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.

MONSTER MASHUPS #137

 Here we have the SWORD-GRASS...

THE SKELETON BEAST...

THE VENUS MAN TRAPS (unleashed by a female villain, of course)

 THE STRANGLER VINE.

THE KNOCKOUT POD-PLANTS.

MONSTER MASHUPS #136

 

I was working on some notations and just wanted something uninvolving on the TV screen to supply background, so I put on the 1978-79 THE BAY CITY ROLLERS. I expected it to be a skit-show with musical numbers by the Rollers, which it was. I didn't know that it started as THE KROFFT SUPERSTAR HOUR, which was a retooled version of the 1976-78 KROFFT SUPERSHOW. I'd watched some segments of the first show but must have overlooked/avoided SUPERSTAR HOUR for whatever reasons. The original one-hour SUPERSTARS show had the Rollers introduce three separare comedy-segments, "Horror Hotel," "The Lost Island," and "Magic Mondo." The first eight episodes must not have scored well, for the show was cut back to half an hour, and all of the shows under the ROLLERS rubric featured only the musicians doing skits and songs and the "Horror Hotel" segment. Those segments are the only ones on streaming, which is a shame because now I'm vaguely curious about the "Lost Island" with its wacky crossover of several Krofft characters. 

I didn't watch PUFNSTUF, except for the movie version, but I'd still would tend to label that version of Witchiepoo more "villain" than "monster." In "Horror Hotel," an altered version of Witchiepoo runs the hotel of the title and doesn't do anything villainous. I can see labeling this version of the character sort of a "mischief-monster." However, all her suitmation assistants are IMO just anthropomorphized animal goofballs with no monster-aspects. If one does deem Witchiepoo a funny monster-- and one can certainly make a case for some witches being monsters, despite Samantha and Sabrina-- then "Horror Hotel" would be a monster-mashup only whenever a "guest monster" appeared. This short list included a mummy, a weird creature from a painting, a black-robed ghost, a Dracula (played by Jay Robinson), and a flat-out copy of the Universal Frankenstein Monster, though the name "Frankenstein" is never used.     

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

In youth I watched some of the Sid and Marty Krofft live-action shows but avoided most of the producers' "suitmation" episodes of the decade. So I was unaware as to how often those shows-- H.R. PUFNSTUF, SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS, and LIDSVILLE-- played host to crossovers between those franchises.  Probably the most notable one took place on LIDSVILLE. Though actress Billie Hayes had a regular role on that show, she also guested as her PUFNSTUF character Witchiepoo, wherein she had a romantic relationship with LIDSVILLE's comic villain Hoodoo. The two characters later showed up in "Horror Hotel," a segment of the 1978-79, but in a non-romantic context. "Hotel" also played host to comical versions of Dracula and an unnamed Frankenstein Monster.

     In 1972, when ABC was still seeking to publicize both PUFNSTUF and LIDSVILLE, the station aired THE BRADY BUNCH MEETS ABC'S SATURDAY SUPERSTARS. I've no idea if I saw the hour-long special in The Day, but at present only a brief clip appears on YouTube. This hype-special seems to have more of a narrative than most such specials, in which actors would most frequently just introduce clips from the TV shows being hyped. Apparently for the whole hour of SUPERSTARS, all six of the Brady Kids get zapped into a television set, meet both Witchiepoo and Hoodoo, and presumably watch clips of shows that needed hyping before getting returned to what passed for "Brady reality."     

MONSTER MASHUPS #135

 Samson faces THE FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON. (Some humans claim it belongs to a group called "Smoke Monsters," but only one is seen.)

 And then there's THE WIDE-MOUTH MONSTER.

MONSTER MASHUPS #134

 In this post I linked to my short review of the short-lived monster-mash title HOWLING COMMANDOS OF SHIELD, but I can't even muster a short review of its predecessor, the mostly incoherent six-issue series NICK FURY'S HOWLING COMMANDOS, written by Keith Giffen and penciled by three different artists.

The main members of the "Creature Corral" (yes, they're called that once) are mostly new variations on standard monster-types: vampire Nina Price, werewolf "Warwolf," a clone of the Frankenstein Monster, and a zombie with no ID, "John Doe." The other three members may or may not be continuous with earlier Marvel monsters known respectively as "The Glob," "The Living Mummy," and "The Gorilla-Man." Despite the title, Nick Fury makes only a token appearance, and his subordinate Clay Quartermain is actually in charge of ramrodding the mutinous monsters. 

 A few non-monster guest-stars with occult associations, such as Brother Voodoo and the Son of Satan, make appearances, but most of the other subordinate characters are literal monsters: Lilith the Daughter of Dracula, Goom, Grogg, Groot (not yet confined to one word), and Dragoom. Wiki claims that the Werewolf By Night and the Manphibian are in there but I didn't see them. An old Giant-Man foe, the Living Eraser, is name-checked only, and some old Hulk villains, the Lords of the Living Lightning, appear briefly. The Mole Man shows up for two panels toward the end. Some guy named Merlin is the villain but he seems unlikely to be continuous with any previous version. The series is pretty much a mess, and the art's ugly.  

MONSTER MASHUPS #133

 THE DART-TONGUED BEAST.

This one's called both THE CHOKE-FOAM MONSTER and THE SOAP-BUBBLE MONSTER.

THE CAVE-CENTIPEDE.