Crossover Cover: The Duelist

 

Are you a Jonathan Maberry fan?

Then you'll love his story in this anthology, which has a nod to his Pine Deep trilogy!

For more information, be sure to purchase 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 Covers: The Blood of Carthage

 

A portrait of Hellboy hangs in Giles’ apartment. The painting of Hellboy, seen in #23, provides further proof a version of Hellboy exists in the CU, although not all his solo exploits or crossovers with other characters can be included. 

This crossover 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! Like its predecessors, this volume is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Something's Fishy

Cassie Hack faces off with Mary Shelley Lovecraft, who compares her to “that red devil boy with the tail” and claims she’s “compelling, though maybe not so well loved as the Summers girl,” referring to Hellboy and Buffy, respectively.

Crossover Cover: The Goon Meets Hellboy

Hellboy gets knocked on the head, and upon regaining consciousness finds himself at a different location, where he meets a zombie-killing palooka known as the Goon. After another knock on the head, Hellboy finds himself back where he was when he received the first blow to the head. The exploits of Powell's adventurer the Goon take place in the present day, but in a very surreal world with 1930s trappings, and therefore likely occur in an alternate reality to the Crossover Universe. Hellboy must have somehow been transported to the Goon’s universe from the CU. The two would later cross paths again at the end of the one-shot Criminal Macabre/The Goon: When Freaks Collide. Cal McDonald recognized Hellboy, so they must have both come from the CU, and other crossovers in the Criminal Macabre comics and prose stories support this.

Crossover Cover: Hellboy: Oddest Jobs

As I've stated before, I take Hellboy crossovers on a case-by-case basis, as some fit easily into CU continuity, and some don't. This particular anthology of prose stories contains four stories with crossovers that do fit, in my opinion. In Brian Keene's "Salamander Blues," Hellboy encounters a group of mermen who are holding people hostage, and concludes the National Guard is not coming, and neither is the army or the FBI or Black Lodge or any of the other alphabet-soup agencies. Black Lodge is a covert occult organization that exists across Keene’s multiverse, including several works that have been incorporated into the Crossover Universe. In Barbara Hambly's "Repossession," set in the summer of 1962, Hellboy battles a demon hunter who is seeking notes left behind by Abdul Alhazred, author of the Necronomicon. In Gary A. Braunbeck's "In Cupboards and Bookshelves," Hellboy’s latest case brings him to Cedar Hill, Ohio, a town featured in a series of short stories, novellas, and novels by Braunbeck. "Feet of Sciron" by Rhys Hughes is particularly crossover-heavy. Hellboy recruits Foggy Dicks, a porn star that can generate ectoplasm, for a sex magic ritual in order to prevent the planet Nekrotzar from colliding with Earth, battling King Sciron in the process. Nekrotzar was drawn towards Earth by Marvin Carnacki, the current director of the Carnacki Institute, founded by his ancestor to rid the natural world of paranormal threats. Hellboy says most people think the original Carnacki was William Hope Hodgson’s fictional creation, just as many other authors pretended their subjects were fictional: Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne with Phileas Fogg, H.G. Wells with Dr. Moreau, M.P. Shiel with Prince Zaleski, and Maurice Richardson with Engelbrecht. He also says Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien are at Mount Snaefell in Iceland. Foggy replies that he remembers Verne wrote a book about two explorers. Hellboy simply smiles in response. In Nekrotzar, the monster-hunting demon receives a riverboat ride from writer Philip José Farmer, who has been resurrected there after his death. Hellboy reveals to Foggy that billions of years ago Nekrotzar actually did collide with the Earth, which was merely a cloud of stardust then. Earth congealed around Nekrotzar, trapping Sciron’s palace in what would become the younger planet’s crust, forty miles under what is now Iceland. This Carnacki Insitute is clearly a separate group from the one seen in Simon R. Green’s Ghost Finders series. Engelbrecht is from Maurice Richardson’s book The Exploits of Engelbrecht. The subterranean world Sciron’s palace inhabits is the one seen in Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Philip José Farmer, of course, revealed the existence of the Wold Newton Family to the world, and wrote several chronicles of events in the CU. Farmer’s appearance here evokes his Riverworld novels, albeit as homage rather than a true crossover. This story must take place after Farmer’s passing in 2009, although it was published earlier than that.

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 Cover: Criminal Macabre/The Goon: When Freaks Collide

Paranormal private investigator Cal McDonald comes face-to-face with the zombie-killing palooka known as the Goon, and ultimately joins forces with him to defeat a man who is bringing his imagination to life with an occult tome. The man summons Hellboy, who Cal recognizes, before being defeated. The exploits of Eric Powell's adventurer the Goon take place in the present day, but in a very surreal world with 1930s trappings, and therefore likely occur in an alternate reality to the Crossover Universe. However, both P.I. Cal McDonald of Steve Niles and Christoper Mitten's comic Criminal Macabre and Mike Mignola's monster-fighting demon Hellboy (whom the Goon met in a 2004 issue of his own title) have independent links to the CU, and given that Cal knows who Hellboy is, it is very likely that the two were transported to the Goon's universe from the CU.

