Crossover Covers: Masks 2

A sequel to Chris Roberson, Alex Ross, and Dennis Calero's series Masks, which takes place in an alternate universe, as I discussed in a previous post. Heroes from three different time periods team up to fight a villain called the Red Death, including two Green Hornets, two Katos, the Black Bat, two Miss Furys, the Shadow, the Black Terror, two Black Sparrows, the Spider, the Green Lama, Lady Satan, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. The contemporary Hornet and Kato are the ones from Dynamite's ongoing Green Hornet comic, which is incompatible with NOW Comics' take on the character, further cementing this series as an AU.

This series, along with many other works of fiction, will be included in my forthcoming two-volume tome Crossovers Expanded Vols. 1 and 2, an authorized companion to Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Vols. 1 and 2 by Win Scott Eckert. The books will debut at FarmerCon/PulpFest on July 21-24, where Win (who also will be providing the foreword for Vol. 1) and I will be signing copies at the booth of Meteor House, the books' publisher, which Win runs along with Michael Croteau and Paul Spiteri. Keith Howell, who provided the covers for both volumes, and William Patrick Maynard, who is contributing the foreword for Vol. 2, will also be on hand to sign copies.

Crossover Covers: Swords of Sorrow

A crossover event from Dynamite Entertainment featuring various heroines and anti-heroines. The Kato seen in this series is Mulan Kato from Dynamite’s Green Hornet comic, which ignores the continuity of NOW Comics’ version of the Green Hornet. Masquerade is the version of the Golden Age comics heroine Miss Masque seen in the comic Project Superpowers, which features a vast number of Golden Agers being freed from their decades-long imprisonment in Pandora's Urn. Lady Zorro first appeared in Dynamite’s Zorro ongoing series, which portrays Zorro as half-Native American, a conflict with numerous other accounts of his background. Therefore, this series has to take place in an AU.

Crossover Covers: Masks

A very loose adaptation of the Black Police Trilogy from the Spider pulp novels, featuring the Spider himself, the Shadow, the Green Lama, the Green Hornet and Kato, the Black Bat, the Black Terror, Zorro (Rafael Vega, a descendant of the original Zorro) and Miss Fury. The leader of the Black Legion turns out to be Brian O’Brien, formerly the Clock, a masked vigilante appearing in stories published by Centaur Publications and Quality Comics in the 1930s and ’40s. The heroes visit a penthouse at the Empire State Building, where the Shadow remarks that it is too bad that the occupant of the penthouse is out of the country, as he would be a valuable ally to them in this mission. This is a reference to Doc Savage. Britt Reid meets with reporter Steve Huston, who mentions Old Man Havens. Steve Huston and Frank Havens are from the pulp exploits of the Phantom Detective. The events of this comic differ greatly from the Black Police Trilogy, including factors such as the identity of the mastermind being changed and Nita Van Sloan’s role being omitted (indeed, she is never even mentioned.) The Spider is wearing a version of his outfit from the movie serial The Spider’s Web rather than the costume from the pulps. The Black Bat is given a different origin story than in the original pulps. The Green Hornet is out of character, calling criminals “mooks,” and is stated to be from Chicago rather than Detroit. All these factors serve to place this story outside CU continuity.