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.