2) “BURIED ALIEN”

By the end of the 1980s, many of the old-school under-the-table crossovers were halting as DC became a mega-conglomerate and Marvel turned grimmer and grittier.  Thankfully, Mark Gruenwald’s ‘Quasar’ was around to hold up the banner of Silver Age frippery.  When The Runner, an Elder Of The Universe, gathered Earth’s super-speedsters to compete in a race to prove who could challenge him, Quasar came along for the ride.  The winner of the match suddenly materialized in the Marvel Universe, took the whole course to the moon in seconds, and declared that his name was something like “Buried Alien”, everyone knew what Mark was referencing.  (The second Flash had only died four years earlier, after all, and his revival seemed unthinkable at the time.)