Crossover of the Week

Spring 1939 

THE SONG OF THE STORM 

A gangster’s henchman brings I. V. Frost the remains of a manuscript his boss burned, about one of Thomas Carnacki’s cases. In the manuscript, Carnacki identifies the charm on Sir Evan Chichester’s watch as the Talisman of Byagoona, which legend holds dates to antediluvian Stygia, and can allegedly switch one person’s mind into another’s body. The ancient sorcerer currently inhabiting the gangster’s body was given the Talisman by Byagoona. He tells Frost about some of his old foes, including the greatest swordsman in Spanish California and a famous gunfighter and his lover. The entity Rhagorthua taught him how to summon a storm by singing. 

Short story by Matthew Baugh in I. V. Frost: Tales of Mystery and Scientific Detection, Joe Gentile and Kim Perisin, eds., Moonstone Books, 2017. Thomas Carnacki is from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. Byagoona is a Great Old One from James Ambuehl’s “The Bane of Byagoona.” Stygia is from Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. The sorcerer wielding the Talisman battled Zorro in Baugh’s story “Zorro and the Bruja” (More Tales of Zorro, Richard Dean Starr, ed., Moonstone Books, 2010), and a fictionalized version of the historical gunfighter Mysterious Dave Mather in his tale “Trail of the Brujo” (Low Noon: Tales of Horror and Dark Fantasy from the Weird Weird West, David B. Riley, ed., Science Fiction Trails, 2012). Rhagorthua is from David Conyers’ “A Handful of Dust.” 

This crossover writeup is one of over a thousand included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from 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

Summer 1935 

THE DOMINO LADY’S TRIPLE THREAT 

The Domino Lady battles a German American Bund targeting an old friend of her father. As Ellen Patrick, she meets two police detectives, one of whom is Chas Faraday. Last time Ellen stayed at the Waldorf-Anthony in New York, she met a strange and shadowy man named Kent, who saw a magician named Kosmo performing amazing feats with his cape while he (Kent) was serving in the court of the Czar. Later, Kent used a Baritsu move to save Ellen's life. Ellen meets two more cops, Sergeant Garcia and Patrolman Hawke, and reads an article in The Daily Sentinel. Detective Faraday tells Ellen he is thinking of leaving the Berkeley Police Department and has applied for police jobs in Neptune and Palm City. Patrolman Hawke tells Ellen stories about his aviator brother. 

Short story by Brad Mengel in Domino Lady Volume Two, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2016. Chas Faraday is an ancestor of Michael Faraday, the protagonist of the TV series The Cape, which is set in Palm City. Kosmo is also from that series. The Waldorf-Anthony is the hotel owned by pulp hero Jim Anthony. Kent is the pulp hero of the shadows. Baritsu is a Japanese wrestling style from the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Empty House.” The comic book story “The Conflagration Man,” a crossover between the shadowy vigilante and the bronze man, implied both heroes had learned Baritsu from Holmes. Philip José Farmer originally identified Holmes as one of Doc’s teachers in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. Baritsu was also mentioned in The Cape. Sergeant Garcia is a descendant of Sergeant Demetrio Lopez Garcia from Disney’s Zorro television series. Patrolman Hawke is the father of Matt Hawke, aka the Avenger, the hero of a series of Men’s Adventure paperbacks by Chet Cunningham. The Daily Sentinel is the Los Angeles edition of the Detroit newspaper published by Britt Reid, the Green Hornet. Neptune, California is the setting of the television series Veronica Mars. Patrolman Hawke’s aviator brother is the father of Stringfellow and St. John Hawke from the TV series Airwolf. This story takes place in summer, three years after the death of Ellen’s father, meaning 1935. 

This crossover writeup is one of hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to 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 Cover: Zorro: Rise of the Old Gods

Zorro’s hunt for a band of outlaws leads him into battle with servants of Cthulhu. Dagon and Azathoth are mentioned.

