Crossover of the Week

Winter 1940; Summer 2011

A PLAGUE ON THE LAND

Moran’s Pub, owned by Seamus Moran, is frequented by vigilantes. Seamus pours the owner of a fire opal another large Bushmill’s, and thinks of his cousin Paddy and his bar uptown. Seamus thinks most of the vigilantes are killers, with two exceptions: “the green one was a man of peace, the pink one killed when she had to but mostly avoided it.” Seamus, a leprechaun, asks the Nightmare to deal with trouble in his homeland, Eire, the spiritual plane of Ireland. In the 21st century, Detective Sergeant Bianca Jones of the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide division talks to Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, at Paddy’s. Bianca thinks the Nightmare is “a character, like the Spider or the Pink Reaper,” but Nemesis says he was real, and persuades Bianca to go back into the past to help the hero in Eire.

Short story by John L. French in Apocalypse 13, Diane Raetz, ed., Padwolf Publishing, 2012. The vigilante with the fire opal is the shadowy hero of the pulps. Paddy Moran and Nemesis are from Patrick Thomas’ Murphy’s Lore series. “The green one” is the Green Lama, while “the pink one” is the Pink Reaper, another character from the Murphy’s Lore series. The Nightmare is a pulp-era vigilante created by French. The Nightmare became romantically involved with Nemesis in Thomas and French’s book From the Shadows. Bianca Jones appears in her own series of stories by French. Bianca is wrong about the Nightmare and the Pink Reaper being fictional, and she is also wrong about the Spider’s nonexistence.

Crossover of the Week

Apologies for the lack of posts since Monday. I was in New York City from Tuesday until a few hours ago. :)

1939
THE UNDEAD KILLER
The Nightmare battles the Dead Man, a zombie sent back in time from the future, who is now acting as an enforcer for gangster Wolf Hopkins. A mugger tells the Nightmare about a conversation he overheard among a group of hoods at the Black Ship. The Nightmare thinks maybe Kent can give him some pointers on phrases to use to intimidate criminals. Later, in his alter ego of Michael Shaw, the hero is approached by Lieutenant Jerome Easton at the pub Moran’s. Easton refers to “gentlemen’s clubs, like that one the Commissioner belongs to, what’s it called? The Baltic Club?” Shaw replies, “Something like that.” Contemplating the best course of action in confronting Hopkins, Shaw thinks, “Richard would charge in with guns a-blazing, taking down his quarry, but only after leveling half the city in doing so. Kent would already know where Hopkins’ headquarters was. He would stealthily infiltrate it and find the clue that would lead him straight to the Dead Man. He’d go there straightaway, always assuming he didn’t have to rescue an agent or two first.” Considering whether he should recruit agents of his own, or an attractive female companion, he thinks, “Who am I kidding? If I had a girl like Nina or Carol, I’d marry her at once, and the Nightmare would be a memory. Sometimes we can be such damn fools.”
Short story by John L. French in Zombies in Time and Space, Ron Hanna, ed., Wild Cat Books, 2010. Kent is the alter ego of a certain shadowy pulp hero; the Black Ship, the Commissioner, and the club to which he belongs are from the same series. Moran’s is owned by Seamus Moran, whose cousin Paddy Moran runs the bar Bulfinche’s in Patrick Thomas’ Murphy’s Lore series. Richard is Richard Wentworth, better known as the Spider. “Nina” may be a typo, and meant to refer to Wentworth’s beloved, Nita Van Sloan. Alternatively, it could be a reference to Nina Ferrera, niece and former assistant of Harold Ward’s pulp villain Doctor Death, and the girlfriend of Death’s foe Jimmy Holm. Carol is Carol Baldwin, girlfriend of Tony Quinn, alias the Black Bat. The central premise of Zombies in Time and Space is in the far future, the Zombie Institute of Time and Space was created, which sends the undead back in time because physically traveling through time is impossible for living beings. Since there are numerous instances of recorded time travel by living beings in the Crossover Universe, the Institute likely exists in the future of an alternate reality, and the Dead Man was sent to the 1930s of the CU rather than his native reality. This raises the possibility the other time periods in which the zombies found themselves were also alternate realities, both to their own universe and to the CU.

