Crossover Movie Poster: Captain America: The First Avenger

The Red Skull, on seeing the Tesseract, this universe’s version of the Cosmic Cube, remarks, "And the Führer digs for trinkets in the desert." This line is a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, confirming the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an alternate reality to the CU, as is the main Marvel Universe.

Crossover of the Week

Yesterday, I had the immense pleasure of attending a midnight showing of one of my favorite movies, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As with the previous showings I attended, the audience participation was great, as was sharing the experience with people who love RHPS as much as I do. In honor of this great experience, here's my write-up of the novel that brings the movie into the CU.

2003

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNCANNY

John Taylor escorts an elf across the Nightside, helps deceased P.I. Larry Oblivion look for his brother Tommy, and refuses to take Walker’s place as agent of the Authorities that rule the Nightside. Appearing or mentioned are: Hydes; a cyborg from some future timeline with eyes glowing golden, mainlining a fierce and nasty future drug called Blood; taduki; Martian red weed; Queen Mab; Oberon and Titania; the Street of the Gods; Puck; the Sonic Assassin; the Time Tower; the Deep School; Salvation Kane; Old Mother Shipton; Indiana Jones; Mr. Stab; Miss Eliza Fritton, who used to run a private girl’s school; the Carnacki Insitute; the Droods; the Vril Power Gang; the Nazi Skull; Jacqueline Hyde; the worms of the Earth; a stuffed water baby; giant albino penguins; an old-fashioned grandfather clock, with a cobwebbed human skeleton propped up inside it; a lizard serum; Julien Advent; Rats’ Alley; Dr. Delirium; Wu Fang; and a Hand of Glory made from a monkey’s paw.

Novel by Simon R. Green. The Hydes are individuals who use the formula that turned Dr. Henry Jekyll into Edward Hyde as a narcotic. Jacqueline Hyde is a descendant of Jekyll’s who takes her ancestor’s serum, which turns her into a male Hyde. The cyborg from a future timeline with eyes glowing golden is one of the Hadenmen from Green’s Deathstalker series, which takes place in one of many possible futures for the CU. The Blood drug is also from the Deathstalker books. The drug Taduki is from H. Rider Haggard’s novels and stories about hunter Allan Quatermain. Martian red weed is from H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. Queen Mab is from William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, while Oberon, Titania, and Puck are from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Street of the Gods is from Green’s Hawk and Fisher novellas Winner Takes All and The God Killer. The Sonic Assassin is Michael Moorcock’s secret agent Jerry Cornelius, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion. The Time Tower is from Green’s novel Shadows Fall. Salvation Kane is probably meant to be Robert E. Howard’s heroic puritan Solomon Kane. The Deep School is an extradimensional school for sorcerers seen in Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone stories. Old Mother Shipton, Mr. Stab, and the Droods are from Green’s Secret Histories series. Dr. Delirium goes on to become one of the main villains of the fourth Secret Histories novel, From Hell with Love. The Indiana Jones reference can be interpreted as a reference to either a real person or a fictional character, but since both Indy and John Taylor are firmly established as being in the CU, we can accept this as a legitimate crossover. Miss Eliza Fritton must be the same Miss Fritton who was the headmistress of St. Trinian’s, a private school for girls, in illustrated cartoons by Ronald Searle. The Carnacki Institute is featured in Green’s Ghost Finders series. The Vril Power Gang is a reference to the Vril power from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race. The Nazi Skull is a reference to Captain America’s Nazi archenemy, the Red Skull. The worms of the Earth are from Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn story of the same name. The giant albino penguins are from Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. The stuffed water baby is a reference to Charles Kingsley’s children’s book The Water Babies. The old-fashioned grandfather clock with a cobwebbed human skeleton propped up inside it is from the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, bringing that film and its sequel, Shock Treatment, into the CU. The lizard serum is probably the one used by the Lizard, a foe of the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man. Julien Advent, a recurring character in the Nightside books, is meant to be adventurer Adam Adamant from the British television series Adam Adamant Lives! Rats’ Alley is from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Wu Fang is a pulp villain created by Robert J. Hogan. The Hand of Glory made from a monkey’s paw is a reference to W. W. Jacobs’ story “The Monkey’s Paw.”

Crossover Cover: The Tsar Bomb

Captain America’s shield and a picture of Hellboy hang on the walls of Atomic Robo’s offices. Hellboy's face is obscured, but the rest of the picture makes him instantly recognizable. Since this story takes place in 1961, Robo must know the real Hellboy.

