AVENGERS: THE CROSSING - How Marvel BROKE Iron Man
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- In this video, Owen explains the history of Avengers: The Crossing, how Marvel attempted to turn Iron Man into a villain and replace him with a teenage Tony Stark, and how this story almost broke the iconic superhero forever.
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Special thanks to Scott Niswander of @NerdSyncProductions for providing additional voiceover!
▶ Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
2:06 - Cracks in the Armor
5:49 - Crossing The Line
11:35 - A Stark Contrast
16:02 - Outro
▶ Music Used:
Music from freetousemusic.com
‘Daily’ by ‘Lukrembo’
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/ sugiwa-memories
#TheCrossing #Avengers #Marvel - Zábava
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Thanks for all the LOVE,HARD WORK and attention to detail you put into your vidoes/channel Owen.Keep'em coming.
Shocking deaths? Time travel? Time displaced versions of characters? Deaths that don't stick? Out of character betrayals? Ya thats definitely a comic book story.
The crossing is for iron man what the 90’s clone saga is for Spider-Man. From what you described, it sounds like all the similar beats from Clone Saga were repeated here:
1. Have the hero suffer a mental breakdown and his actions become darker; thus justifying in the minds of editorial, the reason to replace him.
2.Reveal a twist that calls into question everything that we’ve known about the hero for decades.
3. Introduce a fresh, younger and less burdened version of the established hero
4. Have the established hero act out of character by violently attacking their loved ones (I.E. Peter punching Mary Jane while she was pregnant), so that they look horrible in the eyes of the readers; thus, putting the replacement hero on a pedestal by default.
5. Established hero and Replacement hero fight each other, ending in a stalemate.
6.Established hero “Leaves “ the book
7. Replacement Hero attempts to win over the established hero’s fanbase, but ultimately, fails( or at least, never matches the same level of popularity, in Ben Reilly’s case)
8. Editorial sees the writing on the wall, and kills off the replacement hero. Then, they quickly return the established hero back to where they were before the storyline was written.
9. Said storyline is hand waved away, with none of its dangling plot threads ever being addressed again. Readers are left questioning continuity.
10. Fans ask themselves “ what the hell was the point of all this?”
*sigh* Oh, late 90’s comics 🤦♂️
Great video, as usual, Owen.
Except the original plan for the Clone Saga seems much more promising: letting Aunt May die, Peter & MJ becoming parents & pass the mantle down to Ben.
@@94evangelion that’s true. However, I’m talking about execution, not potential. That’s what I meant when I said that the crossing mirrored the clone saga. Potential means nothing if everyone ends up loathing the storyline
@@Dhampir101980 to be fair on the Clone Saga, it had have a strong start & the initial issues were popular. It's just everything else afterwards with the marketing department & various editors interfering is why the saga became this reviled mess.
The crossing seems like so pure character assassination on Tony Stark.
@@94evangelion I know. I read some of the clone saga when it came out, plus Owen, Matt Draper and Comic tropes have all done videos on the storyline. I’m not hating on the clone saga, even if, personally, I feel that it’s ultimately unnecessary in the greater Spider-Man methodology, outside of simply being were Ben Reilly was created. It had interesting ideas, but the storyline and the execution collapsed under its own weight. The crossing was clearly meant to be the same concept for Tony, but was executed far worse. If teenage Tony had been fondly embraced in the same way that Ben was, then maybe the crossing wouldn’t be as reviled today. I think another strike against the crossing is right after it ended, a huge character relaunch happened with Heroes Reborn, thus making the event feel even more pointless. It be like if after the clone saga concluded, then the very next year One More day/ brand new day came out.
"The crossing is for iron man what the 90’s clone saga is for Spider-Man"
*Proceeds to say he hasn't read it*
If we are getting an evil Iron Man (played by Tom Cruise) in Multiverse of Madness, I would love to see him ally with Kang as a tribute to this story.
then he fights a de-aged RDJ teen Tony?
@@smhfirebruh5630 HA OMG MAYBE
Marvel or Disney can easily now pick characters to fans from The multiverse to Make The checklist
@@trainerredcharizard7982 true!
@@ntcnetwork9934 for every Focus group multiverse IS The easy wsy to do it
Yep, the crossing, and heroes reborn was the "new 52" of their time. Best thing to come out of this was heroes return.
Excessive.
It’s almost feels like a right of passage at this point where whether it’s DC or Marvel an iconic hero needs to get royally screwed over in some form or another
Nowadays? Marvel and DC will just pull stunts like The Crossing to not have to pay their former creators overdue royalties including Captain America.
