Thursday, April 23, 2009

Crossovers I Want To See: Wonder Woman & Incredible Herc

Welcome to a brand new installment called Crossovers I Want To See. It's your basic pie-in-the-sky geeky mash-ups. In this awesome alternate reality, I'd get to see a Gail Simone, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente-written crossover between Wonder Woman and Hercules drawn by the magnificent current Wonder Woman artist Aaron Lopresti and sometimes Herc cover artist Art Adams (I love me some Art art).

Back when I was in third grade Mrs. Getz (or maybe it was fourth grade with Ms. Doodie) we started learning about Greek and Roman myths. The one that I remember the most was Sisyphus and his constant boulder rolling. That lead to me checking out a number of books from the library and reading through them. I also got into comics within a few years of that and started reading Wonder Woman when Artemis took over the mantle and Diana started running around in bicycle shorts and cut her hair.

After that John Byrne took over and...things happened. Anyway, as most of you know, Wonder Woman's had an iffy-at-best run as DC's main superchick since then, but I think Gail Simone's run on the book has been fantastic and you really need to crack open an issue or trade to see how amazing Lopresti's artwork looks. Simone's made it a point to explore Wonder Woman's place in the pantheon of all gods, not just her specific group and it's been a lot of fun seeing her as the true warrior she really is.

Pak and Van Lente have been doing the same with Incredible Hercules, the book that took over after Pak's awesome Planet Hulk story lead into World War Hulk. While Jeph Loeb does...things to the Hulk in his Hulk book, Herc and Hulk supporter Amadeus Cho took the spotlight in the former Incredible Hulk book. I missed most of the Secret Invasion tie-in, but I think I've read the rest of the issues and they're a lot of fun, even balancing the mythology stuff with the post Secret Invasion Marvel status quo. It's a fun book you should definitely check out.

Anyway, after reading this week's issue of Herc, it hit me that these two books have been thematically similar for a while now and it would make perfect sense as a crossover. I know there hasn't been a Marvel/DC crossover in a while, but this would be a great, well-executed and probably understated tale that could feature our two heroes taking on a bevy of gods and goddesses from across the two universes. But hey, I'll leave the creative aspects up to the creators. Maybe Art or Aaron could draw me in the background of a panel hanging out with Amadeus! Just drop me a line and I'll sign a waiver.

5 comments:

  1. Did you read "Love & War" yet? It features a kinda-Wonder Woman as the villain Herc is up against.

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  2. I haven't yet, but I really want to. I read the first trade, a few miscellaneous issues and then got back on the monthly with the origin issue and the latest arc.

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  3. "Love & War" is great stuff. Awesome action and some funny digs (though they didn't take my suggestion to run "Comics' Best-Selling Amazons" across the cover in the later chapters). The most I've ever enjoyed Clayton Henry's art as well.

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  4. Has the trade come out yet? I haven't seen it around here, but that doesn't really mean much.

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