I thought I'd put this up. The comic is actually from last week, but sometimes I'm slow with getting random issues read. Heck, sometimes I'm slow with getting any issues read.
Unholy Union by Marvel/Top Cow, starring The Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider, Doctor Strange, The Darkness, and Witchblade.
First off, a cover by Marc Silvestri, which isn't surprising given that he does a lot of comics for Top Cow books. Possibly surprising (or not) is that Michael Broussard, who did the interior art, produced work that looks a lot like Silvestri's. Looked good.
The story is one of those things that, also not surprisingly, combines some Marvel and Top Cow characters, as in those listed above. And that tends to be it with most of the crossovers - the X-Men/Cyberforce crossover months back was all in all meaningless aside from seeing, essentially, two Wolverines and two Psylockes smack some stuff up. The most recent Wolverine/The Darkness crossover (assuming there have been others, else it's the only one) was actually kind of neat, as while it involved the current Darkness, the story was mostly about Wolverine meeting his ancestor back in WWII. And no, Wolverine didn't get blown up and regrow his entire body. I don't think, anyway.
Daredevil is mentioned in the background (as it was Matt Murdock who defended Jackie Estacado [The Darkness] in a trial happening before the book's events). The Hulk and Ghost Rider are all in all meaningless, mostly just there to add a few awesome looking splash pages and action. Doctor Strange is used as the Sorcerer Supreme rather than a total dope, scrying events first, and then warning The Darkness and Witchblade as to what will be coming. No feature, really, of uber-powerful powers that can melt the skin off this or that, which is nice, because it places him in a subtle role of someone who knows what's going to happen, but won't interfere.
This crossover issue is kind of unique, though. While the Marvel characters don't have a lot to do - which makes sense - what they do makes sense in the context. The issue is mainly to showcase The Darkness and Witchblade in their current roles, as well as show a small scene with Cyberforce and a little bit of The Angelus (the light to The Darkness's dark). It's a prologue of sorts, from here immediately jumping into what I can only assume is going to be Top Cow's big event, First Born, which looks to be a war waged by The Angelus on The Darkness, with what looks like the entirety of Top Cow's characters involved. Or most of them, anyway.
I actually have two First Born issues, the little First Look they did (which might as well be an Issue #0) and First Born #1, but I haven't read them yet.
