CROSSOVER MADNESS

 The blog known as THE TOM BREVOORT EXPERIENCE showed that the linked MLJ issues, PEP COMICS #4 and TOP NOTCH #5, featured the first crossover of superheroes in comic books, and probably the first crossover of any featured comic book protagonists, since the continuity works in some non-super types as well.

First, in PEP #4 the headliner of that comic, The Shield, crosses paths with The Wizard, headliner of TOP NOTCH, but they work a related case separately.

In the course of the Shield's adventure, he gets some aid from one Cadet Korvin, star of a strip called "The West Pointer" from TOP NOTCH.

Then, for the last part of the PEP crossover, the mundane hero "The Midshipman" also has a meeting with the Wizard.

In the next installment of the crossover, in TOP NOTCH #5, the Shield cameos in the Wizard's story but again the two do not team up as such. But we do get to see what adventure caused the Wizard to be at sea when he crosses paths with The Midshipman, as seen from that character's POV in PEP #4. In addition, Cadet Kornell gets a chance to shine by helping the Wizard fight the Mosconian invasion.

And so ends comics' first crossover. It isn't anywhere near as good as "Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner" or "Daredevil vs. The Claw," which opuses fans of the time continued to talk up in subsequent years. That's probably why "Shield/Wizard" fell between the cracks, but it's still a milestone, albeit a minor one. 

ADDENDA: In BLUE RIBBON COMICS #9 (1941), someone decided to cross over two other mundane servicemen heroes, Corporal Collins and Sergeant Boyle, and to add in a little metafictional touch as well, in the third panel below.

MONSTER MASHUPS #87

 ARCHIE'S MAD HOUSE #13 provides a monster-trio-- for once, working in the Mummy instead of the Wolf Man-- for a gag cover referencing nothing in the comic proper.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND qualifies as a crossover just on the basis of its "good monsters" Godzilla and Anguirus, even though Anguirus only had "collective stature" as the result of having been part of the ensemble in DESTROY ALL MONSTERS.

However, the movie is also a "proto-crossover" from the standpoint of its "bad monsters," since the story combines "established villain" King Ghidorah with "new villain" Gigan-- but only Gigan returns in a timely manner for one more Godzilla rumpus, GODZILLA VS. MEGALON. In contrast, Megalon made no more film appearances, any more than did one-shot hero Jet Jaguar, so neither the former's teamup with Gigan nor the latter's teaming with Godzilla qualifies Megalon as a crossover film. (Megalon may appear in crossover-stories within other media, though.)

 

NULL-CROSSOVERS #9

In CRACK COMICS #25, Butch, the tomboy sidekick of The Clock. complains that she'd get better treatment working for The Spirit, and both characters act as if the other hero existed in their world. This was diegetically true, since Quality Comics re-published Will Eisner's "Spirit" pages. George Brenner's "Clock" pre-dated  Eisner's "Spirit" by four years, and the latter hero might've been inspired by the earlier one, though in the 1940s Brenner (if it was him rather than a ghost) looks like he's intentionally biting Eisner's style.

In any case, a reference to another character does not a crossover make.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

The 1944 Warners short GOLDILOCKS AND THE JIVIN' BEARS should win some award for the daffiest "fairy tale crossover" ever, and not only because all of the characters, both human and animal, are supposed to be Southern Black people seen through the cartoon lens of director Friz Freleng and writer Tedd Pierce. In contrast to many other "ethnic stereotype" cartoons of the time, this one just harps on one stereotypical trait: all the "Black-adjacent" characters-- and that's everyone in the short-- are crazy for jive music. 

We start with the Three Bears, who are all male players of jazz/jive. They play their music with such enthusiasm that their instruments catch fire, so they have to leave the house to let everything cool down. While they're gone, Goldilocks, a teenager in high heels, enters their house.

Next door is Grandma's House from "Little Red Riding Hood." The Big Bad Wolf, decked out in Grandma;s clothes, is hungrily waiting the arrival of Little Red, but he gets a telegram (from a Steppin Fetchit type) saying that Red has been delayed, working at Lockheed as a "rivetator." Then the Wolf sees Goldie show up at the Bears' house, and he decides that she's the solution to his hunger pangs. By the time Goldie gets into bed for a good nap, the Wolf's waiting for her, and he chases her around the house, with intentions that are presumably carnivorous.

