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!

Crossover of the Week

1881

THE WAR SHAMAN

The Merkabah Rider gives his ally Kabede a pistol with the Elder Sign imprinted on its side. Kabede refers to their conflict with the Great Old Ones. The two of them, along with the Rider’s old friend Dick Belden, are visited by Shar-rogs pa, the blue abbot of Shambhala, aka Faustus Montague. The monk Chaksusa told the Rider of the abbot when he’d battled Shub-Niggurath, the Yiggians, and the Black Goat Man. Faustus’ brother is Mun Gsod. Faustus tells the Rider, Kabede and Belden of stories that are true: a whaler with an Indian figurehead pursuing a pale leviathan to the doom of her crew and her scarred captain; a young boy putting his hand on a sword and drawing it lightly from a stone, becoming the greatest king the world has ever known; and thirteen heroes with two hearts between them, who set themselves between an insignificant world and all the evil that time and space can muster. He further states a word Chaksusa taught to the Rider, when combined with the Star-Stones of Mnar, is doubly detrimental to the Great Old Ones. The Apache Piishi has seen the Rider’s old acquaintance Misquamacus. Ten of Faustus’ disciples died battling Adon’s Creed on a mesa at a place called Stallions Gate in New Mexico. Among the allies of the Merkabah Riders are the Kun-Sun-Dai and the Watchers. Faustus thinks Misquamacus may be serving Nyarlathotep. The Rider’s own claustrophobia reminds him of his boyhood friend Aloysius Monkowitz’s many phobias. The Rider and Piishi faced Shub-Niggurath and the Cold Ones together. Misquamacus has manipulated the Billington family in the past. The geometric patterns in sand-images made by a group of skinwalkers remind the Rider of the diagrams in the Book of Zylac. Misquamacus summons Ossodagowah.

Short story by Edward M. Erdelac in Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel, Damnation Books, 2011. The Elder Sign, the Great Old Ones, Shub-Niggurath, and Yig are from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The Star-Stones of Mnar are from August Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold. Misquamacus is from both The Lurker at the Threshold and Graham Masterton’s Manitou novels. The Lurker at the Threshold mentions both Misquamacus’ devotion to Nyarlathotep and his conjuring of Ossodagowah. The Billington family is also from The Lurker at the Threshold. “Shar-rogs pa” and “Mun Gsod” are Tibetan approximations of “Darkness Slayer” and “East-helper,” the English translations of the names of the blue wizards Morinehtar and Rómestámo from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This story reveals Rómestámo and Misquamacus are the same being. The whaler is the Pequod from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The boy who drew the sword from the stone is King Arthur. The thirteen heroes with two hearts between them are the various incarnations of the Doctor, of Doctor Who fame. While most of the Doctor’s exploits take place in an alternate universe, it has been established the Doctor has a CU counterpart, who often goes by the name of Doctor Omega. Stallions Gate, New Mexico, is the future site of Project Quantum Leap, from the television series Quantum Leap. The Watchers (more properly the Watchers’ Council) are from the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while the Kun-Sun-Dai (whose full name is the Order of the Kun-Sun-Dai) are from the “Awakening” and “Calvary” episodes of the Buffy spin-off Angel. Aloysius Monkowitz is an ancestor of obsessive-compulsive private investigator Adrian Monk from the television series Monk. The Cold Ones and Zylac appear in Cthulhu Mythos fiction by Clark Ashton Smith. Zylac’s book, The Wisdom and Sacred Magic of Zylac the Mage, appears in stories by Joseph S. Pulver.

Crossover Cover: Angel: After the Fall

Angel uses a spell from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (from the Evil Dead films) to heal himself. This series takes place months after the Angel series finale “Not Fade Away.”

Crossover Cover: Angel Spotlight: Wesley

Charles Gunn asks Fred Burkle for the slime analysis on “the Illithid case.” Illithids are the mind-flayers from the Dungeons and Dragons games, thus making the various D&D realms alternate realities to the CU.

Crossover of the Week

1914

THE MARK OF THE RED LEECH

            Private Henry Jones Junior is scolded for journaling by Captain Dickson, whom Colonel Renwick respects. Jones’ journal entry refers to Pvt. Simpson. Dickson refers to Captain Spencer and the others, and doubts that they will see Captain Ulysses Paxton again in this world. Jones says that his father has met Dickson’s famous mentor. The mark left on the corpses of a group of soldiers reminds Dickson of something in his mentor’s files called the red leech, a case which his biographer never published. A maddened Major Richard Wentworth attacks Dickson and the others, but is subdued and calmed down. The killer proves to be the vampire Sir Francis Varney. Dickson says that Dracula is real. Varney is killed by a man named Isaac, who is accompanied by a little girl. Several groups were investigating the soldiers’ deaths, including one led by Colonel Renwick and one including Colonel Wyndham-Price.

