Millennium
These issues have, subsequently, been collected in a TPB.
Millennium
(1987 - eight issues, DC Comics)
Writer: Steve Englehart. Art: Joe Staton. Finishes: Ian Gibson.
"Crossover" epics (where a story line involves most of a comics company's heroes and interconnects various separate titles), though maybe not as prevalent or as intrusive these days, were all the rage in the 1980s. Probably begat by Marvel's Secret Wars, they kicked into high gear with DC Comic's Crisis on Infinite Earths -- a maxi-series which redefined the DC Universe and established the idea that such massive team ups should have significant impact on the company as a whole. Although Crisis had threads that crossed over into the regular titles, it was easily readable on its own. But the many subsequent crossover mini-series were meant to be intricately tied into the surrounding comics...in order to get readers to buy comics they didn't normally buy. As such, many crossover mini-series don't entirely read well on their own. Which is problematic for collectors years later. I mean, you might find the complete crossover mini-series itself...but it'd be difficult to track down all the related spin-off comics (and pricey, to boot, when, as here, the spin-offs number over forty different issues).
Which brings us to Millennium -- DC's third crossover epic (after Crisis and Legends). And like Legends and the subsequent Invasion, it's problematic to read on its own.
The story has the Guardians of the Universe deciding to usher in the next step of humanity's evolution by selecting a handful of humans who will be jump started to the next level. A sinister group of robots -- the Manhunters -- want to stop them, and worse, have been operating in secret on earth for years, agents even having ingratiated themselves secretly with many heroes. So it's up to the combined might of DC's various heroes (Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, the Justice League, the Outsiders, etc., etc.) to battle the Manhunters and to help protect the Guardians' chosen ones.
Based on some reviews I've read, Millennium is one of DC's least well-regarded crossover epics. Which is funny, because in some respects, I liked it better than many I've read.
The nature of the premise -- ranging from the pseudo-philosophical stuff detailing the Chosen, to the paranoia and soul searching as our heroes discover some of their trusted friends are working for the Manhunters (or have been replaced by look alike robots), plus the big slam bang battles ranging from undersea bases to alien worlds -- means that Millennium actually seems to have more scope and variety in its plotting than many of the other epics. And writer Steve Englehart actually takes time to let the story breathe, allowing the characters to sit around and talk. Many crossovers result in generic secenes of a multitude of heroes, each uttering a nondecript line or two. Here, although there are plenty of heroes just filling out the backgrounds, there's a bit better sense of the characters being characters.
Of course, as I said, the point of a crossover like this is to, well, crossover into other titles. Englehart will spend the better part of an issue having the characters talk about what they have to do next, gearing up for some strike on some Manhunter base...only to have the actual confrontation take place in a concurrent issue of Batman or The Justice League International or something, and have it be all over by the time the next issue of this mini-series hit the stands (though a climactic battle does take place in issue #7). Read years later, if you're picking up this mini-series by itself, there are rather conspicuous gaps in the story (though characters occasionally provide brief recaps of what we've missed). Yet, for all that, I still enjoyed it more than Legend, or Invasion.
It's drawn by Joe Staton, an artist I generally like quite a bit. His style can vary, sometimes being a little too rough and cartoony, but here he's in top form (perhaps aided by Ian Gibson's finishes), with expressive figures and a great sense for telling a story through panels. George Perez (who drew Crisis) and John Byrne (who did Legends) may be more detailed artists...but Staton might be the better storyteller. Of course, Staton drew a long ago issue of Showcase (#100) which was very much a precursor for these kind of mass team-ups, so I may have nostalgic affection for seeing Staton tackle it again.
Perhaps some of the flak the series received is due to the fact that Englehart seems to have time-slipped and thinks he's back in the early 1970s, working for Marvel, when people like him, Steve Gerber, Jim Starlin, and others really went to town turning super hero epics into metaphysical odysseys. There's a definite head trippy ambition to Millennium that's wholly absent from most other 1980s DC crossovers, a feeling Englehart is maybe taking his philosophical stuff seriously (like devoting the better part of one issue to detailing a philosophical eight-step program that could have been borrowed from an Eastern guru). It's at once silly...and oddly audacious. The "Chosen" selected by the Guardians are a multi-racial, multi-national group, and maybe that turned off some more conservative readers too, with one character a homosexual, and, by the end, nary a white man in the bunch. Again, it all seems oddly gutsy and ambitious, in a way not even the Crisis on Infinite Earths did.
Of course, a number of these crossovers were used to kick start new series -- usually ones that fail -- and this was no exception, as the Chosen become their own super group and were sprung into their own title, The New Guardians -- a title which only lasted a year.
I can't say Millennium, as a mini-series, fully works. Too many plot threads spin-off into other comics, making the story choppy and unsatisfying, and even some of these issues feel padded a bit, as though they're just place holders between the crossover issues. And I'm not entirely sure what the Manhunters' goal was (other than just to be ornery) nor how this related to overall continuity. Some trusted characters were revealed to be agents of the Manhunters...but those friends are still around today (and the story reflects the continuity of its time, not just in the broad strokes like the Green Lantern Corps, but in minor on-going plot ideas like the fact that Guy Gardner had undergone a temporary personality adjustment).
But I kind of enjoyed it, even with -- or maybe because of -- its incomplete glimpses of a larger story and other titles (since some of the missing gaps are really just big fight scenes anyway). I even find myself casually, idyly, searching through a few back issue bins, to see if I can find any (cheap) copies of some of the crossover titles.
And that's more than I've done for any other crossover.