Crossover of the Week

July 1996

EXPLOSIVE JUSTICE

Former police officer Bowen Chadwick (secretly the superpowered vigilante known as the Blaster) watches a news story on National News Net, a part of Havens International Media, delivered by Curtis Van Loan. In a flashback to the circumstances under which Chadwick gained his powers, Sergeant Sampson Jones tells Special Agent Simmons, “I do not care if the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover comes up to me with a request signed by the ghosts of Eliot Ness, Wyatt Earp, and Sherlock Holmes; I will not relinquish control of this environmental travesty.” Van Loan later introduces Chadwick to another vigilante, the Voice, who needs his help against a right wing militia. The Voice says, “If it weren’t for the women and children in the compound, I’d be sorely tempted to use my honorary Uncle Dick’s scorched earth methods. Go Mack Bolan on ’em.” After the militia is defeated, a helicopter picks up the Voice and Chadwick; the crew of the aircraft refers to the pilot as String.

Short story by Erwin K. Roberts in Casebook of the Voice, Modern Knights Press, 2014. Havens International Media is an outgrowth of the Daily Clarion newspaper owned by Frank Havens, an ally of the Phantom Detective (aka Richard Curtis Van Loan). The Detective’s girlfriend in the pulp stories was Muriel Havens, Frank’s daughter; Curtis “Curt” Van Loan is their son. Sergeant Jones is almost certainly mistaken about Sherlock Holmes being deceased, and was probably fooled by Holmes faking his death in 1957. The Voice’s honorary Uncle Dick is Richard “Dick” Wentworth, better known as the Spider. Mack Bolan, the Executioner, is the protagonist of a series of novels by Don Pendleton and others. It has been suggested Bolan is Wentworth’s son. The helicopter pilot is Stringfellow “String” Hawke from the television series Airwolf.