I mentioned the 1960s MUNSTERS series in an earlier post, but I've now also reviewed most of the later iterations, except for a 2012 reboot pilot and the syndicated MUNSTERS TODAY series.
THE MINI-MUNSTERS and THE MUNSTERS' REVENGE
THE MUNSTERS' SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
Archie Goodwin and Angelo Torres collaborate on a 1965 CREEPY story titled "Monster Rally."
I've no idea how many monster mashups may be rattling around amid all the MAD imitations launched in the early fifties, but the uncredited creators of the Ajax-Farrell title MADHOUSE visited that particular well at least three times.
First, in "Going, Going, Real Gone" a bunch of spooks (one of whom resembles Peter Lorre) try to get teenaged "bop-kats" (why do I suspect the scripter made that one up of whole cloth?) to stop dancing in their haunted house.
Then in "Emily Ghost Guide to Midnight Manners" the titular advice-giver keeps one fang tucked firmly in cheek as she tries to tell a group of monsters how to scare a honeymoon couple. She shoulda taught them the lyrics to the Time Warp.
And finally, MADHOUSE #4, otherwise a reprint of previous stories, simply reworks an interior, Dali-esque splash from the "Real Gone" story to provide the issue's cover.
In HOUSE OF SECRETS #63 (1963), Mark Merlin and his secretary
-- who'd finally started fighting mystic menaces in #59, instead of the alien antagonists they'd been battling since the feature began in 1959-- took a break from the magical, encountering three allomorphic critters, all created to invade the Earth by ET evildoers.
Within a year of MLJ launching the first comic-book crossover. they used their new feature "Steel Sterling" to debut a villain who would reform and get his own feature as a costumed hero in a scant few months.
First, in ZIP COMICS #10 (1941), Sterling battles a trio of circus-skilled thieves: strong man Hefto, rubber-man Twisto, and fire-breather Inferno. Hefto dies in that story while Twisto and Inferno escape.
In ZIP #11, Twisto and Inferno part ways. Twisto is captured by the law, but as in compensation, a new, more formidable villain takes his place: the devilish, poison-using Rattler. Sterling masquerades as a crook in order to trap Inferno, but the two of them end up battling the Rattler. Inferno gets poisoned, but after Sterling saves his life, the fire breather swears to reform. His intent to reform cancels him out as a "villain," but the story still registers as a villain-crossover thanks to the presence of both Twisto and The Rattler, while Inferno's grooming as a future hero makes his presence a proto-crossover of two heroes.
In ZIP #12 Inferno helps Sterling capture the Rattler and then surrenders to the law. However, in #13, Sterling goes under cover in prison to catch another bad guy, and once again Inferno, in the same prison, renders aid. A possible parole is mentioned by the warden.
In BLUE RIBBON #13. Inferno's still in prison, but he breaks out in order to foil the plan of other prisoners to kill the judge who sentenced them, and Inferno as well. Once the threat is neutralized, the judge suggests that Inferno (no other name is given) should remain a fugitive while taking up the superhero game. He only enjoyed six more solo adventures, but at least in the last one, it was stated that the governor has pardoned the former felon. And as far as I know that ended the character's Golden Age adventures, though he was revived in the Silver Age once to team up with The Web, and may have been revived elsewhere in other unsuccessful reboots of the MLJ line. (In the 1967 story, yet another hero, the Fox, has a non-speaking cameo.)
Usually in the Golden Age villains didn't often cross from one feature to another. One of the few exceptions was the villain Crazy Quilt, who was allegedly created by Jack Kirby in BOY COMMANDOS #15 (1946). He went on to three more appearances before his last one in BOY COMMANDOS #33 (seen above, possibly drawn by Curt Swan), just three issues before the title was cancelled in 1949.
