In "Our Lives Together," I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren't exactly crossovers.

Today, based on a suggestion from reader Jessica, we look at an X-Men/Alpha Flight "crossover"...

In 1997, Steve Seagle launched a brand-new Alpha Flight series with artists Scott Clark and Chris Carlson...

The team included classic members likes Vindicator, Guardian, Puck, Madison Jeffries and Sasquatch (although Sasquatch has gone over the deep end and is now a feral beast), but James Hudson (Guardian) has been de-aged to less than 20 years old! The team also has new team members including brothers Flex and Radius and a new female hero named Murmur. The whole thing had a major X-Files bent to it, as Seagle ampted up the conspiracy angle of the whole thing with them really not trusting their new government bosses (and the whole mystery of how Guardian is now a teenager again!).

A few months into his run on the book, Seagle then got the much bigger assignment of Uncanny X-Men, working alongside Joe Kelly as the two new writers of the X-Men (the biggest shake-up on the X-Men titles in over five years, since Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza took over from Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio - Nicieza left earlier and was briefly replaced by Mark Waid, but then Lobdell took over both titles for a year or so).

Just four months into his stint on Uncanny (and a couple of months after Chris Bachalo made his debut as the artist on Uncanny X-Men), Seagle decided to tie his two series together in a cool crossover that wasn't really a crossover.

Wolverine is driving Sauron to prison (following Sauron attacking the X-Men over the last couple of issues) when he is stopped by the new Alpha Flight. Seagle uses the opportunity to have Wolverine size up the new team...

We learn that they think that Wolverine killed Madison Jeffries....

Wolverine obviously tells them that their story is dumb and leaves them in the dust. However, further down the road, they decide to make it an issue and attack him again. They tussle a little bit, but just when it looks like Wolverine has begun to cast doubt upon their story, Sasquatch just clobbers him....

Things go from bad to worse when the rest of the X-Men show up when they find out that Wolverine is in trouble (the first time that Alpha Flight ever showed up was when they tried to capture Wolverine and the X-Men had to fight them, so this is old hat to everyone involved)...

So they have one of their great superhero vs. superhero fights that the Marvel Universe is well known for until Cannonball and Flex get to talking and they realize that the whole thing is a big misunderstanding and Alpha Flight has been had...

So the Canadian heroes apologize and realize that there is a viper in their own nest, so they head back to Canada to take down the general who sent them after Wolverine in the first place (meanwhile, Wolverine has gotten Heather really confused, as she realizes that he is right. She and James Hudson had been living together fine just recently with him at his normal age, so none of this makes any sense).

Okay, so how did Alpha Flight see the same fight?

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By Alpha Flight #9, Scott Clark was off of the series, so there were fill-in artists until Duncan Rouleau debuted as the new series artist.

Roger Cruz drew this particular issue (with Chris Carlson still on inks).

The story opens up with them seeing Wolverine from the air...

And then we got the Alphan perspective on the initial meeting that we saw in the X-Men issue...

But we get to see what happened AFTER Wolverine drove off...

Throughout it all, we see the mysterious General Clarke monitoring everything through the member known as Manbot and when everything is resolved, we see him getting ready to face off against the Alpha Flight members looking for answers when they return to base...

Well-handled stuff by Seagle.

Thanks to Jessica for the suggestion! If anyone has a suggestion for another piece of interesting shared continuity, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!