Crossover Covers: Red Sonja/Claw

Crossover Cover: Masterstroke

Crossover Cover: It

Besides a Lovecraft reference, this book has ties to a number of other King works. An artist named Pickman is mentioned; this is Richard Upton Pickman from Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model." Elements of King's work that are mentioned are: the town of Hemingford Home, Nebraska (which must be a CU version of the town seen in The Stand, which takes place in an alternate universe); the deserted town of Gatlin ("Children of the Corn"); Shawshank Prison (which appears in a number of King's books and stories, most prominently in "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"); a crazy cop who killed a number of women in Castle Rock, Maine (Frank Dodd from The Dead Zone); a black army mess cook in the '30s named Dick Hallorann (The Shining); Rebecca Paulson of Haven Village (The Tommyknockers); the Turtle (The Dark Tower); and a supernatural '58 Plymouth Fury (Christine.)

Crossover Cover: Painkiller Jane/Hellboy

Crossover Cover: Night of the Living Rerun

This Buffy novel by Arthur Byron Cover has a reference to The Book of Eibon, a Cthulhu Mythos tome created by Clark Ashton Smith. The Mythos is arguably one of the most referenced works of fiction in terms of crossovers. I'm afraid I haven't read this book, which Win included in Volume 2, so I don't really have much more to say about it.

Crossover Cover: Night of the Trilobites

This tie-in novel for the 1960 sci-fi show The Invaders, written by Peter Leslie and set in Wales, features a gossip columnist with the unique name Trewithick Polgadden-Warr. Trewithick first appeared in Leslie's novel Deadline (written as by Patrick Macnee), a tie-in for the classic British spy show The Avengers. Since the latter show is firmly in the CU, so is The Invaders. Author Emmanuel Gorlier has also done two stories for Black Coat Press where a 17th century ancestor of Jean de La Hire's hero the Nyctalope encounters members of the alien race seen in The Invaders.

Crossover of the Week

Late November 1951

COLD BLOOD

            Sergeant William Beef’s biographer, Townsend, tells him that he needs a unique quality to make him famous as a detective: “You must resemble an alligator every few pages, like Mrs. Bradley, or talk like a peer in an Edwardian farce, like Lord Peter Wimsey. Or use bits of exclamatory French, like Poirot.” Theo Gray asks Beef to look into the death of his friend, Cosmo Ducrow. Townsend thinks, “How different, I could not help reflecting, was the conversation of Holmes and Watson while they sat waiting for their clients not half a mile away.” Noting that there are better known detectives than he, with better reputations, Beef asks Gray why he did not consult Poirot, to which Gray responds that he was engaged on another case. When Beef asks the same about Albert Campion, Gray replies that Campion was not interested. Beef says that he wonders where Gray will be if he refuses the case, to which Gray responds “On the phone to Inspector French…”

            Novel by Lionel Townsend, edited by Leo Bruce. Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs. Bradley, Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, and Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French have all been established as existing in the CU; therefore, this crossover brings in Sergeant Beef. Beef’s cottage, where he first meets with Gray, is in Lilac Crescent, and was chosen for its proximity to Baker Street. Holmes and Watson were no longer living at 221B Baker Street in 1951, so Townsend must have been referring to their conversations in years past.

Crossover Cover: Vampirella vs. the Eudaemon

In this story, Vampirella goes undercover at a sex club in Amsterdam, where the Eudaemon and his buddy Ed are tracking the same evil Vampi sensed. Vampi and the Eudaemon do battle, until the latter's foe Mördare begins a destructive rampage. The Eudaemon, who had his own miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics, was created by a writer/artist who went simply by the name Nelson. He is Bobby Formazzo, the son of a benevolent demon, who can transform into a massive magenta-skinned creature to fight the ruthless demon Mördare. Since Vampirella is firmly in the Crossover Universe, this story brings in the Eudaemon.

