Crossing over with other webcomics?

[masterpainter72]

Hi,I'm new here! I saw Sidekick Girl having a cameo in the webcomic Crossoverlord(in the Dasien wrestling sequence)and was wondering if you wanted to use other webcomic characters-better get approval from the creators of said characters and there's the open source character called Jenny Everywhere and in order to use her,you MUST include this statement:

"The character of Jenny Everywhere, the Shifter, is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving The Shifter, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

Hope that makes sense.

[Lore]

Oh wow. That crossover was from a while ago. Kinda forgot about it. We're aware of Jenny Everywhere and the permissions needed to use other creator's characters in our comics. As it stands, we have no plans for any crossovers at the moment and no other comic has approached us about it, but thanks you for the suggestion.

[davidj]

I remember in Crossoverkill at one point Hoodoo was suggesting that they go and recruit someone who was the product of a formalized training program like her rather than rookie semi-amateurs like Fusion and Energize. And I said, yeah. They should totally get Illumina. She's got a diploma and everything.

[masterpainter72]

Are Val and Mac the discriminating types? Imagine those two with Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. What would their reaction be to the fact that she's a he!?!?!?

[tower015]

I feel like Mac would be the type who wouldn't notice, and that Val would be the type of person who wouldn't care.

[coriolis]

I don't read a lot of superhero comics these days, but IMO the following have some potential for crossoverness:

Mega Maiden and the Chop Chop Princess has stopped updating.
Atomic Laundromat Probably more in the nature of mutual cameos.
Giant Girl Adventures
Hero Happy Hour has almost the right "sidekicks=second-class-citizens" vibe but they aren't quite as stringent about class separation as the Metro City 'verse. Sidekicks are also scarcer.
League of Super-redundant Heroes is too solidly a satire, but leave out the specifically parody characters (i.e. Flying-Fox Man) there would be a lot to work with between the hapless heroes (okay maybe tone down the haplessness, especially Lazer Pony's...) and not-so-villainous villains. Good Girl's situation is one of subtle horror, deserving of further examination.
Belated Addition: GrrlPower could be interesting; supers there are under quasi-military control, but still...

[masterpainter72]

Did Val's reality receive one of those silver spheres at the end of either Crossoverlord or CrossoverKill?

[davidj]

No, she wasn't part of the crew.

[masterpainter72]

I now hear of a third Crossover comic called Crossoverpower. Maybe Erika and Lore should jump on that bandwagon...?!?!?

[Erika]

Crossovers are something that we have essentially zero interest in. The only exception I can think of is if a comic we both really like and respect, whose creator we like and respect, wanted to do something, then we'd think about it. But Both Something Positive, and The Devil's Panties, the only comics I can think of off the top of my head that we would consider, are much more successful than we are, and don't do crossovers themselves (with a few exceptions.)

Crossovers take a HUGE amount of work to make work right. All the work you usually do to make sure that your stories are well-told, your art is well-rendered, and your characters are well-represented, has to double in order to include other people's characters, AND you have to communicate extensively with the other creator on top of that. The result in many cases is characters being poorly represented or genres that don't work together. (Slice of life comics can work because they're set in the real world, but comics like SG have their own settings, so you end up with either world-hopping, or hand-waving.)

Crossoverlord wasn't even technically a crossover, as far as SG was concerned, because there was no joint storyline between us and the other creator(s). Instead, it was a cameo. Cameos are a little easier to deal with, and easier to make work properly, since all you need is a person's permission and the attempt to portray them accurately. In our case, Val ended up in a few pages of some story or another, doing things we probably would not have ever had her do, and drawn with a large bust, in complete opposition to her real character. So you can see how well that works out. Speaking for myself (and I think Laura would agree here) we don't regret giving permission to the project, but if we had it to do over again, we would have declined. Either way, it was a compliment of the organizers to think of us, and for that we're appreciative.

I do think the idea of shared worlds where a variety of creators contribute is a neat one, though, even if it's not something we have any interest in doing ourselves.

If anyone is interested in examples of what I think are very successful crossovers, I would recommend the storylines between Something Positive and Queen of Wands (a comic that ended a buncha years ago.) It worked so well that when QoW ended, the main character ended up as a character in SP. There have also been successful crossover plots between SP and Girls with Slingshots in a couple of places.

[masterpainter72]

Here's a list of webcomics and maybe someone here will be familiar with them:

Mindmistress
Dasien
Fusion
Magellan
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki
Magical Girl Neil
Victory
Mechagical Girl Lisa A.N.T.(defunct)
Lightbringer
Lady Spectra and Sparky
The Green Avenger (site is down)
Grrl Power
Heroes Unite

[coriolis]

I can also think of Girls With Slingshots characters that became permanent parts of S*P, and vice versa, but Randy and Danielle hang out a lot in real life.

But of course, a prerequisite there is finding other sympatico artists, and hanging out with them.

There is another form of "shout-out" aside from cameo or crossover, which I guess could be called a "character cognate". This is where the genres of the strips involve don't quite match up exactly, so the character has to be reworked a little (but is still faithfully portrayed and clearly recognizable). Prime example of this would be what Phil Foglio did with The Whiteboard's "Doc" in last Monday's "Girl Genius". That genetically-engineered intelligent polar bear with dark pince-nez? A representation of Doc Nickel, the main character (and author avatar) of anthropomorphic-universe The Whiteboard. The Whiteboard has some fun representation of mad science in an otherwise realistic (as realistic as anthro can be...) frame, so I do commend it. But I don't think a SG crossover would work with either strip

Edit: Awwww, yeah. Got my third star with this post.