I'm really more inclined to believe this. Because the character changes, deaths, retcons, replacements...they've been happening like CLOCKWORK since the 90's.
And years later came Avengers Disassembled with Wanda going full tsu-tsu, and most recently Secret Empire which it almost did to Cap what the Crossing did to Stark.
They never learn I guess.
And before Quicksilver 86-88. XD
They didnt almost break him. They broke him so bad they killed him off and replaced him with a time traveling tennage version of himself. Sucked so bad
Also awesome video you should cover busiek and Perez avengers run that was a classic especially the Kang dynasty storyline
Great suggestion!
On the one hand, I have to give Marvel credit for taking such a big swing with this storyline. But on the other hand, I have to wonder how they possibly could have thought that this kind of retcon/status quo change was ever going to land with fans.
I mean DC did just do a huge ass retcon that destroyed their multiverse and more or less rewrote their canon in Crisis on Infinite Earths and since DC kept that canon for over 30 years, I can see why Marvel was willing to try.
The fans at that time where only buying silver age stuff, so this move even tho it doesn’t fit with the vibe of the avengers was their way to give one of their titles a silver-age twist without changing the status-quo.
Risks like this are not worth giving credit for. This and what they did with Spider-man during the clone saga were both dead on arrival bad ideas and bad execusion.
I read the first issue of the Crossing... and promptly got angry & stopped reading Iron Man and the Avengers because it was so terrible. (Cancelling Force Works didn't help either.) I didnt know Kaminski left the books after, he was a great writer and I don't blame him for leaving the books.
Force works got a bit too heavy on the edge for its own sake at points, but I did quite like some of the stories and villians for it. I liked Slorenia and Black Brigade and such. Speaking of Force Works and that whoel Iron man War Machine type deal, do you happen to know if there's a good place to read the last chapter of the Brothers in Arms Flipbook online?
I was really young when all this came out. I remember it being advertised on the pages of the DC vs Marvel crossover comic my dad used to read me as I sat on his lap. It was the first time I ever saw Iron Man. I remember his quote vividly: "Am I destined to betray my friends just as I was destined to wear this armor?"
This storyline is the kind of thing that happens when writers and artists get themselves under the impression that they can do no wrong. When superstar names are the only thing that matters and issues sell by the thousands no matter what their contents you end up with storylines trying to shock and surprise without any pathos, respect or substance.
...it wouldn't be hard to argue that we're still living with the aftereffects of that, even now.
The 90s had so many wacky stories that it’s hard to remember them all. I can’t believe they did Iron man like that 🧐. Great video as usual Owen!
This sounds like a Brian Michael Bendis story
How can the young Tony be killed but that not cause some sort of serious time paradox? Wouldn't that basically wipe out ALL of the previous Iron Man adventures from the timeline - meaning the traitor Iron Man never existed in the Marvel universe until the one from the Heroes Reborn universe crossed over? They shouldn't have tried to mess with time travel as well as making Tony a traitor.
It would have been better if Tony was just revealed to be a traitor, sacrificed himself to stop Kang, and then months later (after people had a chance to miss the original Tony) they go back in time and somehow make a copy of Tony and bring him back to modern day.
If one of your long-time creators would rather quit his job than work on your dumb story, maybe reconsider what you are doing!
yeah, you do not seem to get what happened...Marvel was just trying to make the pain, the damage, stop. They didn't care about explanations much, and neither did readers(like me). Running away from/pretending the steaming dogshit they were putting out NEVER HAPPENED was the best thing to do
Oh my innocent child… you expect comics to make sense? You haven’t been reading for very long have you? Have you just been reading wiki pages after watching MCU movies or something? Heh. Those wiki pages aren’t true. They weren’t that clean and orderly whatsoever. Hell, sometimes those wiki pages are flat out wrong.
...oh no I've gone cross-eyed.
@@Akkbar21 🤦🤦🤦
@@GenghisDon1970 Magneto clone saga equal. Neither did readers?🤔
It's just now hitting me that Marvel repeated this Iron Man story nearly beat-for-beat when Scott was overtaken by the Phoenix Force and had to face off with his younger self.
Edit: Actually, I'm starting to realize Marvel had recycled a lot of 90s concepts in the 2010s.
Why do dc and marvel keep trying to turn there heroes into villain's.