There was no reference to the villain's history with the Boy Commandos when he was introduced as a new villain for Robin the Boy Wonder in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #123 (1951), but the theoretical storytellers John Broome and Jim Mooney had nothing to do with the Commandos features so far as I know. Possibly, because the Commandos title was dead, someone decided that Crazy Quilt was worth re-using instead of making up a new pattern-criminal. This was the colorful crook's final Golden Age story, not least because STAR SPANGLED COMICS was cancelled in 1952, leaving Robin to return to his status as Batman's partner. However, DC reprinted the Boy Wonder's combat with the multicolored menace, and this resulted in CQ getting revived in a 1979 BATMAN issue, so that from then on he was defined as a de facto opponent for the Dynamic Duo.
I almost never bother with crossovers between fictional characters and "celebrities playing themselves," all of which I deem null-crossovers. But here's a peculiar forgotten null-crossover from BOY COMMANDOS #22 (1947). I was reading all of the stories in which the Commandos encountered the florid fiend Crazy-Quilt, but in #22 the heroes also met cornpone singer Judy Canova. In fact, "Real Judy" forms a passion for girl-hating teenager Brooklyn. She also helps him bust a crime, though this doesn't make Brooklyn any more receptive to female attentions.
I wonder if DC got permission to use Canova's image. Possibly they were floating the idea of a Canova comic? The first and only comic book devoted to the persona of the hillbilly songstress came out in 1950 from Fox Features and only lasted three issues.
Technically this is just a "gallery of monsters" in a Charlton kiddie-comic, but here 'tis anyway.
Here's my review of KLAUS AND THE WITCH OF WINTER, in which the best moment is Grant Morrison's version of Santa Claus meeting Gepetto of PINOCCHIO fame.
And here's KLAUS AND THE CRISIS IN XMASVILLE, wherein the titular hero meets one of his folkloric analogues, the beneficent Russian spirit Grandfather Frost.
I've completed my review of GOTHAM SEASON 2 here.
As explained therein, the season consists of two separable story-arcs. But the first, "Rise of the Super-Villains," only has intermittent crossover-episodes, given that the Big Bad of the story, Theo Galavan, is not an icon emulation of a comics character. Thus crossovers only exist in the arc when a "new" villain crosses over with an "established" villain, as in the three-part opener featuring Jerome "Maybe-Joker" Velaska, and the episode "By Fire," in which Catwoman and Firefly explicitly team up to pull off a crime.
The entire eleven-episode arc "Wrath of the Super-Villains," qualifies as an ongoing crossover, in which mad scientist Hugo Strange is responsible for creating or empowering such template deviations as Mister Freeze, Firefly, Clayface, and Azrael. (Also, the comics character Cornelius Stirk appears for a small role as an Arkham inmate.) The concluding episode suggests other, unspecified menaces released on Gotham thanks to Strange, but until I've watched the other seasons I can't determine if any of those shown in that episode are later specified.
Going by the logic of my discussion of superordinate and subordinate ensembles in ICONIC BONDING PT. 4, the first episode of the first season, "Pilot," qualifies as a crossover in that this show introduces the show's versions of Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler as permanent members of that superordinate ensemble.
ADDENDUM: I neglected to add "The Court of Owls," whose presence is only implied in the first episode, but who are later identified as the killers of the Waynes. They too are "crossovers" only for the first episode, albeit by implication only.
There are only two other crossover possibilities. One is the minor character of Victor Zsasz. In the comic books, he's an independent serial killer, but the TV series, emulating the film BATMAN BEGINS, turned the character into a hitman for the mobster Carmine Falcone. In the show he also works under Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, In both capacities, he's semi-bonded to the service of his bosses, and so is subsumed by their natures, just as, in Kirby's NEW GODS, villains like Kalibak and Desaad are subsumed by the long shadow of Darkseid.
The other potential crossover appears in just one episode, "The Blind Fortune-Teller," where Gordon and company encounter Jerome Velaska, a circus clown who confesses to murdering his mother. Had the show's producers never done anything more with Velaska beyond this episode, I would deem him to be merely an unreasonable facsimile of the Joker, not unlike a similar one-shot figure in Season 2. But at the start of Season 2, Velaska gets bumped up to full supervillain status, and that makes him a "strong template deviation" of the original character, not just a doppelganger.
