Crossover of the Week

November 1945

WHO MADE ME SUCH A WOMAN?

            Kanoto Yoshimuta, who has lost her family in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, accepts a ride from a man with gold-capped teeth and a Prussian hairstyle. The man tells Kanoto that he knows how she has been trying to bribe fishing boats to take her to an obscure little island to collect specimens of its fungi, and that he has already warned General MacArthur not to be eating mushrooms anytime soon. Sakima, Haruchi, Doctor Natas, and Serizawa are also mentioned.

            Short story by G.L. Gick in Harry Dickson and the Werewolf of Rutherford Grange, Black Coat Press, 2011; reprinted in The Monsters of Madame Atomos by André Caroff, adapted and translated by Brian Stableford, Black Coat Press, 2012, and in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 9), Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Rivière Blanche, 2012. Kanoto Yoshimuta is better known as André Caroff’s villain Madame Atomos. This story ends with her choosing her nom de guerre. The man with gold-capped teeth and a Prussian hairstyle is John P. Marquand’s Japanese spy Mister Moto. The obscure island is from the movie Matango (aka Attack of the Mushroom People); those who ingest the mushrooms on the island are transformed into humanoid mushrooms themselves. Mura Sakima is a Japanese agent from the film serial The Masked Marvel, while Oyama Haruchi is a spy from the serial G-Men vs. the Black Dragon. Doctor Natas is from Guy d’Armen’s novel Doc Ardan: City of Gold and Lepers. Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier’s adaptation and translation of d’Armen’s book implies that Natas is actually Sax Rohmer’s Doctor Fu Manchu. Dr. Daisuke Serizawa is from the Japanese monster movie Gojira, which was released in the United States as Godzilla. Although the mass destruction seen in the Gojira/Godzilla films is incompatible with Crossover Universe continuity, Serizawa does have a CU counterpart, as seen in Michel Stéphan’s story “The Red Silk Scarf.”