For attention
@@opposite_hedgehog_753 figures why am I not surprised
1:35 gotta love how the artist gave the Iron Man on the left muscles even though he is, you know, made out of iron (or adamantium or whatever)
A lot of historic armour was shaped like muscle so it kind of fits. It's really weird when they add veins however.
Great work Owen. There's so much to say about the Crossing,as a Ferrophile myself I really hated this "Event" and Thank God for Busiek,he "Fixed" what it shouldn't be fixed from the beginning.
I would just like to say, Black Knight is absolutely an A-List character, Marvel just doesn't know it/treat him like one yet.
Amazing video. I'm always amazed when I learn more about these 90s stories and find out that some aspects are even worse than what I expected.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I wonder were the avengers would be today without Kurt Buseik
I liked the Force Works and War Machine tie-ins to The Crossing pretty well.
The Pocket Universe Tony that became the Modern Tony (Well sorta given the whole dying again and stint as AI tony) was sorta a combination of Teen Tony and the original Tony's soul.
Every character, or idea really, is one story away from being "broken" or "revived" or "saved" or "destroyed". That's the best thing about literature, whether it's prose or pictures that tell the story. Nothing is forever.
10:19 Would that've caused a time paradox with the Tony Stark that was injured while captured by the Viet Cong?
Fan Fic: Heroes Reborn Iron Man is the grown up version of Teen Tony. Teen Tony was returned to the same point in time he was displaced from and grew into original Tony.
Grunewald is a legend COVER HIS CAP RUN AS WELL AS NEW UNIVERSE AND QUAZAR AND SQUADRON SUPREME
Oh yes, the retcon so bad, Marvel got rid of it about a year later.
Saying that teen Tony was killed off isn't accurate. He was literally aged up to adulthood to be the Tony Stark of the pocket universe created by Franklin Richards. Everyone that came back from the pocket universe was originally sent from 616.
At the time i thought so.🤔
Nice video!! I was reading X-Men and hardly thinking about Avengers back then.
my boy Owen always delivering the goods
When a writer gets one of these great ideas-in-premise, they should ask themselves: Is there room for flubbing this or that element in the grand scheme of things, or does it have to in essence be perfectly done in order to work at all? Because if one or more missteps can send it crashing - if you need it to be done quickly or confuse readers or lose impact - then it never really was a great idea. Great ideas can survive some mishandling. 'Neat' ideas cannot.
That art is horrendous. Great video Owen!
Thanks!
The artwork in that Iron Man comic was HORRIBLE. LOL.The early Mike Deodato was decent,man,he's improved his craft sooo MUCH !!!That George Perez and Busiek run in the Avengers was AWESOME !!! Perez at his artistic best and Busiek kicking up a storm on the writing front. I believe Vey was on inking duty. Very sad news about GEORGE PEREZ tho,him not having very much time to live,TRULY SAD.
1:11 A similar "gimmick" Marvel would try again with Captain America during Secret Empire.
Wait, how, I mean, they bring teen Tony, old Tony hurted his younger self and that had repercusions on himself where he ended up with a protective chest plate... Then how does it not affect the fact teen Tony is killed then old Tony is back, like wouldn't that just deleted him from history, or is this MCU meme thing where time travel is not like in back to the future, like WTH?!
To fight Tony, they did a time heist to grab young Tony at the point that his parents were killed by 'someone' from the future. Young Tony had the biometrics to access the Stark arsenal in Force Works, allegedly to even the odds against Kang. (Just like Beast's mistake with time-traveling X-men), there was no expectation to return young Tony to the timeline he had been grabbed from.
When Tony had his moment of ';redemption' and interposed to save young Tony, he had the technology from his advanced suit used to stabilize young Tony. Young Tony was forced to wear the chestplate as classic Tony had done, due to heart damage.The fact that young Tony had the same genetics/biometrics meant that he could continue living the life of a Stark while the older Stark's existence was not deleted from the 616 history until Franklin Richards returned the Heroes Reborn and scrubbed reality.
Intrestingly the orginal iron man might still be dead. As teen tony was the one in the onslaught and was returned after heroes reborn.
Yes. Original Tony dead.😳
Things are bad when a company has to do something drastic to an iconic character
the crossing served as such a low point for the book, that the only thing future writers could do was improve the book (thanks Kurt)
This whole "The Crossing" crossover reeks of 90s Marvel comics trying to be edgy and cool
I´m here just to shine a light over Tom Tenney, the bizarre artist of Force Works 1-3. Just google him, you will love him!
Great stuff!
Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
The artwork of this era sure was…something. 🤢
Great video as always Owen! Super informative.
It is pretty awesome.
