Crossover Cover: Murder Island

 

In this Executioner novel by Josh Reynolds, Mack Bolan and his latest target, arms dealer Byron Cloud, find themselves on an island being hunted by a man called Sarban Rainsford. Tony Spence, the CIA’s man in Hong Kong, tells Bolan that Cloud is a third-generation criminal: “His granddaddy used to run a floating casino. He was mostly a blackmailer, but he dabbled in the arms trade and murder-for-hire. His daddy was of similar cut. Both were pretty nasty, so Byron’s comparatively harmless.” The Yellow Chrysanthemum is mentioned.  Sarban Rainsford’s name is inspired by Sanger Rainsford, the protagonist of Richard Connell’s story “The Most Dangerous Game,” which has already been included in the CU. Bolan suggests in passing that Rainsford may be using an alias. If so, he likely read Sanger’s account of his duel with the Russian General Zaroff and was inspired to adopt both Zaroff’s M.O. and Rainsford’s surname. Byron Cloud’s grandfather is Reinhardt Cloud, a foe of the pulp hero Jim Anthony. Reinhardt was first mentioned in Reynolds’ novel The Death's Head Cloud and made his first physical appearance in Red Shambhala. The Yellow Chrysanthemum is likely another name for the Brotherhood of the Golden Chrysanthemum, mentioned in other works by Reynolds, and related to the Sons of the Golden Chrysanthemum from Derrick Ferguson’s Dillon series. 

This novel is one of hundreds of crossovers that will be covered 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 of the Week

July 1996

EXPLOSIVE JUSTICE

Former police officer Bowen Chadwick (secretly the superpowered vigilante known as the Blaster) watches a news story on National News Net, a part of Havens International Media, delivered by Curtis Van Loan. In a flashback to the circumstances under which Chadwick gained his powers, Sergeant Sampson Jones tells Special Agent Simmons, “I do not care if the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover comes up to me with a request signed by the ghosts of Eliot Ness, Wyatt Earp, and Sherlock Holmes; I will not relinquish control of this environmental travesty.” Van Loan later introduces Chadwick to another vigilante, the Voice, who needs his help against a right wing militia. The Voice says, “If it weren’t for the women and children in the compound, I’d be sorely tempted to use my honorary Uncle Dick’s scorched earth methods. Go Mack Bolan on ’em.” After the militia is defeated, a helicopter picks up the Voice and Chadwick; the crew of the aircraft refers to the pilot as String.

Short story by Erwin K. Roberts in Casebook of the Voice, Modern Knights Press, 2014. Havens International Media is an outgrowth of the Daily Clarion newspaper owned by Frank Havens, an ally of the Phantom Detective (aka Richard Curtis Van Loan). The Detective’s girlfriend in the pulp stories was Muriel Havens, Frank’s daughter; Curtis “Curt” Van Loan is their son. Sergeant Jones is almost certainly mistaken about Sherlock Holmes being deceased, and was probably fooled by Holmes faking his death in 1957. The Voice’s honorary Uncle Dick is Richard “Dick” Wentworth, better known as the Spider. Mack Bolan, the Executioner, is the protagonist of a series of novels by Don Pendleton and others. It has been suggested Bolan is Wentworth’s son. The helicopter pilot is Stringfellow “String” Hawke from the television series Airwolf.

Crossover Cover: Arctic Kill

Mack Bolan battles the Society of Thylea, a white supremacist group dating back to World War I. The society believes in the Vril, and their ruling body is known as the Sun-Koh. One of their henchmen is an ex-German Special Forces officer who was nicknamed “Sturmvogel.” Agent Chantecoq of Interpol also appears. The Vril is from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race. The Sun-Koh is named after Sun Koh, a German pulp character. This Sturmvogel must have been nicknamed after the German pulp character of the same name. Chantecoq, who first appeared in Reynolds’ Executioner novel Border Offensive, is probably a relative of Arthur Bernède’s character Chantecoq, “the King of Detectives.”

Crossover Cover: More Blood

This authorized anthology of new Destroyer stories written by fans of the series, co-edited by Warren Murphy's son, has two stories with crossovers. One is Brad Mengel's "The Roads Not Taken." A cop turned soldier in Vietnam named Remo is greeted by a sentry named Michael Long, also a cop in civilian life. Remo’s platoon mates have nicknamed him the Destroyer, just as others in the group have been dubbed the Exterminator, Hannibal, and Sergeant Mercy. Remo considers becoming a soldier of fortune when his tour of duty ends, "like that Rainey fellow people [keep] talking about." Remo can see himself like James Bond, traveling the world to protect America. A visiting soldier tells a group of listeners about how he cleared a fellow soldier of the allegation of a massacre at Hoi Binh. This soldier, named Bolan, also tells them a story he heard from a guy named Spenser in Korea. Michael Long (later known as Michael Knight) is from the TV series Knight Rider. The Exterminator is John Eastland from the movies The Exterminator and Exterminator 2. Hannibal is John "Hannibal" Smith from the TV show The A-Team. Sergeant Mercy was the wartime nickname of Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, the vigilante created by Don Pendleton. Bolan cleared the name of Niles Barrabas in "Incident at Hoi Binh," included in Executioner #63: The New War Book. Barrabas is the protagonist of another series, The Soldiers of Barrabas by Jack Hild. Jim Rainey is the hero of Peter McCurtin’s Soldier of Fortune series. James Bond needs no explanation. Spenser is Robert B. Parker’s future private investigator. In R.J. Carter's "Fool's Paradise," Remo Williams and Chiun team up with a masked vigilante to end the threat of the sentient computer chip Friend, which has been corrupted by the caped crusader’s archenemy, a psychotic clown. Mark Howard, assistant director of CURE, tells Remo, "Thanks to the run of unique characters that regularly pass through this city, your street clothes and your blurred-out features have the newscasters crediting some faceless vigilante, with the'‘man in the kimono' as his partner and sensei. Richard Salamander, Rick Dragon, something like that.' There is apparently some bad blood between Chiun and this latter individual. The vigilante says that more than one of the defense mechanisms in his cave headquarters were designed to contend with an out-of-control extraterrestrial, should the need ever arise. Although the masked vigilante is not referred to by name, the story makes it abundantly clear that he is the Batman. Per CU continuity, this would be the as-yet unidentified fourth Batman, whose predecessors were Bruce Wayne Sr., Dick Grayson, and Bruce Wayne Jr. His archenemy is the Joker. The faceless vigilante is another DC Comics hero, the Question (although he was originally published by Charlton Comics), while his sensei is martial arts master Richard Dragon. The extraterrestrial against whose losing control Batman is taking precautions is Superman.

Crossover Cover: Summit Chase

Remo Williams asks a gangster, “How’s Mack Bolan doing?” A female British agent’s handler is James, a field agent grounded due to catching an S.T.D., who is said to have a series of books based on him. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, is Don Pendleton’s vigilante character. James is, of course, James Bond, whose womanizing has finally caught up with him.