Here's my review of yet another massing of monsters in the TV movie SCOOBY DOO AND THE RELUCTANT WEREWOLF. The only monsters close enough to their original models to make this a crossover as well as a mashup are Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and his bride, and Mister Hyde, despite the latter getting the punny name of "Mister Snide."
One of the earliest crossovers of TV cartoons appeared after the 1968 success of THE ARCHIE SHOW, for in the succeeding year, Filmation adapted the SABRINA comic series. But while the comic series had never been tied to the Riverdale Universe, the first year of THE SABRINA COMEDY SHOW was tied to the Archieverse from the first. SABRINA in turn birthed "The Groovy Goolies," who also got their own series (unfortunately).
Thus, as soon as the comic-book Sabrina got her own self-titled feature in 1971, Sabrina immediately melded with the Archie characters and remained so in most later iterations.
I may have found the most obscure monster-mash ever in the barely watchable kid's film WITCHMAS, reviewed here.
I've reviewed SCOOBY DOO: RETURN TO ZOMBIE ISLAND here. In addition to its primary purpose, to "retcon" the events of the 1998 movie SCOOBY DOO ON ZOMBIE ISLAND, it also throws in a prologue where the intrepid teens capture a whole family of malcontents who dress up like phony monsters. Three of these look like familiar Scooby Gang antagonists-- the Creeper, the Snow Ghost, and the Spooky Space Kook. However, since there's not even a faint tie to the original crooks, there's no crossover here.
The folks at Riffteax, in their quest for inspired garbage to mock, helped bring back into currency a near-plotless half-hour short called SANTA'S ENCHANTED VILLAGE. It was shot at two related Christmas theme parks in California and in Illinois and produced by K. Gordon Murray, famous for doing a lot of sixties kiddie features as well as for dubbing numerous Mexican fantasy-films for American audiences. In addition to Santa Claus, the legendary characters include Merlin and Puss in Boots. Far less well known are "the Ferocious Wolf" and "Stinky the Skunk," who are doppelgangers of characters from some of those Mexican films, the best known being TOM THUMB AND RED RIDING HOOD. But since the skunk and the wolf aren't connected to those characters-- indeed, the actors' costumes only resemble the Mexican depictions in a general way-- I wouldn't say that these two anthropomorphics are crossovers as such.
ADDENDUM: I may as well note that Merlin also appears in the Mexican film SANTA CLAUS from 1959, so that's why Murray stuck the Arthurian wizard in with the jolly old elf. Though I didn't mention Merlin's presence in my review, I would consider the film a crossover for that reason. But I *don't* consider the appearance of a minor devil in the same film as constituting a crossover, because it's not THE Devil.
The TV cartoon "Mother Goose Land" has Casper try to prevent his supporting ghouls The Ghostly Trio from raising havoc in Mother Goose Land. They encounter Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue, Little Miss Muffet (whole lotta littles), Jack and Jill, the Mouse and the Clock It Ran Up, Jack Be Nimble, the Dish and the Spoon, Humpty Dumpty, and both Mother Goose and her bird. Casper brings in Wendy the Good Little Witch to help drive off the Trio.
In "Ghost of Honor," another cartoon collected alongside this one on YouTube, Casper visits the Paramount studios to see how cartoons are made. There he encounters various Paramount cartoon characters who come to life off the paper, though the only one I recognized was Baby Huey.
Of the "Mother Goose" characters who actually appear with Betty, as opposed to just being mentioned, I count Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three, Little Boy Blue, The Pied Piper and the Mice of Hamelin, Little Miss Muffet and her spider, the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, the cast of the "Cow Jumped Over the Moon," The Three Blind Mice, and the Four and Twenty Blackbirds, who beat up Muffet's spider.
Until today I'd never noticed that Warners' character Henery Hawk had actually starred in his own 1942 cartoon before becoming a support-character in the 1946 debut cartoon for Foghorn Leghorn, WALKY TALKY HAWKY. So HAWKY is a crossover in which a former Prime gets permanently demoted to the status of a Sub.
The 1995 theatrical cartoon SUPERIOR DUCK, in addition to squeezing in a bunch of Warners cartoon characters into its scattershot plot, also includes an appearance by Superman, looking a little like the Joe Shuster version.
Two more null-crossovers in which an established villain appeared with a newbie, but the newbie failed to become a recurring figure from then on.
First, from 1950, The Catwoman and one-shot gang-boss Mister X"
Like the previous entry CARRY ON SCREAMING, the 1953 Dennis Wheatley novel TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, reviewed here, stands as a "reference only" crossover, in that it's stated that the events of a different Wheatley novel, starring different characters, took place in the same universe of the characters of DAUGHTER. But since there's no interaction of icons within the two literary worlds, it's a null-crossover.
