Crossover Cover: Watch Your Back, Mr. Minamoto

 

Are you a John P. Marquand fan?

Then you'll love this chapbook by Frank Schildiner, in which a mysterious Japanese man called Mr. Minamoto takes on Jack London's Assassination Bureau, Ltd.!

For more information, including the other crossovers in this chapbook, be sure to buy copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2! Incidentally, not only was this story also published by Meteor House, but it shares its cover artist, the enormously talented Keith Howell, with Crossovers Expanded!

Crossover of the Week

Spring 1876

SOUL OF THE EAST 

 The Lone Ranger and Tonto deliver some outlaws to Marshal Dave Bliss, who is grateful he listened to Marshal County and trusted them. One of the best witnesses against the outlaws was killed in a gunfight with Swifty Morgan. Bliss says Morgan is one of the fastest guns, along with Herod, Mortimer, Grimm, Hickok, Holliday, and the Ranger himself. The Ranger, Tonto, and an Asian man whose life they saved are confronted by Sheriff Amos Polk, who will soon be leaving his post to become a judge. The Japanese man, Sora Nagamasa, tells the Ranger his would-be killers’ client, Clive Cooper, is one of the junior partners of the Cooper-Tillman Company, an American trading firm based in China, who are treated as underlings by the most powerful company there, Struans. Nagamasa is really Sora Minamoto, spy and soldier for the Emperor of Japan, who usually works under the shortened version of his name, Moto. 

Short story by Frank Schildiner in The Lone Ranger and Tonto: Frontier Justice, Matthew Baugh, ed., Moonstone Books, 2018. Marshal Dave Bliss is from the movie Hang 'Em High. Marshal County is the father of the title character of the television series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Swifty Morgan is from the movie Support Your Local Gunfighter. John Herod is from the movie The Quick and the Dead. Colonel Douglas Mortimer is from the film For a Few Dollars More. Judge Amos Polk is from the TV movies The Over-the-Hill Gang and The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again. The Cooper-Tillman Company and Struan and Sons are from James Clavell’s Tai-Pan. Sora Minamoto is an ancestor of John P. Marquand’s Japanese spy Mr. Moto, who appears under the name Minamoto in Schildiner’s chapbook Watch Your Back, Mr. Minamoto.

This crossover writeup 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 Cover: Mafia Fix

In this novel, Remo Williams encounters, and ends up fighting with, James Bond, Mister Moto, and Hercule Poirot, none of whom are referred to by name.

Crossover of the Week

November 1945

WHO MADE ME SUCH A WOMAN?

            Kanoto Yoshimuta, who has lost her family in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, accepts a ride from a man with gold-capped teeth and a Prussian hairstyle. The man tells Kanoto that he knows how she has been trying to bribe fishing boats to take her to an obscure little island to collect specimens of its fungi, and that he has already warned General MacArthur not to be eating mushrooms anytime soon. Sakima, Haruchi, Doctor Natas, and Serizawa are also mentioned.

            Short story by G.L. Gick in Harry Dickson and the Werewolf of Rutherford Grange, Black Coat Press, 2011; reprinted in The Monsters of Madame Atomos by André Caroff, adapted and translated by Brian Stableford, Black Coat Press, 2012, and in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 9), Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Rivière Blanche, 2012. Kanoto Yoshimuta is better known as André Caroff’s villain Madame Atomos. This story ends with her choosing her nom de guerre. The man with gold-capped teeth and a Prussian hairstyle is John P. Marquand’s Japanese spy Mister Moto. The obscure island is from the movie Matango (aka Attack of the Mushroom People); those who ingest the mushrooms on the island are transformed into humanoid mushrooms themselves. Mura Sakima is a Japanese agent from the film serial The Masked Marvel, while Oyama Haruchi is a spy from the serial G-Men vs. the Black Dragon. Doctor Natas is from Guy d’Armen’s novel Doc Ardan: City of Gold and Lepers. Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier’s adaptation and translation of d’Armen’s book implies that Natas is actually Sax Rohmer’s Doctor Fu Manchu. Dr. Daisuke Serizawa is from the Japanese monster movie Gojira, which was released in the United States as Godzilla. Although the mass destruction seen in the Gojira/Godzilla films is incompatible with Crossover Universe continuity, Serizawa does have a CU counterpart, as seen in Michel Stéphan’s story “The Red Silk Scarf.”