NULL-CROSSOVERS #20

 I haven't seen the Cecil B DeMille western epic THE PLAINSMAN (1936) in something like forty years, and it was not readily available on streaming. But there was a mediocre TV remake in 1966, and I wasted a little time sussing that out.

The entirely fictional story brings together western legends, Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill Cody, respectively played by Don Murray, Abby Dalton and Guy Stockwell. However, in contrast to at least two of my "western legend crossovers" explored here and here, both versions of PLAINSMAN are null-crossovers, because in real history Wild Bill was associated in various ways with both Calamity and Buffalo Bill. Since they have that real-life connection, even the most absurd fictional story about the three of them does not count as a crossover.

Incidentally, the '66 PLAINSMAN is awful in every way, except that at the end Leslie Nielsen shows up playing the non-legendary (in my book) historical figure of General George Custer. 

RAR #79: THE TOTEM

Issues 74 and 75 of STRANGE TALES contained a two-part story by Steve Ditko, beginning when a stone statue called The Totem comes to life to attack a couple of convicts who menace an Indian tribe.

The second part then shows the Totem relentlessly turning on its own people, at which point the old shaman who summoned the demon banishes it.

MONSTER MASHUPS #111

 Found this cover online but haven't read the actual story referenced.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 This blogpost mentions at least two literary characters, Scott's Rob Roy and Fielding's Jonathan Wild, showing up in an 1884 dime novel called THE BLUE DWARF.

MONSTER MASHUPS #110

 I only came across this mashup by chance, in which an episode of YOGI'S TREASURE HUNT dragged out yet another hoary cliche from Hanna-Barbera's own moldy treasure-chest. Features a spoofy Drac, a Franky, and a lady vamp.

MONSTER MASHUPS #109

  Tom Sutton, under the name "Sean Todd," did four installments of a series called "Frankenstein Book II," appearing in issues #3-6 of Skywald's PSYCHO b&w magazine. It's very incoherent, mixing monsters of different eras, and doesn't have an ending, but the artist puts a lot of moxie in his pencils.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In WOW #14, Mary Marvel meets both the folklore-character Jack Frost and an approximation of the Greek dawn-goddess Eos, under her Roman name Aurora.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The Egyptian wizard Ibis encounters both Celtic and Greek boogiemen in IBIS #4 when he squares off against both Morgan LeFay and Cerberus.

MONSTER MASHUPS #108

 I've now reviewed both the 1995 and 1997 narrative incarnations of the DARKSTALKERS franchise here.

In addition, two episodes of the 1995 TV show sustain a crossover-vibe. In "Donovan's Bane," the episode that introduces the monster-hunter Donovan Baine, the spirits of both Merlin and Morgan Le Fay briefly appear to lend aid to their respective descendants, Harry Grimore and Morrigan the Succubus. And in "Darkest Before the Dawn," regular vampire Dimitri is revealed to have been in contact with the O.G. King of Vampires, who appears in a flashback to give Dimitri an idea that becomes the main story of the episode.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #14 did its own version of "the Trenchcoat Brigade," even though most of the characters aren't wearing trenchcoats. This version includes Deadman (occupying the body of Wonder Woman in this scene), Doctor Fate, Doctor Occult, Zauriel, Zatanna and Etrigan the Demon. These weirdie-heroes get the lion's share of action while the regular JLU heroes sit things out.

RAR #78: LI'L CHIEF BUGABOO

 Scene from the debut story of the Little Chief in PEP #40. At least he makes his bones by punching out a mountain lion.