Crossover Cover: Bullets & Brimstone

Negral, a Sumerian fire god turned Hell’s chief of security, meets Baltimore Police Detective Bianca Jones, who regularly combats the occult. The Department of Mystic Affairs told Bianca about Negral. Negral doubts Hex or Paddy Moran are very fond of him. French’s Bianca Jones is already in the CU, as is Thomas’ Paddy Moran from his Murphy’s Lore series. Negral (aka Hell’s Detective), the Department of Mystic Affairs, and Hex have also appeared in the Murphy’s Lore novels, as well as in spin-off books of their own, thus establishing that Thomas’ Murphy’s Lore Universe is a subset of the CU.

Crossover Cover: Rites of Passage

Bianca Jones’ captain in the Baltimore Police Department sends her to the Department of Mystic Affairs’ academy to receive further training in battling supernatural menaces. While there, she begins a rivalry with a fellow cadet named Karver, who is secretly a former demonically possessed serial killer called the Carver that Bianca brought to justice early in her career. This story is a crossover between French’s monster-fighting cop Bianca Jones and Agent Karver of the DMA, who first appeared in Thomas’ Murphy’s Lore series before spinning off into tales of his own. Since Bianca Jones is in the CU, so are Agent Karver and the other characters in the Murphy’s Lore books and their various spin-offs.

Crossover Cover: Tales from the Pulp Side

I accidentally posted the cover of Russell Thorndike's novel The Slype twice, so I deleted that one and I'm covering this anthology instead. Two of the three stories have crossovers. The first is John L. French's "Wolf Hunt," in which the Nightmare (aka Michael Shaw) sacrifices his life to save Leda, the woman he loves. Lieutenant Jerome Easton receives the news that the hero died while battling a gang war in Coast City alongside an unidentified pink-clad vigilante. Thinking that vigilantes have been thought dead before and later turned up alive, Easton then reminds himself that the Whispering Monk did truly die. Easton goes to the bar Moran’s, owned by Seamus Moran, searching for the Nightmare. Contemplating giving his equipment to Easton, Shaw, who has been resurrected, thinks, “Maybe he’d don the mask and gloves, wield the .45s, and go join Gordon in Chicago.” Hannibal Tomas, a hired gun out of Harbor City, murders a witness to a crime committed by gang boss Wolf Hopkins’ men, and kidnaps the man’s sons in order to persuade his wife not to testify. One of the two boys asks the Nightmare, who has come out of his short-lived retirement, if he is “the guy on the radio?” The hero laughs, and thinks that he’ll have to tell Kent. Later, he thinks, “That’s why people like Kent, Richard, and I wear the black and haunt the night. When the law fails, when justice is thwarted, there is always vengeance, and we are the ones who can mete it out.” The Nightmare later confronts Tomas as he comes out of a Harbor City bar called Dave’s Place. The Nightmare is French’s own creation. Leda, also known as Nemesis, is from Patrick Thomas’ Murphy’s Lore and Terrorbelle books. The pink-clad vigilante is the Pink Reaper, the Nightmare’s cousin, who first appeared in Thomas’ book Lore and Dysorder: The Hell’s Detective Mysteries. The Nightmare worked with Nemesis and the Pink Reaper in French and Thomas’ collection From the Shadows; the final story in that book, “Defying the Odds,” featured the Nightmare and the Reaper becoming involved in a gang war in Coast City, with the Nightmare ultimately sacrificing his life to save Leda’s, and then being brought back from the dead. The Whispering Monk was the subject of a titular story by Gordon E. Warnke in the June 1934 issue of the pulp All Detective Magazine. The Nightmare avenged the Monk’s death in the first story in From the Shadows, “The Woman in Black.” Seamus Moran is the cousin of Paddy Moran from the Murphy’s Lore books. Both Seamus and Paddy are leprechauns. Gordon is Police Commissioner James “Wildcat” Gordon, aka the pulp hero known as the Whisperer. The Chicago reference is incorrect, as the Whisperer operated out of Gotham City, although he retired in 1941, leaving the city in the capable hands of the Batman. Hannibal Tomas is a member of the Tomas family from French’s book The Devil of Harbor City, which also details Michael Shaw’s final battle with Wolf Hopkins. Dave’s Place is also from The Devil of Harbor City. Kent is Kent Allard, aka the Shadow, while Richard is Richard Wentworth, aka the Spider. In Patrick Thomas' "The Games People Play," the Pink Reaper (Kaye Chandler) cannot imagine Detective Mydnight or the Nightmare shivering in an alley in a skimpy outfit. Kaye’s uncle was a brilliant inventor: “It was even said that Dash Chandler had been approached in a recruitment effort by a man with a team of experts with their headquarters in Manhattan’s tallest skyscraper. The leader of that team had been shocked when Dash not only turned down his offer, but wasn’t the least bit impressed by him.” Detective Mydnight is an original character created by Thomas. The man headquartered in Manhattan's tallest skyscraper is Doc Savage.