I know, right? Each time I look at 90s comic art, especially from Marvel and DC, most of the times I have the same impression. It just feels... ugly; unappealing at best. I guess there is a reason why the 90s were the dark age for comic books (aside of the horrible writing, of course...)
Thanks for watching!
Honestly, Kang having a sleeper agent within the Avengers is a compelling idea. The execution was awful, but the overall idea had promise. Does anyone have any ideas on what they could've done with this?
So if a teenage Tony Stark was brought to the future, and was later killed, wouldn't that screw up the timeline?
Also, anyone else think Kang is an annoying villain?
It's funny how the one almost-positive part of The Crossing, "Kang's attempts at mind control were what unsettled Hank Pym enough to hit Janet," was thrown out in another miniseries that was trying to "Fix" The Crossing.
OMG I can't believe i forgot about this horrible POS story. I read it years ago and i remember it pissing me off but I haven't thought about it since. Usually when a comic makes me this mad it sticks with me Great video
Onslaught is more the ideas Magneto put in Xavier's head, his own guilt, and the extra powers of Nate Gray X-Man. (And trying to absorb Franklin Richards entirely)
The mid-late 90s were such a rough time for Marvel man
Civil War, Ultimate Iron-man and many other broke Iron-man. But this? Interesting premise. Like Hydra Captain America.
Yes.🤦
Im not gonna lie, a story about iron man secretly being bad and having his teenage self defeat him and replace him sounds extremely dope if done right. Also wasn't this kinda shown in an avengers show? Teen tony at least?
Loved the videos as always. You should cover Jonathan Hickmans Fantastic Four that would be awesome.
Great suggestion!
I remember teenage tony I had an issue of iron man with him as the lead he was fighting blizzard it was decent and knowing what we know now about this and heroes reborn afterwards marvel was trying to keep up with image and I didn't like it I love Grunewald but this was one of the weakest runs if his career
4:16 Honestly Group Editors was such a fantastic idea
Ah 1994-1999 the wilderness years. Even volume 3 of the Avengers and Iron Man falling flat with great art and lacklustre stories.
Avengers vol. 3 is so great.
Huh..And i thought that "secret Empire" was The First Big retcon/making a hero into a Villlain that annoyted fans
This happened to me one time
I remember, Teen Matt was a real ass.
Ngl i kinda like an evil ironman brainwashed by kang. It makes sense to me but I agree the way how it was done probably was wrong. Thats the problem with comics/manga/etc. there is no lasting consequences.
I’ve never read The Crossing, but I remember it being talked about. From what I’ve read about it, and from what you’ve covered in this video, I have to say I kind of like The Crossing. Apart from the Teenage Tony thing. And what I like most is that it wasn’t a saga that droned on for years.
It doesn't matter if the story is trash and they kept teen tony around and the comics weren't even that great until the very early 2000s
Busiek's run not good?🤔
Nice to see the nod to this storyline Hickman has done in the nUltimate Universe.
In your next video can you please talk about The Superior Iron man it will be amazing to know it from you.......
Could you talk about the cancelled Hulk origin story of Barry-Windsor Smith (the story that would eventually become Monsters)?
Can you do a video about the exiles?
Is Superior Iron Man a successful story about Tony breaking bad though? I mean it's kinda got stuck with the stink of AXIS on it where Tony's turning evil was "botch magic by Doom & Wanda that made heroes evil & Villains good" with Tony just magicing up a force-field to keep him evil.....& Then Secret Wars happen, Bendis took over the book afterwards where we just never mention it again.
Hey, Scott!
Mike Deodato wanted to be Jim Lee soooo badly during this era lmao
Great work shedding some light on this travesty! Iron Man is easily my favorite Marvel hero bar none so when I first learned about this story, it both broke me and baffled me to no end. How could they do this? How could someone think this was a good idea!? What?? I don’t even… Luckily it doesn’t hang around for long and good guy Kurt Busiek would come along to repair the damage. At least until Civil War, but that’s for another time! (My poor Shell-Head… 💔He just can’t catch a break can he 😭)
Eh. Honestly the idea wasn't that bad and for a while the events told seem okay, if it was better handled it could become a classic
CW...🤦
If you look at it in hindsight 90s era DC and marvel where trying to compete with image and it work for both good and bad.
Oh man, I have those young Iron Man issues. That fight in the arctic was the truth.
Nice
A very strange idea, but thankfully it didn't last for long.
