Crossover Cover: The Tall Texan

 

Are you a Western fan?

Then you'll love this entry in the Gunsmith series by "J. R. Roberts" (Robert J. Randisi), which has nods to not only two of Randisi's other series, but also the Canyon O'Grady books (written by various authors, including Randisi, under the penname Jon Sharpe) and the classic TV series The Wild Wild West!

For more information, be sure to purchase a 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!

Crossover Cover: Someone Else's Trouble

Clint Adams, the Gunsmith, teams up with Ki to track down a gang who stole a sword in the custody of a friend of Clint’s, killed the man’s wife, and kidnapped his daughter. Clint’s friendship with Secret Service agent Jim West is mentioned. Clint has heard about Ki, the partner and bodyguard of rancher Jessie Starbuck, from Marshal Custis Long. Jessie Starbuck and Ki appeared alongside Marshal Custis “Longarm” Long in the first ten Longarm Giants by Tabor Evans, as well as their own series, the Lone Star books by Wesley Ellis. Several of the Gunsmith books by "J.R. Roberts" (Robert J. Randisi) refer to Clint’s friendship with Jim West, who is from the classic TV western The Wild Wild West. Clint’s friend Talbot Roper, a Pinkerton and recurring character in the Gunsmith books, appears as the main character of two novels by Randisi, Bullets and Lies and The Reluctant Pinkerton.

Crossover Covers: Atomic Robo and the Knights of the Golden Circle

Atomic Robo has spent the last fourteen years in the Old West after accidentally being transported there from June 2013. Robo, Doc Holliday, and Bass Reeves encounter the younger version of Robo’s foe Heinrich von Helsingard. Robo says, “Old colleague of mine, he used to say, ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ I think it works with whenever too.” In the epilogue, Secret Service Agents James West and Artemus Gordon discover the wreckage of Helsingard’s airship. Robo was transported to 1870 at the end of the miniseries Atomic Robo and the Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur. Robo’s old colleague is Dr. Buckaroo Banzai. James West and Artemus Gordon are from the television series The Wild Wild West, of course.

Crossover Cover: The Weird Western Adventures of Haakon Jones

This collection of Weird Western stories has several crossovers. In "Stuff of Dreams," set in March 1875, Haakon Jones is lured into a blizzard by a beautiful red-golden haired girl. It is suggested that Ithaqua may have caused the blizzard. The girl is clearly Atali, the title character of Robert E. Howard’s Conan story "The Frost Giant’s Daughter." It is possible that the frost giant and Ithaqua (from August Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos story of the same name) are the same being. In "Belfry's in Your Bats!," set in August 1876, Jones thwarts a bizarre plot on the life of President Grant. He is assisted by a Secret Service agent named Jim who dresses in a tight suit and vest, and carries an explosive material in his boot heel. Jim is Jim West from The Wild Wild West. In "A Knight Does Not  a Pawn Make," set in 1877, Jones finds himself on the opposite side of a range war from an expensive hired gun. The man is unnamed, but dresses all in black, has a holster decorated with a silver chess knight, charges $1000 for his services, quotes classical authors, and gives his address as the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. The hired gun is Paladin from the television series Have Gun – Will Travel. In "Surf City, Here I Come," set in 1889, Jones is a passenger aboard a ship that encounters the island of R’lyeh in the South Seas. Haakon fights the Deep Ones and briefly glimpses Cthulhu. In "The House of a Thousand Mirrors," also set in 1889, Jones nearly loses his soul to a witch’s enchanted mirrors in Deadwood. The mirrors are clearly meant to be those seen in Robert E. Howard’s Kull story "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune." In Howard’s story, Tuzun Thune is assisted by a girl. Rick Lai speculates that the witch who encountered Haakon Jones is an older version of that same girl. In "Action on Arkham's Boot Hill," set in 1904, Jones visits Arkham, Massachusetts, where he meets Miskatonic University student Ward Phillips. A character named Ward Phillips appeared in H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price’s "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." Phillips was based on Lovecraft himself, whose full name was Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If Lovecraft and Price’s Phillips is the same person as the Phillips who encountered Haakon Jones, he must be a few years older than Lovecraft, who was only fourteen years old in 1904.