Crossover Cover: Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep

 

Ash Williams and Elvis Presley battle the mummy Ho-Tep, who is seeking to use an Egyptian “Book of Souls” called the Necronomicon Ho-Tep for his own ends.

This crossover is one of hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2 by Win Scott Eckert, so if you loved Win's books, feel free to give mine a look!

Crossover Cover: Ashes 2 Ashes

Ash Williams and the Wise Man track the Necronomicon Ex Mortis to an ancient temple which contains what appears to be Indiana Jones’ skeleton. This miniseries takes place concurrent with the first Evil Dead film. The skeleton’s resemblance to Indy is puzzling, considering his appearances as an old man in the framing sequences of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which are set in the 1990s, as well as his encounter with Lara Croft sometime before 2000, after apparently having been rejuvenated back to the prime of life (hence Lara's reference to him being "seemingly ageless").

Crossover Covers: Vampirella/Army of Darkness

Crossover Cover: Army of Darkness/Reanimator

Ash Williams time-travels to March 1922 from 2012 and meets Herbert West, who is later revealed to be the same West whom Ash has met before, having used the Necronomicon Ex Mortis to travel back in time. Ash previously met West in the stories Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator and Prophecy. Jay Lindsey notes “This one takes some wrangling, since the implication is that the 2000s West is the one from Lovecraft’s original story. Since the Cthulhu Mythos timeline I generally refer to claims that West disappeared in 1921, I propose that the 2000s West attempted to use the Necronomicon to visit his ancestor, but due to some temporal quirk, missed his demise and ended up with amnesia, assuming the identity of the previous West.” Although the latter-day Herbert dies in this story, he is later resurrected via sorcery and returned to the 21^st century via unrevealed means, as referenced in the Reanimator miniseries.

Crossover Covers: Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash

Cassie Hack is called out of retirement by Ash Williams when the remnants of the Black Lamp Society begin selling pages from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. As Cassie and Ash are thrown through time by the Necronomicon, they pass Nightmare and Sleepy battling the Claw alongside ’Devil in the 1940s. Nightmare and Sleepy appeared in Clue Comics, published by Hillman. The Claw was a villain that was featured in the Lev Gleason title Silver Streak Comics. ’Devil is Bart Hill, aka Daredevil, one of several heroes who fought the Claw. The shortening of his codename is done in deference to Marvel Comics’ long-standing use of the name Daredevil for one of their own heroes. The abbreviated name is also used in the Dynamite series Project Superpowers, which does not fit into CU continuity. Nightmare and Sleepy appeared in a flashback in the Hack/Slash storyline “Super Sidekick Sleepover Slaughter,” and Daredevil was shown in a symbolic image in that story.

Crossover Covers: Army of Darkness/Xena

Because of the many anachronisms in both series, Win has argued that Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess take place in an alternate universe, which Ash traveled to from the Crossover Universe. There is precedent for this take, since Ash also traveled to the AU seen in the comic Marvel Zombies.

Crossover Covers: Darkman vs. the Army of Darkness

Two of Sam Raimi's characters cross paths. Wildwood (spelled "Wyldwood" here) Cemetery from Will Eisner's comic The Spirit also appears.

Crossover Covers: Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash

Crossover Covers: Hell on Earth

In this storyline, the Parliament of Demons seeks to give Dracula the power belonging to the god Chaos. The Parliament allows Dracula to use its forces to attack Earth. In response to this, the Conjuress sends her agents, including Vampirella and Pantha, to battle Dracula and company. For the most part, I have followed Win's example by only listing a few stories where Vampirella meets Dracula, since there have been several over the years. However, there is another crossover in this story. One of the Parliament's agents is a vampire named Orlok. Based on his name and physical appearance, he is clearly Graf Orlok from F.W. Murnau's silent horror film Nosferatu, which was loosely based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Obviously, Orlok must have been resurrected after his death at the hands of Eva in the miniseries The Darkness vs. Eva: Daughter of Dracula. Eva first appeared in "Ash vs. the Monsters," a storyline from the Army of Darkness comic book that also featured her father. However, in both the miniseries Prophecy and Vampirella Halloween Special 2013, she meets the same version of Dracula that Vampi regularly battles, and he apparently doesn't recognize her. Presumably, the Dracula that appeared in "Ash vs. the Monsters" is a different "soul-clone" of the real Dracula than Vampi's foe.

Crossover Covers: Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator

Crossover Covers: Hack/Slash Part 2

Besides the characters shown yesterday, slasher hunters Cassie Hack and Vlad have also met:

Mercy Sparx, a demon created by Josh Blaylock, who has been recruited by Heaven to track down rogue angels....

The depraved supervillain Bomb Queen, whose alternate reality Cassie traveled to from the CU (and who traveled to the CU herself in the storyline "Interdimensional Women's Prison Breakout")...

Eva, Daughter of Dracula...

The ghostly slasher Victor Crowley, from the Hatchet film series...

And in the coda to Cassie and Vlad's saga, Ash Williams from the Evil Dead films and the comic book Army of Darkness.

This series wracked up an impressive number of crossovers in its years of publications. As a bonus, here's a one page unofficial comic by creator Tim Seeley in which Cassie and Vlad meet two other master killers: Dexter Morgan (from the television series Dexter) and Jason Voorhees (from the Friday the 13th movies.) I'm probably not going to include this in the book, but it's still pretty cool, particularly as I'm a Dexter fan.