MONSTER MASHUPS #158

 I gave the 1984 SHE a negative review eight years ago, but I'll admit, after a re-screening, that it isn't as unimaginative as most post-apoc films, which, if they have monsters at all, usually keep it down to some stumbling zombie-mutants. SHE does boast--

THE NOOKS, mutants who are totally okay after their arms get sliced off.

GODAN, a psychoknietic mutant who tries to build a cult around his godhood.

 A colony of vampires who appear on the surface to be high-society types.

A self-regenerating fellow named Xenon, who can not only rebuild any body part (arm, head) out of nothing, the severed parts also grow into duplicates of Xenon-- though this monster's real threat is that he sounds like Robin Williams on speed.

There's also a mad scientist (assisted by a big bearded guy in a tutu) and a gang of warriors called "Norks," but I consider both of these "villains" rather than "monsters."       

MONSTER MASHUPS #156

No combinations of distinctive monsters occur in GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI until the 1996 story-arc "Survival Mansion." In this tale, the GS team is trapped by evil munitions makers who have started making monsters, whether of real demonic derivation or of artificial creation, to sell as super-weapons. The villains try to use the sweepers as test subjects of their monsters' toughness, but Mikami and her aides Yokoshima and (a now mortal version of) Okinu kick the asses of--

A ghost woman.

  Zombie dogs.

A Gun-Golem (my name for it).

A troop of miniature GI JOE dolls (huh?)

A (sometimes) sexy djinn named Gura.

And an artificial version of the Hindu bird-god Garuda.

MONSTER MASHUPS #155

 I liked the first crossover between the DC Universe and the Monster-verse, but a second one sounded like gilding the lily.

I did rather enjoy King Shark becoming a kaiju.

 Giant Shark gets to fight Godzilla while Giant Croc fights Kong.

JLA mixes it up with LEGION OF DOOM.

 

Interesting tete-a-tete with Black Manta and Cheetah.

Harley says "hi" to Big Bat.

New appearances of King Ghidorah and Rodan (or variants thereof).

Cheetah also gets kaiju-ized.

Some unnamed monsters appear, as well as Skar King from the sequel.

All in all, not quite as good as the first one, but a decent read.  

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Most manga serials didn't delve into any crossovers, but GHOST SWEEPER MIKAMI (1991) crossed over the main character, Japanese exorcist Reiko Mikami, with the folkloric character of THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.

 To be sure, it's really just a minor demon that tosses together a lot of tropes from the Pied Piper story and reworks them for its own convenience (much like the manga author), such as changing adult humans into children or controlling rat demons. But one could argue that it's still a loose adaptation of the original, though it counts only as a "high-charisma" crossover.

The manga got an adaptation into an episode of the 1993 TV anime, under the title "Everyone, Turn Into a Kid!" Again, the name "Piper of Hamelin" just gets cursory mention. 

Other manga-episodes, as well as their anime adaptations, brought the ghost-sweepers in contact with Santa Claus and with the Japanese folklore-figure Yuki-Onna. The one movie made from the franchise was not based on a manga from the author and has the GS team encounter a very Nippon-ified version of the vampire Nosferatu.   

ADDENDUM: After the anime ceased, the story "Battle with Wolves" had Mikami encounter both Norse Fenrir and Greek Artemis.

  

And the Mikami group also meets the supernatural sea-princess Otohime, from the folktale URASHIMA TARO.

MONSTER MASHUPS #154

 Mediocre monsters from Gerry Conway's really stinky LEGION run.

THE JOVIAN ATTACK SQUID...

And THE VENUSIAN NIGHT SHARK.

  

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In this post I talked somewhat about the crossovers in the ARCHIE universe of super-teens, including their encounter with the evil scientist Mad Doctor Doom, who originally appeared in a 1962 issue of ADVENTURES OF LITTLE ARCHIE.

But I didn't mention this villain-crossover in CAPTAIN HERO--

-- wherein new villain Witch Doctor seeks to impress three "elder states-menaces," in the form of Doctor Nose, The Consumer, and The Whistler-- though as I recall, technically, The Whistler wasn't IN the ARCHIE superhero stories, but in the contemporaneous ARCHIE spy-spoofs, entitled THE MAN FROM RIVERDALE. Not that even I, after all this time, care about the discrepancy. 

