THE WEIRDIE FILES

 Here's a "DC Gothic" that, like DEADMAN, preceded my previous candidate for the company's second non-anthology "weird feature," which I had previously pegged as the SHOWCASE debut of the Phantom Stranger: the CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, a failing book that the company strove to shore up with spooky content.

     One issue during this run had the heroes encounter both DC's private eye character Jonny Double and their high-wire haunter Deadman.   

MONSTER MASHUPS #130

 Samson strikes again, against THE THROWER-BEAST and his spiked-mace tail...

...and THE GIANT FLOATING JELLY-FISH...

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I'm not about to try chronicling all of the multitudinous crossovers in DC's war comics, even though I've just finished laying out the one in SGT. ROCK ANNUAL #2. Still, though the story "Heap the Corpses High" in DC SUPERSTARS #15 (1977) isn't worth explicating, this is a really nice cover juxtaposing Sergeant Rock, Mademoiselle Marie, and the disguise-master Unknown Soldier masquerading as Rock for some damn reason. More Kanigher craziness as usual.

 

RAR #93: MADOGA

 

Madoga, seen above in the first three panels fighting a big mummy, was a member of a society of sorcerous villains, The Legion of the Weird, who were defeated in their one outing by the Challengers of the Unknown.   

MONSTER MASHUPS #129

 More Samson-monsters, starting with THE GIANT STING-RAY.   

And the poorly-named SEA MONSTER.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In this post I noted how one issue of Timely's KRAZY KOMICS took a subordinate character, The Creeper, from a strip called "The Vagabond" and made him a co-star of a strip about a rabbit-detective named Homer. Only this first "teamup" counts as a crossover of these two characters. A little later The Creeper was joined in his nutty nefarious activities by his lookalike son "Crawler," while Homer and his allies kept chasing the two of them down. In KK #9-10 the antagonists visited "Fairy Land" (which might as well be the story's title) and met...                              

  RED RIDING HOOD and her WOLF        

KING MIDAS and THE OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE.    

 
THE THREE BEARS and the GIANT from "Jack and the Beanstalk"                                                             

SIMPLE SIMON, WILLIAM TELL, and three characters from the "Hey Diddle Diddle" rhyme.                                                                                     

                      

KRAZY KOMICS #7-9 also played host to a three-part story teaming up a new character, a beneficent fairy named "Inky the Imp," with a "Fractured Fairy Tales" version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his mice (who are the Piper's allies this time).   

In KK #11, though the "heroes" and their "villains" aren't in Fairy Land anymore, they still meet a "King Arthur" who looks more like Old King Cole. 

KK 12 then asserts that all of the Krazy Komics characters inhabit their own world, and The Creeper magicks some of them into the "real world."  They try to protest their treatment in the comics to the creators of Timely Comics (all of whom are caricatures of the real raconteurs). I recognize only Ziggy Pig, Silly Seal and Super Baby, but the main characters are still Creeper, his son Crawler, and the rabbit Homer. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #128

 

This MARVEL FAMILY story, "The Trio of Terror," is not only a crossover for the Marvels but also a "mashup" of three monsters from Greek mythology.

True, the story acts as all three are "monster-types," when that distinction applies only to the Satyr. In mythology there's only one Argus and one Hydra, and as almost anyone knows, the Hydra is not some two-headed troll but a seven-headed dragon. Since none of the three are particularized icons, the monsters comprise a mashup but not a crossover.      

MONSTER MASHUPS #127

 THE METAL-EATING MONSTER.                                                         

THE TREE TERROR.                                                                          

THE GIGANTO-BULL.                                                                          

              

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Yet another encounter of Casper with fairy-tale characters, from "Grumpy Characters," SPOOKY SPOOKTOWN #15 (1965).                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

MONSTER MASHUPS #126

 The Ghostly Trio learn that they just don't rate as true monsters in "For Monsters Only" in TUFF GHOSTS #19 (1965).                              

