Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Rob Zervations. I am Rob Leifeld. I have drawn and illustrated and written comic books for the last 34 years.

Youngblood, X-Force, Deadpool, Cable, Domino, Captain America, the Avengers, Hawk and Dove.

I love comic books.

I love making comic books, talking comic books, participating in comic books, consuming comic books.

And that is what Rob'servations is all about.

This week, we are going to bite into a juicy topic that there is no way we will encompass everything that we need to do in this installment because this is a big, multi-part subject matter that we can cover in bite-sized pieces along the way, and that is the subject of crossovers, crossovers.

Marvel, DC, both in the 80s, entered this bigger world of

multi-intercompany crossovers, and they never looked back.

Once these left the barn, once these horse were often racing, there was no putting them back.

And we have been galloping on them as an industry ever since.

They changed everything about comic books, comic book marketing.

They were an important part of giving publishers control,

control of the product that they were putting out and in a way that they had not maybe

previously experienced. And because these were so successful, this became a way that they could

revisit these crossover concepts and continue to market and give you events that you would need

to participate in. They'd throw their marketing budgets and advertising dollars at you in an effort to convince you that this was

something that you had to be a part of no matter who the creative team, no matter who the

creators. See, we are coming out of a period in the late, from the late 70s, mid-70s into the 80s,

as I have covered here, time and again, where creators were at the helm. You've heard these names.

I'm going to say them again. Jim Starlin, Frank Miller, George Perez, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Howard Shakin.

These were the seminal creators, Marv Wolfman. These guys were the movers and shakers. They were giving you

the comics that you loved.

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