The third BLADE film, BLADE TRINITY, is the only one to qualify as a crossover. It includes a version of the Marvel hero Hannibal King, albeit with assorted changes from the original model, and yet another version of Dracula, having nothing to do with either Stoker or the Marvel Comics incarnation.
One episode of the Japanese-made BLADE teleseries sports a crossover with Wolverine.
It's double your Golden Age villainy as the Hangman battles both Captain Swastika and the Executioner! (What, no fiendish representative for Italian fascists?)
Though Mademoiselle Marie lost her series in the early sixties, she kept showing up in other DC features.
Like teaming up with the Hellcats in the early seventies.
And a decade later, with the Unknown Soldier a few times.
Since I ventured into POPEYE criossovers in my last post, I may as well note that I'm aware of one "super-villain team-up" in the sixties POPEYE TV cartoons executed by King Features. In "Private Eye Popeye" (a title already used for one of the Paramount theatrical shorts). Brutus, a creation of the King animators, teams up with The Sea Hag, a product of the comic strip.
They also appear, though not as a team, as participants in a scheme to get Popeye to show up on a "This is Your Life" program in the episode "Strange Things Are Happening."
In my previous post I mentioned that I wasn't sure if Popeye in the comic books ever crossed over with the separate E.C. Segar creation O.G. Wotaschnozzle, a mad professor. But "Strange Things" also uses a scientist by that name, even though he's terribly off-model, not even having his distinguishing oversized schnozzola.
Obviously the crossover of the MARS ATTACKS franchise with that of Popeye is the one-shot's main appeal. Yet there's also a more minor crossover in that one of the E.C. Segar characters shown above was not created for the Popeye universe, even when the strip was still called "THIMBLE THEATER." The bearded fellow with the huge schnozz is Professor Wotaschnozzle, and as the late Don Markstein helpfully noted, Wotaschnozzle first appeared as a support-character in a 1932 sequence of Segar's separate SAPPO comic strip. Much as Popeye took over THIMBLE THEATER from its default "star" Castor Oyl, Wotaschnozzle edged out the titular character John Sappo and dominated that strip until it ended in 1938. Then, as Markstein explains, Segar's successor on POPEYE Bud Sagendorf revived O.G. Wotaschnozzle for a back-up series in POPEYE comic books, though in this incarnation Wotaschnozzle got top billing and Sappo was just support-cast. I have no idea if Wotaschnozzle crossed over with any POPEYE characters during his comic-book years, so it's possible that Powell and Beatty authored the first such interaction in this 2013 project.
I certainly wasn't expecting to find a monster mashup in the pages of a Golden Age SHADOW comic (v. 3, #8), but here's a scene in which a Sphinx outstares a Cockatrice. The bearded fellow summoning three other monsters-- all doomed to get "stoned" by the Sphinx's glare-- is a comic-book foe of the Dark Avenger, name of "Monstrodamus."
In my review of the 1923 novel THE MOON MAID I commented:
I don't know about the other two parts, but MOON MAID is part of a loose continuity with the Mars books. It's through Earth's radio contact with Mars that future-Earth perfects space travel with the use of Martian "rays," and Storytelling Julian even mentions John Carter, though it's not clear just what he knows about the Martian hero.
The book stands as a "null-crossover" in my system because John Carter and his Martian domain are referenced but none of the icons therefrom are present in the story. ERB does name the hero's spaceship "The Barsoom," which was the author's canny way of evoking the Mars books within a technically unrelated story.
ADDENDUM: Barsoom-Mars is also "in-universe" with the sequel novels as well, but the name is only mentioned in passing within the first sequel and not at all in the second.
My most definitive statement on the rise of identity politics in the 21st century has been the three part TRUMP VS SHAME CULTURE, starting here. But I started thinking about the role of humor in culture, thanks to a Youtube podcast in which Michael Rowe interviewed Greg Gutfeld.
