I believe it was Mark Waid who compared cross-over villains to wedding dresses: you use them only once.
_____Is that statement true? And if so, why?
_____DC cross-over villains are as follows: the Anti-Monitor (Crisis), Darkseid (Legends), the Manhunters (Millenium), Circe (War of the Gods), Monarch (Armageddon 2001), Eclipso (Eclipso: The Darkness Within), the Alien rip-offs (Bloodlines), Extant and Parallax (Zero Hour), Neron (Underworld Unleashed), the Sun-Eater (Final Night), Darkseid (again, Genesis), Solaris and Vandal Savage (DC 1 000 000), and finally Azmodel (Day of Judgment).
_____At Marvel, we have Death and the Grandmaster (Contest of Champions), the Beyonder (Secret Wars and Secret Wars II), the High Evolutionary (The Evolutionary War), the Serpent Crown (Atlantis Attacks), Thanos (The Infinity Gauntlet), the Magus (The Infinity War), the Goddess (the Infinity Crusade), and Onslaught (Onslaught, of course).
_____Whew. Quite a list.
_____Of those, Darkseid, the Manhuners, Circe, Eclipso, Extant (in the form of Monarch), Parallax, Vandal Savage, Azmodel, Death, the Grandmaster, the High Evolutionary, the Serpent Crown, Thanos, and the Magus were characters who were villains at large who simply happened to finally hit it big. The Sun-Eater can be added to the list of non-original villains.
_____Conversely, Darkseid, Circe, Monarch, Eclipso, Extant, Parallax, Neron, Vandal Savage, Death, the Beyonder, the High Evolutionary, and Thanos have all appeared after their cross-over was done with.
_____Only the Anti-Monitor, the Aliens rip-offs, Solaris (to date), the Goddess, and Onslaught could be called one hit wonders.
_____But the list of villains who appeared for the last time as cross-over villains is fairly long (just take the ones that weren't on the second list; your humble host NWJ doesn't need carpal tunnel syndrome). Why is that?
_____The problem that is posed by many of these characters after their big cross-overs is that any further use is anti-climactic and cheats them of the importance they held. Once the entire heroic universe was needed to take them down, so it's hard to believe that Impulse could do it. Either they would have to continually necessitate big hero teams to battle (as Eclipso did in his ongoing series when he was finally taken down by a group composed of, among others, such powerful players as the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre). But that method either becomes repetitive, ridiculous, or simply too complex to orchestrate regularly.
_____Other tacts have mixed results. Parallax's further appearances have emphasized his heroic nature, so that multiple heroes were not required for a battle. The Beyonder's further appearances have attempted to minimize his power, and been lame beyond belief. Thanos has apparently changed his ways (sort of). And Darkseid always has a scheme up his sleeve.
_____But why do these villains need to re-appear? To tell a satisfying story, there must usually be an ending. In the case of super-heroes, that involves the good guys winning. The audience feels cheated otherwise. To have the villain return means that the original story was not closed, and seems to invalidate its importance. It trivializes the heroes as well, since their combined efforts are shown to have been insufficient to end whatever the menace was. Particularly if there was a "heroic sacrifice", a return of the villain seems a mockery of the heroes' efforts.
_____What do you think?