Crossover of the Week

July 1962

OPERATION STARFISH

            James Bellmore is a Marine attached to the Joint Advisory Committee on Korea (JACK) as the assistant to the organization’s number two man, Colonel Doctor Wingate Peaslee, also known as the Terrible Old Man. The name of the agency is a front for their battles against eldritch horrors. Bellmore and Peaslee travel aboard the USS Miskatonic to Johnston Island. Bellmore had a fight with a midshipman who decided to sample a bottle from his case of Remmers Imperial Stout. Bellmore’s friends in London, Steed and Drake, suggested that he develop a hobby. Having taken up cooking, Bellmore sends some of the foodstuffs to his friends, though mostly to Brenner, a Swiss chef he briefly studied under in New York. Bellmore meets Adam Royston of British Experimental Research Group, Unit 3. The Miskatonic uses a Tillinghast Resonator to lure the monsters on the island to be killed, including the Hounds of Tindalos.

            Short story by Peter Rawlik in Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, Tim Marquitz and Nickolas Sharps, eds., Ragnarok Publications, 2014. Wingate Peaslee is from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Out of Time.” His nickname of “the Terrible Old Man” is a nod to Lovecraft’s story of the same name. The USS Miskatonic is named after the Miskatonic Valley, the setting of many of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos tales. Remmers is Rex Stout’s detective Nero Wolfe’s favorite beer. Wolfe’s Swiss chef is Fritz Brenner. Steed is British spy John Steed from the television series The Avengers and The New Avengers, while Drake is John Drake from the television series Danger Man (aka Secret Agent.) Adam Royston is from the movie X the Unknown. The Tillinghast Resonator is from Lovecraft’s story “From Beyond.” The Hounds of Tindalos are from Frank Belknap Long’s titular tale.