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If you've been in comics for as long as Marvel editor Tom Brevoort has, there's not doubt you've seen your share of great ideas that didn't end up on the page. Recenty, Brevoort revealed an instance of exactly that from some decades ago, when he was working on a truly rare event in the comic book world - a Marvel and DC crossover. Specifically, we're talking about the storied JLA/Avengers book by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez.

Brevoort was asked about the ideas that got away when he was a guest on the Word Balloon Comics Podcast with host John Siuntres, and the long-serving Marvel editor was quick to bring up the comic that saw Superman going toe-to-toe with Thor and the (often shared) standoff between Captain America and Batman.

"When we first plotted the story," Brevoort begins, "Kurt [Busiek], George [Pérez], myself, and Dan Raspler, the DC editor, all got together down in Florida after an Orlando con and spent a day just kind of banging out ideas. [...]  One of the ideas that came up that everybody was really excited about was, in issue 3, we were going to enter a world where the two universes have come together. Where the Marvel characters were in the DC world, and the DC characters were in the Marvel world."

Pausing really quickly here in case you're scratching your head and saying, 'But didn't the Marvel and DC worlds already collide? Wasn't that the point of JLA/Avengers?' For clarity - Brevoort is talking about the possibility of Marvel characters in a world that operates by DC rules, and vice versa. Make more sense? Great.

"Then we did issue 1," he continued, "We did issue 2, Kurt started to write issue 3, and we just couldn't make it work. It did not work the way we thought it would, because by the year 2000, the difference between the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe - other than the filigree of one has a Gotham City and one doesn't - [wasn't] really different in the sort of way that they were in the '60s."

Yep - apparently a couple of decades of sharing artists and writers - not to mention being part of the same popular but still objectively niche sales landscape - had homogenized the respective DC and Marvel worlds too much for readers to distinguish them enough for their reversal.

"[We were] kind of going," the current X-Men editor expands, "'OK, Superman's in the Marvel Universe. What does that look like; what does that mean?' We had all these drafts where he had a skyscraper headquarters in the middle of New York City, but they didn't like him for some reason, and it just didn't make any sense. You're doing almost either a parody of Superman or a parody of Marvel. And [we tried to do] the same thing with every character - what does Captain America look like in the DC Universe? Well, they like him there. Well they like him here too! Does he have an America cave that's shaped like a shield? The idea of it, the abstract notion of the Marvel characters and the DC in the Marvel universe, [we thought] that's cool! Turns out, it wasn't as cool as we thought. When it came time to actually figure it out, we pivoted, and we did other stuff instead."

For reference, the issue in question - JLA/Avengers #3 - came out in November of 2003. So that's almost a quarter of a century that this thorn has been sticking in Brevoort's side.

"I'm not as happy as how that part of it resolved," as he tells it, laughing. "Ultimately, I know that and it bugs me nobody else on Earth. Maybe it bugs Kurt, I don't know. Maybe it bugged George. I don't know, but nobody else cares if I'm happy or not."

Well, we care, Tom, though we're pretty sure you're joking. And hey, if you ever want to give it another shot, we won't say no to another Steve/Bruce meeting. Just let them actually kiss this time, OK?

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day 2026 / Comics Giveaway Day  2026 events.