MONSTER MASHUPS #160

 Oh, those 1950s twist-ending tales. In "Deadline" (JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS #16 (1953), horror-writer Herbert Carvel tries three times to get his editor to buy a story involving a conflict between vampires and ghosts. The editor doesn't like pitting two types of monsters in the same story, but he must be desperate for stories because he accepts an invitation to Herbert's house for dinner, only to learn that (1) Herbert is a ghost, (2) wife Lydia is a vampire, and (3) the editor is the dinner! What a twist!

       

MONSTER MASHUPS #159

 Here lie the feminine fear-figures of MONSTER MARRIAGE SHOP, starting with --

URURU THE WEREWOLF.

ROBIN THE HARPY.

HARNIS THE SUCCUBUS,

CAMILLA THE VAMPIRE.

MEISA THE GORGON.

YUKO THE UNICORN.

KANAME THE AKANAME (scum-sucking demon)

ARK THE SELKIE.

SARA THE SALAMANDER and EYERENE THE CYCLOPS. 

BAPHOMET THE DEMON.

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.

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 #153

 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.

LIFE WITH ARCHIE #39 is dated July 1965, so it's likely that the unidentified writer and artist were primarily swiping from THE MUNSTERS, which launched in September 1964. To be sure, though, only the emulations of Herman and Lily Munster are clearly patterned on MUNSTERS characters. 

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." 

Arriving at the main house, the teens first meet a creepy butler named Igor (of course), the shadow of a T-rex named Rex, and a caged, talking bat named Percy, though Wendy insists he's a canary. But Archie's comes out of his love-trance just in time to join Veronica in freaking out at the sight of Wendy's aunt and uncle. The two teens speed back to Riverdale, and don't get to see Wendy show that she, too, is a real monster. I think the reason she becomes a fish-woman is so that the writer could toss out an in-joke vaguely referencing Starkist Tuna's mascot Charlie (created in 1961). I doubt that this was the Archie Gang's first encounter with multiple monsters-- certainly it's not even a good story of its kind-- even if the only earlier item might be the cover of this 1961 magazine.     
         

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.

  

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #136

 

I was working on some notations and just wanted something uninvolving on the TV screen to supply background, so I put on the 1978-79 THE BAY CITY ROLLERS. I expected it to be a skit-show with musical numbers by the Rollers, which it was. I didn't know that it started as THE KROFFT SUPERSTAR HOUR, which was a retooled version of the 1976-78 KROFFT SUPERSHOW. I'd watched some segments of the first show but must have overlooked/avoided SUPERSTAR HOUR for whatever reasons. The original one-hour SUPERSTARS show had the Rollers introduce three separare comedy-segments, "Horror Hotel," "The Lost Island," and "Magic Mondo." The first eight episodes must not have scored well, for the show was cut back to half an hour, and all of the shows under the ROLLERS rubric featured only the musicians doing skits and songs and the "Horror Hotel" segment. Those segments are the only ones on streaming, which is a shame because now I'm vaguely curious about the "Lost Island" with its wacky crossover of several Krofft characters. 

I didn't watch PUFNSTUF, except for the movie version, but I'd still would tend to label that version of Witchiepoo more "villain" than "monster." In "Horror Hotel," an altered version of Witchiepoo runs the hotel of the title and doesn't do anything villainous. I can see labeling this version of the character sort of a "mischief-monster." However, all her suitmation assistants are IMO just anthropomorphized animal goofballs with no monster-aspects. If one does deem Witchiepoo a funny monster-- and one can certainly make a case for some witches being monsters, despite Samantha and Sabrina-- then "Horror Hotel" would be a monster-mashup only whenever a "guest monster" appeared. This short list included a mummy, a weird creature from a painting, a black-robed ghost, a Dracula (played by Jay Robinson), and a flat-out copy of the Universal Frankenstein Monster, though the name "Frankenstein" is never used.     

