CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here's a mostly forgotten crossover of two WWII Fawcett heroes, Commando Yank and the Phantom Eagle, remarkable only in that most Golden Age companies didn't bother crossing over their B-level heroes.

RAR #60: WASSERSTEIN

 If the Apache boyfriend of series-star Martha Washington ever had a first name, I couldn't find it. A fun minor character, though I imagine that some modern Native Americans might cringe at seeing even a futuristic Indian dressed in buckskins and moccasins.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here's a curious fairytale crossover: THE BIG BAD WOLF by director Ub Iwerks, coming out about four years after the famous Disney cartoon. In most respects the titular lupine is just a generic wolf, but since he's called Big Bad, I'd count him as derivative of the icon from "Three Little Pigs." And even if he wasn't, the wolf is opposed by Little Boy Blue, Little Bo Peep, and a generic heroic scarecrow, the latter being the closest thing the short has to a main character.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I came across this waste-of-paper while sorting through old books, and decided to blog about it as one of the most obscure crossovers of all time. The one issue of SHURIKEN TEAM-UP was apparently an attempt of publisher Eternity Comics (a subdivsion of the better remembered Malibu) to build on the modestly successful SHURIKEN series by having the heroine cross over with new character Libra, who enjoyed just one issue of his own feature. There's a third guy on the cover but from what I can garner from the incoherent script I think he was a support character in SHURIKEN. The issue ends on a never to be resolved cliffhanger.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #4

 I found mention of this abortive crossover in a zine called LET'S STRIP, by Hurricane Heeran. Heeran writes that this cover of THE AMERICAN HUMORIST (a comics supplement for THE NEW YORK JOURNAL) marks "the first comic character to appear with a character from another series-- the Yellow Kid, paired with one of the pinup girls drawn by Archie Gunn." 

It's definitely a crossover of artistic talents and reputations, since the Yellow Kid's creator Richard Outcault collaborates on this drawing. And of the two, the Yellow Kid, one of the first well-known characters of the comic-strip medium, certainly qualifies as an "icon" in the sense I've used for my meditations on crossovers.

However, from what I can gather of the oeuvre of the popular Mister Gunn, most of his drawings were illustrations of showgirls of the "New York musical comedy stage," as one online commentary puts it. I get no indication that Gunn produced any narrative devoted to characters, continuing or otherwise, except insofar as he may have illustrated characters produced for theatrical plays or for pulp magazines. So the unnamed showgirl paired above with the Yellow Kid is not really a character, much less an icon in my definition. And so this intersection of talents merely resembles a crossover, but is even less of one than the many comic-strip reprint magazines that showed disparate funny-paper characters meeting one another.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #3

 JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER is not just an amusing bad movie, it's also a "null-crossover." 

Whereas the same-year BILLY THE KID VS DRACULA really does cross over the two titular icons, the other film teams one recognizable icon, a fictionalized Jesse James, with an icon who is merely derivative of the original Frankenstein. The derivative nature of Frankenstein's daughter may count on invoking a dollop of recognizability, but it's faux recognizability since she does not literally connect with the icon created by Mary Shelley.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #2

 Purely for me to keep track of my own formulations, here's one null-crossover I mentioned on another blog, under a now discarded term, from MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #1. The overall issue IS a stature-crossover between its featured protagonists, The Thing and The Man-Thing. But it might appear at first glance to be a charisma-crossover with the story's villain The Molecule Man. Yet it is not, because this is the Second Molecule Man, not the one who met the Thing and the other members of the Fantastic Four (though the first one appears in the story just long enough to die). Had it been the latter character, his crossing paths with The Man-Thing would have been a charisma-crossover. But since he's meeting both "heroes" for the first time in this story, Second Molecule Man merely RESEMBLES a charisma-crossover.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #1

"Null-crossovers," as I'll explain more elsewhere, are narratives that look like crossovers, either stature-type or charisma-type, that don't satisfy my criteria.

One such is this 1964 issue of MYSTERY IN SPACE. That magazine had for several years hosted the running adventures of DC's foremost space-hero, Adam Strange, who had been introduced under the auspices of editor Julie Schwartz. However, other assignments moved Schwartz off that title, and he was replaced by another long-term editor, Jack Schiff. The latter had overseen another SF/horror title, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, in which he'd nurtured a somewhat less impressive SF-protagonist, Space Ranger, and when Schiff was assigned MYSTERY IN SPACE, he transferred that character to MYSTERY, sharing "space" with Adam Strange. But since the two didn't share "time"-- Strange being set in the era of contemporary Earth, while the Ranger was in a far-future period. Under Schiff's aegis, though, Space Ranger teamed not with Strange but with his far-future descendant. But despite sharing the name, the descendant isn't identical with the iconic figure who had his own series, so-- no real crossover. But at least the cover-copy is honest about it not being the original character.