Crossover of the Week

Autumn 1939

THE GREEN LAMA: CRIMSON CIRCLE 

The Green Lama battles a scientific enclave called the Collective that threatens not only him, but his aides as well, and has recruited several of his former allies and enemies. Lt. John Caraway wonders where Rick Masters is when you need him. The Lama broke the central tenet of his faith when he murdered Karl Heydrich in R’lyeh. The Collective can confirm his work against the Medusa Council in 1935. An unpublished article by Betty Dale of the Herald-Tribune correctly postulates that the Lama is really Jethro Dumont. The hero tells Gary Brown and his wife Evangl Stewart-Brown about his battle with Cthulhu. The Collective is based in Black Rock. Morgue attendant Dan Rohn refers to the Tipton murders. When Dumont left America years ago, there were more pressing matters to deal with, such as whether Wentworth and Van Sloan would ever get married. Not too long before the Green Lama debuted, a predecessor of his encountered a killer matching the description of Collective member Omega. In a flashback, Evangl reminds herself to ask her friend Diane Elliott of the Amalgamated Press about the Lama’s battle with the Medusa Council, and Evangl’s mother says vigilantism “seems to be going around with the bat fellow and that doctor gentleman.” The Lama’s lover Jean Farrell remembers running from a shoggoth in R’lyeh. At the Herald-Tribune offices back in the present, Betty Dale talks to her fellow journalist Luke Jaconetti. Commissioner Woods has an impassioned conversation with former Commissioner turned Governor Kirkpatrick. Detective Crevier says, “When it comes to vigilantes, copycats are a dime a dozen. You remember how many guys we had running around with a black fedora and trenchcoat back in the day?” Dr. Barry Dale, a researcher on atomic energy and Betty’s brother, meets with the President to brief him on the Collective, and tells him the Intelligence Service Command has denied any knowledge of them. Nyarlathotep appears before the Collective. 

Novel by Adam Lance Garcia, Moonstone Books, 2015. The Green Lama is Kendell Foster Crossen’s pulp hero. Rick Masters had his own backup feature in Spark Publications’ Green Lama comic. R’lyeh, Cthulhu, the shoggoth, and Nyarlathotep are from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The Lama’s battle against the Medusa Council was seen in the anthology Day of the Destroyers, edited by Gary Phillips. The Intelligence Service Command is from the same book. Reporter Betty Dale is Secret Agent X’s girlfriend. Black Rock first appeared in Garcia’s story “The Black Rock Conspiracy,” included in the anthology The New Adventures of Foster Fade, the Crime Spectacularist. Fade appeared in stories by Lester Dent in All Detective Magazine. In “The Black Rock Conspiracy,” Fade battled an unnamed Omega. The Tipton Murders are a reference to Garcia’s other story from that anthology, “Dead Men’s Guns.” Wentworth and Van Sloan are Richard Wentworth, aka the Spider, and his beloved Nita Van Sloan. Governor (formerly Commissioner) Stanley Kirkpatrick is also from the Spider novels. Diane Elliott is Operator #5’s girlfriend. “The bat fellow” is the Black Bat, while “that doctor gentleman” is the pulp hero commonly known as “Doc.” Luke Jaconetti first appeared in “The Black Rock Conspiracy” before appearing in Garcia’s The Green Lama: Scions, as well as Day of the Destroyers. Detective Crevier is referring to the shadowy hero, the Spider, and possibly others. Barry Dale is the alter ego of another Spark Publications hero, Atoman, created by Crossen and Jerry Robinson. His appearance here foreshadows his future superhuman identity. 

This crossover writeup is one of hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Sherlock Holmes & the Green Lama: The Heir Apparent

 

Are you a fan of Kendell Crossen's pulp hero the Green Lama?

Then you'll love this novel in which the future Lama, Jethro Dumont, teams up with Sherlock Holmes!

For more details, consult my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! Much like the first two volumes, this one is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: The Green Lama Unbound

I covered the original version of this novel some time ago. Since then, a revised and expanded version has been published by Moonstone Books. The Green Lama battles Cthulhu. Cthulhu; Nyarlathotep; R’lyeh; the Great Old Ones; the Outer Gods; the Necronomicon; the Deep Ones; Abdul Alhazred; Glyyu-Uho; Vhoorl; flying polyps; the Great Race of Yith; shoggoths; Arkham, Massachusetts; Innsmouth; the Miskatonic River; Miskatonic University; Professor Randolph Carter; and Zkauba are from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This novel also makes use of characters and places from Cthulhu Mythos tales by August Derleth (the Elder Gods); Brian Lumley (Chthonians and Shudde M’ell); Ramsey Campbell (Baalbo, Yifne, and Tond); Walter C. DeBill, Jr. (Ogntlach); Lin Carter (Xoth); and A. A. Attanasio (Yaksh). Rick Masters and Twin Eagle had their own feature in Spark Publications’ Green Lama comic book series. “That guy who lives in the Empire State Building” is a well-known bronze-skinned pulp hero. Arnold Toht is from the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, while Colonel Ernst Vogel is from the third film in the series, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Neville Sinclair is from the film version of Dave Stevens’ comic The Rocketeer. Since the comic book has already been incorporated into the Crossover Universe, the Sinclair mentioned here must be the CU counterpart of the Sinclair from the film, which follows a different continuity than the comic. The phrase “klaatu barada nikto” appears in both the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films. Foster Fade, “the crime spectacularist,” appeared in three stories by Lester Dent in All Detective Magazine in 1934. Richard Knight appeared in the pulp magazine Flying Aces in stories by Donald E. Keyhoe. The Black Bat was created by Norman Daniels and appeared in Black Book Detective. The Lama’s old detective friend in London is Sherlock Holmes. Elisha Pond is a false identity used by Secret Agent X, who appeared in a titular magazine. The original version of the novel has a few references that were deleted from the revised version, such as a rampaging ape (King Kong), Captain Hazzard (a one-shot pulp hero created by Paul Chadwick), Dan Fowler (an FBI agent appearing in the pulp G-Men Detective), Lance Star (a Canadian pulp hero recently revived by Bobby Nash and other writers), and Jim Anthony (who appeared in the magazine Super Detective).

