Sunday, August 31, 2014

Crossover of the Week

1934
NEIGHBORHOOD IN PERIL
            Jim Anthony works to protect the non-Anglo Saxon residents of a New York neighborhood from a racist group. Officer Burland secretly meets with Jim to discuss the situation. Gibbons, the Managing Editor of Jim’s paper, the New York Star, tells Jim that Gunigun at the Sentinel says one of his delivery boys in the neighborhood got hit by a truck. FBI agent Dan Fowler asks Jim not to get involved with the investigation. Jim threatens to go to Frank Havens of the Clarion with the story, and suggests that someone in the U.S. government may be working with a “pure America” group like the Knights of the Open Palm. Jim is later visited by G-2 agent Jeff Shannon, aka the Eagle, who refers to a man named Ashton-Kirk. After the villains are defeated, Jim shakes hands with Dan, the Sentinel’s elderly owner.
            Story by Erwin K. Roberts in Jim Anthony: Super Detective Volume Four, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2013. Officer Kip Burland is the alter ego of the comic book hero the Black Hood, whose adventures were published by MLJ, the company later known as Archie Comics. The character also appeared in a short-lived pulp magazine, Black Hood Detective. It is unconfirmed whether Burland ever operated as the Black Hood in the CU. “Gunigun” is a reference to Bill Gunnigan, the City Editor of the Daily Sentinel, the newspaper owned by Britt Reid, aka the Green Hornet. Dan is Britt’s father, Dan Reid Jr. Since the Green Hornet was based out of Detroit in the CU, Gunnigan and the elder Reid must have been visiting New York to work with the paper’s branch in that city. The year of this story is conjecture based on the fact that it takes place before Britt took over ownership of the Sentinel from his father. FBI agent Dan Fowler was created by Major George Fielding-Eliot and appeared in the pulp G-Men Detective. Frank Havens and the Clarion newspaper are from the pulp magazine The Phantom Detective, written by a number of authors using the pen names “G. Wayman Jones” and “Robert Wallace.” The Knights of the Open Palm are from Carroll John Daly’s short story of the same name, the first of a series of tales about P.I. Race Williams that appeared in the pulp Black Mask. Jeff Shannon, aka the Eagle, appeared in four stories in the pulp Thrilling Spy Stories and one in Popular Detective, all written by Norman A. Daniels as “Kerry McRoberts.” Ashton-Kirk was a Sherlock Holmes-like detective (albeit based in New York) who appeared in stories by John T. McIntyre for The Popular Magazine, which were collected in four books.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Crossover Cover: Valdemar's Daughter/The Mad Trist

These two short novels, both included in the same book, feature Edgar Allan Poe's sleuth C. Auguste Dupin, and also have strong connections to two other Poe stories, "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," respectively.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Crossover Cover: Knock-Out

In this novel (also known as Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back), Bulldog Drummond teams up with another series character created by H.C. "Sapper" McNeile, sportsman and consultant with the War Office Ronald Standish.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Crossover Covers: The Bandit

In this non-series novel by Leslie Charteris, one of South American bandit chief Ramon Manrique’s assistants turns out to be a Pinkerton detective who has been in contact with “Kennedy the Assistant Commissioner.” Detective Inspector Peters arrests Ramon. Kennedy and Peters also appear in the Saint books, as well as the standalone novels X Esquire, The White Rider, and Daredevil.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Crossover Cover: The Resurrection Ring

I picked this book up at Pulpfest this year. Although the format is based on the original Secret Agent X pulp, this is actually a new novel by Stephen Payne, with a few crossovers. Agent X visits a gangster's funeral disguised as a reporter. When another crook takes a swing at him, X intercepts the blow, prompting the mobster to say, "What are you? Some kinda damn superman, like that laughin' mook what dresses in black and prowls around at night?" This is a reference to the Shadow, of course. There is also a reference to the Pink Rat, an underworld dive from the Shadow novels, a few chapters later. The gangster also asks the disguised X if he thinks he's "a damn mind reader, like that Captain Whatsisname...?" Later, there is a reference to X having an adventure in a country called Teutschland with Hazzard. Payne is planning to chronicle the team-up between Secret Agent X and the telepathic Captain Hazzard (both created by Paul Chadwick) in a novel called Hell's Haven. Finally, at the end of the novel, X visits two of his aides at the clinic where they are convalescing, which is owned by a neurophysician and adventurer who is a friend of X's. This friend also has a secret facility in New York that specializes in treating criminals. While there, X runs into a Mutt-and-Jeff duo, one short and apish and the other wasp-waisted and rather handsome, both of whom insult each other viciously, and a golden-eyed giant of a man. Obviously, the latter is Doc Savage, accompanied by Ham and Monk.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Crossover of the Week

