THE WEIRDIE FILES

 

I came across a library copy of the 2012 cluster-crossover JUSTICE LEAGUE TRINITY WAR, and it's pretty standard for its purported architect Geoff Jones: just another sloppy smorgasbord of DC heroes doing stupid things. Its only point of interest is showing a version of Justice League Dark composed of John Constantine, Deadman, Black Orchid, and Frankenstein, though one line asserts that Zatanna was a former member. Whether this was ever a lineup in any other comic book I do not know.    

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Dracula managed to appear on both incarnations of Filmation's GHOSTBUSTERS, though the two Dracs have nothing in common. In the live-action 1970s GHOSTBUSTERS, the vamp is a senile old bloodsucker who gets his long fangs stuck in a tree (which his mate Countess Dracula finds sexy-- a rare adult joke in this kids' show).

 Then he pops up on the cartoon GHOSTBUSTERS once, looking a lot like the studio's comical vamp from THE GROOVY GHOULIES.

  

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here are two more curiosities in which fictional characters are described as having had real lives, though all are only seen as ghosts.

 In the Filmation GHOSTBUSTERS episode "The Headless Horseman Caper," the heroes encounter a ghost who appears based on the legend of the Hessian soldier recounted in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but without the disturbing detail of getting his head blown off in battle. The cartoon just says he's some ghost-- not even given any specific military designation-- who was told by his boss, Prime Evil, to make himself look headless by pulling his head down into his body in order to scare people. The episode has nothing to do with the Irving story except for giving the ghost what I assume is supposed to be a Hessian costume.

Slightly better is "The Ghost of Don Quixote," though technically there are four ghosts from the pages of the Cervantes book: the Don, his sidekick Sancho, and their respective mounts, a horse and a burro. Ghostbuster Eddie is seen reading a book on the Don's adventures, but there's no mention of the book being fiction, nor that the author wrote the book to satirize chivalric romances. The scene shifts to Spain, where a young boy has been reading the same book. When he and his parents are assailed by motorcycle-thugs, the four ghosts spring out of the boy's book-- implicitly summoned from the vasty deeps by the kid's love of the Don's exploits. The lance-wielding ghost drives off the thugs, but their boss summons the Ghostbusters to get rid of the specters. However, the Ghostbusters make common cause with Quixote in defeating evil, and the ghosts then return to the pages of the "history book."   

MONSTER MASHUPS #149

 Wonder Woman did start fighting more big monsters in the 1960s than she had in the previous two decades. But whereas as the "teen version" for the heroine had two separate monster mashups, the adult WW only had one tale in which she contended with two distinct monsters, ranging from THE SPHINX-BIRD--

And the featured menace, THE BOILING MAN.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #148

 Sixties Wonder Girl has her second and last encounter with multiple monsters, starting with the ICEBERG MONSTER--

 

And THE MEDUSA-BIRD.

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MONSTER MASHUPS #147

WONDER WOMAN #123's feature story, "Amazon Magic-Eye Album," pits the heroine's juvenile self against a bevy of bizarre beasts:

THE HEDGEHOG FISH and THE GIANT OCTOPUS.

THE GIANT ELECTRIC EEL.

And THE WATER COBRA.

This is a more imaginative Wonder Girl story than most, as the writer tended to pit WG against mundane menaces like sharks and whales, and maybe the occasional giant bird.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I haven't rewatched all the NIGHTMAN episodes of the 1990s lately, but I did rescreen a few that seemed to hold some potential.

In "That Ol' Gang of Mine," a mad scientist brings to life the long-preserved bodies of (going left to right) Al Capone, Bonnie Parker and John Dillinger, none of whom died and all of whom were simply kept on ice by J. Edgar Hoover For Reasons. This is, however, a null-crossover because I don't regard that the real-life criminals ever became what I call "legendary figures," the sort of figures authors often feel free to turn into fictionalized avatars of the authentic human beings.

   

In contrast, the NIGHTMAN episode "Manimal" contains both one legendary (and thus "innominate") figure and one franchise character (who would be "nominative" since his exact status as a fictional character can be easily "named"). The franchise character is Doctor Jonathan Chase, played by the same actor who essayed the character on the short-lived TV show MANIMAL, and here he's playing substantially the same role. He meets Johnny Domino/Nightman and the two battle the evil of the legendary Jack the Ripper, who shows up in the 20th century thanks to a magic crystal-thingie.       

RAR #95: RED ARROW, NAWANDO AND WHITE BULL

In 1951 P.L. Publishing released three issues of RED ARROW, devoted to the adventures of the war-bonneted main hero and his young sidekick Running Deer. The characters had no origin and were given no motive for riding around the West fighting evildoers. The stories were ordinary and the only art I liked was the cover of issue #3, shown below. The "Minnie-Hot-Cha" in the green dress may have actually shared the name of Hiawatha's bride, since in her one appearance she's named "Laughing Water."

  

In this essay I've analyzed the one good story to appear in RED ARROW. This was a one-shot tale about a Navajo medicine-man, Nawando, whose vision guides him to his successor, the young brave White Bull. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #146

 THE SPIDBAT.

THE RADIOACTIVE UNICORN.

