At Wizard World Chicago, Top Cow announced a two-part Darkness/Superman crossover, written by Ron Marz and drawn by Tyler Kirkham, debuting in December; to be followed by a DC-produced JLA/Cyberforce one-shot by Joe Kelly and Doug Manke (Justice League Elite) in the first quarter of 2005. 

With a trade edition of the previous Top Cow/DC crossover WildC.A.T.s/Cyberforce: Killer Instinct ready for publication, the announcement of two more crossover projects indicates a growing cooperation between the two comic publishers.

But the biggest crossover news of Wizard World Chicago concerned the 'crossover that didn't happen' -- Daredevil/Batman.  At his panel on Friday afternoon, Brian Michael Bendis told the story of coming up with a concept for a Daredevil/Batman crossover that had creators from both Marvel and DC extremely excited until it was killed at the upper levels of DC management.  Bob Wayne of DC Comics appeared at Bendis' panel to say that DC would be happy to OK the project, but not until there was regime change at Marvel. 

While the rivalry between Marvel and DC is longstanding and apparently as unavoidable as death and taxes, it appears that bad feelings (which some observers believe stem from derisive comments made about DC by the Marvel management team during the Jemas era -- see 'Comic Wars Heating Up') have reached the level where fans and retailers, in spite of the support they showed for projects like JLA/Avengers, can forget about any crossovers, no matter how much narrative or financial sense such projects might make, between the characters of America's two comic book publishing giants.