Crossover Covers: The Many Faces of Arsène Lupin

This anthology from Black Coat Press contains a number of stories featuring Maurice Leblanc's gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, mostly pastiches but also including a short story by Leblanc and a play co-written by him and Francois de Crosset. There are a number of vintage pastiches included, such as Anthony Boucher's "Arsène Lupin vs. Colonel Linnaus," which has a Sherlock Holmes reference, and therefore I have included it in the new volumes. Twelve stories are reprinted from previous Black Coat anthologies, all of which Win included in the first two volumes. Four new stories are also included, all of which will also be in the new volumes: Bradley H. Sinor's "With Cat-Like Tread," Matthew Dennion's "The Price of a Favor," "A Theft of China" by Matthew Ilseman (a follower of this site), and David L. Vineyard's "The Last Jest of Arsène Lupin" (which I treated as an alternate universe story, since it portrays Lupin as Nero Wolfe's father, whereas in the CU Wolfe's father is Sherlock Holmes.)

Crossover Cover: From Here to Infinity!

In the Man-Thing story in this issue, Joshua Kale, leader of the Cult of Zhered-Na and Man-Thing's potential ally, uses magic to show the members of the Cult the history of their namesake, an ancient Atlantean sorceress. Zhered-Na worshiped the god Valka, and was given a vision of the future by her deity. Valka is a deity from Robert E. Howard's Kull stories. Win included an issue of Master of Kung Fu where Shang-Chi met Man-Thing in Vol. 2, and this crossover reinforces his inclusion.

Crossover Covers: Batman/Hellboy/Starman (with Some Notes on the Knight Family in the CU)

In his 1980s series All-Star Squadron, Roy Thomas established that Ted Knight, the original Starman and father of Jack Knight, the Starman who appears in this story, was the cousin of Sandra Knight, aka Phantom Lady, one of several characters DC acquired from the defunct comic company Quality. Phantom Lady is in the CU through two crossovers: "The Olympic Saboteurs," a story from the Fox Features incarnation of Phantom Lady where she refers to Sherlock Holmes in a context that suggests he is a real person, and a story featuring her successor in Action Comics Weekly that reveals that one of the former students at a university run by Sandra is Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers fame. Since Ted and Sandra Knight both have CU counterparts, I'm inclined to say their genealogical relationship applies to those versions as well as their DCU equivalent. It is worth noting that Mrs. Peel's maiden name was Knight, and her father was Sir John Knight. However, Art Sippo's story "How Art Thou Fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer" depicts Sun Koh, "the Nazi Doc Savage," having sex with a married MI5 agent named Lady Felicity Knight. Art has confirmed for me that Emma Knight-Peel is therefore Lady Felicity's illegitimate daughter by Sun Koh, and therefore Mrs. Peel has no actual relation to the Knight family.

Crossover Cover: Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

This collection of stories by Kim Newman describes the misdeeds of Professor James Moriarty and Colonel Sebastian Moran. The first story, "A Volume in Vermillion," shows how Moran first came to work for Moriarty. The final story, "The Problem of the Final Adventure" describes the duel between Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, as well as the events leading up to it, from Moran's point of view. All of the story titles are various on the titles of stories from the Holmes canon. Each of the stories has several crossovers. "A Volume in Vermillion" features characters from Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, while the title story is a sequel to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. A number of other fictional criminals appear, including the Lord of Strange Deaths (Fu Manchu), Les Vampires, Doctor Nikola, Doctor Mabuse, and A.J. Raffles and Bunny Manders.