Crossover Cover: Horror in Clay

The Green Lama battles a murderous golem created by a Rabbi who initially unleashed the creature on the German consulate in New York. The Rabbi has learned of the Holocaust the Nazis will soon enact against his people from hieroglyphics in an ancient temple in Jerusalem. The temple had images on the walls of the Ark of the Covenant, the Staff of Ra, and crystal skulls. Also in the temple was a statue of a horrible ancient god named Cthulhu. The Green Lama appeared in stories by “Richard Foster” (Kendell Foster Crossen) in the pulp magazine Double Detective. The Ark of the Covenant, Staff of Ra, and crystal skull references are meant to evoke the Indiana Jones films; indeed, an earlier version of this novella that appeared in the anthology The Green Lama Volume One contains a reference to “Professor Jones, Jr. at Marshall College.” Cthulhu needs no explanation at this point. The Lama went on to battle Cthulhu in Garcia's The Green Lama: Unbound.

Crossover of the Week

Summer 1935-1936

DAY OF THE DESTROYERS

            Jimmie Flint, Secret Agent X-11 of the Intelligence Service Command, battles Colonel Lucian Starliss and his Medusa Council, who seek to oust President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and take over the United States. Along the way, he receives aid from the Phantom Detective (Richard Curtis Van Loan), the Black Bat (Tony Quinn), the Green Lama (Jethro Dumont), and the Gray Face (Owen Tull.) Herald-Tribune reporter Luke Jaconetti moonlights for the Amalgamated Press, which employs Jimmie’s girlfriend Kara Eastland. Luke receives a phone call from Betty Dale. After the Council is defeated, Kara says that Dumont is organizing other wealthy men such as himself, including Van Loan and “that odd chap, Wentworth” for a Patriots for Progress group.

            An anthology of linked stories by Gary Phillips, Tommy Hancock, Aaron Shaps, Jeri Westerson, Ron Fortier, Eric Fein, Joe Gentile, Paul Bishop, and Adam Lance Garcia, edited by Gary Phillips, Moonstone Books, 2015. Luke Jaconetti first appeared in Garcia’s story “The Black Rock Conspiracy,” featuring Lester Dent’s pulp hero Foster Fade; he also appeared in Garcia’s novel The Green Lama: Scions. Reporter Betty Dale is the girlfriend of Secret Agent X, who has no known connection to Secret Agent X-11. “That odd chap, Wentworth” is Richard Wentworth, aka the Spider. This crossover brings Secret Agent X-11 (a character created for this anthology) and the Gray Face (another original character, created by Phillips), into the CU.

Crossover Cover: Of Monsters and Men

This prose anthology from Moonstone Books features pulp heroes battling monsters. Five stories have crossovers in them. In "Bump in the Night" by Tommy Hancock, Frederick C. Davis' hero the Moon Man battles the Invisible Man, who specifically identifies himself as the same individual of whom H.G. Wells wrote. However, it seems unlikely that John Hawley Griffin would have survived his brutal assault at the hands of Edward Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II. Most likely, this Invisible Man is an unidentified individual who has replicated Griffin’s formula for his own misdeeds. Adam Lance Garcia's "The Daemon's Kiss" mentions that the Green Lama and Jean Farrell have been a couple ever since their encounter with Cthulhu. The Lama and Jean battled Cthulhu in Garcia's novel The Green Lama Unbound. In Eric Fein's "The Phantom's Ghost," the Green Ghost (George Chance), visiting France, battles a successor to Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, who has apparently stolen the original Erik’s remains. The remains in this story cannot be those of the real Erik from Gaston Leroux’s novel, as he survived at least until the year 2003, when he appeared in Simon R. Green’s Nightside novel Hex and the City. In Sean Taylor's "Golden Amazon Versus Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame," John Russell Fearn's character the Golden Amazon, visiting Notre Dame Cathedral, tussles with a cult that has brainwashed Quasimodo into doing its bidding. Apparently Victor Hugo was lying when he referred to Quasimodo’s death in his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Quasimodo actually acquired extended longevity somehow. Wold Newton scholar Matthew Baugh's story "Sycorax" features Captain Future battling the witch Sycorax (from William Shakespeare's The Tempest) on Titan. There are also references to Segir and Black Pharol from C.L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories, Tsathoggua from Cthulhu Mythos fiction by Clark Ashton Smith, and Jekkara (or Jakkara) from Leigh Brackett's Mars stories. The Captain Future stories take place in an alternate universe where all the planets in the Solar System are inhabited by various sentient species in the 21^st century.