ADDENDUM: I did give some thought to the consideration as to whether any of the "Harvey haunts" might be considered monsters in my lit-crit system, but decided that even the mischief-makers fell into my category "demiheroes." 

MONSTER MASHUPS #125

 Here's a scene from SANTA VS. DRACULA, though the entire work is not yet offered online.                                                                              

                                                                                                                   

RAR #92: THE MOHAWK POLTERGEIST

 

The 1983 SUPER FRIENDS episode "Once Upon a Poltergeist" brings Batman, Robin, and Apache Chief into conflict with the unnamed ghost of a deceased Mohawk chief, who creates havoc in Gotham City because he has mistaken the terrain for his ancestral lands. The scenes in which the Mohawk shakes the towering buildings of Gotham in order to hurl them from "his" land is an inspired menace, since in general Real Americans have a grudge against WASPS for usurping the land, even if the menace in this story is mistaken in his particular object. Apache Chief, whose knowledge of Real American culture proves important to solving the problem, calls the chief a name once, but it's simply a word that signifies the general term for Iroquois people.      

CROSSOVER MADNESS

The WB toon Sylvester is even more involved than the Herman and Katnip team discussed here.                                                                         

                                                          

                             

Famous Studios' Herman the Mouse already had starring status by the time he was teamed with Katnip, and though it's been argued that Katnip was preceded by various "proto-Katnips," the first Herman/Katnip cartoon is really Katnip's first appearance, and a crossover thanks to Herman's established status. Sylvester, in contrast, is not given his familiar name in his first appearance in 1945's "Life with Feathers," but it would be tough to label this a "Sylvester cartoon." In it the cat functions to simply react to the foolishness of the main character, a suicidal lovebird. Sylvester's also a subordinate character in the 1946 Porky Pig short "Kitty Cornered" and in the 1947 Foghorn Leghorn short, "Crowing Pains."                                           

    Sylvester's ascension to stardom (albeit under the name "Thomas") really comes about in the 1947 "Tweetie Pie." Tweety had been the main character of a handful of shorts starting with 1942's "A Tale of Two Kitties," though he only got the name Tweety in a 1944 cartoon. Thus "Tweetie Pie" counts as a crossover in which Sylvester "guest stars" in a Tweety cartoon, though together they become so strongly associated that they form a semi-bonded ensemble. However, only their first interaction counts as a crossover, since the two became so strongly associated that it erased their previous associations. Thereafter, Tweety hardly ever appears thereafter without Sylvester, while the cat makes other starring appearances as a solo act.                                                                                                   

   The most prominent "Sylvester solos" usually involved him attempting to capture the baby kangaroo Hippety Hopper, whom Sylvester mistook for a giant mouse. The kangaroo started out as an opponent to the cat in 1948, and all of these shorts focus on Sylvester's comic takes rather than Hippety's responses to him (even though some of the cartoons give Hippety shared top billing alongside Sylvester). In one 1952 take, after Sylvester did various cartoons with his son Sylvester Jr as another subordinate, here Sylvester has a one-shot teamup with a new character, Benny, whose name resembled his namesake, Steinbeck's "Lenny" from OF MICE AND MEN. In this cartoon dimbulb Benny keeps calling Sylvester "George" (another Steinbeck reference), but Sylvester is still the only star.                                                                                                           

   Benny gets one more shot at stardom in 1953's "Cat-Tails for Two," where he's teamed with a diminutive cat who really is named George (or who has accepted that Benny calls him that). However, though Benny builds a little crossover-charisma here due to his previous appearance, the star of the short was the first version of Speedy Gonzalez-- who I regard as identical with the later version despite differences in design.                                                                       

   Speedy would also be paired with Sylvester for a few shorts starting with 1955's "Speedy Gonzalez." These were not as iconic as the Tweety-Sylvester pairings, but all of these cartoons are crossovers, as are the much later (and not iconic at all) pairings of Speedy and Daffy Duck.                                                                                                                                                                                           

                                 

MONSTER MASHUPS #124

 Somehow I think the HEAVY-MATTER EAGLE is pretty much the same as the earlier STONE-CRUSHING EAGLE.                                    

