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 Cover: The Rocketeer Cargo of Doom

In this continuation of Dave Stevens' character, Cliff Secord does battle with a criminal known as the Master (who is referred to at one point as "John Sunli---," before the character speaking is interrupted), who is utilizing dinosaurs from a distant island (whose name starts with the word "Skull") for his nefarious schemes. Stevens is a tough act to follow, but Waid and Samnee did a pretty impressive job with this series.