Monday, June 1, 2015

Crossover Covers: For Heaven's Eyes Only

The Droods go up against a massive satanic conspiracy to bring about Hell on Earth. Appearing or mentioned are: Walker, the Nightside, the London Knights, the Lord of Thorns, the Walking Man, Augusta Moon, the Oblivion brothers, Mr. Usher, John Taylor, and Razor Eddie (from Green's Nightside books); MI13 (the CU equivalent of the branch of British Intelligence seen in the Marvel Universe); Castle Frankenstein (from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein); Indiana Jones; the abandoned Danse Academie in Germany’s Black Forest that had been a feeding ground for one of the Old Mothers (from Dario Argento's film Suspiria); Area 52 (from the Image Comics series of the same name); the Iron Mann of the Plains (a reference to Edward S. Ellis' dime novel story "The Steam Man of the Plains"); the Carnacki Institute and Jeremy Diego (from Green's Ghost Finders series); description theory (from Warren Ellis' comic Planetary, which takes place in an AU); monkey’s paws (from W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw"); Bradford-on-Avon (the fictionalized version of the real town seen in Green's novel Drinking Midnight Wine); a ghost named Ash from Shadows Fall (Leonard Ash from Green's novel Shadows Fall); Jimmy Thunder, God for Hire (also from Drinking Midnight Wine); Night Gaunts (from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos); Sons of the Old Serpent (probably connected to the Serpent in the Sun from Drinking Midnight Wine); and SAS combat sorcerers (from Warren Ellis' comic Gravel.)

3 comments:

  1. There's a Sons of the Serpent in the Marvel Comics universe, though I imagine they are unrelated. There is also work on Gnosticism called Sons of the Serpent Tribe.

    Speaking of comics, the occult, and the Droods. I happen to have a copy Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight issue 54, in which the cape crusader battles an undead sorcerer named Osric Drood. It's by Dan Raspler and the great Mike Mignola and it's very Lovecraftian. In fact, it mentions the Elder Ones which may or may not be Lovecrafts Elder Ones (or the Old Ones.) This comic predates Greens books by over a decade, but it is fun to speculate on a relation between Batman's Drood and Green's. And you can make an argument for it being a Lovecraft crossover. (Mignola would later write Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham which is an explicit Mythos Crossover.)

    Worth mentioning, Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard book has an appearance of Night Gaunts. I heard they are portrayed differently than Lovecraft's, but it's been awhile since I read the book.

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  2. Does Indiana Jones actually appear, or is he only name-dropped?

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