And with issue #29 appeared the last of the multi-monster mashes in MIGHTY SAMSON. Issues #30 and #31 just had one monster apiece, and after one reprint the title expired. But if I ever get round to counting up the members of this menagerie, it's possible that this feature may have racked up more "monster mashes" than any other single series in any medium. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #145

 THE TIGRAWK.

THE PENTOPUS. (What, too much trouble to draw more than five arms?)

THE GIANT MOUSE (a real terror to the little elephant next to it).

 THE HORN-TOSSING FAWN.

MONSTER MASHUPS #144

 Whoever wrote MIGHTY SAMSON 26 didn't take as much joy as the regular guys(s) in coining bizarre names for the mutant monsters, leaving me the burden of coming up with names for--

THE SEA DRAGON.

And the GIANT PELICAN.

MONSTER MASHUPS #143

 THE MOLE-WORM.

 

THE GIGANTO-RAT.

MONSTER MASHUPS #142

 THE AERO-PANTHERS.

THE INFRA-RED ANT.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #141

 THE GIANT SEA BULL.

THE QUILLED ANEMONES.

 Then there's (to bestow a name where one does not appear) THE MER-GORILLA.

And the SEA SKATER and THE GIGANTO-WHALE..

All of these monsters are commanded by a mutant race of "watermen," led by "King Nephtoon," but because they seeks a villainous goal, that of conquering N'Yark, they rate as villains rather than monsters.              

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I didn't expect to find a crossover while buzzing through a 1976 HOT STUFF but here's the Little Devil saving Jack Frost from the villainous Iceman in "The Deep Freeze Mystery" (HS #137).

   

NULL-CROSSOVERS #21

 I devoted one post here to an installment of the silly time-travel series from JUMBO COMICS, "Stuart Taylor," in which Taylor and company went back in time to encounter the characters of Washington Irving's purely fictional story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." But hey, maybe in Taylor's universe. Sleepy Hollow was real.

    In the case of the Taylor story from JUMBO #53, however, here we have a null-crossover, despite the writer's use of the legendary folkloric name of Bluebeard. At least the Sleepy Hollow story got most of the details of the original tale right. Here it looks like the writer and/or artist decided to whack out a story of Taylor's group traveling back to ancient Persia and fighting against a potentate who wants to get jiggy with Taylor's gal-pal. I don't have a problem with the creators depicting the French Bluebeard as Persian, because the Wiki article on Bluebeard mentions that sometimes European artists drew the character as vaguely Turkish, in keeping with a craze for Orientalism. But the Taylor tale makes no attempt to emulate any trope of the dominant Bluebeard story, so I tend to think the makers just hacked out a standard tale and stuck the Bluebeard name on it. In the same Wiki-article Victorian writer Andrew Lang pointed out that there was no good reason in the story to imagine Bluebeard as a Muslim, for Muslims of the time, unlike Christians, were allowed more than a single wife at a time. Indeed, the Taylor tale imagines "Bluebeard" trying to add the modern female to his harem. So this is a case where the use of a famous name by itself carries no true crossover-vibe.         

RAR #94: JAMES HIGHWATER

 In the Grant Morrison ANIMAL MAN run, James Highwater is an anthropologist who helps the hero undergo a "vision quest," though he's not a standard "mystical Indian" in any way.

MONSTER MASHUPS #140

 THE FLAME FISH.

THE BATWING PELICAN.

THE LIGHTNING EEL.

THE SEA MONSTER and THE LOBSTER SHARK.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The cover to KRAZY KOMICS #2 is a null-crossover between Tessie the Typist and her boyfriend (who are in the comic) and Li'l Vinegar (who is not).

But Basil Wolverton contributes a real crossover between a goofy pilot-character, Flap FlipFlop, who'd been launched the previous year, and his much more popular hero Powerhouse Pepper. For good measure Wolverton tosses in another null-crossover, having Pilot Flap comment on reading a "Tessie the Typist" comic book.  

Also in WILLIE #16, we get a totally unheralded crossover between the alliterative Jeanie Johnson and Millie the Model in "A Modeling Mood."

And in MARGIE 46, the cast of Patsy Walker crosses paths with Timely's good-hearted movie star, Hedy Devine.

MONSTER MASHUPS #139

 The first monster mashup in Warren's CREEPY shows up as early as 1965, for issue #2's "Wardrobe of Monsters." Archeologists unearth five sarcophagi: one containing an Egyptian pharaoh and the other four containing "monster-suits" with a suspicious resemblance to creatures conceived long after the empire of Egypt.

One of the experts figures out that the "monster-suits" can be activated into living forms if one sends one's astral spirit into them, and wouldn't you know it, the unscrupulous cad finds reason to bring all four fiends to life so that he can knock off his colleagues. However, the spirit of the pharaoh is still in play, and the rotter learns that whether you're a vampire, a Frank-monster, a werewolf or a devilman, using these devices to commit murder just isn't suitable behavior.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Aside from a two-page fight-scene, there's not much to recommend about Dark Horse'd 1995 teamup of The Shadow and Doc Savage. It's not actively bad, just unambitious.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #138

 First we have the SPEARBIRDS, who serve the (non-monstrous) "Wingmen."

 And THE LONG NECK MONSTER, whom Samson drafts to help him against the flying warriors.