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To help writers keep track of the flood of new and changing characters, Thomas had kept a plastic box of index cards noting where characters had last appeared, and what their powers were. That would no longer do. Now there was a gigantic database, an alphabetized list on five pounds of perforated computer paper printouts. Coordinating the increasingly complex story continuity between titles was also becoming a burden. One of the Marvel Universe’s hallmarks was that it was all one grand narrative, that everything that happened in one title had a potential impact on all the others. This was manageable when Stan Lee had personal oversight of eight comics a month, but nearly impossible when a cadre of excitable twenty-somethings wanted to let their imaginations wander—or when the bottom line called for franchise expansion. How could Spider-Man be everywhere at once? “The problem at Marvel,” said Wein, “was that we suddenly became a business with a bunch of books that Stan, I don’t think, ever in his heart expected to last more than a couple of years.” Complicating matters further were the proprietary battles for character use. “Gerber would want to have Hulk do one thing in The Defenders,” said Claremont, “but Englehart would say, ‘I’ve got him doing this other thing in the Avengers. Who has priority?’ ”