WI: THe Marvel-DC Deal Went Through

What kind of long-term consequences would have happened had the deal for Marvel to produce comics of DC properties gone through? DC's comics were hemmoraging money, with the main profits coming from the merchandise. Warner Brothers (who owned DC) approached Marvel to produce comics as a way to remove that millstone from their throat. Assuming that the rights don't revert to DC later, what would be the long term effects of it? How would the presence of characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern affect the Marvel Universe? I have no doubt that the venture could be successful. Marvel leveraged a successful comic out of a toy with minimal backstory with Rom: Spaceknight, so I don't think they need to worry about properties with existing fanbases like Superman or Batman. Plus think how cool it would be to have Batman rubbing shoulders with Iron Man.
 
What kind of long-term consequences would have happened had the deal for Marvel to produce comics of DC properties gone through? DC's comics were hemmoraging money, with the main profits coming from the merchandise. Warner Brothers (who owned DC) approached Marvel to produce comics as a way to remove that millstone from their throat. Assuming that the rights don't revert to DC later, what would be the long term effects of it? How would the presence of characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern affect the Marvel Universe? I have no doubt that the venture could be successful. Marvel leveraged a successful comic out of a toy with minimal backstory with Rom: Spaceknight, so I don't think they need to worry about properties with existing fanbases like Superman or Batman. Plus think how cool it would be to have Batman rubbing shoulders with Iron Man.

it popped up on another thread. from what I remember, the concensus was that the DC properties would have been wholly segregated, like star wars, or partly, like spiderman appearing in a single issue of transformers.

The problem is that the rights could always expire and any core marvel issue in which a DC character appeared could be reprinted after that only following negotiations with DC and any characters created for DC centric series could fond themselves off limit or require retconning.

better then to treat DC as an imprint.

on the other hand, you could end up with this:

spiderman_batman2_by_marcpasquin-d7rw0yo.jpg
 
What kind of long-term consequences would have happened had the deal for Marvel to produce comics of DC properties gone through?

Setting aside plausibility...

It'd probably save the Legion of Superheroes in the long-term. At worst it'd give Legion a chance to survive. That franchise never really recovered from "Crisis" removing Superboy from continuity, which sent something that was on par with the 1980s X-Men in terms of popularity to its grave.

No "Crisis" at all would also remove a precedent for later writers to copy; DC wouldn't intermittently 'fix' its own continuity. Although the Marvel imprint would likely possess a tighter functional continuity simply because there were so few titles in production. That'd be easier for collaboration and editorial oversight.
 
Setting aside plausibility...

It'd probably save the Legion of Superheroes in the long-term. At worst it'd give Legion a chance to survive. That franchise never really recovered from "Crisis" removing Superboy from continuity, which sent something that was on par with the 1980s X-Men in terms of popularity to its grave.

No "Crisis" at all would also remove a precedent for later writers to copy; DC wouldn't intermittently 'fix' its own continuity. Although the Marvel imprint would likely possess a tighter functional continuity simply because there were so few titles in production. That'd be easier for collaboration and editorial oversight.

I wonder to what level they would feel constrained by past continuity. DC might not want their character to be messed with too much since their value via merchandising depends on a certain consistency so I guess they might more or less ask the reader to assume most characters background would remain true unless directly contradicted.
 
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