            Short story by Travis Hiltz in Harry Dickson vs. the Spider, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2014. Private Henry Jones Junior is better known as Indiana Jones. Captain Dickson is detective Harry Dickson, from pulp stories by Jean Ray and others. Colonel John “Renny” Renwick will later become one of Doc Savage’s five aides. Pvt. Simpson is meant to be an ancestor of the titular family from the animated sitcom The Simpsons. However, The Simpsons is too absurd in its events to comfortably take place in the CU. Most likely, there is a Simpson family in the CU, but they have had very different misadventures from their cartoon counterparts. Also, they almost certainly do not have yellow skin and only four fingers. Captain Eliot Spencer will later become the Cenobite known as Pinhead, as seen in the movie Hellraiser, based on Clive Barker’s story “The Hellbound Heart,” and its sequels. Captain Ulysses Paxton is from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels. Dickson’s mentor is Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Watson referred to Holmes’ involvement in “the repulsive story of the Red Leech” in “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.” Major Richard Wentworth will later fight crime as the Spider. Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire. Dracula needs no introduction at this point. Isaac Laquedem (aka the Wandering Jew) and the little girl (Lotte) are from Paul Féval’s novel The Wandering Jew’s Daughter. Despite the different spellings, Colonel Wyndham-Price is meant to be an ancestor of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from the television series Angel.

Crossover Covers: Reborn

Illyria, the fallen Old One, is recruited by the Hierarchy of Bete Noir, the secret City that Shapes the World, to destroy Liandra, the Fallen Angel and the city’s “court of last resort.” The Hierarchy is mentioned to be the oldest client of the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart. Illyria and Liandra fight, but end up forming an uneasy alliance as they are mystically transported around the world and finally to a post-apocalyptic future before returning to Bete Noir in the present. This crossover links Peter David’s Fallen Angel comic series to Illyria and Wolfram & Hart from the TV series Angel, and thus to the CU. Since time flows differently within Bete Noir than it does in the rest of the world, dating within the Fallen Angel series can be difficult; however, using Illyria’s perspective, this crossover happens a few days after the Angel episode “Time Bomb.”

Crossover of the Week

Autumn 2010-Spring 2011

BLOOD AND BULLETS

            Deacon Chalk has hunted monsters ever since a member of the race of angel/human hybrids known as the Nephilim killed his family. Deacon states, “There are few proclaimed vampire slayers and they range all kinds. Anita out in St. Louis, but she has a lot of stuff going on, not just vampire executions. Cat and Bones run their crew killing vampires and do a fine job of it. I hear whispers about the Blue Woman now and again, but it’s hard to pull the fact from the fiction on that one. There’s some folks in California. In L.A. and a small town east of it, who do mostly vampire slaying, but I haven’t met them yet. The black guy and old man combo who roam around do nothing but vampires. From what I hear they have a personal stake in it, so to speak. Sam and Dean will tussle with a vampire, but usually they are chasing down demons.”

            Novel by James R. Tuck. Anita is the main character of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, which takes place in an alternate reality where humans know that the supernatural is real. However, Justin Gustainis’ Morris and Chastain Supernatural Investigations series has established that Anita does have a CU counterpart, who has doubtless had very different adventures than Hamilton’s version. Dhampir Catherine “Cat” Crawfield and vampire bounty hunter Bones are from Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series of novels. Vlad Tepesh appears in Frost’s series, but he hates the name Dracula and possesses pyrokinetic abilities. This is probably a “soul-clone” of the original Dracula, who somehow developed pyrokinetic talents that the true Vlad Tepes lacks. The Blue Woman is Nancy A. Collins’ monster hunting vampire Sonja Blue. The small town east of L.A. is Sunnydale, the home of Buffy Summers on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Los Angeles reference is to the titular vampire from Buffy’s spin-off Angel. The black guy and old man combo are Marvel Comics’ vampire hunter Blade and his mentor Abraham Whistler, the latter of whom debuted in the cartoon Spider-Man: The Animated Series and went on to appear in the Blade film series. Sam and Dean are monster hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester from the television series Supernatural.

Crossover Cover: Angel Spotlight: Doyle

Doyle is confused for someone named Mark Healy, which he says happens all the time. Mark Healy is from the television series Roseanne. Healy was played by Glenn Quinn, who also played Doyle on Angel. This crossover brings Roseanne into the CU, and by extension The Jackie Thomas Show. The final episode of Roseanne implied that the entire series was actually a story written by Roseanne Conner that told a greatly distorted account of her life. Obviously, this should be disregarded for the purposes of incorporating Roseanne into the CU.