Crossover of the Week

1945

HAPPY DEATH MEN

            The Avenger (aka Richard Henry Benson), visiting the Midas Club under the guise of Juan Dyer, overhears a group of men talking about a series of gruesome murders. According to Burke at the Classic, the victims were all chosen at random. One man says that he would expect this if “that nutcase with the fangs and the fright wig” were still around, but he hasn’t been seen in a couple months. “Dyer” and his companion, Ellen Patrick, join the conversation. The men who were already discussing the killings are Drew, an attorney; Dithers, the construction magnate; and Mann, a financial advisor. Dithers says that the killers have horrible death’s head grins, like the victims of poisoning murders in Gotham a few years ago. They are joined by Dr. Karl Walden and his companion, Lilya Zarov. Drew has instructed his daughter to stay indoors until the killings have stopped. When Zarov leaves, “Dyer” attempts to find her; upon returning, he finds that Ellen and Walden have disappeared, and that none of the others at the table remember them being there in the first place. Stepping into a back alley, the Avenger is attacked by one of the grinning murderers. In a flashback, Benson and his aide Nellie Gray battle one of the so-called “Happy Death Men.” As the monster attempts to crush him to death, Benson uses a technique taught to him by the yoga master Dekka Lan Shan and refined with instruction from another New York crime fighter to slow his heart rate in order to briefly deceive the creature into thinking he is dead. The creature is killed by Ellen Patrick, now in her other identity as the Domino Lady. Benson says that the dead creature’s skin tissue matches a strange polymorphic material similar to the residue at the scene of Justice, Inc.’s battle with a woman known as “The Countess,” who seemingly died at the end of that affair. Benson states that rich men have been disappearing, members of various clubs: the Explorers Club, the Cobalt, the Sphinx, the local branch of the Baltimore Gun Club, and the Discoverers League. Back in the present, Benson regains consciousness, finding himself, the Domino Lady, and three of his aides as captives in the living room of a penthouse apartment. Benson realizes that Lilya Zarov and the Countess are one and the same person, though her appearance has changed. Benson tells Walden that unlike the Nazis, the United States has successfully created a supersoldier. Smitty asks if Walden is part of the Unholy Nine gang; Walden replies that that group stole his organization’s good name, or at least half of it. One of Benson’s aides, Fergus “Mac” MacMurdie, refers to rumors of immortality elixirs such as Royal Jelly and the “Elixir of Life.” Benson suspects that Dr. Walden is far older than he looks, and Mac wonders if he once had a supply of a longevity elixir that ran out. Smitty remarks that the Countess was reportedly disfigured around the time of the Russian Revolution, and that it seems like she spent a long time looking like “a female Phantom of the Opera” despite her current difference in appearance. Benson suggests that Walden is the “Baron” who assisted the Countess in her misdeeds last year, and that she has changeable flesh like him. At the conclusion of the affair, Benson sends the last of the Death Men to a secure rehabilitation clinic in upstate New York that is run by a bronze-skinned doctor friend of his. Benson suggests to his comrades that Walden may have escaped from them using technology similar to that used by a foe of this doctor, which in turn was based upon a “disintegrator” invented by Theodore Nemor. Nellie asks if perhaps Walden believes, as did a man called Rode Boeman whom they encountered a few years ago, that there is more to Benson’s condition than mere muscular paralysis.