1940
THE DEVIL’S NEST 
            The jungle lord Ki-Gor joins an expedition to the valley known as the Devil’s Nest to find Brendan Barnes, the American heir to a great fortune. Barnes tells the group that his family has been associated for years with the Jellyby Foundation in London, and therefore received regular reports on the Foundation’s work in Borrioboola-Gha and other parts of Africa. One of Ki-Gor’s traveling companions, Dr. John Moore of MI6’s Department Q, refers to an expedition funded by a patron of the Royal Geographic Society to a nearby valley where a dinosaur allegedly exists: “Too close a follower of that old crackpot Challenger, I suppose...This is the Congo, not some cloud-shrouded neverland like Maple White Land.”
            Short story by Duane Spurlock in Jungle Tales, Volume 1, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2012. Ki-Gor the jungle lord’s adventures were originally chronicled by several authors using the pen name “John Peter Drummond” in Jungle Stories from 1939 to 1954. In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby is a self-styled philanthropist who tries to ship downtrodden Britishers off to the African colony of Borrioboola-Gha so that they and the natives can earn money through coffee growing. Moore is wrong about the dinosaur in the valley, and he is also wrong about Professor George Edward Challenger not having actually discovered Maple White Land, as his discovery of the plateau was recounted in Edward Malone’s account (edited by Arthur Conan Doyle) entitled The Lost World.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Crossover Cover: Harry Dickson vs. the Spider

This anthology from Black Coat Press contains two of the original Harry Dickson stories, six stories that previously appeared in volumes of Tales of the Shadowmen, and ten stories that are either new or appear for the first time in English. Looking at the credits in the back of the book, at least nine of the new stories have crossovers, and therefore I will write them up. I've already read and written entries for the first two new stories. Among the characters appearing in the new tales are Sexton Blake, Indiana Jones, Abraham Van Helsing and Mina Harker, the Wizard of Oz, and Tarzan.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Crossover Covers: The Prisoner: Shattered Visage

In this comic book set twenty years after the end of the cult classic television series The Prisoner, John Steed and Emma Peel are glimpsed at a spy's funeral. According to Wikipedia, James Bond (with Sean Connery's likeness), Napoleon Solo, and Illya Kuryakin are also at the funeral. I haven't read the series myself, and Wikipedia can't always be trusted, so I don't know whether this is true or not. There is also a reference to another spy being a master interrogator, trained by Mr. Smiley himself. This is a reference to John le Carré's George Smiley.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Crossover Cover: Nautilus

In this issue of the Australian comic book company Frew Publications' Phantoms series, the Ghost Who Walks discovers the Nautilus, which still has Captain Nemo's corpse inside it. Nemo was last seen alive and well in 1939, when he had three encounters with Navy Jones, the adventurous great-grandson of the legendary Davy Jones, as seen in three issues of the Fox series Science Comics. These 1939 exploits, incidentally, demonstrate that Nemo's alleged death in 1909 (referred to by Alan Moore in "The New Traveler's Almanac") was a falsehood. Nemo would have been 131 years old when he encountered Navy Jones, but appears much younger, presumably due to undergoing the Capellean blood-sharing ceremony when he was younger. Nemo must have finally died for real at some point between 1939 and 1988, when his ghost encountered the Ghostbusters, as seen in the comic book story "The Counter Clock Criminals."

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Crossover of the Week



Summer
THE CRIMSON CLOWN—KILLER
            The Crimson Clown goes undercover as a criminal at the Pink Rat in order to confront Boss Flannery. Later, in his true identity of Delton Prouse, he goes to a benefit for the Policemen’s Widows Fund held by Nina Hastings. Prouse tells Inspector Blurney he is familiar with Rocky McFayne’s newspaper, the Express, though it is not as large as Havens’ Daily Clarion. Another guest at the benefit, Jasper Baldwin, was a member of the Gray Gang until Dan Fowler of the Feds brought the mob to justice. While hiding in the same office where Flannery and Baldwin are meeting, the Clown witnesses the Black Cat attempting to steal from them.
            Short story by Tom Johnson in Pulp Echoes, Night to Dawn Magazines & Books, 2011. The Crimson Clown was created by Johnston McCulley and appeared in Detective Story Magazine from 1926-1931. The Pink Rat dive bar is from the Shadow novels. The Black Cat (aka Nina Hastings) appeared in the one-shot pulp The Angel Detective. Like the Crimson Clown, the Black Cat was a Robin Hood-type adventurer, stealing criminals’ ill-gotten gains and giving them to the needy. Frank Havens, publisher of the Daily Clarion, is from the Phantom Detective pulp novels. FBI agent Dan Fowler’s exploits were chronicled in the pulp magazine G-Men Detective. Since the Shadow, the Black Cat, the Phantom Detective, and Dan Fowler are all in the CU, this crossover brings in the Crimson Clown. In the November 11-December 9, 1928 issues of Detective Story Magazine, McCulley had a serial entitled “Thubway Tham Meets the Crimson Clown.” Thubway Tham was another series character of McCulley’s who appeared in Detective Story Magazine, a lisping conman who preyed on those who rode the New York City subway system. McCulley also wrote “Thubway Tham and Mr. Clackworthy” in the February 18, 1922 issue of Detective Story, in which Tham met Christopher B. Booth’s own grifter character, Mr. Amos Clackworthy, who also appeared in that magazine. Tham and Clackworthy crossed over again in Booth’s “Mr. Clackworthy and Thubway Tham,” published in the March 4, 1922 issue of Detective Story.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Crossover Cover: City without Guns


In this story, Batman and Robin travel to London to study Scotland Yard’s methods. The Yard has a collection of portraits of famous crime fighters. However, the Dynamic Duo’s own picture has been ripped from its frame. After apprehending a fugitive American criminal with the aid of British Batman fanatic Chester Gleek, the duo discover that the portrait was originally donated by Gleek, who indignantly reclaimed it after seeing that it was placed alongside paintings of such “inferior” detectives as Sherlock Holmes.