Crossover of the Week

Autumn 2010-Spring 2011

BLOOD AND BULLETS

            Deacon Chalk has hunted monsters ever since a member of the race of angel/human hybrids known as the Nephilim killed his family. Deacon states, “There are few proclaimed vampire slayers and they range all kinds. Anita out in St. Louis, but she has a lot of stuff going on, not just vampire executions. Cat and Bones run their crew killing vampires and do a fine job of it. I hear whispers about the Blue Woman now and again, but it’s hard to pull the fact from the fiction on that one. There’s some folks in California. In L.A. and a small town east of it, who do mostly vampire slaying, but I haven’t met them yet. The black guy and old man combo who roam around do nothing but vampires. From what I hear they have a personal stake in it, so to speak. Sam and Dean will tussle with a vampire, but usually they are chasing down demons.”

            Novel by James R. Tuck. Anita is the main character of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, which takes place in an alternate reality where humans know that the supernatural is real. However, Justin Gustainis’ Morris and Chastain Supernatural Investigations series has established that Anita does have a CU counterpart, who has doubtless had very different adventures than Hamilton’s version. Dhampir Catherine “Cat” Crawfield and vampire bounty hunter Bones are from Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series of novels. Vlad Tepesh appears in Frost’s series, but he hates the name Dracula and possesses pyrokinetic abilities. This is probably a “soul-clone” of the original Dracula, who somehow developed pyrokinetic talents that the true Vlad Tepes lacks. The Blue Woman is Nancy A. Collins’ monster hunting vampire Sonja Blue. The small town east of L.A. is Sunnydale, the home of Buffy Summers on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Los Angeles reference is to the titular vampire from Buffy’s spin-off Angel. The black guy and old man combo are Marvel Comics’ vampire hunter Blade and his mentor Abraham Whistler, the latter of whom debuted in the cartoon Spider-Man: The Animated Series and went on to appear in the Blade film series. Sam and Dean are monster hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester from the television series Supernatural.

Crossover of the Week

1991

NOT JUST A JOB

            A man Freddy Krueger has chosen as his new human protégé gets a book from the Springwood library that features a chapter on Krueger, as well as “the infamous John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Henry Lee Lucas, as well as less well-known deviants such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and the Sawyer family of Texas.”

            Short story by Nancy A. Collins in Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger’s Seven Sweetest Dreams, Martin H. Greenberg, ed., St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Gacy, Bundy, and Lucas are all historical serial killers. Michael Myers is from the Halloween series of movies, Voorhees is from the Friday the 13^th films, and the Sawyer family is from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series of films, furthering the connection between these series.

Crossover Cover: Return to Hell House

This novella (which first appeared in the anthology He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson) is a prequel to Matheson's novel Hell House, which is in the CU through references in two of Kim Newman's stories. It is mentioned that a member of a previous expedition to Maine's Belasco Mansion in 1931 was driven insane by the experience, and was shipped off to Castle Rock Asylum. The town of Castle Rock, Maine is a recurring locale in the works of Stephen King.