One of the earliest, if not the earliest, teamup of Superman villains, "Superman's Super-Magic Show," appeared in ACTION COMICS #151 (1950). Lex Luthor has to put his usual ruthlessness aside to gain the help of Mister Mxyzptlk (and, to a lesser extent, The Prankster) in a project to confound the Man of Steel.
One generally overlooked "villain crossover" appears in the 1938 serial FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS.
"A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle," a 1984 episode of THE NEW SCOOBY DOO MYSTERIES, joins the ranks of a small coterie of Scooby-stories featuring a mashup of classic monsters.
Dracula and his assistant Igor (on loan from a Frankenstein movie, perhaps) encounter the Scooby Gang and invite all of them to Drac's castle for a costume party. However, the Scoobies are the only ones who wear costumes; everyone else-- Drac, his unnamed bride, a mummy, a wolfman, a gill man, an invisible man and a Frankenstein Monster-- is the real thing. The monsters have all retired from scaring people, but now they're being haunted by the ghost of Drac's old foe Professor Van Helsing, so they want the famed Scooby "ghostbusters" to bust that boogieman.
It's not surprising that the ghost is the only phony monster in the bunch, an imposture of Igor, who wants the castle for himself. In a peculiar side-plot, the only non-monstrous guest of Dracula is a lady stage magician named Chandra, who aspires to get hold of a mystic gem that will (and does) give her real magic powers. At first I had no idea what a stage magician was doing in a monster-mashup. Then I learned that the writer of the episode was Paul Dini, who, according to fandom lore, was a big fan of the DC Comics magician-hero Zatanna-- so much so that he worked her character into an appearance or two on the BATMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE cartoons, not to mention the fact that he later wrote a ZATANNA comic series.
"Hassle" also counts as a crossover because Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster are definite icon-emulations of their cinematic personas, though all the other monsters are just generalized monster-types.
Poobala's site covers how the TV show MISTER ED played host to Irene Ryan, playing something that was essentially (if not literally) her character Granny from THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES. But since he wasn't concerned with crossovers from other media, he didn't cover "The Trials and Tribulations of Emmy Lou," an episode of MISTER ED that also served as a back-door pilot for a possible series based on the 1944-1979 comic strip EMMY LOU-- though no such TV series eventuated.
Now, had the characters of Emmy Lou and her castmates all been original creations, then this abortive pilot would only count as a "null-crossover." But since Emmy Lou had stature as the star of her own comic strip, this is a full crossover. I couldn't find a shot online from the actual episode, but here's one of actress Noanna Dix, who played Emmy Lou.
Shaman was the first of a pair of native North American heroes introduced by John Byrne for the franchise ALPHA FLIGHT. Shaman, a member of the Sarcee tribe, was the mystical expert on the all-Canadian team of heroes, but Byrne didn't really put much depth into any of the characters. Thus Shaman comes off as a fairly simple magical hero, with no insight into the function of shamanic practices in the Sarcee culture.
His daughter Elizabeth proved more interesting, even after Byrne left the comic. Though originally estranged from her father for involved reasons, she gets sucked into his mystic superhero activities, and is transformed into another super-type, Talisman, with her own special powers. While Shaman soon faded out, Talisman remained with the super-group for a few more years in the original series. She had a little more dimension, in part because she was a modern city-girl struggling with her occult powers, and she certainly had the better costume of the two.
CARRY ON SCREAMING is a null-crossover for the same reason as JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER. As my review articulates, the movie follows the capricious exploits of a mad scientist and his sexy sister as they embark on experiments Frankensteinian. The scientist is not even an offspring of any version of Frankenstein, but he says that he studied under the master of monsters. In addition, he also studied under Doctor Jekyll, so he has a supply of the Hyde-juice around and uses it to transform a nosy constable. This strategy backfires when "Sergeant Hyde" beats up the monsters of the scientist and ends his rampage. So the recognizable figures of previous narratives never "cross over," they're merely spoken of-- and mere references do not a crossover make.
I'm indebted to the incredible POOBALA site for pointing out something I didn't know about the crossover of two sixties sitcoms: DENNIS THE MENACE and DONNA REED-- namely, that the former aired on CBS while the latter aired on rival network ABC. That's more interesting than the episode itself, suggesting that someone involved in the production of both shows had a stake in both, and arranged this unusual crossing of paths.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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," 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.
Here's my review of the 1997 DTV film THE CREEPS. Though a lot of imitations of the Universal monsters don't count as crossovers because they're ersatz versions of the originals, here the explanation is that the four fiends have been summoned into reality from the annals of fiction-- so they are supposed to be roughly coterminous with the original icons.
Jerry Siegel must have been feeling his oats on the supervillain crossover thing, for in SSK #9, the Kid and his partner Stripesy contend with three fiends-- Doctor Weerd, the Needle and another previous one-shot, Moonglow-- all of whom are being menaced by a fourth fiend, "the Chapter Killer." This time none of the evildoers get away.