MONSTER MASHUPS #107

More monster-trash than monster-mash, but I guess THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS counts.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The 1990s MASK cartoon had at least one villain-crossover, the half-hour "Convention of Evil." At least six villains-- Pretorius (Tim Curry), the Stinger (Stuart Pankin), the Tempest (Bud Cort), Lucifer (Jonathan Harris), Kablamus (Jim Cummings) and Gorgonzola the Cheese Witch (Cree Summer) -- had already appeared on earlier episodes, as is illustrated by clips from those shows.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #19

  Most of the null-crossovers I've examined here have been covers or one-page interactions of characters that are not genuine narratives, like this one. SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE #44 is a crossover between various horror-hosts, consisting of two pages at the comic's beginning and a full-page joke at the end. Despite the greater length I would still judge this to be a non-narrative vignette of the type I discussed here. 

 As usual in these types of vignettes, the hosts not only don't interact with the characters, there's also no real narrative in their three pages here. This is in marked contrast to the EC story "Horror Beneath the Streets," examined here, in which the hosts both interact with their "victims" and dominate the story as focal icons.

As a curiosity, the letters-page issue of HOUSE also sports a "crossover" of a very different sort, as future comics superstar Todd MacFarlane weighs in with his opinion on a recent issue.

The same lettercol includes a separate letter in which a fan asks about the disposition of several DC characters that have nothing whatever to do with any of the horror-titles. I rather doubt the fan directed this inquiry to SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE; probably someone just wanted to run the letter some place and SECRETS had a hole to fill. This exchange is amusing for a comment, attributed to DC editor Len Wein, in which the reader asks about the TEEN TITANS character "Bumblebee" and is told that the character "never existed."  

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The 1950 Casper cartoon "Once Upon a Rhyme" shows Casper reading a book of Mother Goose tales. From the cover, Mother Goose invites the friendly ghost to enter her domain. He sees the Three Blind Mice (who of course don't see him) but his spectral appearance frightens both The Old Woman Who Lives in the Shoe and Miss Muffet's spider (Miss Muffet having already been scared off her tuffet by said arachnid.) Red Riding Hood isn't put off by Casper's ghostliness, so they become friends, after which Casper's scare potential saves Red from the hungry Wolf. 

It's a decent little cartoon, but it's more than a little odd that the pre-adolescent Red looks to be wearing lipstick.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 From my review:

______

The only reason Charlie and Vinnie are in "Oldies But Young 'Uns" is to set up the back-door pilot that appeared in the same season a few episodes later, focusing almost entirely on the antics of father and son (with a piddling guest-appearance by Al Bundy). Said pilot was titled "Top of the Heap," the same as the very short-lived sitcom that resulted. "Top" is IMO one of the worst back-door pilots ever made, but it was the only time the makers of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN succeeded in spinning anything off from their one huge sitcom success. Christina Applegate and David Faustino guested on "Top," but the show bottomed out in seven episodes. A retooled version, without any guest appearances, came and went equally quickly.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

I finally had the time to reread H.P. Lovecraft's THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS, and though the majority of HPL stories probably register only as "null-crossovers," since the icons referenced don't appear "on stage," WHISPERER actually qualifies as a full icon-crossover, for reasons set down here.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 An example of a time-travel crossover set in modern times:

And just to give an example of a "team" of innominate legends drawn purely from recorded history, here's a 1947 BLUE BEETLE story from ALL TOP COMICS #8. The titular hero encounters, thanks to a time-travel device, a "super-menace team-up" whose members are culled from different eras: the pirate Blackbeard, the serial killer Jack the Ripper, and the wife-murderer Doctor Crippen. In fact, the writer of this tale made an overt attempt to "mythify" the historical Crippen-- who only killed one woman according to the law-- into some sort of odd "Bluebeard" type who killed multiple wives.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 A noteworthy though short-lived hero-team book was the All-Winners Squad, which was a belated attempt by Timely to ape the successful Justice Society feature.

This story, pitting the All-Stars against a time-traveler named Future Man and his contemporary aide Miss Death, was pretty bland except for the villain showing off his invention of "atomic fire," fire that could burn anything made of atoms.

MONSTER MASHUPS #106

 In MARVEL FAMILY #71, the titular heroes visit "Ghost Island." the refuge of a variety of "haunts," including a vampire, werewolf, a fire-breathing devil, regular ghosts and poltergeists, a witch and a variety of unidentified ghouls.