            Short story by Win Scott Eckert in The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files, Joe Gentile and Howard Hopkins, eds., Moonstone Books, 2011. The Midas Club is from the Doc Savage novel The Man Who Shook the Earth. Clyde Burke, a reporter for The New York Classic, is an agent of the Shadow, as is Rutledge Mann. The Shadow is the crime-fighter who helped Benson in refining his heart-stopping technique. The “nutcase with the fangs and the fright wig” is the Spider. Attorney Carson Drew is the father of young amateur sleuth Nancy Drew. J.C. Dithers is Dagwood Bumstead’s boss in Chic Young’s comic strip Blondie. The Domino Lady, created by Lars Anderson, is one of the most famous pulp heroines. The poisoning murders in Gotham are a reference to Batman’s archenemy the Joker. Dr. Karl Walden is meant to be Baron von Hessel from Philip José Farmer’s Doc Savage novel Escape from Loki. Many questions about the Baron/Walden are answered in Eckert’s story “The Wild Huntsman” (The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 3: Portrait of a Trickster, Meteor House, 2012.) The Countess Lilya Zarov is meant to be Lili Bugov, the Countess Idivzhopu, and is also from Escape from Loki. In Farmer’s novel, it is mentioned that the Countess’ family held manhunts; Lili’s use of the name Zarov in this story is meant to imply that she is related to General Zaroff from Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” The Countess’ previous encounter with Justice, Inc. was chronicled in Eckert’s story “Death and the Countess” (The Avenger Chronicles, Joe Gentile and Howard Hopkins, eds., Moonstone Books, 2008.) Dekka Lan Shan is also from Escape from Loki, and is the grandfather of the Dekka Lan Shan who appears in “The Sapphire Death,” a Peter the Brazen story by “Loring Brent” (George F. Worts.) The Explorers Club and the Sphinx Club were both real clubs. The Cobalt Club is from the Shadow novels. The Baltimore Gun Club appears in Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon, and The Purchase of the North Pole. The Discoverers League is from the novel Hunt at World’s End by Gabriel Kaufman. The supersoldier created by the United States government is, of course, Captain America. The Unholy Nine appear in Max McCoy’s story “Feast of Fire,” found in the limited hardcover edition of The Avenger Chronicles. The Royal Jelly serum was created by Sherlock Holmes, and has provided him and his family and friends with extended lifespans; its existence was revealed by William S. Baring-Gould in his biography Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. The Elixir of Life was created by Dr. Fu Manchu. The Phantom of the Opera is from Gaston Leroux’s novel of the same name. The clinic in upstate New York is Doc Savage’s Crime College. Doc’s encounter with a villain using similar teleportation technology to Dr. Walden’s was chronicled in The Vanisher, while Theodore Nemor’s disintegrator appears in Edward Malone and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger story “The Disintegration Machine.” Eckert first proposed that the device from The Vanisher was based on Nemor’s creation in his story “The Vanishing Devil” (Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 1: The Modern Babylon, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2005.) Rode Boeman is meant to be Red Orc from Philip José Farmer’s The World of Tiers novels; Benson encountered him during the events of Christopher Paul Carey’s story “Devil’s Dark Harvest” (also found in The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files.)

Crossover Covers: Justice, Inc.

The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the newly-minted Avenger battle Rodil Mocquino and John Sunlight, who seek to master time itself. In #3, Doc says that one of his ancestors was a Vandal. The implication of this statement is that Doc is descended from the immortal DC Comics supervillain Vandal Savage. The Shadow compares the death of Richard Benson’s wife and daughter to “that murder case last May…only there the child survived while the parents were slain.” The child is Bruce Wayne, later known as the Batman. In #5, John Sunlight has two-way wrist radios, which were stolen from “those detectives I killed last month,” a reference to Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem. Michael Uslan’s annotations in the back of the issue indicate that Sunlight only thought he killed Tracy and Catchem. In #6, a Nazi agent named Kruger appears. This is meant to be Heinz Kruger, the Nazi agent who killed Dr. Reinstein, the creator of the Super-Soldier Serum that empowered Captain America. This series offers a completely different take on the circumstances of the Avenger’s origin than Paul Ernst’s original pulp novel Justice, Inc. A time-traveling Doc Savage from the 21^st century appears; this is meant to be the version of Doc seen in Dynamite’s Doc Savage miniseries. However, that series is incompatible with the details of Doc’s later life given in Philip José Farmer and Win Scott Eckert’s The Evil in Pemberley House. Also, Bruce Wayne’s parents died in 1929 in the CU, not 1938. Therefore, this series must take place in an alternate universe.

Crossover of the Week

1939

JAZZ

            Occult detective Ravenwood opens a jazz club. Guests at the grand opening party include a famed industrialist named Stark and his much younger fiancée, A.J. Martin from the Associated Press, a scientist named Dr. Erskine and his wife, and former actress Margaret Grace, who was flown to New York by ace pilot Lance Star. Ravenwood remembers a recent visit to Los Angeles where a thrilling golden-haired woman came to his aid against some shady characters.

