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.
                                                                   

RAR #91: THE KICKMIQUIK TRIBE

 In this 1950 DONALD DUCK story by Carl Barks, the tribe encountered by Donald and his nephews never has a proper name. However, since they live near a river called "the Kickmiquik," why not let that be their default name? In my essay I noted that Barks exerted himself to make the tribal people's customs and attire match that of the Indians of the Northwestern U.S.                                                                        

MONSTER MASHUPS #121

 Relatively small mashup in issue #7.                                                                    

THE MOLE MONSTERS.                                                                    

And THE FLOWING BLOB.

MONSTER MASHUPS #120

 And from MS #6 we get... THE KANGORILLA!                                          

THE METAL EATERS.                                                                        

THE SPIDERSAURUS.                                                                             

 THE JET-BIRD.                                                                                    

THE VACUUM BEAST.                                                                                 

THE COLOSSO-WHALE.                                                                    

And to my surprise, the author for the first time repeats a monster, providing a new representative of the species of THE FLYING SWORDFISH from #5. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #119

 More one-shot monsters from MIGHTY SAMSON #4.                                        

The rather unimaginatively named GIANT TOAD and GIANT FLYING FISH.                                                                                                    

THE ICE MONSTER.                                                                            

The comparatively original HIGH-SPEED HYENAS.                                    

And THE HYPNO-BEAST, the first one in the series to look like a mutated human.