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.    

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.

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MONSTER MASHUPS #147

WONDER WOMAN #123's feature story, "Amazon Magic-Eye Album," pits the heroine's juvenile self against a bevy of bizarre beasts:

THE HEDGEHOG FISH and THE GIANT OCTOPUS.

THE GIANT ELECTRIC EEL.

And THE WATER COBRA.

This is a more imaginative Wonder Girl story than most, as the writer tended to pit WG against mundane menaces like sharks and whales, and maybe the occasional giant bird.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 I'm not about to try chronicling all of the multitudinous crossovers in DC's war comics, even though I've just finished laying out the one in SGT. ROCK ANNUAL #2. Still, though the story "Heap the Corpses High" in DC SUPERSTARS #15 (1977) isn't worth explicating, this is a really nice cover juxtaposing Sergeant Rock, Mademoiselle Marie, and the disguise-master Unknown Soldier masquerading as Rock for some damn reason. More Kanigher craziness as usual.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #128

 

This MARVEL FAMILY story, "The Trio of Terror," is not only a crossover for the Marvels but also a "mashup" of three monsters from Greek mythology.

True, the story acts as all three are "monster-types," when that distinction applies only to the Satyr. In mythology there's only one Argus and one Hydra, and as almost anyone knows, the Hydra is not some two-headed troll but a seven-headed dragon. Since none of the three are particularized icons, the monsters comprise a mashup but not a crossover.      

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In some of my posts on the crossover subject, I've noted that I didn't consider a work a crossover if a famous icon appeared only as a conventionally dead person. Thus DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is not a crossover simply due to the presence of Dracula as a slain corpse, because in that form the vampire has no agency. If he was seen doing only one thing before he perished, as happens with Fu Manchu in DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, Dracula would have agency. (Parenthetically, DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is a charisma-crossover because Van Helsing carries over from the 1931 film and does have agency within DAUGHTER as well.) So an undead being can still have agency, even if the original character of the individual has erased, as seems to be the case with Undead Wild Bill Hickock in JONAH HEX TWO GUN MOJO.                                                           

 The same principle holds for spirits of the dead that may not be able to do anything but render warnings or advice. This type includes the various specters that tutor the Ghost Rider so that he can become a new champion of the frontier: Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Pat Garrett, Kit Carson, and some lawman I never heard of, Bill Tighman. The end of the story suggests that the hero may have dreamed the encounter, but as long as the icons in question have a possible real existence, as opposed to being null-variants, they still have crossover-agency.                                                                   

  

MONSTER MASHUPS #112

 The Legion of Monsters concept, given a one-shot appearance in 1976, got upgraded to a limited series in 2011. Review here.                      

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 A noteworthy though short-lived hero-team book was the All-Winners Squad, which was a belated attempt by Timely to ape the successful Justice Society feature.

This story, pitting the All-Stars against a time-traveler named Future Man and his contemporary aide Miss Death, was pretty bland except for the villain showing off his invention of "atomic fire," fire that could burn anything made of atoms.

MONSTER MASHUPS #106

 In MARVEL FAMILY #71, the titular heroes visit "Ghost Island." the refuge of a variety of "haunts," including a vampire, werewolf, a fire-breathing devil, regular ghosts and poltergeists, a witch and a variety of unidentified ghouls.

Incidentally it's only a crossover for uniting the Marvel Family, all of whom had independent features.

THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #62

Since I'm making up for not having done many villain-crossovers, I'm obliged to state that "Almost Got 'Im," the 1992 episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES, is easily the best villain-cross in that series, if not in all Batman cartoons of all time.

"Almost" only has one close rival: "Mayhem is the Music Meister" from BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, which I mentioned in GREATEST #43. In any case, that one's less notable for its villain-crossovers than playing Batman off such familiar heroes as Black Canary, Green Arrow and Aquaman.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

Technically the story "Brothers" crosses over Brother Power with a couple of Swamp Thing's support characters, but it counts.

A cool cover to a boring story in SPECTRE #11, featuring stature-characters Spectre, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and The Enchantress, and one charisma-character, The Gentleman Ghost.