Gutfeld's first contention was that for some forty years, Liberals working in American popular culture had largely succeeded in portraying Liberal characters as cool, compassionate and funny, while Conservative characters were mean and reactionary. Gutfeld's contention was not new, and finds support in Ben Shapiro's 2011 book PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA. For this book the author interviewed dozens of movie and TV professionals who were very candid (in the days before Shapiro's high visibility) about slanting their stories in order to make Liberals look good and Conservatives look bad. Gutfeld illustrated his point with the movie ANIMAL HOUSE, which pitted good natured slobs against the controlling Dean Wormer. But a better example of the political slanting would be IMO the 1982-89 sitcom FAMILY TIES, in which two middle-aged flower children gave birth to three teenagers, one of whom, Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox), was the Conservative Who Was Always Wrong.
The meme of "cool Liberals vs. uncool Conservatives" continued through the later years of the 20th century. Reagan and Bush Senior appealed to voters who wanted constancy, but Bill Clinton grabbed the part of America that wanted a rockstar President. Conservatives were clearly horrified, and they tried every trick to make Clinton look like a swindler or a murderer. They did finally expose him an adulterer during his second term, but as far as I can tell, it did little to harm his general popularity, though we'll never know he could have won an election with that "blot" on his escutcheon. Throughout much of the first decade of the 2000s, the Left also seemed to control the sense of which group was cool in the school, and indeed George "Dubya" Bush was the Republican gift that kept on giving-- the gift being endless opportunities for satire.
Yet even though I held some Liberal sensibilities during the 2010s, I sensed a greater shrillness in many Liberal comedians of the time, though I blogged only about one, Larry Wilmore, in this ARCHIVE essay. And slowly pundits like Shapiro and Gutfeld were becoming cooler than ultraliberal puppets like Wilmore and Stephen Colbert. What caused the shift?
I think it was the election of Obama in 2009.
In theory, it should have made the Democrats the coolest kids in the political school, to have fostered the election of the country's first Black President. However, I think the Dems subconsciously shifted into the mindset that had dominated the Republicans in the nineties. THEY became the defenders of the faith, of the new order.
Further, they hitched their collective stars to the idea that Obama was a great President because he was the first Black person to achieve the office. That in turn led them to make increasing investments in what we now call Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And that's how we got a race-grifting zero like Kamala Harris as second in line to the Presidency.
On some level, they know they've done wrong by arguing that skin color and ethnicity should be factors in judging candidates. And that results in psuedo-comedians like Stephen Colbert rattling off monologues that are nothing but solid Trump-hatred putdowns, rather than anything resembling wit.
CASPER'S SCARE SCHOOL, reviewed here, is the only one of the Casper films that can fairly be called a "monster mash."
Though Spooky had appeared in a handful of CASPER theatrical shorts, I don't think both he and his girlfriend Poil appeared in animation until an episode of the 1996 TV cartoon.
The ghostly girl with the Bronx accent also appeared alongside her freckled boyfriend in CASPER'S HAUNTED CHRISTMAS.
Though the totally unfunny Captain Caveman continued to make appearances even after losing his show, such as in SCOOB, the only time Caveman and his associates The Teen Angels made a featured crossover appearance together seems to be in the final issue of Marvel's SCOOBY DOO comic.
In one panel artist Dan Spiegel mixed up the Angels, so that DeeDee tells Taffy (the blonde one) to go relate something or other to "Taffy," by which the script writer actually meant third girl Brenda.
In my review of the Italian fantasy-film THE GIANTS OF THESSALY, I stated that despite its attempt to adapt one of the first crossovers in Greek epic, the crew under Jason either don't include the really famous characters of the epic's crew, or they have a couple of ordinary guys with similar names, mainly a crewman named Orpheus.
...while the ARGONAUTICA is an early example of a "crossover story." the non-legendary nature of Jason's crew nullifies that aspect of the original story. If the only action taken by Orpheus, the one "big name" in Jason's crew, is that of moaning over his lost Eurydice, I see no reason to equate this character with the master singer who sang his way in and out of Hell.
In contrast, the 1963 JASON does satisfy my criteria, as does the 2000 telefilm adaptation, since both use the legendary icons in such a way as to evoke the earlier myth-figures.
