Crossover of the Week

September 16-23, 1989

CRIME OF THE ARTS

            The Voice teams up with a woman named Dana to take down the militia to which the man who disfigured her belonged. The hero uses his father’s gas gun, and quotes the First Master Detective, “Watson, you see, but you do not observe.” The Voice uses a meditative technique one of his honorary uncles taught him rather than go to sleep. The Voice compares a female scientist working with Dana’s victimizer to the original Victor Frankenstein. The woman’s father worked at a secret facility that reprogrammed people located near a town in upstate New York. The Voice calls his friend Curt Van Loan of Havens International Media. The Voice uses his Uncle Kent’s mental trick to fall asleep nearly instantly, and teaches Dana his Uncle Jethro’s technique for reducing pain without drugs. The Voice remembers seeing a picture of the militia’s leader in the New York Clarion. The Voice thinks that Matt Helm would have taken a practice shot at a tree, but he can’t alert whoever is approaching. Dana compares the militia’s headquarters to Fu Manchu’s lair, but the Voice replies “If old Fu owned this place, we’d probably be dead by now.”

            Story by Erwin K. Roberts in Casebook of the Voice, Modern Knights Press, 2014. The Voice’s father is the pulp hero Secret Agent X, who was created by Paul Chadwick under the pen name “Brant House.” The First Master Detective is Sherlock Holmes. The Voice’s honorary uncle who taught him the meditative technique is Michael Traile, “the Man who Could Not Sleep,” the archenemy of Donald E. Keyhoe’s pulp villain Dr. Yen Sin. The reference to “the original Victor Frankenstein” is consistent with numerous books, comics, and movies in which relatives and descendants of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein engage in experiments of their own. The secret facility near upstate New York is Doc Savage’s Crime College. Curt Van Loan is the son of Richard Curtis Van Loan, aka the Phantom Detective, who appeared in a titular pulp magazine by several authors using the pseudonym “Robert Wallace.” Van Loan’s girlfriend in the original pulp stories, Muriel Havens, is Curt’s mother; her father, Frank Havens, was the publisher of the New York Clarion newspaper. Uncle Kent is Kent Allard, alias the Shadow, while Uncle Jethro is Kendell Crossen’s pulp hero The Green Lama, whose real name was Jethro Dumont. The references to Matt Helm and Fu Manchu could be interpreted as allusions to fictional characters, but given the Voice’s familiarity with a number of other heroes and villains, I am treating them as valid crossovers.

Crossover of the Week

October 31, 2007-January 21, 2009

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

            Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain attempt to prevent presidential candidate Howard Stark, who has been possessed by the demon Sargatanas, from winning the election and destroying the Earth. The tabloid The National Tattler is mentioned several times, and FBI agents Colleen O’Donnell and Melanie Blaise discuss the female agent who shot Buffalo Billy. During the Maine primaries, Stark attends a meet-and-greet at the IHOP in Derry, and later hosts a town hall meeting in the auditorium of Bannerman High School in Castle Rock. Quincey says that many weird things have occurred in Castle Rock, and suggests that it may be a nexus of supernatural activity. Malachi Peters, a CIA assassin who was killed in 1983 and ended up in Hell because he enjoyed his work too much, has been sent back to Earth to assassinate Stark. He reminisces about his old boss, “an enigmatic man known only as Mac,” who always referred to a hit as a “touch.” Quincey and Libby discuss other supernatural investigators, including a woman named Anita and Jill Kismet. An assassin called the Grocer’s Boy, whose father was an assassin himself and had a cover identity as a grocer, is hired to murder one of Stark’s fellow candidates. Peters is told by a demon using the name Ashley that she can make his sniper rifle invisible using a variation of the Tarnhelm effect.

            Novel by Justin Gustainis, 2011. The National Tattler is from the Hannibal Lecter novels by Thomas Harris, as is Agent Clarice Starling, who shot serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. The Maine towns of Derry and Castle Rock appear in many novels and short stories by Stephen King. Bannerman High School is named after the late Sheriff George Bannerman from King’s The Dead Zone and Cujo. Mac is Matt Helm’s boss in Donald Hamilton’s novels. Hamilton portrayed Helm as a member of a separate organization from the CIA, so perhaps the references in the series to Peters being a former CIA agent are an error or fictionalization on Gustainis’ part, and he was actually a member of the same agency as Helm. Anita is a reference to Laurell K. Hamilton’s vampire hunter Anita Blake, while Jill Kismet appears in novels by Lilith Saintcrow. The Anita Blake and Jill Kismet series both portray the general public as being aware of the existence of the supernatural, which is incompatible with CU continuity; the Blake and Kismet mentioned in this novel, therefore, must be versions unique to the CU, who have had very different adventures from their better-known counterparts. The Grocer’s Boy is meant to be a pastiche of the hitman known as the Butcher’s Boy, who appeared in three novels by Thomas Perry. Indeed, Gustainis refers to him (possibly accidentally) as the Butcher’s Boy at one point, and therefore it can be assumed for CU continuity that he is in fact a disguised version of Perry’s assassin. The Tarnhelm effect is a spell used to make specific objects or people invisible to others in the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. Since the Lord Darcy tales take place in an alternate reality where Richard the Lionheart did not die in 1199 and the world is governed by laws of magic rather than physics, the Tarnhelm effect must exist both in the CU and Lord Darcy’s universe.