THE GORILLA-SAUR.                                                                        

THE GIANT VAMPIRE BAT.                                                              

MONSTER MASHUPS #123

 THE STONE-THROWING MONSTER.                                                            

THE METALPECKER MONSTER.                                                         

The prosaically named FLYING MONSTER.                                      

THE PLANT MONSTER and THE ROBOT BODYGUARD.                     

In this issue, the writer apparently decided that he would keep the creature-quota even higher through the use of featurettes on "Famous Monsters Samson Had Known," but which didn't actually appear in earlier stories. Such as THE NET-CASTING SPIDER-MONSTER                                                                                                   

    THE LIGHTNING-BEAST...                                                                       

    And THE SPINE-THROWING CACTUS.                                               

                                                          

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Since the cartoon JAMES BOND JR takes place in a world where James Bond has a college-age nephew involved in fighting evil spies, no crossovers are involved when Junior faces off against alternate-universe versions of Goldfinger and his henchman Oddjob.                           

  However, if this Goldfinger also associates with a character from the "Bond cosmos" that the original's not associated with-- as in the episode "Cruise to Oblivion," where the villain also employs "Nick Nack," a creation of the movie MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN--then that's a charisma-crossover.                                                                 

  In "The Inhuman Race," the powerhouse Jaws works alongside Nick Nack in the service of TV-show original Doctor Derange.                     

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Whereas the Disney animated shorts usually only crossed over characters who had appeared in the cartoons, the Disney comic books, usually published by Dell, felt free to intermingle any characters any Disney project had adapted-- thus providing a "mass crossover" universe some time before Marvel Comics did so. In this 1960 tale "Bad Deeds' Club Annual Picnic" (DELL GIANT #33), Gyro Gearloose not only encounters a bunch of disparate villains-- the Big Bad Wolf, the Wicked Witch, Black Pete, Captain Hook and the Beagle Boys-- the story also works in Peter Pan, the Seven Dwarves, the Three Little Pigs, Mickey Mouse and Uncle Scrooge.                         

     The same issue also includes a Pluto story, "The Dancing Dog,"  in which the dopey dog encounters the satyr Pan but also Stromboli from PINOCCHIO.                                                                                       

From DELL GIANT #30. there's "Hook and Crooks." Uncle Scrooge and Gyro Gearloose chase the Beagle Boys to Neverland to recover the billion dollars stolen from Scrooge, only to find that the Beagles have joined forces with Captain Hook.                                                                                         

    Modern gender politics are well served by "The Scary All-Girl Safari," taking Daisy Duck, Minnie Mouse, Grandma Duck and Clarabelle Cow on a jungle cruise.                                                            

In "The Tiny Trouble Shooters," Chip and Dale ally with Scamp (a product of LADY AND THE TRAMP) avoid Monstro the Whale and help Pinocchio and Gepetto against a Giant who looks familiar though I can't place him from anything earlier.                                         

On a minor personal note, I remember having read these comics in real time, when I was about five years old, give or take a year, and upon re-reading them sixty-plus years later, I still remember some of them pretty well.   
 

MONSTER MASHUPS #122

 And in this corner, we have--                                                                        

THE PETAL-PRISON PLANT.                                                                       

THE BLACK MONSTER.                                                                    

THE GIANT WORM.                                                                           

THE MONSTER MAN. (He's also called "the Ice Monster," but MS already had one of those.)                                                                         

THE APE-MEN.                                                                                    

THE FLAME-WOLVES (though they're not seen breathing flame as the writer claims).                                                                                       

 
   THE MANY-HEADED SHARK.                                                             

THE TUSKED MONSTER.                                                                       

And, most imaginatively, the ICICLE-QUILL FISH.