Crossover Covers: Final Phase

 

The Black Bat battles the Black Sun Cult alongside the Phantom Detective, I. V. Frost, the Domino Lady, Nighthawk, Ki-Gor and Helene, Captain Hazzard’s aides, and Jim Anthony. The Phantom Detective listens to a radio broadcast by Diane Elliott. Nighthawk is from Fortier’s novel Nighthawk: Burning Skies. This crossover brings him into the CU. Diane Elliott is Operator No. 5’s girlfriend. In an amusing moment that is more of an in-joke than a true crossover, the Domino Lady tells the Phantom Detective that she’s always thought the use of a spotlight signal to summon him was a great idea, and that she’s surprised some other masked mystery man hasn’t stolen it from him, a foreshadowing of Commissioner Gordon’s use of the Batsignal to summon Batman.

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by 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

Spring 1966

THE REVELATION OF THE YETI 

In Africa, Doctor Omega asks Barton Werper if he’s ever been to Vulcan. Werper says their guide is Robert John Kilgore, aka Ki-Gor, and that his biographical subject is the most famous Jungle Lord, but there were earlier ones in India, such as Mowgli. The Doctor mistakenly refers to Ki-Gor as “John-Gor.” Ki-Gor describes Werper’s father, Lt. Werper of the Belgian Army, as almost as poor of an abuser of the native peoples of Africa as that ivory trader in the Congo. Accompanying them on their search for the Yeti is Nora the Ape-Woman. The Doctor recalls meeting two other animal-human hybrids, Paula Dupree and Felifax. Ki-Gor once found a lost Egyptian civilization called Memphre which some say is, like Opar or Kor, one of the lost colonies of Karkosa. Ki-Gor says some claim that vile cults lurk at their destination of a kind unseen since the days of Solomon Kane. Werper remembers some of the names of the beings presumably worshipped by these cults, such as Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Dagon, members of the Great Old Ones. Doctor Omega tells his traveling companions about the Tcho-Tcho. Nora heard about the Jermyn family in the Congo. Through a dimensional shift, they find themselves on the Plateau of Leng. Nora identifies some runes as written in Aklo. According to the Doctor the Yeti are called the Mi-Go on Pluto, where they serve Yog-Sothoth. Omega speculates that a door he sees is a spatial portal, an artifact of the Ancients. A quartet of sorcerers consists of Doctor Karswell; Madame Palmyre, who worships an entity called Baal; Cristaldi, a Mexican warlock who once fought Dracula; and the Master, who worships a god called Manos. The Doctor is puzzled on hearing the Master’s name. 

Short story by Atom Mudman Bezecny in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 12: Carte Blanche, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2015; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 22), Jean-Marc Lofficier, ed., Rivière Blanche, 2018. Doctor Omega is from Arnould Galopin’s titular novel; Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier’s adaptation and translation identified him with the Doctor from the television series Doctor Who. Vulcan is from the Doctor Who serial “The Power of the Daleks.” The Doctor’s archenemy is his fellow Time Lord the Master. “Barton Werper” was the nom de plume used by Peter and Peg Scott for a series of unauthorized Tarzan novels in the 1960s. Robert Kilgour (spelled “Kilgore” here), aka Ki-Gor, appeared in tales by John Murray Reynolds and various authors using the pen name “John Peter Drummond” in the pulp Jungle Stories. Memphre is from the Ki-Gor tales. Mowgli is from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Jongor is the hero of a series of novels by Robert Moore Williams. Lt. Werper is from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. The ivory trader in the Congo is Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Nora the Ape-Woman is the title character of Félicien Champsaur’s novel. Paula Dupree is from the movies Captive Wild Woman, Jungle Woman, and The Jungle Captive. Felifax is from Paul Féval, fils’ Felifax, the Tiger-Man. Kor is from H. Rider Haggard’s She novels. “Karkosa” is a reference to the kingdom of Khokarsa from Philip José Farmer’s novels of Ancient Opar. Farmer meant Khokarsa to be the same location described in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.” Solomon Kane is Robert E. Howard’s Puritan adventurer. The Great Old Ones, including Cthulhu, Azathoth, Dagon, and Yog-Sothoth, and the Plateau of Leng are from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The Tcho-Tcho are from August Derleth’s contributions to the Mythos. The Jermyns are from Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family.” The Aklo language is from Arthur Machen’s “The White People”; Lovecraft later used it in “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Haunter of the Dark.” The Mi-Go are from Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Craig Hinton’s Millennial Rites identified the Great Intelligence from the Doctor Who serial “The Abominable Snowmen” with Yog-Sothoth. The Ancients are from the movie Stargate and its television spin-offs. Karswell is from M. R. James’ “Casting the Runes.” Madame Palmyre and Baal are from Renée Dunan’s Baal. Cristaldi is from the movie Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man. The Master (not the Doctor’s foe) and Manos are from the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate.  

This crossover write-up 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! 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

1940

THE DEVIL’S NEST 

            The jungle lord Ki-Gor joins an expedition to the valley known as the Devil’s Nest to find Brendan Barnes, the American heir to a great fortune. Barnes tells the group that his family has been associated for years with the Jellyby Foundation in London, and therefore received regular reports on the Foundation’s work in Borrioboola-Gha and other parts of Africa. One of Ki-Gor’s traveling companions, Dr. John Moore of MI6’s Department Q, refers to an expedition funded by a patron of the Royal Geographic Society to a nearby valley where a dinosaur allegedly exists: “Too close a follower of that old crackpot Challenger, I suppose...This is the Congo, not some cloud-shrouded neverland like Maple White Land.”

            Short story by Duane Spurlock in Jungle Tales, Volume 1, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2012. Ki-Gor the jungle lord’s adventures were originally chronicled by several authors using the pen name “John Peter Drummond” in Jungle Stories from 1939 to 1954. In Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby is a self-styled philanthropist who tries to ship downtrodden Britishers off to the African colony of Borrioboola-Gha so that they and the natives can earn money through coffee growing. Moore is wrong about the dinosaur in the valley, and he is also wrong about Professor George Edward Challenger not having actually discovered Maple White Land, as his discovery of the plateau was recounted in Edward Malone’s account (edited by Arthur Conan Doyle) entitled The Lost World.

Jim Anthony, Super-Detective Volume Two: The Hunters

I am currently reading this novel featuring Jim Anthony (a hero from the "spicy" pulp Super Detective who was created as an imitation of Doc Savage, but has many qualities setting him apart from the Man of Bronze), which has him battling villains alongside Count Zaroff from Richard Connell's famous story "The Most Dangerous Game." The novel is split into two halves, each by a different author. Josh Reynolds' story is "Death in Yellow," which has Anthony and Zaroff fighting members of the Tcho-Tcho race of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as tie-ins to Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow. Among other crossovers, Anthony first meets Zaroff at the New York branch of Jules Verne's Baltimore Gun Club, and Jim and a friend discuss a trip to Maple White Land with Ki-Gor (whose first published appearance in 1938 must have actually taken place years earlier, since The Hunters takes place in 1931.) Micah Harris' "On the Periphery of Legend" has Anthony and Zaroff hunting game on an island far west of Sumatra that is still inhabited by dinosaurs. While there, they encounter a film crew and a giant ape, who is later brought back to civilization. Again, there are crossovers besides the obvious connection  to King Kong, such as the appearance of a former member of the Czar's inner circle who is using the name Allardravitch, who has a prominent nose and a ring, obviously a disguised version of a major pulp character.