecting rare crossovers of DC and Marvel. Nerds will probably drool over it. Much like me.

I found the writing to be extremely interesting. The artwork was uneven in some stories and in others wonderful.

I was happy to find the book in better condition than was originally described

I especially like the Superman and Hulk issue, this was the first time I read a Hulk comic in over 35 years, and I really enjoyed the storyline and how the two characters interacted. I was surprised to see that the Hulk could actually speak relatively normal.I already read the Daredevil and Batman issue, the story is quite also quite good, but the best story--bar none--was the Spider-man and Batman vs. Carnage and the Joker. I have always liked the Joker as a villain, and he was well-suited (no pun intended) and well-matched with Carnage. This storyline was well worth the entire cost of the Amazon price. The other stories meant zilcho to me, since I was interested only in the main storyline characters. I think DC and Marvel ought to have their heroes exchange battles with the Marvel villains in any future crossover classic.

This book wasn't as strong as the previous DC/Marvel trade paperbacks. Still decent reading though, best story was the Hulk & Superman one.

good

This book collects seven inter-company crossovers:1) Incredible Hulk v. Superman: This is the best story in the book, though its far from perfect. The story begins with a married Lois and Superman talking and goes back to the 1960s and an encounter between Superman and the Hulk as well as Clark Kent and David Banner. The story is a great classic potboiler that gets Thuderbolt Ross and a red haired Lex Luthor involved. There's less Hulk smashing Superman and vice versa, but that should be expected with legendary comic scribe Roger Stern at the helm as we get a far more character based story. The art by Steve Rude is gorgeous which makes it stand out from almost everything else in this book. There's shades of Dave Stephens in the art, which only has one unfortunate drawback which is Lois putting on a skimpy outfit for one scene for seemingly no other reason than to elicit information from Rick Jones. The framing scenes were nothing special either, but still this is a good story. Grade: B+Daredevil and Batman: These were a natural duo to pair up. Both dark characters and both redefined by Frank Miller in the 1980s. I wonder if this story would have been better if Miller wrote it. Both writer and artist try to ape Frank Miller and the results are awful. The plot becomes a bunch of ego roller derby. The art is garish with the villains Two Face (and for some reason) Mister Hyde looking awful. Grade: D+Spider-man and Batman: This was a good concept involving Batman and Spider-man being drawn together through a plot that involved two of their most deadly rogues, the Joker and Carnage and a plot to essentially lobotomize these mad killers society refused to execute. There was some great concepts involved particularly the idea of Spider-man and Batman both being orphans, and the similarities and contrasts between Carnage and the Joker as mad killers. The story has a lot of good concepts. What hurts is the length. Even a double length comic wasn't enough to do it justice. This would have worked far better as a 2-4 issue miniseries. As is, I'll give it a grade of C+.Spider-man and Gen 13: I have to admit to knowing nothing coming into reading this other than that they were published by Wildstorm, an imprint of Image comics. I still don't know much. They're supposed to be a superhero team, although there overall dynamics seemed similar to MTV's The Real World. Beyond that, the comic doesn't do much. They face a villain whose in the middle of a child custody dispute which gets thrown in because but it's really hard to follow the plot. There are some very nice jokes and cute moments particularly when one of them quoted the theme to the 1960s Spider-man TV show. The art is second best in the book, so overall I'll give it a grade of C-.The last two comics are Gen X/Gen 13 Team X/Team 7 and I also have to confess ignorance of these three other teams. If you enjoyed these titles when they first published, you may get more out of these stories. However, this is where production value comes in and the fact that Marvel and DC really put no work into the presentation of this book, simply slamming the stories and covers in with no introduction compared to the first Crossover Classic that had detailed information...on stories featuring Spider-man and Superman. Also, the inclusion of these one off Wildstorm stories is weird and doesn't really fit. Someone looking for Wildstorm crossovers with Marvel is hardly going to want to read a retro 1960s Superman/Hulk story but they're jammed in anyway.What little I can get out of the stories: the Gen X and Gen 13 features an evil mad scientist plot luring our two teams of young superheroes to a beach. It's really lame. I'd give it a D-. The Team 7 and Team X story is a little bit more of an interesting black ops story with ill-defined objectives. Still, I'd give that one a D.It's problematic to have two large team meetings in a story with 40 pages. And what is perhaps the most damning thing in both stories, the teams are so similar it really is hard to keep straight whose on what team which doesn't speak for the originality of the teams.At any rate, there's one good story, one decent concept undone by page limitations and five other stories ranging from subpar to awful. Personally I'd recommend picking up a copy of Superman v. the Hulk as a standalone and skipping this trade.