In STAR SPANGLED KID #7, Jerry Siegel and Hal Sherman created what may have been the first crossover of previously established villains in comic books, teaming up two foes of the Star Spangled Kid: Doctor Weerd and The Needle. Possibly the book's editor put a bug in the ear of the raconteurs working on the same title's TARANTULA strip, for in SSK #8 Manly Wade Wellman and Hal Sharp produced a story entitled "The Trio of Terror." In it three previous one-shot foes of the "spider-man" came together for crime and revenge: the Crime Candle, who killed victims with poison candles, a western-themed fellow named Bardon, and a crime-boss called The Sting. Tarantula bests them all pretty easily, so that the Trio's only distinction may be if they're the second crossover of "repeat offenders."
I've noted elsewhere that technically the first supervillain crossover in comic books is that of the Joker and Catwoman in BATMAN #2 (1940). Yet it's less than satisfying in that Catwoman isn't yet in full supervillain mode, but is just a shady lady with a fancy name, like the Dragon Lady in TERRY AND THE PIRATES.
The first "full-blown" supervillain crossover seems to occur in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #7 (1942), wherein the heroic team of the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy contends with two villains who had appeared in previous stories, the Hyde-like Doctor Weerd and the pencil-thin Needle. Though the above page shows the two fiends planning to betray one another when it's expedient, they end up escaping together when foiled by the two heroes. There's also a third brand-new villain in the story, the Assassin, but I suspect he never appears again and so does not function even as a "proto-crossover."
In contrast to the first crossover of Warner Brothers' animation, 1933's THREE'S A CROWD, the company's last "living library" short, 1946's "Book Revue," depends mostly on puns of book titles, and only crosses over Daffy Duck with Red Riding Hood and her hungry opponent The Wolf.
Presumably to better promote the "Fantasyland" section of Disney's theme park, MICKEY MOUSE IN FANTASYLAND (1957) crosses over some of Disney's best known animal-heroes with figures from stories steeped in magical fantasies. In one such tale, Mickey and Goofy take the air in a two-person flying machine and end up in Neverland, where they aid Peter Pan against Captain Hook. Tinkerbelle, the Indians, the mermaids and the Lost Boys all appear.
In the next story, Donald Duck goes into the fishing business with Pinocchio (still a puppet for whatever reason). The two fishermen rescue a castaway who informs them of a place to reap a harvest of "jolly berries," but the two sharpers from Pinoccio's film, the fox and the cat, horn in on the deal. For good measure, the fearsome cetacean Monstro also turns up but gets tamed by a dose of the berries.
One of the more Morrison-esque outings in wild crossover matchups appears in the eight-part "Architects and Mortality" narrative in 2006's TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. The main feature was a tedious revival of The Spectre, but the backup strip starred Doctor Thirteen, DC's resident skeptic of all things metaphenomenal. Writer Azzarello and artist Chiang then proceed to force the doctor and his daughter Traci (who conceals from him the fact that she can do magic) with a motley crew of odds-and-ends from DC history: Andrew "I, Vampire" Bennett, Anthro the cave-boy, Captain Fear (the ghost of a 17th-century Caribbean pirate), JEB Stuart and his Haunted Tank, a version of the Golden Age juvenile hero Genius Jones, and Infectious Lass, a toss-off concept who appeared in at least one Legion of Super-Heroes tale.
"Architects" boasts a few funny bits and nice art, but is not quite worth putting under the analyst's lens-- hence, its mention here.
A little known bit of trivia: the well-known western teleseries WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE (1958-61) received a crossover appearance on the less well-heralded oater TRACKDOWN (1957-59). At left Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) shares space with TRACKDOWN star Robert Culp.
The 1952 film OUTLAW WOMEN pits a bunch of made-up Old West characters (including Marie Windsor's "Iron Mae," who puts women in control of a whole town) against an outlaw gang, including two famed outlaws whom I don't think crossed paths in real life, Sam Bass and Johnny Ringo. The illo above shows a schmuck almost getting drawn into a duel with gunfighter Ringo.
Sandwiched in between the first superhero teamups that would dominate the BRAVE AND BOLD title for the majority of its history, we have the feature's only teamup of DC Comics' World War Two war-heroes. I think the cover-featured heroes-- Sergeant Rock, the Haunted Tank and Jonny Cloud-- all still had ongoing features in 1964, when BRAVE AND BOLD #52 was published. A surprise team-up member is Mademoiselle Marie, who had lost her series in 1960, who spends part of the story as a "woman in an iron mask." Also noteworthy in a silly way is how all four heroes do a "Spartacus."
Great Joe Kubert art with so-so Robert Kanigher story as Sergeant Rock finds himself crossing paths with the Viking Prince, who hadn't appeared in a new story since the 1950s.
