Saturday, September 27, 2014
THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #31
I can't exactly claim that the crossover in PRIZE COMICS #24 is any great shakes as a story. However, it enjoys a particular place in American comic-book history, being the first tale in which characters from disparate features team up against a single foe-- one who, in this case, also sported his own feature from that publisher. Possibly this short tale intended to imitate Timely Comics' historical "book-length" story in which the Human Torch battled the Sub-Mariner, amid guest-shots from other Timely heroes, published in the fall of 1941, or the July 1941 story entitled DAREDEVIL VS. HITLER, aka DAREDEVIL #1. However, in both earlier stories, the individual heroes separately grappled with whatever menace was at hand. They did not truly "team up," as the Prize heroes do in this 8-page tale. The only Golden Age tale comparable would be published five years later, when Solomon Grundy took on the Justice Society-- and even then, only for a few panels does that man-monster fight the whole team, as the Frankenstein Monster does against the Prize superheroes.
Again, it's not a great tale. For one thing, the Monster-- whose series was one of the few Prize-serials that's still celebrated today, thanks to Dick Briefer art-- is a bit too much of a punching-bag for all of the heroes, including two goofy non-superheroes, "the General and the Corporal."
But as far as being the first time a villain found himself beseiged by the stars of several ongoing features, this story seems to take the, uh, "prize."
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