Marvel Comics created the idea of a universe where all of their characters interacted. Their limited series, Secret Wars, brought that universe to the next level. Marvel took its top heroes and its top villains, placed them on an alien planet, and pitted them against each other. The result spawned spin-off stories in each character’s respective titles, a sequel series, dozens of toy lines, the alien costume that would eventually become Venom, and, above all, the concept of a maxi-series. DC’s eventually Crisis on Infinite Earths owes itself to the Secret Wars as that series showed publishers could find major sales in manufactured events that everyone knew would eventually end. Epic story lines that dominate the major publishers came because of the commercial success of the Secret Wars.