Crossover Cover: Red, White and Blood

The third, and to date final, Nathaniel Cade novel. In this one, Cade and Zach attempt to prevent the parasitic creature known as the Boogeyman from murdering the president. Among the items in Cade’s trophy room are the leg of a cockroach roughly the same size as a human arm, hung on the wall with a plaque reading Operative Samsa, W. Berlin, 1948; a gallon jar filled with formaldehyde holding an insect claw labeled Delambre Remains, 1958; and the dried-out husk of a six-foot-tall praying mantis marked Judas Breed, Adult Stage, New York, 1997. The cockroach arm comes from Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis." The Delambre remains are a reference to the 1958 film The Fly, based on George Langelaan's short story of the same name. The Judas Breed is from Guillermo del Toro's 1997 film Mimic, which was very loosely based on Donald A. Wollheim's story. Tim Lebbon's Hellboy novel Unnatural Selection implied that Hellboy was involved in the events of Mimic. Perhaps he and Cade worked together to resolve the situation. The Whateley farm appears in a flashback, which also mentions Aleister Crowley’s conjuring of a moonchild, the bloody proof of which is all over Whitechapel. The Whateley farm is from Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," while the moonchild is a reference to Aleister Crowley's novel of the same name. One of the characters in The Moonchild, Simon Iff, also appears in a series of detective stories by Crowley. The Whitechapel reference implies that this moonchild is Jack the Ripper. Since the origins of the Redjac entity have never been explained, this take on the Ripper could be considered valid for the CU.  Among the places where the Boogeyman is reported or confirmed to have been encountered are Fairvale, CA; Camp Crystal Lake, NJ; and Springwood, IL. Fairvale is from Robert Bloch's novel Psycho and Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation. Camp Crystal Lake is from the Friday the 13th film series. Springwood is from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. The implication is that the Boogeyman influenced Norman Bates, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger, at least in their initial killings.

Crossover Cover: Painkiller Jane/Hellboy

Crossover Covers: Batman/Hellboy/Starman (with Some Notes on the Knight Family in the CU)

In his 1980s series All-Star Squadron, Roy Thomas established that Ted Knight, the original Starman and father of Jack Knight, the Starman who appears in this story, was the cousin of Sandra Knight, aka Phantom Lady, one of several characters DC acquired from the defunct comic company Quality. Phantom Lady is in the CU through two crossovers: "The Olympic Saboteurs," a story from the Fox Features incarnation of Phantom Lady where she refers to Sherlock Holmes in a context that suggests he is a real person, and a story featuring her successor in Action Comics Weekly that reveals that one of the former students at a university run by Sandra is Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers fame. Since Ted and Sandra Knight both have CU counterparts, I'm inclined to say their genealogical relationship applies to those versions as well as their DCU equivalent. It is worth noting that Mrs. Peel's maiden name was Knight, and her father was Sir John Knight. However, Art Sippo's story "How Art Thou Fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer" depicts Sun Koh, "the Nazi Doc Savage," having sex with a married MI5 agent named Lady Felicity Knight. Art has confirmed for me that Emma Knight-Peel is therefore Lady Felicity's illegitimate daughter by Sun Koh, and therefore Mrs. Peel has no actual relation to the Knight family.

Crossover Cover: Hellboy: Unnatural Selection

This Hellboy novel has references to the monster-fighting demon's involvement in the events of three horror movies. One is "something to do with pods" in 1978, a reference to the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The remake is very different in its particulars from the original, though a few character names are at least partially retained: Miles Bennell becomes Matthew Bennell, Becky Driscoll is Elizabeth Driscoll, and Jack Bellicec is a main character in both. Presumably the makers of the second film gave the actual people involved the names of characters from the previous one in order to create the illusion that it was a re-imagining of the original story rather than a sequel. (It's also worth noting that Kevin McCarthy has a cameo in the remake where he appears to be playing Miles Bennell, trying to convince people of the invasion as he was at the end of the original.) Another incident was "a shark thing" in 1975, a reference to the film version of Jaws. A third episode was more recent, and involved giant insects that mimic human beings in New York, a reference to the movie Mimic, which was very loosely based on Donald A. Wollheim's 1950 short story of the same name. According to Christopher Farnsworth's The President's Vampire, the title character, vampire secret agent Nathaniel Cade, helped resolve the original Body Snatchers crisis. In the following book, Red, White and Blood, it is implied that Cade was involved in the events of Mimic. Perhaps he worked with Hellboy to help defeat the Judas Breed insects, though Guillermo del Toro evidently omitted their involvement in the incident from his retelling. It's also worth noting that Farnsworth's website formerly boasted a timeline for Cade's universe, which included an entry for the birth of Hellboy, who was not referred to by name.