The Bears return to see Goldie and the Wolf, but they think the two are "jitterbugs," so they jump to their instruments and begin playing hot jazz. Instantly Goldie forget her peril and begins a free style dance with the confused Wolf, flinging him around and forcing him to dance until he's pooped. Wolfie escapes back to Grandma's house and crawls into bed, just as Red (who sticks to being a little girl rather than altering her age) shows up, ready to play her part. The Wolf doesn't want to chase her because his feet are too sore, at which point the Bears show up again and began playing more hot jazz. Grandma, who's been cooped up in a wardrobe this whole time, bursts out and forces the Wolf to continue dancing with her. The cartoon ends with the exhausted Wolf dropping a familiar Jimmy Durante catch-phrase, the only time any of the characters abandons the usual dialect.

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 As I've discussed in detail on the ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE, it's possible to have a "proto-crossover" in any established icon-universe by having the starring character(s) encounter a new icon intended to be spun off into a new series. I've already discussed this line of thought here (without the same terminology) with regard to spin-offs like MAUDE's first appearance on the ALL IN THE FAMILY TV series.

By the same logic, it's possible for a "debut villain" to exist in a crossover with an established, familiar villain, if the debut villain ended up becoming a regular presence in the hero's series. My oft repeated example has been the debut story for the Spider-foe Green Goblin, who debuted in a teamup with the once-established villain-group The Enforcers.

The debut of Marvel's Wolverine is similar but not identical. From the scanty evidence of that story, one can only surmise that the Canadian crusader was intended to be some sort of hero, albeit a contentious one who takes on both the Hulk and the Hulk's previously established monster-foe The Wendigo. There was no evidence to suggest that, at the time of that story's publication in 1974, that Wolverine was meant to be spun off into any kind of feature, but creator Len Wein could just as easily meant to keep bringing the character back in the pages of INCREDIBLE HULK, as an antagonist to the Green Goliath. (In that status Wolverine would not have been a good match for most other Marvel heroes, who unlike the Hulk would not be proof against Wolvie's claws.) Of course, had Wolverine never appeared again in any other venue, "And Now the Wolverine" would be a null-crossover in which the Wendigo was the only "familiar antagonist."

Nevertheless, whatever Wein's original intent, he altered that intent by giving the one-shot character a new venue within the next year, when Wolverine was one of three previously established characters to join the New X-Men (not counting Cyclops, the one holdover from the Old X-Men). The other two, Banshee and Sunfire, had been kicking around in various Marvel titles for several years, so like Wolverine they brought no stature to the table, only whatever charisma they'd accrued as subordinate icons. Wolverine, having appeared only once before, had the least charisma of the three. but ironically he ended up becoming far more integral to the X-team than the other two. 

All three characters comprise charisma-crossovers only within that initial story, "Deadly Genesis," after which Banshee and Wolverine graduate to a form of collective stature as they continue having X-adventures. Sunfire, who departs the group after "Genesis," is dominantly a guest-star in other features from then on, and so his stature from "Genesis" is extremely minor.

Banshee faded from the group within a few years, but Wolverine became a major Marvel star, accruing stature not only from his membership in a group but also from a long running solo series and from such limited serials as WOLVERINE /HULK, in which the two old opponents were co-equal Primes in that particular crossover.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

In addition to the revived-hero guest stars in Archie Comics' THE FLY, three issues played host to a multi-villain cabal out to destroy the hero and his partner Fly Girl. Said cabal, "the Anti-Fly League," was mostly made up of one-shot villains except for the Fly's closest thing to an arch-nemesis, The Spider. Fiends included two Earth criminals, Linda Drake and Karl Rance, and various visitors from other times and planets such as Dovi, LXO III, Bra-Kr, and Roxr, and one cherub who wasn't a "repeat villain" but a "you killed my brother" duplicate of said villain. (The first guy was called "The Metal Master," while the second fellow was "The Metal Monster." Nice of the writer to keep them distinct.)

