From SUPER DUCK #35 comes one of the most peculiar creations I've come across, Ugh Lee Heap, a fat Indian-type who has a long tail and prehensile-looking feet. The story makes it sound like he's appeared in an earlier story (though GCD shows nothing else for the character-name). In this scene he uses his tail for sleeping arrangements.
To recapitulate the substance of the preceding post, I've determined that the format of the particular type of "crossover story" known as the "monster mashup" takes two broad forms of the "isomyth" and the "allomyth." In this sense myth refers to "the totality of the mythic tropes used in a given narrative," and the characters who are potentially "mashup monsters" conform to one of those two forms. My primary insight in the earlier essay was to establish that every character is used more than once-- one example being the DC monster-character Solomon Grundy-- begins to establish a "narrative myth," a myth not present in characters who only appear in one story.
Now, on THE ARCHIVE, even though I generally use "mythicity" to mean something other than "totality of tropes," I also judge each narrative's mythicity on a "good/fair/poor" spectrum of development. On this blog, with this different but complementary usage of the mythicity-term, I will assert that the two forms of the isomyth and the allomyth further subdivide in "high" and "low" levels for both, because I judge this division to be a good means of distinguishing the "mashup" from the "anti-mashup."
HIGH ISOMTHICITY-- This type of narrative is almost never associated with the "monster mashup," even though the various creatures in the narrative in question may have some significant physical differences between one another. I gave prominent mention to Wells' ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU. All of the monsters in ISLAND are natural animals who have been artificially altered by the mad scientist, and thus, even though each one belonged to a different species originally, now they all share the same "species," having become "of the same species" of the Beast-Men.
At the same time, monsters who actually belong to different species may still be isomythic depending on their context. In the 1933 KING KONG the big ape fights a T-Rex, a pterdodactyl and a giant snake. They're all typical representatives of these fictionalized animal-types, but they lack myths of their own for the same reason as the sparring partners of Gamera: they're intended only to be used as one-shot opponents for a principal monster-character, and so they generate no mythic narratives.
LOW ISOMYTHICITY-- The characters in these narratives also share the same myth-origins, but they APPEAR to look like characters who do not share such origins. In the DOCTOR SPEKTOR story entitled "She Who Summons the Dark Gods," an evil sorceress causes the titular hero to fall into a dream where he encounters doppelgangers of his "real-world" enemies. All of the dream-images of Dracula, Frankenstein Monster et al, share the same origins, but they LOOK LIKE the real creatures of Spektor's world.
In fact, these faux-monsters don't even have to be copies of characters who share the monster-persona. In SCOOBY DOO 2, the Great Dane and his buddies contend with artificially created copies of their old enemies-- none of whom were literal monsters, but rather villains who dressed up as marauding monsters.
LOW ALLOMYTHICITY-- This would apply largely to what I've called a "monster of the month" situation. Godzilla faces a number of one-shot monster-opponents-- Ebirah, Megaguirus, Biolante-- and although they are allomythic in comparison to Godzilla, their stories end in their debut tales, and so they do not sustain their allomyths beyond a low level of intensity.
HIGH ALLOMYTHICITY-- This is the most flexible of the categories. Some characters may stem from separate narratives, as did FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, where both are monsters. But one may also have high allomythicity in a narrative where two or more monster-types appear for the first time against any type of persona, monstrous or not. This is seen in the one-shot film MONSTERS VS, ALIENS, wherein the four heroes are modeled upon four "classic movie monsters," and they join forces to contend against a villainous alien. The reverse also applies in a comic like JUSTICE LEAGUE #45. Here a group of non-monstrous heroes fight not one but two newly debuted monsters, the Shaggy Man and the Moon Creature. Had there been but one new monster, of course, I would have labeled that character just another isomyth. But an allomyth is generated by the interaction of the two monster-types, even though said interaction lasted only for that issue, since to my knowledge the Moon Creature never appeared again, and though the Shaggy Man did, he was just another superhero sparring-partner and didn't cross conceptual paths with any monster-types.
Since I spent a certain amount of time deciding whether or not a Swamp Thing/ Solomon Grundy crossover counted as a mashup in my system, and decided in the affirmative, it just makes sense to include it now in the mashup list.
About the only noteworthy thing about the issue is that the situation shown on the cover actually takes place in the story.
I'm not yet finished with the long-running Quality feature "The Death Patrol," but so far its Native American member "Chief Chuckalug" (top panels) seems to be the only Real American in the mix. All of the members of the Patrol were broad ethnic stereotypes, whether red, black or white.
In a story entitled "The Auction" in BORIS KARLOFF'S TALES OF MYSTERY #12, professional auctioneer Bentley is commissioned to preside over an auction at lonely Lochshire Castle. To his consternation, the items being auctioned are full of black magic associations, and the bidders appear to be nothing less than "the living dead."
Bentley identifies only two species of spectre, "ghouls" and "vampires," though there's no telling what the artist had in mind when he drew the above images of a colorfully clad dwarf and a bald guy with pointed ears. Vague as these "modern-day spectres of evil" are, there's just enough diversity there to judge them "allomythic."
However, the more interesting aspect of the story is the writer's catalogue of weird objects. Not everyone would deem "occult artifacts" to be "monsters" in their own right, but I would invoke the famed short story "The Monkey's Paw" as precedent. Bentley's evil auction-items mentions only one artifact that arises from traditional myth, a "Medusa shield" which is based on the aegis of Athena, a shield donned with Medusa's head. Other items include a hangman's rope, a pierced knight's helmet, and a black panther that may or may not be alive, all of which are apparently capable of being used for evil purposes. I've seen just two examples of "catalogues of famous weapons" in literature. One is the 12th century Welsh story "Kulwych and Olwen," in which King Arthur boasts of four great weapons, and the 17th-century allegory "Pilgrim's Progress," in which the protagonist enters an armory full of weapons from the Bible, such as Samson's jawbone-of-an-ass, et al. But "The Auction" might be the first mashup of monstrous artifacts.
Here are two examples of groups of allomorphic monsters who all share the same origins and are therefore "isomythic."
The first appeared in BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY #12, in which a typical American town plays host to a convention of club-members who call themselves "Kreepers" and who appear to be wearing an assortment of monster-masks. Big surprise, the Kreepers are all real monsters. The unbilled writer never supplies any origin for the disparate creatures but there's a loose solution that they're some "parallel race" that's existed on Earth for centuries.
The second appears in issue #30 of the same title, in the story "Produce Me a Monster." A reporter investigates the secret of Karlarka, a Hollywood producer who makes horror movies with incredible makeup effects on his monsters. The reporter follows Karlarka to a remote island, and finds out-- yeah, you guessed it-- all of Karlarka's "actors" belong to an isolated race of allomorphic monsters, as does the movie-maker himself. I think this is the only story in BORIS KARLOFF in which the name of the comic's "host" is transparently parodied.
Just reviewed the 1973 Andy Milligan film BLOOD, which deals with the acrimonious marriage between a mad scientist who's a part-time werewolf, and his vampiric wife. There's also a man-eating plant, but I don't count this as a "monster," just a tool used by the mad wolf-scientist.