Incidentally it's only a crossover for uniting the Marvel Family, all of whom had independent features.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I checked one of a series of "pulp heroes meet monsters" series from Moonstone, name of THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE VS. FRANKENSTEIN. It was competent, but I've nothing much to say about it except that I liked the descendant of Dr Frankenstein going by the name "Cushing."

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 From my review of CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE SLAVE GIRL:

Of the other "name pirates" standing alongside Kidd and Bonney, only Blackbeard (Mike Ross) has anything much to do. The names of Calico Jack, Stede Bonnet and James Avery are tossed out haphazardly and with no real characters attached, while another famous pirate, Bartholomew Roberts, gets both of his names farmed out to two separate characters, a Captain Bartholomew and a Captain Roberts. I guess the writers got a short list of famous pirate-names and ran out. Anyway, as far as crossovers of legendary historical characters are concerned, only Kidd, Bonney and Blackbeard rate. 

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #105

 EC artist Jack Davis did a lot of lobby cards and album covers on "monster mash" themes, but this might be the best of them, even if one doesn't necessarily consider most of the Addams Family "monsters."

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 From my review of the 1978 sex comedy FAIRY TALES:

Fairyland in this case is more like one of the many "all-fairy-tales-sold-here" worlds, though Prince doesn't seem to recognize any of the figures he meets on his quest-- Little Bo Peep (Angela "LOST EMPIRE" Aames), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Tommy Tucker, Scheherezade (Nai Bonet), Old King Cole, Peeping Tom, and the Frog Prince. The original version is also supposed to have some erotic schtick with Jack and Jill, but this didn't appear in the version I watched. IMDB lists actors who played the roles of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Little Dutch Boy," but I never spotted either one... Aside from Prince having short and inconsequential encounters with Bo Peep and the Jack-and-Jill couple, almost all the action takes place within a colossal laced-up boot, "The Shoe of Pleasure," which is Fairyland's foremost whorehouse. The woman who lives in this shoe doesn't have any children; I guess she knew what to do. The writers give the Madame Who Lives in a Shoe (Brenda Fogarty) a name culled from a separate nonsense-poem, that of "Gussie Gander." 

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #62

Since I'm making up for not having done many villain-crossovers, I'm obliged to state that "Almost Got 'Im," the 1992 episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES, is easily the best villain-cross in that series, if not in all Batman cartoons of all time.

"Almost" only has one close rival: "Mayhem is the Music Meister" from BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, which I mentioned in GREATEST #43. In any case, that one's less notable for its villain-crossovers than playing Batman off such familiar heroes as Black Canary, Green Arrow and Aquaman.

RAR #77: EVENING STAR

 Following up on RAR #68, here's an extremely minor example of a female chief from a 1957 TOMAHAWK, for a story winsomely entitled, "Revenge of the Girl Chief." But it's such a mediocre story-- involving a young squaw, Evening Star, who takes over leading her tribe when her father is murdered-- that making the daughter into a son would have made no structural difference. I'd like to think that somewhere in the thirty years of the TOMAHAWK feature-- at least in its Revolutionary War setting-- that there was at least one female "Real American" better than this one. But I found this one by chance and am not likely to go looking for a better candidate.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

THE DALTONS' WOMEN is a low budget oater within the "Lash LaRue" series, wherein the whip-wielding hero and his comedy relief contend with the Dalton Gang. However, this very fictionalized version of the Daltons just barely sustains any crossover-vibe. Of the three real-life Daltons, the script uses just the name of Brother Emmett (Tom Tyler), and makes up two other names, Clint and Jess, out of whole cloth.

I think that the "women" are two saloon girls who have a big catfight over their intended beau, though I've already forgotten if that was one of the Daltons or not. The catfight is really the only part of the movie worth seeing.

