Crossover Cover: Hungry Heart

This anthology contains a Nightside story by Simon R. Green. John Taylor is hired by a witch to recover her heart, which has been stolen by her ex-boyfriend. Appearing or mentioned are: one of Dracula’s coffins, complete with original grave dirt and a certificate of authenticity; the mummified head of Alfredo Garcia, smelling strongly of Mexican spices; the mirror of Dorian Gray; and a phial of heart’s blood from Varney the Vampyre. Dracula’s coffin is from Bram Stoker’s novel, of course. The mummified head of Alfredo Garcia is from the film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. The mirror of Dorian Gray is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Varney the Vampyre is the title character of James Malcolm Rymer’s penny dreadful serial.

Crossover of the Week

2003

THE BIG GAME

John Taylor battles Sir Francis Varney, the King of the Vampires, who is trying to turn the Nightside into a homeland for the undead. Appearing or mentioned are: Tsothagua Tequila; Jack Drood; the Street of the Gods; Kor; Julien Advent; Something from a Black Lagoon; the withered and mummified arm of the original Grendel monster, presented to the Adventurers Club by Beowulf himself, back in the sixth century; an ex-Ghost Finder; some kind of Boojum; the Suicide Club; Dracula; and Rassillonn’s Restorative.

Novella by Simon R. Green in Tales from the Nightside, Ace Books, 2015. Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s penny dreadful serial Varney the Vampire. Tsothagua Tequila is a reference to Tsathoggua, a Great Old One created by Clark Ashton Smith as part of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Jack Drood is from Green’s Secret Histories novels; his appearance here places this story before the short story “Question of Solace.” The Street of the Gods is from Green’s Hawk & Fisher novellas Winner Takes All and The God Killer. Kor is from H. Rider Haggard’s novel She. Julien Advent is an alias for the titular hero of the 1960s British television series Adam Adamant Lives! Something from a Black Lagoon is a reference to the Universal horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon. The original Grendel monster and Beowulf are from the Old English epic poem Beowulf. The ex-Ghost Finder must have been a former member of the Carnacki Institute from Green’s Ghost Finders series. The Boojum is from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark.” The Suicide Club is from Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of the same name. Dracula needs no introduction. Rassillonn’s Restorative is a reference to the Time Lord Rassilon from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Crossover of the Week

1914

THE MARK OF THE RED LEECH

            Private Henry Jones Junior is scolded for journaling by Captain Dickson, whom Colonel Renwick respects. Jones’ journal entry refers to Pvt. Simpson. Dickson refers to Captain Spencer and the others, and doubts that they will see Captain Ulysses Paxton again in this world. Jones says that his father has met Dickson’s famous mentor. The mark left on the corpses of a group of soldiers reminds Dickson of something in his mentor’s files called the red leech, a case which his biographer never published. A maddened Major Richard Wentworth attacks Dickson and the others, but is subdued and calmed down. The killer proves to be the vampire Sir Francis Varney. Dickson says that Dracula is real. Varney is killed by a man named Isaac, who is accompanied by a little girl. Several groups were investigating the soldiers’ deaths, including one led by Colonel Renwick and one including Colonel Wyndham-Price.

            Short story by Travis Hiltz in Harry Dickson vs. the Spider, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2014. Private Henry Jones Junior is better known as Indiana Jones. Captain Dickson is detective Harry Dickson, from pulp stories by Jean Ray and others. Colonel John “Renny” Renwick will later become one of Doc Savage’s five aides. Pvt. Simpson is meant to be an ancestor of the titular family from the animated sitcom The Simpsons. However, The Simpsons is too absurd in its events to comfortably take place in the CU. Most likely, there is a Simpson family in the CU, but they have had very different misadventures from their cartoon counterparts. Also, they almost certainly do not have yellow skin and only four fingers. Captain Eliot Spencer will later become the Cenobite known as Pinhead, as seen in the movie Hellraiser, based on Clive Barker’s story “The Hellbound Heart,” and its sequels. Captain Ulysses Paxton is from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels. Dickson’s mentor is Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Watson referred to Holmes’ involvement in “the repulsive story of the Red Leech” in “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.” Major Richard Wentworth will later fight crime as the Spider. Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire. Dracula needs no introduction at this point. Isaac Laquedem (aka the Wandering Jew) and the little girl (Lotte) are from Paul Féval’s novel The Wandering Jew’s Daughter. Despite the different spellings, Colonel Wyndham-Price is meant to be an ancestor of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from the television series Angel.