In DEVILINA #2 (from defunct publisher Skywald), John Albano and Frank Thorne spin a story of western horror. Two White yokels violate a young Indian woman and then kill both her and her brother. Their relative, an unnamed medicine man, transforms himself into a wolf-creature to levy vengeance.
See WEIRD MYSTERIES #6. Read, read, read. Read story "Full Moon," see hitchhiking man accept left from pretty woman driving car. Read, read, read. See man change into werewolf and start to ravage beautiful woman. See beautiful woman change into vampire. See biter bit, for millionth time, albeit literally.
Possibly the worst Real American character in comics is Ranark the Ravager, some sort of king-size Canadian demigod who just looked like a big Indian guy. He's so unimaginative, weirdies like "The Waquo Idol" and "The Indian Monsters" are positively refreshing by comparison.
Owlwoman appeared in 1977, the same year as Dawnstar. Until I find something earlier, that probably ties them for the place of "first costumed Native American superheroine."
Although the new X-MEN feature had been appearing for roughly two years, I like to think that the creator of Owlwoman only gave her "clawed gloves" to make her more owl-like, rather than out of some desire to emulate Wolverine.
The earliest Native American super-villainess I've encountered is the character of Queen Bee. She appeared in the 1966 LONE RANGER cartoon, each episode of which consisted of two "Lone Ranger" shorts (with or without Tonto) and one "Tonto" short. Tonto got to take on Queen Bee in one of his solo shorts, but all one knows of the villainess is that (1) she herself appears to be Native American, and (2) she somehow got hold of a massive honeycomb, and this in turn allowed her to control massive bee-swarms that she could use against intrepid settlers. Guess her motto was, "Bee all that you can bee."
The fine arts of Revolutionary America often used Indian "queens" or "princesses" to represent the newborn country in terms of prosperity, as seen in this 1778 engraving.
In comics and the majority of other cultural artifacts, though, Native American usually had no such exalted roles. The image of the "squaw" was that of a subservient female who accepted the duties assigned her by her tribe.
One of the few counter-examples comes from BILLY THE KID #56 (1966). This scant 8-page story, probably by the team of Joe Gill and Charles Nicholas, depicts a feisty Indian maiden riding into war alongside her braves, proclaiming herself "queen of the Apaches" and knocking Billy the Kid off his horse with her gun-butt. She takes him prisoner and makes her regular redskin beau jealous, so Billy has to fight the guy and escape-- after which Nura's threat just arbitrarily ends.
In this respect I tend to think canonical literature is no better than pop literature, since both tended to elide female Native Americans in favor of males. Even the crude jungle comics at least included a smattering of Black females who were evil plotters or voodoo queens. The idea of strong Native American women seems very rarely explored in any medium until such notions were explored in the pop culture of the 1970s.
DC Comics' Scalphunter was launched in WEIRD WESTERN TALES #39 (1977). The protagonist was a White Indian, Brian Savage, abducted by Kiowas as a child and raised as one of them, though as the page below clarifies, the Kiowas of the story have their own "caste system" and don't allow Scalphunter to earn "warrior feathers." In addition to sustaining his own feature the character occasionally interacted with both other western heroes and with superheroes via time travel.
The name of Brian's father, Matt Savage, may have been a call-out, subconscious or otherwise, to a 1959 DC feature, "Matt Savage, Trail Boss," though nothing in the story explicitly links the two characters.
Hawk was a member of the Freemen in Marvel's KILLRAVEN title, who sought ways to expel H.G. Wells' Martians from Planet Earth. He was introduced somewhat "on the fly" before being given a good backstory, plus an unfortunate but heroic death.
Johnny Cloud, "the Navajo Ace," may have been the first Real American to get his own series during the "Silver Age" (1956-70). This WWII army pilot premiered in ALL AMERICA MEN OF WAR #82 (1960) and appeared in most of the issues until the title's demise in 1966, often being pictured on the cover. The initial story has a strong "Virgil Tibbs" feel as Cloud resents constantly being called "Chief" by most if not all Caucasian soldiers on his own side, although the denouement of that story sports a minor twist on the theme.