The serial lasted only three issues, #21-23, and then pooped out so that only The Spider, Dovi and LXO III got to set insidious traps for the Dropsophilidae Duo. It may be that the writer got bored with the trope, or realized that he'd written himself in a corner by including Linda and Rance, who in their one-shot appearances only provided a threat to the super-powered heroes because they the crooks acquired accidental super-resources. Hard to say if this group was influenced by the similar sounding Superman Revenge Squad, which appeared at DC the same year. About two years later Marvel used the trope more memorably in the first SPIDER-MAN annual, in which the Sinister Six also considerately took turns attacking the hero instead of ganging up on him en masse.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Harvey Comics' "Wendy the Good Little Witch," unlike her confrere Casper, was original to comic books, being introduced as a "proto crossover" in "The Poor Little Witch Girl" (CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST #20, 1954). One odd thing about the story, which isn't available for copying, is that after Wendy hangs out with Casper for the story's five pages, her aunts come home and tell her they want her to date Casper's naughty cousin Spooky, who had just been introduced the year before Wendy, in CASPER #10. Lacking a shot from the original story, I've included the cover of the first WENDY comic, where her indebtedness to Casper is foregrounded 

Perhaps fittingly, when Wendy made her animated cartoon debut in the theatrical cartoon "Which is Witch," Spooky was along for the ride. Also, I like how Casper goes around pants-less all the time but puts on swim trunks for modesty's sake when he goes to a lake with Wendy.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Right on the heels of the Fly's crossover with Black Hood, here he is in the very next issue of his magazine, meeting MLJ's revamped version of the forties heroes The Shield, whose starring title had lasted just two issues in 1959. Their opponents are not real monsters, but a bunch of criminals dressed in super-enhanced costumes.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Most comics-fans are aware that MLJ (aka "Archie") Comics had a line of superheroes in the forties, and that after all of these features were cancelled during the Golden Age, MLJ didn't revive those characters for another superhero-line until the mid 1960s, with the ill-fated "Mighty Comics" imprint. 

However, during the early sixties MLJ experimented with sprinkling occasional new stories of their super-characters into their teen comedy features-- mostly, from what I've seen, the Shield and the Black Hood. If there's an annotation of these toss-off stories, I'm not aware of it. 

The Fly was not a Golden Age character, having been created for MLJ by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1959. This story, "The Fly and The Black Hood Join Forces," is from ADVENTURES OF THE FLY #7 (1960), and for all I know may be the first time the Black Hood was revived during the Silver Age. If the writer in 1960 had any thoughts of reviving the Black Hood during that period, those hopes died stillborn.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

Albert Pyun, in directing 2010's TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE, could not have made a more problematic crossover had he been trying to frustrate future crossover-ologists, which probably means only me.

So, at the end of 1982's SWORD AND THE SORCERER, the producers floated the possibility of a sequel to the first adventure of heroic Prince Talon (Lee Horsley). In 2008 Pyun and company announced a sequel at last in the works, in which Horsley would participate, presumably reprising his role. But in the finished film, Horsley only had a cameo as an unnamed character, and Talon's name is never mentioned. The signature projectile-sword of the 1982 hero appears in the hands of a new character, Oda, and the script re-uses several names used in the 1982 film, almost none of them have anything in common with the original film's characters. 

The dominant theory is that though Pyun and his producers meant to do a sequel with Horsley, their budget was too low for him to do anything but a cameo, and thus the script created a new character, Oda (Michael Pare), who did everything that Talon would have done in the original concept. But the presence of a sword that might be Talon's is not enough to indicate a sequel, much less a crossover.

However, two of the characters with re-used names, Rodrigo and Verdugo, are just standard warrior-types, just as they were in SORCERER. Though played by different actors in 2010, these characters are the only elements that strongly establish EMPIRE as existing in the same world as SORCERER, so EMPIRE is definitely a sequel because of these characters. If Talon himself had appeared, then one could logically consider the new starring characters as "spin offs" of the original hero, and so I would have characterized EMPIRE as a low-stature crossover. As it is, Rodrigo and Verdugo allow me to term EMPIRE as a low-charisma crossover instead, because the two warriors have a very small modicum of agency thanks to their alliance with Oda.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Though Superman and Batman had appeared together on a lot of comic book covers, SUPERMAN #76 was the first comics story in which they appeared together in a featured teamup, about two years before they became regular partners in the WORLD'S FINEST lead feature.

The two discover each other's identities while traveling on a yacht, along with Lois Lane. Circumstances force both men to change to their costumed identities, and to distract Lois's reporterly suspicions, Superman tells Batman to court Lois. But she overhears their conversation, so she plays up to Batman on her own, arousing Superman's jealousy. By story's ending, both heroes want to know who she really likes, but Lois gets to one-up them once again.