If you could list your top three most unexpected comic book crossovers in recent memory, what would they be?

Godzilla versus Charles Barkley (Darkhorse 1993), Superman meets the Quik Bunny (DC 1987) or ‘Avengelyne II: The Godyssey #1’(Maximum Press 1996)…the one where Jesus and Zeus battle it out albeit through a dream sequence but yeah, it really happened.

Characters have crossed over from one comic universe to another before, but they usually fight, shake hands, band together to defeat a common enemy and then slip back into their home domain with no real excuse as to how they got their in the first place. Hell, DC and Marvel even mashed their characters together in the mess that was the Amalgam Universe (which gives me chills just thinking about it).

Marvel comics announced this past Thursday that writer Neil Gaiman is returning to the house of ideas this summer, and he’s bringing the red-haired heaven sent ‘Spawn’ killer Angela with him.

Gaiman’s angel will return first in the pages of “Age of Ultron” number ten in June. Then she’ll appear again in Marvel Entertainment’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” number five in July that Gaiman will co-write with Brian Michael Bendis.

Now, The choice of Angela is not exactly the thing that will blow the doors of the hinges. It is pretty fresh to see a character from the indie ranks join the Marvel Universe, but why Angela? Also Why Guardians of the Galaxy? She is an Angel that hunts HellSPAWNS! Why is she in space? Who knows what Marvel and Gaiman have up their sleeve, but most likely the Angela we are going to be seeing will be A LOT different than what we are used too, or maybe not.

Angela became a hotly contested IP, as Gaiman and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane fought in a decade-spanning legal battle over who owned the copyright to Angela (as well as other character co-created during Gaiman’s time on the book), which ended in 2012.

I can’t help to think that is a giant double bird in the face of Todd McFarlane. McFarlane has had his share of ownership battles over characters with the Miracleman debacle undoubtedly being the loudest. It was Neil Gaiman going head to head with Todd over those rights, and it is Gaiman who now takes Angela into a new universe with plans of making her feel right at home amid the chaos of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’.

After hearing the news, McFarlane was quoted as saying “Good stories that entertain are something that we all should applaud on any level, Whether we’re doing it directly at Image Comics, or at our competition, it helps keep our industry that we love alive. I will sit back and be as interested as anyone else.”

For those of us that remember Angela more for her scantily clad action figures than her actual comic appearances, the mystery of the Joe Quesada re-design is more palpable than what the character will actually be doing in the Marvel Comics. After all, Angela was killed during the battle with Malebolgia in Spawn #100 (spoiler alert.)

Also, with all this talk about indie characters joining the mighty Marvel Universe, I cannot help but to think about Spawn #10, where it’s presented that company-owned characters are like slaves. Interesting indeed.

-Dagobot
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