When a comic slaps a big, visible "
Crisis Crossover" logo on the cover, but has only a token
Shout Out to the
Big Event that only peripherally affects the plot of the issue in question, that's a
Red Skies Crossover.
The name's taken from the original Crisis Crossover,
Crisis On Infinite Earths. Almost every comic in
the DCU was involved, but in many cases, the "involvement" was just characters looking up and wondering why the skies were red.
Since then, most Crisis Crossovers have had at least a few. For example, in
Infinite Crisis, a squad of blue cyborgs would rampage through a few panels and then fly off, leaving the characters (and the reader) wondering what the heck that was before going on with the story.
This, generally, is good for the book it appears in, getting it the extra readers from the crossover without having to derail its storyline because of it, but bad for the crossover overall, through dilution of the brand.
See also
Wolverine Publicity.
Examples:
- In the original Inferno crossover, one of the first that Marvel Comics did involving all series in their universe, most crossover issues not directly connected to the X-titles featured minor content at best, or at worst, totally contradictory writing to the actual central story. This is particularly glaring in the case of, for example, The Avengers #300, when the newly-assembled group of Avengers fight to retrieve Franklin Richards after his being kidnapped by N'astirh and, despite New York still being consumed by demons, and N'astirh — whom they clearly saw take him — still being at large, they go home with the apparent satisfaction of a job well done.
- A better example (probably because it was rather more low key, with only the occasional editoral blurb) from a few years earlier involved the Casket of Ancient Winters being broken open in The Mighty Thor and almost every other title being smacked with impossible blizzards atop what they are dealing with at the time.
- Inexpertly subverted during The OMAC Project, a mini-Crisis Crossover that helped set the stage for Infinite Crisis. One of the key plot points for both crossovers — Wonder Woman killing Max Lord to break his mind control over Superman — took place in Wonder Woman's own title. Despite DC hyping the issue, most believed that it would ultimately be a Red Skies Crossover, like several others published during that time. Instead, the only reference to the event during the main Mini Series was an incomplete flashback. The fanbase was annoyed.
- Infinite Crisis had plenty of the normal variety, too. For a while, every single book had either an OMAC appear out of nowhere to fight the main character or a few pages devoted to the Spectre destroying something.
- Cable And Deadpool did a really small Cross Over with House Of M that lasted one issue (they were conveniently out of the universe during most of it.) It was so small that if you go back and read the trade you probably won't realize it was really part of House Of M.
- There was an event where a Predator took on characters from Dark Horse's "Comics' Greatest World" line. Apparently the writers of Ghost didn't really want to spend much time with this, so they have one or two panels at the end of one plot where a Predator jumps out and she phases her gun through its face plate and fires, killing it instantly. She doesn't spend any time wondering what that was about and goes back to her own plot.
- A rare live action TV example was "Blackout Thursday," in which NBC's first sitcom of the night, Mad About You, featured the characters causing a citywide blackout trying to get free cable. That night's episodes of Friends and Madman Of The People, both also set in New York, also featured the characters dealing with a blackout, hinting that all three of them shared the same universe (though Mad About You and Friends had already confirmed that the characters played by Lisa Kudrow on both shows were actually twin sisters). Things were spoiled a bit by Seinfeld, whose script for that week (The Gymnast) had already been written before the idea was announced, and the writers refused to change it.
