I wouldn't have bothered noting the Beagle Boys (in issue #20 of their own title) interacting with Clarabelle Cow, but the line predicting their getting nabbed by Scamp is a keeper.
I didn't pick up a lot of the early copies of the title LIFE WITH ARCHIE back in the day. So until I looked at a lot of issues online, I'd never noticed that for the first 50 issues, the title featured a lot of book-length melodramas, rather than the short teen-hijinks stories typical of other ARCHIE features. To be sure, the melodramas were still dominantly comical in nature, but LIFE often had the Riverdale teens getting mixed up in spy games, travels to exotic lands, and encounters with monsters.
Oddly, Archie meets "The Kreeps" thanks to encountering what seems to be a "normal girl," a la Marilyn Munster. However, the winsome brownette Wendy quickly reveals that she's a witch. Further, though Archie doesn't come on to her, she instantly falls for him and slips him a love mickey before inviting the teen to meet her aunt and uncle. Note the resemblance of Wendy's chant to a certain superhero magic word.
As the witch and her enchanted swain proceed to their destination, jealous Veronica stows away in Archie's car. She, not being muddled by magic, is duly shocked to see on the Kreeps' estate a big wolf, a tentacle belonging to an unseen horror, and a pair of disembodied hands named "Boris."
This 1951 "real American" comic has a convoluted history.
First, there was a 1939 masked-cowboy comic strip, "Lightnin' and the Lone Rider," whose two years of strips were reprinted in FAMOUS FUNNIES #61-80.
Then, according to one online source, the comic book company Ajax-Farrell bought the rights of the character, but devised their own version of the masked hero, different in various details, such as an Indian boy-aide, "Bright Feather," introduced (in LONE RIDER #1, 1951) as if he'd always been there.
Then, before any readers could have responded to anything in issue #1, some writer decided to have an Indian elder relate to Bright Feather a story about "Comet's-Tail," a mature warrior of the tribe from some indeterminate period. During a terrible drought CT decides to share his food with an infirm old woman. The old woman turns out to be a comely female magic-maker, "Many Hearts." The story doesn't define her very well, probably because MH is functionally a goddess-figure-- and it would have been unlikely for an American company in the fifties to portray an Amerindian goddess as diegetically real.
It takes CT a few days to figure out that the comely squaw actually is the old woman-- a motif possibly borrowed from the English "loathly lady" trope seen in some Arthurian tales--AND that she prompted CT into sharing his food in order to demonstrate his moral rigor.
Then the third issue of RIDER starts out with a story in which Bright Feather is still the hero's partner, though now Golden Arrow has an inset picture on #3's cover, even as there was one on issue #2. That story is followed by a solo "Golden Arrow" tale, and the last story, once more focused on Lone Rider, gives him no sidekick.
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The cover to KRAZY KOMICS #2 is a null-crossover between Tessie the Typist and her boyfriend (who are in the comic) and Li'l Vinegar (who is not).
But Basil Wolverton contributes a real crossover between a goofy pilot-character, Flap FlipFlop, who'd been launched the previous year, and his much more popular hero Powerhouse Pepper. For good measure Wolverton tosses in another null-crossover, having Pilot Flap comment on reading a "Tessie the Typist" comic book.
Also in WILLIE #16, we get a totally unheralded crossover between the alliterative Jeanie Johnson and Millie the Model in "A Modeling Mood."
And in MARGIE 46, the cast of Patsy Walker crosses paths with Timely's good-hearted movie star, Hedy Devine.
In youth I watched some of the Sid and Marty Krofft live-action shows but avoided most of the producers' "suitmation" episodes of the decade. So I was unaware as to how often those shows-- H.R. PUFNSTUF, SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS, and LIDSVILLE-- played host to crossovers between those franchises. Probably the most notable one took place on LIDSVILLE. Though actress Billie Hayes had a regular role on that show, she also guested as her PUFNSTUF character Witchiepoo, wherein she had a romantic relationship with LIDSVILLE's comic villain Hoodoo. The two characters later showed up in "Horror Hotel," a segment of the 1978-79, but in a non-romantic context. "Hotel" also played host to comical versions of Dracula and an unnamed Frankenstein Monster.
In this post I noted how one issue of Timely's KRAZY KOMICS took a subordinate character, The Creeper, from a strip called "The Vagabond" and made him a co-star of a strip about a rabbit-detective named Homer. Only this first "teamup" counts as a crossover of these two characters. A little later The Creeper was joined in his nutty nefarious activities by his lookalike son "Crawler," while Homer and his allies kept chasing the two of them down. In KK #9-10 the antagonists visited "Fairy Land" (which might as well be the story's title) and met...
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SIMPLE SIMON, WILLIAM TELL, and three characters from the "Hey Diddle Diddle" rhyme.
KRAZY KOMICS #7-9 also played host to a three-part story teaming up a new character, a beneficent fairy named "Inky the Imp," with a "Fractured Fairy Tales" version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and his mice (who are the Piper's allies this time).
