It's a COMICS EVENT!!!! with some individual stories I like, but overall it's a waste of trees. There are so many interesting comics if you go looking for them that it's easy to forget how much sludge gets churned out. Especially by the Big Two. This is a pair of crossover anthologies, one book published by DC and the other by Marvel. In other words, it's fanwank aimed at readers who'll be excited to see the first official DC-Marvel crossover in 22 years. Marvel's September 2025 issue is okay. I liked or didn't mind 5 of its 7 stories and only hated one. DC's November 2025 issue, though, has nothing worth reading until two-thirds of the way through.

There are celebrity authors (Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, Kevin Smith, Frank Miller), none of whom do anything worth a damn. I probably like Miller's self-parody the best out of their stories, even though it's a dumb-as-hell gag strip that'll make you reel at the idea of someone getting paid for it. It's a three-pager. It's inventing new levels of "stupid" and is basically just Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman and Old Man Logan trash-talking each other in art so stylised that you could mistake it for Mick McMahon. At least I'll remember it, though. In fairness, though, Scott Snyder chose interesting team-ups.

Meanwhile, the shorter back-up strips will heighten your appreciation of the likes of 2000 AD and DWM. At their best, quirkier SF magazines like that understand the concept of an 8-page comic strip. Fanwank superhero team-ups are less likely to be worth a damn, although you'll find one or two decent ones here.

Stories I liked include:

It's funnier than Morrison's equivalent effort in DC's book with the same characters. Deadpool's banter to annoy Batman has some decent gags, which are Batman-specific instead of just relying on the tried-and-tested formula of "wacky Deadpool plus humourless straight man". I also liked the use of the Joker.

Reinvents the history of these characters from World War Two onwards, playing with the naming coincidence of Steve Rogers and Steve Trevor. There's nothing particularly interesting in the plotting, but even so it manages to create something new and iconic in 8 pages.

Adorable and cartoonish. Two cute animals play ball together. Welcome to the super-pets!

It's a gag strip, with lots of bad behaviour. I laughed.

This one has a character point and something to say. Its superheroes inherited their status from more famous predecessors and will always be left standing in their shadows. It's basically a conversation, but I quite liked that conversation.

Jolly cartoon nonsense, with a lovable idiot who never shuts up (Harley) and a long-suffering mute who doesn't do much and is less interesting than you'd think (the Hulk). It might be impossible not to love Harley.

Ultimately pointless, with little to say beyond the thuddingly obvious, i.e. "my adventures are darker than yours"... but it's fun to see Constantine vs. Strange (and indeed Swamp Thing vs. Ghost Rider). The Eye of Agamotto is also a nifty thing to throw at everyone's favourite trenchcoat-wearing anti-hero. Also, Constantine and Strange are drawn with different art styles even on the same page.

The rest... naaah. Grant Morrison wastes 27 pages. Various short pieces fail to make the format work. Worst of all is Logo, one of these new Amalgam abominations that are meant to be a combination of existing Marvel and DC characters. Well, maybe they work elsewhere, but yow. Logo's an Amalgam of Lobo and Wolverine. I was screaming and clawing at my eyes. Whoever dreamed that up didn't know and/or care that these two characters are a catastrophic tonal mismatch and the combination would be like roast beef flavour ice cream.

If you enjoyed these crossovers, great. I'm happy for you. I'm sure lots of fans did. There are definitely stories I liked here and I enjoyed the sense of freedom. They're not afraid to get wacky... but it's still essentially fanwank.