This crossover, and hundreds more like it, are covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to 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 Covers: Zorro in the Land That Time Forgot

 

Are you a fan of Johnston McCulley's swashbuckling hero of Old California, Zorro?

Then you'll love this miniseries, in which the hero has an adventure in Edgar Rice Burroughs' land of Caspak!

For more information, check out my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to 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 Covers: Lady Rawhide/Lady Zorro

Lady Rawhide and Lady Zorro join forces to combat a group of slavers who are taking kidnapped women to sell to a brothel. Lady Zorro is from Dynamite Entertainment’s Zorro comic, which portrays Don Diego de la Vega as half-Indian on his mother’s side. This does not fit with the continuity of either Johnston McCulley’s original tales or the continuations by later authors, and therefore Dynamite’s version of Zorro must exist in an AU.

Crossover Cover: Django/Zorro

Django Freeman teams up with the aging Don Diego de la Vega to battle the self-styled “Archduke of Arizona.” This story takes place after the events of Tarantino’s film Django Unchained, which occurred in 1858–1859. However, the film The Mask of Zorro (which is referenced in Jess Nevins' "A Root That Beareth Gall and Worms" and John Allen Small's "A Fate Cast in Silver") has Don Diego definitively dying in 1842. Therefore, I consider this particular story an AU.

Crossover Covers: Swords of Sorrow

A crossover event from Dynamite Entertainment featuring various heroines and anti-heroines. The Kato seen in this series is Mulan Kato from Dynamite’s Green Hornet comic, which ignores the continuity of NOW Comics’ version of the Green Hornet. Masquerade is the version of the Golden Age comics heroine Miss Masque seen in the comic Project Superpowers, which features a vast number of Golden Agers being freed from their decades-long imprisonment in Pandora's Urn. Lady Zorro first appeared in Dynamite’s Zorro ongoing series, which portrays Zorro as half-Native American, a conflict with numerous other accounts of his background. Therefore, this series has to take place in an AU.

Crossover Covers: Masks

A very loose adaptation of the Black Police Trilogy from the Spider pulp novels, featuring the Spider himself, the Shadow, the Green Lama, the Green Hornet and Kato, the Black Bat, the Black Terror, Zorro (Rafael Vega, a descendant of the original Zorro) and Miss Fury. The leader of the Black Legion turns out to be Brian O’Brien, formerly the Clock, a masked vigilante appearing in stories published by Centaur Publications and Quality Comics in the 1930s and ’40s. The heroes visit a penthouse at the Empire State Building, where the Shadow remarks that it is too bad that the occupant of the penthouse is out of the country, as he would be a valuable ally to them in this mission. This is a reference to Doc Savage. Britt Reid meets with reporter Steve Huston, who mentions Old Man Havens. Steve Huston and Frank Havens are from the pulp exploits of the Phantom Detective. The events of this comic differ greatly from the Black Police Trilogy, including factors such as the identity of the mastermind being changed and Nita Van Sloan’s role being omitted (indeed, she is never even mentioned.) The Spider is wearing a version of his outfit from the movie serial The Spider’s Web rather than the costume from the pulps. The Black Bat is given a different origin story than in the original pulps. The Green Hornet is out of character, calling criminals “mooks,” and is stated to be from Chicago rather than Detroit. All these factors serve to place this story outside CU continuity.

Crossover Covers: The Lone Ranger: The Death of Zorro

 

In 1870, a band of ex-Confederate soldiers take over a Chumash Indian mission and institute a reign of terror upon the natives. An aging Don Diego de la Vega comes out of retirement and becomes Zorro once again to defeat them. However, the leader of the renegades shoots him in the back. The Lone Ranger and Tonto set out to avenge his death with the aid of Zorro’s onetime allies La Justicia. La Justicia is from Isabel Allende’s novel Zorro, a re-imagining of the legend. This story does not fit with the circumstances of Don Diego’s death in the movie The Mask of Zorro. In addition, Don Diego was born in 1771 in the CU, which would make him 99 years old at the time of this story, though he appears much younger. Therefore, I have placed this series in an alternate universe.