John
Taylor and Dead Boy help an ordinary woman figure out why and how she
came to be in the Nightside, and also try to reunite her with her
husband. Appearing or mentioned are: the Maltese Falcon (from
Dashiell Hammett’s private eye novel of the same name); Something
from a Black Lagoon (a
reference to the Universal horror film Creature
from the Black Lagoon); one of Frankenstein’s female creations (from Mary Shelley's novels and its various sequels and adaptations);
knockoff Hyde formula (from
Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); a lipstick-red Plymouth Fury with a dead man
grinning at the wheel (the
titular car from Stephen King’s novel Christine); a great black beauty of a car, driven by an
Oriental in black leathers, and a man in the back in a green face
mask and a snap-brimmed hat (the
Green Hornet and Kato, with this particular pair probably being Paul
Reid and Kono Kato, who began working together in 1993); and worms from the earth (a
reference to Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn story “Worms of the
Earth.”)
The Nightside being what it is it could be any Green Hornet past, present, or alternative universe. Though, I agree, the 93 NOW comics seems most probable. (The NOW comics is referenced on the last season of Venture Bros. where the super-villain the Monarch is the son of a vigilante known as the Blue Morpho.)
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to figure out who the characters on the second volume of Crossovers Expanded are based on. (You couldn't use the actual characters without licensing them, of course.) I think the black guy is based on Derrick Ferguson's Dillon and the woman on Cassie Hack from Hack/Slash. I don't know about the rest.