THE WEIRDIE FILES

Though Alan Moore wasn't the first writer to convoke weirdies, he was one of the guys who made the trope popular.

In SWAMP THING ANNUAL #2. for instance, the titular muck monster has to journey to Hell to save the spirit of Abby Arcane, and he gets the assistance of a former ally, The Demon, in so doing. Moore manages to work in Deadman, The Spectre and the Phantom Stranger, even though none of them are necessary to the plot.

In contrast, Moore's almost-final SWAMP THING story guest-stars all of the above weirdies, plus Doctor Fate and many others, and they are all necessary to the plot, so maybe he used the Annual to re-familiarize his readers with DC's resident weirdies just so they wouldn't seem yanked in out of nowhere.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 Here's a prominent example of a convocation of weirdies with no monster content, the so-called "Trenchcoat Brigade" from THE BOOKS OF MAGIC.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

Technically the story "Brothers" crosses over Brother Power with a couple of Swamp Thing's support characters, but it counts.

A cool cover to a boring story in SPECTRE #11, featuring stature-characters Spectre, Doctor Fate, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and The Enchantress, and one charisma-character, The Gentleman Ghost.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 In keeping with my new determination of "weirdies" as a subcategory of crossovers, THE WEIRDIE FILES are dedicated to this literary phenomenon. 

I'll start with the most recent iteration of JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK.

The superordinate ensemble is made up of Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, and Detective Chimp.

The subordinate ensemble consists of The Demon, John Constantine, Blue Devil, and the late great Zatara.

Subordinate guest stars with stature include Zauriel, Deadman, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Andrew Bennett, and five Justice Leaguers. A few such characters show up for one panel and have no lines.

Subordinate guest stars possessed of only charisma are Traci Thirteen, Klarion the Witch Boy, Morgaine LeFey. Felix Faust, Nabu the Wise, Mordru, and the demonic trio Ghast, Rath, and Abnegazar. Traci, daughter of the ghost-buster Doctor Thirteen, attained a little stature in the backup series ARCHITECTS AND MORTALITY but I'm not sure it's consequential enough to designate her a stature-type.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Woody Woodpecker started out as a proto-crossover, popping up in the Andy Panda cartoon KNOCK KNOCK in 1940, and quickly eclipsing all the other characters in the Walter Lantz studio.

For years to come Lantz would continue having his characters cross over in comics and cartoons. FOUR COLOR COMICS #21 is devoted to Oswald Rabbit and his friends, and Woody appears just for about three or four pages, just because.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Since the historical character of Rasputin has IMO acquired what I deem a "legendary" status, I consider that both the 2004 HELLBOY and the graphic novel on which it's based to be charisma-crossovers.

The situation is a little different with characters that are based on myths but who are given some sort of gimmick that doesn't have anything to do with their original stories. For that reason, I don't consider the film's seqjuel GOLDEN ARMY to be a crossover of any kind. However, the 2019 reboot, which mixes at least two figures from disparate mythologies-- Nimue from Arthurian tales, and Baba Yaga from Russian folklore-- does count as a charisma-crossover.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

To celebrate the 50th issue of Warren's VAMPIRELLA in 1976, writer Bill DuBay and various artists collaborated on a crossover-- possibly the first for the vampiric vixen-- between Vampirella and two other characters who had their own serials in the magazine. It's a decent story but not anything I feel the need to review in depth

Here's Vampirella's first meeting with Pantha, the girl with the tendency to go feline and feral.

Later Vampirella and her support-characters encounter the magazine's resident witch-heroine, Fleur.

Finally, because at the time Warren was publishing reprints of Will Eisner's SPIRIT, a final playful story involves a couple of Vampi's buddies visiting Wildwood Cemetery, in the mistaken belief that the long dead Denny Colt may have been revived as a mad killer. More a joke than a real crossover is the last page, where what might be "the spirit of THE SPIRIT" makes an appearance.