A post from my Marvel blog of the 00s, part of a series talking about good individual issues on which I had worked.
April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
We should have an update on our “click-through” experiment hopefully by Friday. So if you haven’t yet clicked the link in the entry two posts back–well, what are you waiting for?
Today’s Good Comic I Had A Hand In is the first issue of the JLA/AVENGERS crossover. Say what you will about this crossover as a whole (and for myself, I feel like it goes off the rails in issue #3, but that’s a whole column in and of itself), but this first issue, I felt, hit the mark precisely, creating a strong build throughout the issue, setting up the larger premise of the series–a comparison between the DC heroes/universe and the Marvel heroes/universe. And it was damn pretty.
Getting this project up and off the ground was no easy thing, as there were three companies involved, rather than just two, since George Perez had signed on with CrossGen at the time. Fortunately, George had left a loophole in his CrossGen contract that allowed him to do a JLA/AVENGERS project should one be offered to him by a certain date. It took everybody right up to the last second to get the necessary paperwork to George.
The core of the team–myself, DC editor Dan Raspler, Kurt Busiek and George– met in Florida, after the Orlando Megacon at which we announced the project, to work out the broad strokes of the story. We got a lot of good stuff out of that meeting. And when a blizzard warning closed Manhattan airports, Kurt and I rented a car and drove for 26 hours straight to get back to New York. I’d love to be able to say that we came up with all of the genius bits on that trip, but frankly we were both so tired and punchy for most of the trip that it’s a wonder we didn’t kill somebody.
Page 21 became known around the office as “Tom’s Page”, as not only did I insist that the Flash be the first hero to traverse the dimensional barriers between universes (both as a tip-of-the-hat to the fact that he was the first character historically to travel between worlds, and because he’s my favorite super hero), but I also purchased the original artwork.
More later.
Tom B
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The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Since I don’t remember an click-through contest and can’t find it anyway, I’ll comment on how much I liked this story and how tired I was of ultra-cosmic fussbudgets who had nothing better to do than mess with the universe’s reality.
Worlds will live! Worlds will die! Each and every week in every comic ever!
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That’s twice I’ve read you saying issue three went off the rails but not why. I’ll have to reread it yet again but I can’t remember being disappointed at all at any point in this crossover and it’s a rare mini or story arc I can say that about! Still, I’d love to hear your reasoning since you get so coolly professorial when you get into stuff like that.
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This is still my favorite mini series. All my favorites in four issues… just add the Byrne era X-Men in there with the New Teen Titans and my brain would have melted.
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