Crossover Cover: The Fortress of S'ahra Sharn

Crossover of the Week

January 14, 1930

THE TOURNAMENT OF THE TREASURE

            On Papeete, Sailor Steve Costigan takes shore leave from the Sea Girl. He runs into his old sparring partner Ned Dargan at an athletic club. Dargan tells Steve that he’s been hired to take part in a tournament, and that he has seen Butch “Slug” O’Leary and Mullargan in town. The men who hired Dargan are named Gutman and Cairo. Steve and Dargan go to the American Bar to meet Dargan’s clients, as well as Steve’s shipmates Bill O’Brian and Sven Larson. They are accosted by a woman named Virginia Harper, who tells them that Gutman and Cairo have her husband. A woman named Madame Ingomar has some sort of power over both Virginia’s husband, Townsend Harper, and the Harpers’ Chinese cook, Sing Lee. Entering the American Bar after O’Brian and Larson come out of it somewhat the worse for wear, Steve spots a retired British fighter named “Seaman” Pallant seated at a corner table with Gutman and Cairo, Fatala and her companion Bebert, and Ingomar. Harper, who prefers to be called Bulan, is the one who attacked Steve’s shipmates. Fatala and her associates have stolen the treasure of Colonel Bozzo-Corona, the head of a criminal organization. The member of the group whose champion wins the tournament will receive all of the treasure. Mullargan is the champion of a small man named Oden. Jack Holligan is fighting for a European named Marius, while a ship’s captain named Bull Dawson is fighting for himself. Sing Lee is a member of the secret society called the Si-Fan. Holligan has been compared to Ace Jessel. Sing Lee tells Steve that some believe Fatala is Fantômas come back in female form. He also reveals that Bulan was created in a laboratory by Professor Maxon, Virginia’s father. Sing Lee inserted cell samples from the real Townsend Harper, who drowned, into Bulan at the orders of Madame Ingomar’s father.

            Short story by Matthew Baugh in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 9: La Vie en Noir, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2012; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 13), Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Rivière Blanche, 2014. Sailor Steve Costigan is the protagonist of a series of stories by Robert E. Howard; Bill O’Brian and Sven Larson serve with him aboard the Sea Girl. Ace Jessel is the protagonist of Howard’s stories “The Apparition in the Prize Ring” and “Double Cross.” Ned “Angel” Dargan is an ally of Frederick C. Davis’ pulp hero the Moon Man. Butch O’Leary is an ally of Norman Daniels’ pulp adventurer the Black Bat; here, he is conflated with Slug O’Leary from “Eando Binder’s” (Earl and Otto Binder) story “Adam Link, Robot Detective.” This crossover brings Adam Link into the CU. “One-Punch” Mullargan is from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan and the Champion.” Townsend Harper (aka Bulan), Professor Maxon and his daughter Virginia, and Sing Lee are from Burroughs’ novel The Monster Men. In the novel, Bulan initially believes that he is Maxon’s creation, but discovers that he is really Townsend Harper; here, it is revealed that he was indeed created by Maxon using cells from the real Harper. Gutman and Cairo are Casper Gutman and Joel Cairo from Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Madame Ingomar is Fu Manchu’s daughter, Fah Lo Suee; she used the Ingomar alias in Sax Rohmer’s Daughter of Fu Manchu and The Trail of Fu Manchu. The Si-Fan is the secret society run by Fu Manchu. “Seaman” Pallant is from The Drums of Fu Manchu. Fatala and Bebert appear in a series of novels by Marcel Allain. Fantômas is a criminal mastermind created by Allain and Pierre Souvestre. Colonel Bozzo-Corona is the head of the Black Coats in novels by Paul Féval. Oden is meant to be Cadwiller Olden from the Doc Savage novel Repel (aka The Deadly Dwarf.) Jack Holligan is an ally of Paul Alfred Müller’s German pulp hero Sun Koh, who has sometimes been referred to as “the Nazi Doc Savage.” Marius is Rayt Marius from Leslie Charteris’ The Last Hero, Knight Templar, and The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal, featuring Simon Templar, alias the Saint.

The Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror

In this miniseries, Cliff Secord battles the evil Otto Rune, who is apparently attempting to unleash a Lovecraftian monster, though it ultimately turns out that the creature is a fake. Cliff is helped on this adventure by a married couple who used to be detectives and have a dog named Asta. These two are meant to be Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, as well as the films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. An unnamed Ham and Monk attempt to retrieve the Cirrus X-3 rocket pack from Cliff, but Doc Savage ultimately decides to let Cliff keep it. Cliff briefly comes in contact with two paperhangers, one of whom is named Jeff. These are the title characters of Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt and Jeff. A friend of Cliff's girlfriend Betty who had fallen victim to Rune meets two desert hillbillies, who are meant to be Snuffy Smith and his wife Loweezy from Billy DeBeck's strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. In Hollywood Horror, the Smiths appear to be living in California, but in the comic strip, they lived in the Appalachians. Perhaps they were on vacation.