Crossover Covers: Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo

 

In Mud Creek, Texas, Jonah Hex has a run-in with Doc “Cross” Williams and his traveling freak show, which includes Wild Bill Hickok, who Williams turned into a zombie using The Book of Doches. Williams also possesses a copy of the book Anatomy by Maturin. The town of Mud Creek and The Book of Doches recur throughout Lansdale’s fiction, both prose and comic books. Maturin is Dr. Stephen Maturin from Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels.

This crossover is one of hundreds that will be included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be released by Meteor House! Much like the first two volumes, this book is an AUTHORIZED companion to Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2 by Win Scott Eckert!

Crossover Cover: Any Approaching Enemy

Lieutenant Jack Aubrey of the Leander delivers two mast sticks to the ship Louisa, captained by Charles Edgemont. Edgemont is already in through an encounter with Horatio Hornblower in his first appearance, Sails on Horizon. The appearance of Patrick O’Brian’s naval hero Jack Aubrey further confirms Edgemont’s presence in the CU.

Crossover Cover: Hoare and the Headless Captains

In this novel by Wilder Perkins, the second of three naval mysteries featuring Bartholomew Hoare, one of Hoare's men uses the phrase "the lesser evil," which reminds Hoare of “the jape invented by one of the more successful frigate captains—Bolitho? Cochrane? He was wont to challenge a new acquaintance to a wager upon which of two beetle larvae, chosen at random from among those tapped from a piece of ship’s biscuit, would be the first to reach the edge of the table. The unwitting newcomer naturally chose the larger grub. When it lost, as it always did, Captain Whoever would joyfully advise the stranger ‘always to select the lesser of two weevils’ and nearly burst his breeches with laughter at his own paltry jest. Aubrey. That was the joker’s name. Lucky Jack Aubrey, they called him, from the wealth of prize money he had won at sea—and squandered ashore.” Lucky Jack Aubrey appeared in a series of novels by Patrick O'Brian, and was brought into the CU by a reference in Jess Nevins' story "Rocambole: Red in Tooth and Claw." The "lesser of two weevils" quote first appeared in O'Brian's The Fortunes of War. Richard Bolitho is the protagonist of a series of novels by Alexander Kent, and this crossover brings him in as well. Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, is not a fictional character, but a real person who served as a Naval captain during the Napoleonic Wars. In the third Hoare book, Hoare and the Matter of Treason, which I have not yet read, Hoare encounters Horatio Hornblower, a clerk named Cratchit (presumably a relative of the Cratchit family from Dickens' A Christmas Carol) and a man named Lestrade (who is described as resembling a ferret, as was Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes stories, suggesting that Perkins' Lestrade is an ancestor of Doyle's character.)

Crossover Cover: Sails on the Horizon

In this naval tale by Jay Worrall, Charles Edgemont, commander of the Louisa, briefly meets Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower. Their encounter takes place in December 1797, during Hornblower's captivity in Ferrol documented in the last chapter of C.S. Forester's Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. Edgemont reappeared in Any Approaching Enemy (in which he briefly encounters Patrick O'Brian's own naval hero Lucky Jack Aubrey) and A Sea Unto Itself. I haven't read the sequels yet, but I will at least read Any Approaching Enemy so I can include it as well.