Riot Headline The Best Books of 2024
Comics/Graphic Novels

Gothamjanes: 8 DC Crossovers We Want to See

Katie Schenkel

Staff Writer

Katie Schenkel is a digital copywriter and pop culture writer. She started getting into comics in her mid-20s through her lifelong love of superhero cartoons and hasn’t looked back. When she’s not at her day job writing websites for small businesses, she’s writing articles for Panels, The Mary Sue, Quirk Books and other sites. Katie also runs the website Just Plain Something with her partner Mike; they host the JPS podcast and their webseries Driving Home the Movie. Blog: Just Plain Something Twitter: @justplaintweets

Cover Art by Mingjue Chen

Cover Art by Mingjue Chen

In “absolutely unexpected but absolutely amazing holy crud how are we so lucky” news, DC Comics’ Gotham Academy is crossing over with BOOM’s Lumberjanes for a six part series. Panelteer Hattie has already expressed her reaction through various gifs, but beyond my personal gasp and happy dance of joy, I started thinking of how the “Gothamjanes” miniseries opens the door to so many other opportunities.

After all, you normally don’t expect DC Comics to partner up with another company for something this big. However, they are in the middle of a Batman meets the Ninja Turtles miniseries right now with IDW, and Gotham Academy is a main canon book with relatively new characters that’s getting a jump into another universe. They’re even letting BOOM itself publish the GA/Lumberjanes book! So while I don’t want to be a sweet naive summer child about this, the possibility of DC allowing other crossovers with books from different publishers is … slightly more realistic than it was a week ago. Heck, even Batgirl writer Cameron Stewart has a tiny more sliver of hope for his dream Batgirl/Spider-Gwen team-up!

So now that the floodgates are opened and the possibilities seem endless, below are my eight super biased (and somehow all-lady) dream crossovers DC can choose from next.

Black Canary meet Jem and the Holograms
We have two rollicking rock bands in Black Canary and Jem and the Holograms. Both have lead singers with big secrets and both bands have some crazy powers behind their sound that make their regular comic antagonists green with envy. Of course I want these books to collide. My thinking is that the girls come together for a big battle of the bands (as you do if you’re a rockin’ girl group) and the Misfits insist on being part of the competition, too. However, nasty Misfits manager Eric Raymond does something sneaky that puts the Holograms in danger and Dinah has to save them all … with a little help from Synergy.

Wonder Woman meets Red Sonja

Wonder Woman travels to Sonja’s world, which doesn’t faze Sonja much since she’s dealt with time/dimension jumping in the Sword of Sorrows event. So they fight side by side, they flirt, they save the day and send Diana home. Considering Red Sonja writer Marguerite Bennett is also writing for Wonder Woman in DC Bombshells, I have a feeling Bennett could do great things with both of these characters spending time with each other. Heck, just seeing the stoic Diana’s reaction to the bawdier Sonja alone would be worth the book’s price!

Batgirl meets Squirrel Girl
This is the dream crossover I’ve wanted for over a year. A Squirrel Girl/Batgirl team-up would be perfection that knows no bounds. Just imagine — we have four STEM ladies (a group made of two superheroines and their extremely smart roommates who help them fight bad guys all the time) coming together and dealing with a foe. How incredible would it be for Babs, Frankie, Doreen, and Nancy have to save the day through coding (and probably puns). All they’d have to do is convince Tippy Toe that Barbara doesn’t have the literal powers of a bat and is not planning to eat her, but after that they’re golden!

Gotham Academy meets Archie

Well, we know that the Gotham Academy kids are about to do some universe jumping. On top of that, Archie’s gang has had crossovers with lots of different non-Archie properties (including the Predator last year). It’s not that much of a stretch for these two groups of high schoolers to meet up! For this one, I imagine the Archie gang traveling over to Gotham Academy as exchange students. Maps and Jughead bond over their love of junk food. Archie and Kyle commiserate over the roller coasters that are their dating lives. Olive and Pomeline try to convince Veronica and Bettie to stop fighting over a boy. And I figure they can do some ghost hunting on the school grounds while they’re at it.

Black Canary meets Spider-Gwen
The great thing about so many band-focused comics is that there are so many opportunities for crossovers. So why not have Dinah and crew crossing over to Gwen Stacy’s universe to open for The Mary Janes! Of course there would be a villain crashing the gig and Dinah and Gwen would have to work together to take said villain down.

Batgirl & the Birds of Prey meet A-Force
We know very, very little about the upcoming version of Birds of Prey. We know (a) Batgirl will be in it and presumably it will be an all-female squad. So, logic would say that teaming the BoP up with Marvel’s own female squad makes a nice fit, yes? The premise can be something about Singularity accidentally opening a hole in space and time, ultimately sucking in the Birds of Prey into 616. Again, we don’t know who will be on BoP coming up so it’s hard to go into the details of what certain A-Force/Birds of Prey pairings would be like, but there’s a lot of potential ass-kicking to be had for these two very new books.

DC Bombshells Meets Agent Carter
Okay, yes … Peggy Carter doesn’t have a comic right now. But let’s just pretend that she did, and it was more or less pulling from the Captain America movies and the Agent Carter show. It would be so amazing for her to meet up with the ladies of the alternate universe WWII comic DC Bombshells! They could set it sometime in between the first CA movie and the first season of Agent Carter, where Peggy gets pulled into a dimension rift where not only is WWII still happening, but she’s surrounded by a dozen or so superheroines. So naturally Peggy helps the Bombshells defeat the Axis Power, is given an honorary title in their squad, and then goes back to her own universe ready to start her new job at the SSR. So now all Marvel has to do is give Peggy Carter her own book already.

Black Canary and Batgirl meet Jem and the Holograms meet Josie and the Pussycats meet Spider-Gwen and Squirrel Girl
This is my totally indulgent pick. It’s kind of ridiculous but you know what, I’m not even sorry. Basically let’s put four comic book girl rock groups in one story and throw in Batgirl and Squirrel Girl. Because why not! Why. Not.

Like the other Black Canary picks on this list, this crossover would involve a battle of the bands, this time with D’s friend Barbara Gordon coming along for moral support. And since Babs knows one Ms. Doreen Green from that other Marvel Universe (when they met in their own crossover I mentioned above, of course), they’d pick her up and go to Spider-Gwen’s world to enjoy the concert. But oh no — a bad guy has come to wreck up the event! Maybe some of the big bads from the various universes would team up themselves to do damage. But of course, in the end the day would be saved with the help of all the bands (and Batgirl and Squirrel Girl) and all the bands would finally get to put on an excellent rock concert. And Panelteer Charles suggested the best way to end this dynamic crossover — with a final song by Tippy Toe’s newly-formed-in-crossover band, Squirrels On Film!

What are your dream DC crossovers with other publishers? Got any particularly juicy team-ups in mind? Let us know!