Crossover Cover: Lai Wan: Tales of the Dreamwalker

The late C.J. Henderson wrote several stories about a female Chinese psychometrist named Lai Wan, who first debuted in his Teddy London stories, which are in the CU. This collection featuring the character includes four stories co-written with other authors, in which Lai Wan is teamed with those authors' characters. "Family Ties" is co-written by Patrick Thomas, and has Agent Karver and his partner Mandi Cobb of Thomas' Department of Mystic Affairs enlisting Lai Wan's aid in tracking down Mandi's kidnapped nephew. The Department of Mystic Affairs tales are a spin-off of Thomas' Murphy's Lore series, and he has done several other spin-off books for characters from that series. "Innocent Monsters" teams Lai Wan with John L. French's Baltimore police detective Bianca Jones, who regularly runs into the supernatural (I did a Crossover of the Week post about Bianca's origin story, "Out of the Blackness," a while ago.) Henderson and Bruce Gehweiler's "One Night in Chinatown" has Lai Wan working with former Sheriff Donna Fargo, who now works for Doctors Blakely and Boles, supernatural experts appearing in a series of stories by Henderson and Gehweiler that are collected in the book Where Angels Fear. Finally, John Sunseri and Henderson's "Not What One Does" has Lai Wan and Sunseri's NSA agent Jack Dixon battling a shoggoth.

Crossover of the Week

Late Spring 1940

A NASTY BUSINESS

            Three criminals in hiding discuss the possibility of being captured by "that Doc fellow and those Justice guys.” The three are gunned down by the Nightmare (Michael Shaw) and his cousin, the Pink Reaper (Kaye Chandler.) The Reaper tells the Nightmare that Benson objected to her calling herself the Pink Avenger. The Nightmare asks her if Clark knows she’s using his mercy bullets. Later, in their civilian identities, Michael and Kaye discover that the owners of a restaurant Kaye frequents have been brutalized by protection racketeers. Michael thinks of how he and a woman named Leda shut down a den of depravity not too long ago. Michael and Kaye have lunch at Moran’s, where they have a discussion with the owner, who mentions his cousin Paddy. Michael goes undercover seeking information at a number of underworld dives, including the Black Ship, while Kaye does the same, albeit in costume, at others, including the Pink Rat. Kaye visits the sister of one of the racketeers, saying that they met at Mrs. Rittenhouse’s last gala. Michael tells Kaye that he was helping Jethro handle “that Yeti problem” at the time of the sister’s wedding. Planning to break into gangster Wolf Hopkins’ brownstone headquarters, the Nightmare says to himself, “I could try the bold approach…kick open the door, guns in hand, demanding to see Hopkins, and ready to shoot down any who oppose me. Richard would do that, he actually likes getting shot at. Kent would find a way to sneak in and surprise the Wolf at his desk.” Spying on a “young man” who turns out to be the sister in disguise, Kaye thinks “Well, why not…it worked for Irene Adler.”

            Story by Patrick Thomas and John L. French in From the Shadows, Dark Quest, 2012. “That Doc fellow” is Clark “Doc” Savage, Jr. “Those Justice guys” are Justice, Inc., the group of adventurers led by the Avenger (Richard Henry Benson.) The Nightmare and the Pink Reaper were created by French and Thomas, respectively. Leda Troy is Thomas’ heroine Nemesis, who also appears in his Murphy’s Lore and Terrorbelle books. The owner of Moran’s is Seamus Moran. His cousin Paddy Moran is also from the Murphy’s Lore series. Kent is Kent Allard, alias the Shadow. The Black Ship and the Pink Rat are from the Shadow novels. Mrs. Rittenhouse is from the Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers. Jethro is Jethro Dumont, aka the Green Lama, who appeared in stories by “Richard Foster” (a pseudonym for Kendell Crossen) in the pulp Double Detective. Richard is Richard Wentworth, aka the Spider. Given the other references, it is reasonable to suppose that Kaye was thinking of Irene Adler as a real person.