This cameo not approved. The comic he’s from is.
I have a bunch of stuff in my Watch Later and Filler Video playlist (both private, so you won’t see them on my YouTube channel) that I need to go through and put up here at the Spotlight. Among them are panels from conventions both public and the pandemic-spawned “at home” variety, longform documentaries, and stuff like that. Let’s get this one out of the way.
In this very old Jake & Leon comic, #17 to be exact (the first of three), when I was still doing them longways on the back of my weekly comic checklist printout, I dropped Ringo here in to promote a comic series that intrigued me. Crossoverlord wasn’t just a nifty pun, it was a crossover of numerous superhero webcomics. It followed a villain who had appeared in Linkara’s The Lightbringer comic, which he gets a lot of flack on and really hates the comic and the way it turned out himself, but I found some merit in the concept at least. The villain was at the time known only as The Smiling Man, because he smiled all the time. This villain’s schemes through the multiverse would drag in heroes Mindmistress, Daisen, Mechagical Girl Lisa A.N.T., Superdan of Bad Guy High Adventures, The Green Avenger, and some character I don’t remember from the comic Indefensible Positions. It was a fun crossover and one of my inspirations to create something like Captain Yuletide once my art skills got past…well, look at the comic above and furthered the idea that the internet could be a way to get comics out into the universe. These weren’t big names but they were pretty cool.
Granted the only hero I would really follow from this and the sequel, Crossoverkill, in which someone was collecting the personification of death in various realities and would bring a few new character in with the returning ones, was Fusion, but that was a mix of personal tastes, what I have time to read (Fusion has been on a very long hiatus if it isn’t officially done like some of my other favorite webcomics), and what’s still online. Also new to that chapter was (easier to copy/paste from a list) Energize, Valkyrie Yuuki, Majestic Knight, Captain Perfect and Hoodoo, alongside returning hero Mindmistress. Both comics also had other cameos of online superhero characters. Sadly a third sequel was not produced after her creator and writer/artist, Al Schroder, passed away. It’s a great series of crossovers and if you haven’t read it, this site collected both series and some tie-in stories from a couple of the contributing sites. Oddly it doesn’t have the Smiling Man’s appearances in The Lightbringer according to the archive.
In the video below, some of the contributors to the original Crossoverlord got together in 2013 to remember the webcomic superhero crossover and plans for future crossovers that didn’t happen after this video was made. Since Ringo ended up in three of my comics, all of them rather old of course, and as fanart since I didn’t actually ask permission but wanted to promote both crossovers, I thought it would be interesting to see what brought these various creators together for this collaboration. It includes background information and concept art for the project.
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I’m not sure if any of these characters are in public domain (besides Lightbringer) and the reason I didn’t link to the comics is that I don’t know which ones are still left. A few are homeless or changed URLs so that also speaks to how long ago these comics came out.
One critique I will make are the revolving artists. Each of the creators got the chance to do a set of pages. This does free others up to continue the adventures in their own comic and move things along. The problem is that they all had very divergent styles. Lewis Lovhaug will be the first to tell you that his art wasn’t very good, and I wasn’t a fan of Schroder’s art style myself. Some artists hit better than others. The revolving writers on the other hand did a good job of keeping a sense of consistency with the characters and the story, something that bad events in major comics using multiple writers and artists didn’t fare very well with at all. Continuity even got screwed up there, while the webcomic crossovers didn’t suffer from that problem nearly as much. Point to the amateurs, I guess.
I don’t know if any of them are still active in comics, web or otherwise, as this video is rather old. As mentioned, Lovhaug has practically disowned Lightbringer, sending it into public domain and Iron Liz has taken that up, releasing one volume of her Lightbringer and a second volume currently on Kickstarter as of this writing. Also as mentioned, Al Schroder passed away before the third crossover could be starter. I don’t recall ever checking out the Crossover Wars comic but maybe someday I’ll get the chance. It’s nice to see people passionate about making good superhero stories, even as a hobby, and hopefully they’re all doing something they really love.
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