Crossover Cover: Death Rides the Valkyrie

This story originally appeared in the Airship 27 anthology Black Bat Mystery Volume One in 2010, and was released in a revised edition as a standalone e-book by Timepiece Press in 2015. The Black Bat investigates a theft aboard a zeppelin. One of the suspects is reformed ex-con Rowland Clark. The Bat’s assistant Silk Kirby scoffs at rumors of a “crime college” in upstate New York. However, after Clark seemingly commits suicide, the Bat reveals the crime college does exist, and Clark was rehabilitated there. Clark’s murderer proves to be Kobold, a former member of the group of German adventurers known as the Alle-Männer. The Crime College was founded and run by Doc Savage, of course. Ostensibly a group of adventurers from the German pulps, the Alle-Männer (German for “All-Men”) were actually created by Salmon, and also appear in his forthcoming novel All-Men: The Shadow-Line.

Crossover of the Week

December 1939

WOUNDS

            New York private eye Rick Ruby witnesses the murder of a policeman inside a tenement, right before the building bursts into flames. Detective Jack McGinnis tells Ruby that his partner is with Mason down at the 87^th coaxing witnesses to view a suspect in a robbery-homicide. The murdered cop’s father hires Ruby to investigate the man’s death, meeting with him at an Indian restaurant called the Gunga Diner at the corner of 40^th and 7^th. Ruby goes to the Keeler Mission on 21^st to question the former inhabitants of the tenement building. The mission’s chef, a black man named Collier, tells him that the lady who started the mission is deceased: “She stepped out that front door with her beau and was run down just like that. Going on ten years now.” Among the tenants interviewed by Ruby are a man named Charlie and his pregnant girlfriend, Sylvia Kovacs. The cop and his father live on the second floor of a three-story walkup next to the Rumrunner bar on 43^rd.

            Short story by Andrew Salmon in The Ruby Files Vol. 1, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2012. Mason is Hollis Mason, a policeman who also operated as a masked vigilante known as Nite-Owl in the 1930s and 1940s; he appears in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book series Watchmen. The Gunga Diner is also from Watchmen, as are Charlie and Sylvia Kovacs, the parents of the mentally unstable vigilante Rorschach, and the Rumrunner bar. Watchmen takes place in an alternate universe where the existence of a virtually omnipotent superhuman being called Doctor Manhattan led to advanced technology (such as electrically-powered cars), the United States winning the Vietnam War, and presidential term limits being repealed, so that Richard Nixon still leads the country in the mid 1980s. Also, half the population of New York City is wiped out in the course of the series. The Mason, Gunga Diner, Charlie, Sylvia Kovacs, and Rumrunner in “Wounds” must be Crossover Universe versions of their equivalents in the Watchmen Universe. There is no solid evidence that Hollis Mason ever operated as Nite-Owl in the CU, nor Walter Kovacs as Rorschach. The Keeler Mission was started by Edith Keeler, who died in 1930, as seen in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” an episode of the original Star Trek series written by Harlan Ellison. Mr. Collier is the father of Impossible Missions Force member Barney Collier from the 1960s spy show Mission: Impossible. Since Star Trek and Mission: Impossible take place in the CU, so do Rick Ruby’s cases.

Crossover Cover: Blood to the Bone

This novella, written by Andrew Salmon as Jack Tunney, is part of the Fight Card series. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are hired by female bare-knuckle boxer Eby Stokes to investigate the disappearance of her husband, who is also her tag team partner. After seeing his body in the morgue, Holmes, Watson, and Eby visit the Waggon and Horses, a bar frequented by boxers. As Salmon acknowledges in his afterword, the Waggon and Horses is from Arthur Conan Doyle's novel Rodney Stone.

Crossover Cover: Ghost Squad: Rise of the Black Legion

This novel by Ron Fortier and Andrew Salmon describes the formation of the Ghost Squad, who battle a Nazi society called the Black Legion. One of the members of the Squad is stage magician Arlene Kane, aka Lady Arcane; Arlene first appeared in Fortier's story "Lady Arcane: The Mistress of Magic," which Win listed in the original volumes. At one point, Squad member and pilot Alan Hale works with FBI agent Dan Fowler, from the pulp G-Men Detective. He also receives some help from boxer Mad Chad Hardin, who once worked with Jim Anthony, who has his own feature in the pulp magazine Super Detective. Finally, the leader of the Black Legion is a major villain of the Crossover Universe, but since his true identity is not revealed until the book's last line, I won't spoil it.