After Cloud lost his feature he was recycled into the ensemble group of WWII fighters, The Losets, and later played a prominent role in Darwyn Cooke's DC THE NEW FRONTIER.
I've devoted this writeup to DC Comic's "sword-and-sorcery Native American" Arak, who journeys through the historical Dark Ages having various adventures. As mentioned in the writeup, only one storyline involves a true crossover, as Arak encounters the Chinese warrior-maiden Mulan.
There's also a knockoff of Arak who appeared in INFINITY INC, but he's so awful I can't stand to write about him more than this little bit.
Marvel's DEFENDERS series of the seventies and eighties was of course a "static crossover" in most if not all issues, due to the series' continued use of high-stature icons with their own features, like the Hulk and Doctor Strange. A majority issues also included many "dynamic crossovers," like the one seen below, in which Moon Knight guest-stars for the multi-part story "Who Remembers Scorpio?"
The "Scorpio" sequence was arguably the best story, and the best crossover, in the tenure of writer Dave Kraft, made more effective by strong Kirbyesque art by Keith Giffen. At first glance, the villains-- the crime combine "Zodiac," led by Scorpio-- appears to be a charisma-crossover, since Scorpio appeared first in the NICK FURY feature while he, together with eleven other astrologically-themed aides, took on THE AVENGERS. But the twelve zodiacal foemen of this DEFENDERS arc all android approximations of the human characters, so none of these artificial antagonists, appearing in DEFENDERS for the first time, were aligned with any previous feature.
Kraft also brought about one of the worst crossovers in Defenders history, when a TV documentary persuaded a dozen or so unaffiliated heroes into auditioning for membership in the "non-group." Many of the guest-heroes were written out of character by Kraft and the interior art was bland. The above cover is about the only good thing about this three-issue farrago.
A more amusing, if minor, crossover appeared in issue #65. Hellcat, the superheroine who had once starred in her own teen-humor series as everyday teen girl Patsy Walker, sought out another Marvel "funny girl," Millie the Model. The two characters actually did cross paths in a handful of earlier comics, but only when both were humor-types. I believe issue 65 is the first time Millie the Model appeared in a Marvel superhero title. She got a mention in the "wedding of Reed and Sue" story in 1965's FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3, but there too it was Patsy Walker who took primacy, as she and her support-character Hedy get a one-panel cameo talking in part about whether Millie is around.
As I noted in my review of Heinlein's novel METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN, it stands as a crossover not for being part of the so called "Future History" of the author, but because Heinlein included another character, "Slipstick" Libby, as a support-character to main star Lazarus Long. Libby had been the star of just one short story, "Misfit."
This brings up an interesting point about crossover functions. It appears that Libby only appeared as an on-stage character in the novel and the short story; in the first as a subordinate icon and in the second as a superordinate icon. Since there's no question of one mode dominating the other numerically, which one determines Libby's overall status?
Going by the argument I made in QUICK CROSSOVER CORRECTION, Libby possessed stature by virtue of being the star of "Misfit," and this confers him on a level of Qualitative Escalation that "outranks" his subordinate status in CHILDREN. But I don't necessarily think that would be the case if, say, Libby had appeared in many stories in a subordinate role to Long or to other superordinate characters. In DOMINANT PRIMES AND SUBS I've noted that the Joker's appearance as a superordinate icon in a handful of stories does not overrule his dominant subordinate status.
The novel also includes a null-crossover, in that Long mentions having conversed with Hugo Pinero, the star of "Life-Line," the author's first published short story.
In the story "Rainbow's End" in FELIX THE CAT #1 (Dell, 1948), the reality-bending feline discovers a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For some reason, going to the end of the rainbow puts him in some sort of Fairy-Land, where almost all the inhabitants want to horn in on his new riches: Miss Muffet, Bo Peep, Red Riding Hood, Jack and Jill, Hansel and Gretel, and Cinderella. He dodges them by hiding in the home of Old Mother Hubbard and her dog, but to prove he's not a greedhead like everyone else, he fills the old lady's larder with lots of food, and the story ends on that underwhelming note.