Sooo many head socks. Gotta love the 90s
Hi! I started to read Iron man since the crossing and I liked it a lot, unfortunately I stopped few monthes later. Anyway, you are saying that Kang started to manupulate Tony since the first meeting? interesting...I didn't notice this point
the crossing was so bad it sent me fleeing Avengers, Iron man, etc, for some time. I'd dispute your take on Avengers prior: I'd say they had some real high points & were a good book...all the better for having "secondary" characters often in the fore, and thus being able to actually characterize & affect them, rather than Cap, Thor, Iron man, who generally were controlled by their own books. Marvel was really floundering by the crossing & for some time after it
Interesting story but confusing as hell with the different books you have to read to get the whole picture I've been pausing this video at times just so I can write down the issue numbers required just to get through this
And at 8:58 what issue is that.
This needs a trade or an omnibus just so it collects the whole run and has all the issues in one volume I mean after all heroes reborn got collected in trades.
Force Works Vol.1 #19 I think.
"Almost" luckily he would most definitely be saved and is one of the most recognisable figures of the past hundred years!
It won't happen but I can dream imagine if Neill Blomkamp made a Iron Man movie in the style of district 9 and Elysium
First off Kaminski was absolutely right, and his run had been fantastic, the book quality fell off a cliff within 2 issues of his departure.
Second off using Iron Man as the turncoat is always a bad idea, the problem with Tony as a villian in my opinion is he's too close to Doom at that point, same ego and tech, different in that he's sarcastic instead of pretensious. Back then as we've seen recently, Cap would have been a better choice (see Hydra Cap).
Yeah I remember wanting to like marvel was not as into it. And I was an image during this time.
Still despite the lack of a listers on the avenger still had a power house on some members. Yet the stories were lack luster.
Terry Kavanagh evil mind behind "The clone saga" and "The crossing", absurde horror story of Avengers.😳😳😳
The evil Mantis 😱… one of its split parts?🤔
Millar reprise Tony badass in “Civil war”!😳
so why did this fail and Phoenix succeeded?
It doesn't sound unlike Disassembled.
Was Masque just Madame Masque with a temporarily updated name or did they introduce a new character?
Original idea Madame Masque. Busiek's retcon new character.
14:31: "they were even done well in other books". No. No they weren't. To quote Linkara "there has never been an instance of a hero breaking bad that people liked." Hal Jordan. Cassandra Cain. Cyclops. Mary Marvel. Tony Stark. None of these stories were good and served to completely trash their characters. I love your videos, Owen, but on this point I must strongly disagree.
Which video is this quote from?
The Armageddon 2001 review I believe.
I hope marvel makes a reboot Iron Man movie in the future id love to see a different version of Tony Stark Iron Man in the multiverse
Thank God I've never read this story
And Iron Man is still dead. Franklin Richards cannot bring him back from the dead.
Well most of all it would have been better if the crossing event didn't include a younger tony stark battling out his older self and have stark be a brainwash puppet of kang the conqueror instead of it someone else take his place instead of tony stark being a secret villain and have his younger self be plucked from his timeline to fight and replaced him once in the main continuety instead.
I've been meaning to read the teen Tony issues for a while now. Primarily because of the Jimmy Cheung art. I did recently read a few 'Marvel heroes' stuff from around that period and enjoyed them. Ellis & Deodato on Thor was good (esp #491 - great read) as was Waid on Captain America.
I exiled my self to another dimension in the 90s My comic buying focussed on comics such as Neat Stuff, American Splendor and Hate
Excessive.
Gotta give them credit for taking a founder member of the avengers and turning him into a murdering pawn of kang🤷🏼♂️
I love weird stuff like this.
Owen, how do you recommend gaining an audience? Sorry this is a random question, but it seems like you’re a mid sized CZcamsr who still answers fans questions, so I was just wondering. I have 1K subs but barely ever get any views, for some reason lol
Remember when they B,C minus listers? Ahh,good times.
90's Marvel was wild. Good ideas. Poor executions.
Great video, I love stories like this. I don't know why comic book fans get so bent out of shape at ridiculous shake-ups like this. This type of crap is what makes comic books fun. 20 years later people are still hopping mad about the Mary Jane/Peter Parker one more day thing.
The level of immaturity it takes to still be crying about that 20 years later makes me embarrassed to be a comic book fan.
I also love the art in this series, for the most part. Overblown and ridiculous wanna be Image artwork is a beautiful thing.
Because "One more day" it destroys. And "One Moment in Time" is non-sense.
Trinston was here..
Iron Man with nose is the OP-est of them all.