In KK #11, though the "heroes" and their "villains" aren't in Fairy Land anymore, they still meet a "King Arthur" who looks more like Old King Cole.
KK 12 then asserts that all of the Krazy Komics characters inhabit their own world, and The Creeper magicks some of them into the "real world." They try to protest their treatment in the comics to the creators of Timely Comics (all of whom are caricatures of the real raconteurs). I recognize only Ziggy Pig, Silly Seal and Super Baby, but the main characters are still Creeper, his son Crawler, and the rabbit Homer.
Whereas the Disney animated shorts usually only crossed over characters who had appeared in the cartoons, the Disney comic books, usually published by Dell, felt free to intermingle any characters any Disney project had adapted-- thus providing a "mass crossover" universe some time before Marvel Comics did so. In this 1960 tale "Bad Deeds' Club Annual Picnic" (DELL GIANT #33), Gyro Gearloose not only encounters a bunch of disparate villains-- the Big Bad Wolf, the Wicked Witch, Black Pete, Captain Hook and the Beagle Boys-- the story also works in Peter Pan, the Seven Dwarves, the Three Little Pigs, Mickey Mouse and Uncle Scrooge.
In WOW #14, Mary Marvel meets both the folklore-character Jack Frost and an approximation of the Greek dawn-goddess Eos, under her Roman name Aurora.
The 1950 Casper cartoon "Once Upon a Rhyme" shows Casper reading a book of Mother Goose tales. From the cover, Mother Goose invites the friendly ghost to enter her domain. He sees the Three Blind Mice (who of course don't see him) but his spectral appearance frightens both The Old Woman Who Lives in the Shoe and Miss Muffet's spider (Miss Muffet having already been scared off her tuffet by said arachnid.) Red Riding Hood isn't put off by Casper's ghostliness, so they become friends, after which Casper's scare potential saves Red from the hungry Wolf.
It's a decent little cartoon, but it's more than a little odd that the pre-adolescent Red looks to be wearing lipstick.
From my review:
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The only reason Charlie and Vinnie are in "Oldies But Young 'Uns" is to set up the back-door pilot that appeared in the same season a few episodes later, focusing almost entirely on the antics of father and son (with a piddling guest-appearance by Al Bundy). Said pilot was titled "Top of the Heap," the same as the very short-lived sitcom that resulted. "Top" is IMO one of the worst back-door pilots ever made, but it was the only time the makers of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN succeeded in spinning anything off from their one huge sitcom success. Christina Applegate and David Faustino guested on "Top," but the show bottomed out in seven episodes. A retooled version, without any guest appearances, came and went equally quickly.
From my review of the 1978 sex comedy FAIRY TALES:
Fairyland in this case is more like one of the many "all-fairy-tales-sold-here" worlds, though Prince doesn't seem to recognize any of the figures he meets on his quest-- Little Bo Peep (Angela "LOST EMPIRE" Aames), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Tommy Tucker, Scheherezade (Nai Bonet), Old King Cole, Peeping Tom, and the Frog Prince. The original version is also supposed to have some erotic schtick with Jack and Jill, but this didn't appear in the version I watched. IMDB lists actors who played the roles of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Little Dutch Boy," but I never spotted either one... Aside from Prince having short and inconsequential encounters with Bo Peep and the Jack-and-Jill couple, almost all the action takes place within a colossal laced-up boot, "The Shoe of Pleasure," which is Fairyland's foremost whorehouse. The woman who lives in this shoe doesn't have any children; I guess she knew what to do. The writers give the Madame Who Lives in a Shoe (Brenda Fogarty) a name culled from a separate nonsense-poem, that of "Gussie Gander."
BETTY BOOP AND THE LITTLE KING is a curiosity with nothing much to recommend it but whatever story might lie behind the mundane details of how it came to exist.
To be sure, at least Betty is central to the action of this 1936 short, in contrast to her being a glorified guest-star in POPEYE THE SAILOR WITH BETTY BOOP in 1933. Ostensibly the animators made a cartoon sex film in which the sailor-man and the Boopadoop girl got it on, which if extant would probably constitute their most interesting crossover.
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.
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.
The naturalistic comedies of RENT A GIRLFRIEND and SENRYU GIRL (the products of two separate mangaka) crossed over in a story in the former universe. Don't know yet if there was a similar one in the SENRYU universe. The gimmick of the latter series is that main character Nanoko only communicates through written poems called "senryu."
A crossover smartphone game titled Kanojo, Okarishimasu Heroine All-Stars was developed by Enish. It featured Chizuru, Mami, Ruka, and Sumi along with female characters from other Weekly Shōnen Magazine manga series like Fairy Tail, The Seven Deadly Sins, Domestic Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Fire Force, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, and Negima! Magister Negi Magi. It was released in September 2021.[48][49] The game's service ended on January 25, 2023
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.
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.
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.
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.
