The entire Valiant universe was one big crossover, and I loved it.
The crossover-continuity thing works well when its a publisher with only 10 or so titles. That's why Silver-Age Marvel was so successful, when Marvel only had JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, TALES TO ASTONISH, TALES OF SUSPENSE, STRANGE TALES, FF, SPIDER-MAN, AVENGERS, X-MEN, SGT FURY, and a few other titles.
Likewise, I've enjoyed many small-publisher crossover events, because it's easier to keep it all cohesive. Such as TOTAL ECLIPSE, or the inter-connected Defiant titles.
When it expands to 40 or more titles a month, it becomes less manageable and consistent. When Marvel doubled its line overnight in the early 70's, continuity began to fall apart.
Shooter's editorial reign was an attempt to reign in that lack of editorial cohesiveness. Marv Wolfman and Roy Thomas (each editor/writers of several titles) almost had their own separate companies within Marvel comics.
Conversely and undermining my own argument, I loved DC in the 70's, where instead of having one single "DC universe" there were a wide array of separate worlds, all interesting:
a Kirby Fourth World universe;
a Kamandi universe;
a Demon universe;
a Bob Haney BRAVE & THE BOLD/Murray Boltinoff universe;
a loose Julius Schwartz-edited heroes universe;
a Joe Orlando-edited DC mystery titles universe;
a Joe Kubert edited World War I and II universe;
Earth-S for the Shazam heroes,
Earth-X where the former Quality Comics heroes like the Ray, Dollman, Uncle Sam, and Phantom Lady were still fighting Nazis in the 70's,
and a few other universes.
So lack of cohesion can be interesting too!
But I liked the renewed cohesion that Shooter was striving for during his reign, that I thought worked quite well and brought new energy to Marvel during most of his tenure.