            Short story by Bobby Nash in Ravenwood: Stepson of Mystery, Ron Fortier, ed., Cornerstone Book Publishers, 2010. Ravenwood was the subject of a series of stories by Frederick C. Davis in the pulp magazine Secret Agent X. Journalist A.J. Martin is one of Secret Agent X’s many aliases. The industrialist named Stark and his fiancée are the future parents of Tony Stark, aka the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man. Dr. Erskine is meant to be the same scientist who created the super-soldier serum that empowered another Marvel hero, Captain America. In the original account of Cap’s origins, “Meet Captain America,” the scientist’s name was given as Dr. Reinstein. Later writers revealed that “Reinstein” was an alias given to him by the United States government, and that his true name was Dr. Abraham Erskine. However, the Dark Horse Comics miniseries The Shadow and Doc Savage: The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons, set in 1937, has him answering to the name Reinstein (along with his daughter Bernie) well before Doc Savage tells him about the Super-Soldier Project at the conclusion of the adventure. In the CU, Reinstein was likely his true name and Erskine the alias, rather than vice versa as in the Marvel Universe. Also, Bernie Reinstein stated in The Shadow and Doc Savage that her mother was long dead. Reinstein must have remarried in the two years between his encounter with the Shadow and Doc and his attendance of Ravenwood’s gala opening. The year of this story is conjecture, but it must take place before Steve Rogers was injected with the serum in 1940, in the aftermath of which event Reinstein was fatally shot by a Nazi agent. The golden-haired woman is the pulp adventuress the Domino Lady, whose stories in the “spicy” pulps were chronicled by an author using the nom de plume “Lars Anderson.” Margaret Grace is mentioned in Nash’s story “Target: Domino Lady,” and also appears in his Box 13 story “The Mystery of the Menacing Manuscript.” Ostensibly a character from the Canadian pulps, Lance Star is actually an original character created by Nash.

Crossover of the Week

December 1941

AS TIME GOES BY…

            In Casablanca, Doctor Omega requests the aid of Rick Blaine, owner of Rick's Café Américain, who agreed to listen to the Doctor as a favor to Ferrari. Rick tells Omega that Major Strasser will see to it that he receives special treatment from neither the Vichy French nor the Nazis. He also says that Captain Renault doesn’t hand out letters-of-transit to just anybody. Rick is startled as he recognizes the song Sam, his piano player, is performing. In Germany, Omega’s time-and-space ship, the Cosmos has fallen into the hands of Doktor Drexler and his son Frank. Several years ago, the Drexlers reigned havoc on New York City with Ironmen created by the elder Drexler, who was later falsely believed to be dead at the hands of the masked vigilante known as the Spider, who defeated them both. Afterwards, Frank started raving about vigilantes who dressed like spiders, bats, or cats, or who dressed in red, white, and blue or the Union Jack. Unbeknownst to father and son, the Doctor and his companion Fred are spying on them. The Doctor tells Fred not to touch a cube that has a powerful effect on Omega. Three months ago, the Doctor and Fred chose as the current power source for the Cosmos a meteor, which shared many properties with vril energy, that some believed originated from an exploding planet. This meteor had traces of solidified krypton gas and sometimes radiated a green glow. Omega calls Noel Essaillon, a Frenchman who has written about time travel, a fool. Back in the present day, the Doctor says that as a backup plan, the Nazis will bury Doktor Drexler’s newest batch of Ironmen to be awakened when the Fatherland has regrouped. Fred refers to them as “Sleepers.”

            Short story by Paul Hugli in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 9: La Vie en Noir, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2012. Doctor Omega is from the novel of the same name by Arnould Galopin, as is his companion Fred and his ship, the Cosmos. Rick Blaine, his Café Américain, Ferrari, Major Strasser, Colonel Renault, and Sam are from the film Casablanca. Although the year of this story is given as 1942, this is incorrect. Rick Blaine’s appearance here takes place contemporaneously with the beginning of Casablanca, which itself takes place in December 1941. Frank Drexler and his father battled the Spider in Norvell W. Page’s pulp novel Satan’s Murder Machines. The vigilante who dresses as a bat is the Batman. The vigilante who dresses as a cat is probably the Black Cat, aka Hollywood stuntwoman Linda Turner, whose adventures were published by Harvey Comics. The vigilante who dresses in red, white, and blue is Captain America. In the 1960s, Cap battled Drexler’s second batch of Ironmen, known as “the Sleepers.” The cube is the Cosmic Cube, which contains mysterious energies that allow its wielder to transform reality itself. In the Cube’s first appearance, it was utilized by Captain America’s foe the Red Skull. The Skull was also the one who originally proposed the creation of the Sleepers, though obviously Doktor Drexler was the one who actually produced them. The vigilante dressed in the Union Jack is the aptly-named Union Jack, Cap’s teammate in the superhero group known as the Invaders. Although most comic book superteams’ exploits do not take place in the CU, it has been established that a version of the Invaders existed in the CU, albeit for a much briefer period of time than their Marvel Universe counterparts. The vril energy is from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Coming Race. The meteor is a piece of kryptonite, a radioactive fragment of Superman’s home planet Krypton, which is deadly to the Man of Steel. Noël Essaillon is from French author René Barjavel’s science fiction novel Le Voyageur Imprudent (aka Future Times Three.)