>>102658015Since no one has actually posted the real story, might as well fucking do it as far as the Secret Wars/Crisis connection.
When Marv Wolfman went to DC full time, upon the arrival of Jim Shooter at Marvel, he pitched the idea of a big storyline where all of DC's heroes fight a villain named The Librarian. Librarian basically would be a big bad information broker who was spying on the good guys and be responsible for selling alien tech to all the DC Universe villains. Think the Tinkerer, the guy who sells Marvel bad guys their weapons and tech.
He sets up the plot in New Teen Titans #21 with the character now called "The Monitor".
Meanwhile Marv gets a pissy letter regarding a continuity screw-up in Green Lantern, which Marv is also writing. This involved, IIRC, Showcase #100 and the fact that Marv explicitly ignored that issue's big massive team-up of various heroes that included Hal. Wolfman has the letter published in the comic, along with a pledge that DC will one day sort out their convoluted continuity.
Wolfman is good to his word, as New Teen Titans is a hit and DC, off the success of other books (Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Levitz/Giffen's Legion, Alan Davis's Batman and the Outsiders), decides to use their 50th Anniversary to fix their fucked up continuity. Marv's Monitor storyline is retrofitted into the vessel to do this major storyline which has a publication date planned for 1985 (the 50th Anniversary year).
Marvel meanwhile finds out about this, along with the fact that DC has secured a deal with Kenner to do a Star Wars type scaled toy line of their heroes. Marvel quickly pitches and gets Mattel to agree to make their own Marvel line as well. HOWEVER, Marvel has other larger plans. Knowing Crisis is planned for 1985, they rush Secret Wars into production and bring Mattel into the comic writers room to help them write it. All so they can use the comic to sell the toys and vice versa.
