Crossover of the Week

Winter 1936-Late Summer 1937 

THE DOMINO LADY’S SCANDAL 

The Domino Lady (Ellen Patrick) tries to clear the name of actor Emilio Romani, who has been falsely accused of statutory rape. Ellen met Romani at a party held by Neville Sinclair a week ago. Romani knows Alan Swann. During a trip to New York, Ellen met Theodore Marley Brooks, a lawyer who regularly tops the best dressed lists. While Ellen is no Monk Mayfair or Fergus MacMurdie, she is a skilled chemist. Romani’s alleged crime happened after he got back from a party thrown by Satan Devlin. Romani mentions the parties Valentino threw every Friday night at the Hyperion Hotel. Ellen learned how to palm a syringe from Mandrake, and how to crack a safe from Jimmie Gray, the heir to the Graylock Safe Company. During another one of her trips to New York, a fellow crimefighter taught Ellen a baritsu move that effectively turned her cape into a whip. The mastermind behind the plot against Romani, councilman and chess player John Sanford, taunts Ellen about her code against killing, saying, “I would already be dead if the Spider was standing before me.” A year later, Ellen catches up with Sanford in Palm City, where he is now calling himself James Fleming. 

Short story by Brad Mengel in Domino Lady Volume 3, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2019. Neville Sinclair is from the film version of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer. Although the film is incompatible with the comic and its continuations published by IDW, which are in the Crossover Universe, Adam Lance Garcia’s The Green Lama: Unbound and Frank Schildiner’s “Blood of the Hummingbird” also establish Sinclair has a counterpart in the CU. Alan Swann is from the movie My Favorite Year. Brooks and Mayfair are two of the bronze man’s aides. MacMurdie is one of the members of the avenging hero’s crime-fighting organization. Jack “Satan” Devlin appeared in five stories by Ernest Manning in Saucy Movie Tales from July 1936-January 1937. The Hyperion Hotel is from the TV series Angel. Mandrake is the title character of Lee Falk’s comic strip Mandrake the Magician. Jimmie Gray, aka the Shadow (no relation to the American pulp hero), is an Australian comic book character created by Jeff Wilkinson. The fellow crimefighter is the vigilante of the shadows. Baritsu is from Doyle and Watson’s “The Adventure of the Empty House.” The crossover comic “The Conflagration Man” implied Sherlock Holmes had taught both the shadowy vigilante and Doc baritsu. The Spider needs no further introduction. John Sanford (aka James Fleming) is meant to be the grandfather of Peter Fleming, aka Chess, from the TV series The Cape, which is set in Palm City. 

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!