RAR #76: THE ZAZZTEC INDIANS

 

In FOUR COLOR #51, Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig go treasure-hunting on "Happy Pappy Island" and almost get sacrificed by the natives, the Zazztec Indians. Curiously, the first time Bugs sees a native, he calls him a "White Indian," but nothing more is said about this odd classification. This 1944 opus is a pretty good Barks-style adventure, though artist Carl Beuttner probably wasn't directly influenced by Barks, since Barks got started in Disney comics only a couple years before this story, in 1942. The script includes a bit in which Bugs tells Porky that he's going to put one over on the "dumb savages" by pretending his flashlight is big magic, but the "savages" aren't fooled for a moment. However, they still believe in making sacrifices to soothe the local volcano, so Porky has to rescue the rash rabbit.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #18

 No, Willie's inability to decide between Tessie and Millie was not a comment upon his sexuality.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 DC jumped feet first into the supernatural/Gothic thing after having generally avoided that type of story for over 20 years, and it seems likely that Carmine Infantino was the biggest influence, as he himself claims in a JOURNAL interview:

I was trying to prepare for the inevitable. In my mind, “What if these things die? What if we’re back in the old days and suddenly superheroes drop off?” The reason I threw out a mess of different titles was, I wanted to sneak in The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets without people much realizing what was going on. Which I did. And also we had a chain of them out there, if you remember, and they were all successful before anyone at Marvel realized what was going on. So we had those going for us, and the superheroes going for us. Meanwhile I kept experimenting with different things.

So in Evanier's book KIRBY, ME claims, maybe a little dubiously, that when Kinney Corp bought DC in 1967, they thought they were getting the top company, only to become displeased when they learned that Marvel was such a strong second. (I think Roy Thomas claimed Marvel didn't obtain the majority market share until the early seventies though.) Still, that story isn't absolutely necessary to put across the notion that someone in management thought it was time for some changes. Infantino was made first art director and then editorial director in 1966 and 1967, and it looks like promoting horror and the Gothic was his major "experiment." Not only did he get rid of the superheroes in HOUSE OF MYSTERY in '67, he also debuted DEADMAN in the failing book STRANGE ADVENTURES. The Spectre had been revived earlier under the tutelage of Julie Schwartz, but the initial format was so rationalized that any "weirdie" appeal of the hero was nullified. Spectre also got his own title in 1967, and though it didn't last long it soon converted into spookier stories before it died. In the late sixties and early seventies, even some of the "mainstream" DC superheroes began exploiting Gothic/horror themes on their covers, such as (obviously) BATMAN but also less obvious types like FLASH and TEEN TITANS. 

One fan attributed the big change to the influence of DARK SHADOWS in '66, but I think it was more likely that DC saw that the Warren magazines had been doing well since 1964 (EERIE) and 1966 (CREEPY) respectively, and that they hired guys like EC stalwart Joe Orlando to cut into that action. That also probably led to the revival of The Phantom Stranger in 1969, as well as another fifties character, Doctor Thirteen. The intersection of the two seems to be the first regular convocation of two "weirdies" at DC Comics, in 1969's SHOWCASE #80-- though the good doctor was dropped from the Stranger's adventures pretty quickly.

RAR #75: THE SHAMAN (1947)

In BLACKHAWK #17. The Blackhawks and their comrade Miss Fear take on The Shaman, who uses illicit atomic science to impress his native followers with his "magic." The location might be Canada, given that the only city mentioned is a made-up place called "North City." There's one line of dialogue where the White governor admits that the natives have some justice on their side, but that he doesn't like The Shaman's fear-mongering. Once he's out of the way, of course, everything becomes hunky-dory.

BTW, despite the judgment rendered by Chuck, there's clearly nothing "dirty" about the Shaman's counter. Olaf comes at the Shaman clumsily, and the Shaman uses his own momentum against him. Later, of course, Olaf does win the second and last bout, but only because he's better prepared. If one of the Blackhawks had used judo against a larger enemy, then that would have been "smart."

