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Crossovers in comics books are cool. I remember reading Secret Wars from Marvel as a kid and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I mean, here in one book were all of my favorite heroes (Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Fantastic Four) and their villains (Dr. Doom, Kang, Lizard, etc.). At the time, I didn't know that it was the first major crossover series ever (preceded only by the 3-issue Contest of Champions series). Somehow, I missed out on Crisis on Infinite Earths from DC, but I did pick up the revamped Superman that resulted from that series.

Anyway, for all the Comic Book Crossover information you can stand, I would recommend the The Unofficial Comics Crossover Index. It's filled with most of the major, cross-title events from the 1980's onward and only lacks the major events from the past few years. Best of all, each crossover is reviewed and lists all the related issues. While, much of the info may be on Wikipedia, it's nice to have all of it in one place and in one format.

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Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew Return

The New York Comic-com was this past weekend and I couldn’t be happier about one surprise announcement made by DC Comics.

Jann Jones announced a new project: Captain Carrot and the Final Ark, a three-issue limited series. "It's a very important year for Captain Carrot," Jones said. The project will be written by Bill Morrison and drawn by Scott Shaw! The villain of the story will be Ra's al-Pica.

I remember reading Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew as a kid and thinking it was just the coolest idea. An entire world that mirrored the DC universe, but populated by talking animals. It's very similar to one of DC's hallmark ideas, the multi-verse. The idea that any number of alternate universes exists, some with minor variations and some with major ones. I've always loved alternate time-line stories and DC has always used them creatively.

Marvel Comics does them as well, but they bounce back and forth with no explanation or connection. They've never attempted to link or explain them. They just use the "alternate time-line/universe" character when it's convenient.

I could go on all day about Marvel vs. DC and maybe one day I will, but for now, I can't wait for some new Captain Carrot.

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If you look at my comics list on the site, you’ll see that the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and DC Who’s Who are some of my favorites. There’s something about having all of that information in one place. The bad thing about them is they become outdated even before they are published.

You can find entries on popular heroes on Wikipedia, but noting exhaustive. I once had a friend that asked me about setting up and online version of those old books, but we never got around to it. As I started messing with some Wiki software, I thought that would be a great project for it and it looks like someone else did too.

Check out the DC Database Project and the Marvel Database project. Browse all the cool entries or contribute if you have the knowledge. Definitely going into my bookmarks.