To make my point more general: Does Hulk/Batman get filed under "H" or "B"? In case I'm coming off obstinate or argumentative - I'm asking half tongue-in-cheek, but the other half recognizes the havoc (which I just now originally spelled with a "k" - thanks Marvel!) a crossover can wreak in your collection if you're compulsive about it.

It's Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk so....

Having trouble with the quote function, this is what badwolf said:

Even if they didn't encounter each other, there's be references in conversation. Stories in the Daily Bugle.

And here is my response:

But why would there be references in conversation? Or stories in the Daily Bugle?

I'm not being deliberately contrarian (I promise). But we don't see every moment of a character's life. Or anyone's life for that matter. Do you know I visited Liverpool last summer? No, you didn't. No reason to know. Until now. But had I not revealed it to you, you'd have been none the wiser.

In a Spidey comic, we don't see every page of the Daily Bugle. If we use our imagination, perhaps the paper has a "Metropolis Correspondent" who writes once a week. We only see Jameson's rants about Spider-Man - because that's relevant to the story. But in between issues, how do we know Jonah Jameson hasn't spoken to "Robbie" Robertson about Bane's takeover of Gotham? How do we know that, in between issues of Avengers, Captain America hasn't called a meeting to talk about the Autobots/Decepticons war?

With most characters, we see twelve adventures a month (more if they have multiple titles or are on teams). But let's think about a character who is only gonna have twelve issues a year, e.g. Iron Fist. Eliminate the sporadic guest appearances. We see Iron Fist battle the likes of Boomerang, Sabretooth and the Wrecking Crew in his solo 70s title. But using the "shared Earth" approach, perhaps between the 5th and 6th issues of his title, he popped over to Gotham to help Batman take out a crime gang. And then mentioned it in passing. But when his own issue comes out a month later, it's on with his story.

Real life people or comicbook characters, we can't be privy to their every moment. Someone (who advocated separate universes) once said to me, "Why hadn't Batman mentioned the Hulk prior to their crossover?" Well, a) we were seeing that crossover now (whenever now is), and b) Batman mentioned he had a file on the Hulk in his Batcave. A moment we weren't privy to, in his early tales, was him mentioning it to Robin or Superman.

I feel that gets around the whole "Why aren't there references?" and "Why aren't there Daily Bugle stories?" aspect. I mean, how do we know what is on page 2 of that newspaper? Perhaps, unseen to us, Jameson has written some editorials about Batman, Superman, etc.

I prefer it when the crossovers Treat them as actual crossovers, with the heroes and villains travelling from one world to another to meet up - but I also like to think that sometimes the universes converge and they exist on the same earth for periods of time - so the old Superman/Spider-Man crossovers etc all still happened, the universes just aligned for those stories, allowing them to happen. When I was organising my Spider-Man stories into a chronological order I even used the first Superman/Spider-Man to help smooth the placement of some other stories lol

I remember the release of the Spider-Man/Superman cross-over in 1976 and the later Hulk/Batman crossover. I never read either one and found the whole idea of DC and Marvel characters meeting unappealing and uninteresting. I have been completely ignorant of subsequent cross-overs until reading this thread. So I guess I'm in the minority when I say: no cross-overs ever, please.