Crossover Cover: More Than Mortal

The third novel in Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet series. Nosferatu Victor Renquist visits England at the request of a female troika of his fellow undead, and becomes a witness to the Urshu known as Taliesin the Merlin’s emergence from his centuries-long hibernation. Merlin’s cocoon was unearthed in a mound excavated by students from Wessex University. The Duke de Richleau led a task force of specialists against occult forces utilized by the Nazis during World War II. Renquist thinks of the few English nosferatu, such as Sir Francis Varney, Barnabas Collins, and Lord Ruthven. A member of the female vampire troika, Marieko Matsunaga, used her powers of persuasion to seduce one of the Wessex students at a pub in Casterbridge in order to investigate the findings at the mound. Marieko is aware of Renquist’s encounter with Cthulhu, one of the monstrous Old Ones. Renquist thinks that the Scottish vampire lord Fenrior may preside over the largest community of their kind since a group of nosferatu and humans caused the dissolution of the Theatre Raoul Privache in Paris. Wessex is a fictional region of England appearing in several novels by Thomas Hardy, including The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Duke de Richleau is featured in a series of novels by Dennis Wheatley. According to Farren, the Duke died in 1997 at the age of 93, whereas Wheatley’s Dangerous Inheritance had the Duke dying in the 1950s, when he was in his eighties. Renquist must have been mistaken as to the Duke’s age and time of death. Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire. Farren claims that Varney was impaled by a vampire hunter called Dr. Feisal in Persia, whereas Rymer’s novel had Varney committing suicide by throwing himself into a volcano. However, Frank Schildiner’s story “Fear from Above,” set in the 1930s, reveals that Varney survived plunging into Mt. Vesuvius, while Simon R. Green’s novella “The Big Game,” set in the 21^st century, elaborates on the circumstances of how he survived. Travis Hiltz’s story “The Mark of the Red Leech” depicts Varney’s destruction in World War I, while Donald F. Glut and Jesse Santos’s comic book story “Dracula’s Vampire Legion” features Dracula resurrecting Varney and other infamous vampires in the 1970s. Varney must have been destroyed and resurrected several times. Barnabus Collins from the television series Dark Shadows is American, but the tie-in novels by “Marilyn Ross” (pseudonym for Dan Ross) have Barnabas visiting England after first becoming a vampire, and only later returning to his native Collinsport, Maine. Lord Ruthven is from John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” Farren claims that Ruthven was captured by the Greek Orthodox Church and exposed to sunlight, killing him. However, Polidori’s story had Ruthven walking around in the daytime. Perhaps the Church conducted a ritual that removed Ruthven’s immunity to sunlight. If so, then Ruthven’s destruction was not permanent either, given his resurrection in “Dracula’s Vampire Legion,” as well as his appearance in the movie Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood. Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones are from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft; Renquist and his coven encountered Cthulhu in the second novel in the series, Darklost. Raoul Privache is the vampire from John Metcalfe’s short novel The Feasting Dead. Although there is no theatre in Metcalfe’s novel, a Theatre Raoul Privache in Paris appears in Kim Newman’s The Bloody Red Baron. The Theatre mentioned in More Than Mortal must be the CU version of the Theatre in the Anno Dracula Universe. Taliesin the Merlin’s portrayal does not fit with other versions of Merlin in the CU, and therefore he is likely one of many individuals to use that name.

Crossover Cover: Tales from the Nightside

This collection reprints all of Simon R. Green's short stories set in the milieu of his Nightside series, which is firmly in the CU. Naturally, several of these stories have crossovers of their own. For instance, in "The Difference a Day Makes," John Taylor sees a lipstick-red Plymouth Fury with a dead man grinning at the wheel (the titular car from Stephen King's novel Christine) and a great black beauty of a car, driven by an Oriental in black leathers, and a man in the back in a green face mask and a snap-brimmed hat (the Green Hornet and Kato; per CU continuity, this is probably the most recent duo to use those names, Paul Reid and Kono Kato), among other references in that story. "Some of These Cons Go Way Back" refers to taduki (from H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain tales), tanna leaves (from Universal's original Mummy film series), Martian red weed (from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds), Hyde formula (from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, of course), and black centipede meat (from William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch.) There is also a new novella pitting Taylor against Sir Francis Varney from James Malcolm Rymer's Varney the Vampire.