MONSTER MASHUPS #151

Here's a Satanic bacchanale attended by many monsters--"ghosts, zombies, vampires and werewolves." The plot of this 1951 story in ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN #25 was probably borrowed from the more famous 1950 EC story, "Horror Beneath the Streets." In the earlier story EC's three horror-hosts pass into the real world and harangue the EC editors into giving the hosts their own books. The writer of this story, probably editor Richard E Hughes (who had a rep for writing many ACG tales under diverse pen names), asserts that Satan resents ACG writer Alan Hartwood for having given mortals such good instructions on how to dispel supernatural evils. After conveniently overhearing that Satan has designs on Hartwood's life, the aggrieved writer spends most of the story fending off werewolves and vampires but then gets spirited away (sorry) to Hell by some ghosts. And yet there's a happy ending, because for some reason Satan then allows Hartwood to continue sending stories to ACG as their new "ghost writer." Wasn't the whole point of the persecution to KEEP Hartwood from writing new stories?

I used the word "Hell" generically, but the script only claims, on page 3, that Satan's minions are "denizens of the Unknown." This would have to be one of the first times that Hughes or one of his writers used that placename as a synonym for some domain that was two parts "afterlife" and one part "collective subconscious." Sixties comics-readers often saw "The Unknown" cited as the stomping ground of the ghostly hero Nemesis.          

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #150

 

It may not be profound but it's the most fun a JLA crossover has been in years. The four icons from the Monsterverse used here are Godzilla, Kong, Mechagodzilla and the Skull-Crawlers. Some new ones are invented as well, though not all of them are given names in the comic proper.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 

I came across a library copy of the 2012 cluster-crossover JUSTICE LEAGUE TRINITY WAR, and it's pretty standard for its purported architect Geoff Jones: just another sloppy smorgasbord of DC heroes doing stupid things. Its only point of interest is showing a version of Justice League Dark composed of John Constantine, Deadman, Black Orchid, and Frankenstein, though one line asserts that Zatanna was a former member. Whether this was ever a lineup in any other comic book I do not know.    

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Dracula managed to appear on both incarnations of Filmation's GHOSTBUSTERS, though the two Dracs have nothing in common. In the live-action 1970s GHOSTBUSTERS, the vamp is a senile old bloodsucker who gets his long fangs stuck in a tree (which his mate Countess Dracula finds sexy-- a rare adult joke in this kids' show).

 Then he pops up on the cartoon GHOSTBUSTERS once, looking a lot like the studio's comical vamp from THE GROOVY GHOULIES.

  

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Here are two more curiosities in which fictional characters are described as having had real lives, though all are only seen as ghosts.

 In the Filmation GHOSTBUSTERS episode "The Headless Horseman Caper," the heroes encounter a ghost who appears based on the legend of the Hessian soldier recounted in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but without the disturbing detail of getting his head blown off in battle. The cartoon just says he's some ghost-- not even given any specific military designation-- who was told by his boss, Prime Evil, to make himself look headless by pulling his head down into his body in order to scare people. The episode has nothing to do with the Irving story except for giving the ghost what I assume is supposed to be a Hessian costume.

Slightly better is "The Ghost of Don Quixote," though technically there are four ghosts from the pages of the Cervantes book: the Don, his sidekick Sancho, and their respective mounts, a horse and a burro. Ghostbuster Eddie is seen reading a book on the Don's adventures, but there's no mention of the book being fiction, nor that the author wrote the book to satirize chivalric romances. The scene shifts to Spain, where a young boy has been reading the same book. When he and his parents are assailed by motorcycle-thugs, the four ghosts spring out of the boy's book-- implicitly summoned from the vasty deeps by the kid's love of the Don's exploits. The lance-wielding ghost drives off the thugs, but their boss summons the Ghostbusters to get rid of the specters. However, the Ghostbusters make common cause with Quixote in defeating evil, and the ghosts then return to the pages of the "history book."   

MONSTER MASHUPS #149

 Wonder Woman did start fighting more big monsters in the 1960s than she had in the previous two decades. But whereas as the "teen version" for the heroine had two separate monster mashups, the adult WW only had one tale in which she contended with two distinct monsters, ranging from THE SPHINX-BIRD--

And the featured menace, THE BOILING MAN.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #148

 Sixties Wonder Girl has her second and last encounter with multiple monsters, starting with the ICEBERG MONSTER--

 

And THE MEDUSA-BIRD.

'