THE WEIRDIE FILES

Though Alan Moore wasn't the first writer to convoke weirdies, he was one of the guys who made the trope popular.

In SWAMP THING ANNUAL #2. for instance, the titular muck monster has to journey to Hell to save the spirit of Abby Arcane, and he gets the assistance of a former ally, The Demon, in so doing. Moore manages to work in Deadman, The Spectre and the Phantom Stranger, even though none of them are necessary to the plot.

In contrast, Moore's almost-final SWAMP THING story guest-stars all of the above weirdies, plus Doctor Fate and many others, and they are all necessary to the plot, so maybe he used the Annual to re-familiarize his readers with DC's resident weirdies just so they wouldn't seem yanked in out of nowhere.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 Here's a prominent example of a convocation of weirdies with no monster content, the so-called "Trenchcoat Brigade" from THE BOOKS OF MAGIC.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

Technically the story "Brothers" crosses over Brother Power with a couple of Swamp Thing's support characters, but it counts.

A cool cover to a boring story in SPECTRE #11, featuring stature-characters Spectre, Doctor Fate, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and The Enchantress, and one charisma-character, The Gentleman Ghost.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 In keeping with my new determination of "weirdies" as a subcategory of crossovers, THE WEIRDIE FILES are dedicated to this literary phenomenon. 

I'll start with the most recent iteration of JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK.

The superordinate ensemble is made up of Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, and Detective Chimp.

The subordinate ensemble consists of The Demon, John Constantine, Blue Devil, and the late great Zatara.

Subordinate guest stars with stature include Zauriel, Deadman, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Andrew Bennett, and five Justice Leaguers. A few such characters show up for one panel and have no lines.

Subordinate guest stars possessed of only charisma are Traci Thirteen, Klarion the Witch Boy, Morgaine LeFey. Felix Faust, Nabu the Wise, Mordru, and the demonic trio Ghast, Rath, and Abnegazar. Traci, daughter of the ghost-buster Doctor Thirteen, attained a little stature in the backup series ARCHITECTS AND MORTALITY but I'm not sure it's consequential enough to designate her a stature-type.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Woody Woodpecker started out as a proto-crossover, popping up in the Andy Panda cartoon KNOCK KNOCK in 1940, and quickly eclipsing all the other characters in the Walter Lantz studio.

For years to come Lantz would continue having his characters cross over in comics and cartoons. FOUR COLOR COMICS #21 is devoted to Oswald Rabbit and his friends, and Woody appears just for about three or four pages, just because.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Since the historical character of Rasputin has IMO acquired what I deem a "legendary" status, I consider that both the 2004 HELLBOY and the graphic novel on which it's based to be charisma-crossovers.

The situation is a little different with characters that are based on myths but who are given some sort of gimmick that doesn't have anything to do with their original stories. For that reason, I don't consider the film's seqjuel GOLDEN ARMY to be a crossover of any kind. However, the 2019 reboot, which mixes at least two figures from disparate mythologies-- Nimue from Arthurian tales, and Baba Yaga from Russian folklore-- does count as a charisma-crossover.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

To celebrate the 50th issue of Warren's VAMPIRELLA in 1976, writer Bill DuBay and various artists collaborated on a crossover-- possibly the first for the vampiric vixen-- between Vampirella and two other characters who had their own serials in the magazine. It's a decent story but not anything I feel the need to review in depth.

Here's Vampirella's first meeting with Pantha, the girl with the tendency to go feline and feral.

Later Vampirella and her support-characters encounter the magazine's resident witch-heroine, Fleur.

Finally, because at the time Warren was publishing reprints of Will Eisner's SPIRIT, a final playful story involves a couple of Vampi's buddies visiting Wildwood Cemetery, in the mistaken belief that the long dead Denny Colt may have been revived as a mad killer. More a joke than a real crossover is the last page, where what might be "the spirit of THE SPIRIT" makes an appearance.