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

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 1972, when ABC was still seeking to publicize both PUFNSTUF and LIDSVILLE, the station aired THE BRADY BUNCH MEETS ABC'S SATURDAY SUPERSTARS. I've no idea if I saw the hour-long special in The Day, but at present only a brief clip appears on YouTube. This hype-special seems to have more of a narrative than most such specials, in which actors would most frequently just introduce clips from the TV shows being hyped. Apparently for the whole hour of SUPERSTARS, all six of the Brady Kids get zapped into a television set, meet both Witchiepoo and Hoodoo, and presumably watch clips of shows that needed hyping before getting returned to what passed for "Brady reality."     

MONSTER MASHUPS #134

 In this post I linked to my short review of the short-lived monster-mash title HOWLING COMMANDOS OF SHIELD, but I can't even muster a short review of its predecessor, the mostly incoherent six-issue series NICK FURY'S HOWLING COMMANDOS, written by Keith Giffen and penciled by three different artists.

The main members of the "Creature Corral" (yes, they're called that once) are mostly new variations on standard monster-types: vampire Nina Price, werewolf "Warwolf," a clone of the Frankenstein Monster, and a zombie with no ID, "John Doe." The other three members may or may not be continuous with earlier Marvel monsters known respectively as "The Glob," "The Living Mummy," and "The Gorilla-Man." Despite the title, Nick Fury makes only a token appearance, and his subordinate Clay Quartermain is actually in charge of ramrodding the mutinous monsters. 

 A few non-monster guest-stars with occult associations, such as Brother Voodoo and the Son of Satan, make appearances, but most of the other subordinate characters are literal monsters: Lilith the Daughter of Dracula, Goom, Grogg, Groot (not yet confined to one word), and Dragoom. Wiki claims that the Werewolf By Night and the Manphibian are in there but I didn't see them. An old Giant-Man foe, the Living Eraser, is name-checked only, and some old Hulk villains, the Lords of the Living Lightning, appear briefly. The Mole Man shows up for two panels toward the end. Some guy named Merlin is the villain but he seems unlikely to be continuous with any previous version. The series is pretty much a mess, and the art's ugly.  

MONSTER MASHUPS #115

 There's no story in OUT OF THE NIGHT #4 (1952) that corresponds to this cover, apparently depicting a battle between a witch (note the broomstick) and a winged demon. But since it's Frank Frazetta, who would complain?                                                                                               

   Same thing here: two monsters fight on the cover with no corresponding story inside. The white creep battling the winged demon was perhaps meant to be a zombie, given the graveyard setting.                                                                                                   

 

NULL-CROSSOVERS #19

  Most of the null-crossovers I've examined here have been covers or one-page interactions of characters that are not genuine narratives, like this one. SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE #44 is a crossover between various horror-hosts, consisting of two pages at the comic's beginning and a full-page joke at the end. Despite the greater length I would still judge this to be a non-narrative vignette of the type I discussed here. 

 As usual in these types of vignettes, the hosts not only don't interact with the characters, there's also no real narrative in their three pages here. This is in marked contrast to the EC story "Horror Beneath the Streets," examined here, in which the hosts both interact with their "victims" and dominate the story as focal icons.

As a curiosity, the letters-page issue of HOUSE also sports a "crossover" of a very different sort, as future comics superstar Todd MacFarlane weighs in with his opinion on a recent issue.

The same lettercol includes a separate letter in which a fan asks about the disposition of several DC characters that have nothing whatever to do with any of the horror-titles. I rather doubt the fan directed this inquiry to SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE; probably someone just wanted to run the letter some place and SECRETS had a hole to fill. This exchange is amusing for a comment, attributed to DC editor Len Wein, in which the reader asks about the TEEN TITANS character "Bumblebee" and is told that the character "never existed."  

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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

To celebrate the 50th issue of Warren's VAMPIRELLA in 1976, writer Bill DuBay and various artists collaborated on a crossover-- possibly the first for the vampiric vixen-- between Vampirella and two other characters who had their own serials in the magazine. It's a decent story but not anything I feel the need to review in depth.

Here's Vampirella's first meeting with Pantha, the girl with the tendency to go feline and feral.

Later Vampirella and her support-characters encounter the magazine's resident witch-heroine, Fleur.

Finally, because at the time Warren was publishing reprints of Will Eisner's SPIRIT, a final playful story involves a couple of Vampi's buddies visiting Wildwood Cemetery, in the mistaken belief that the long dead Denny Colt may have been revived as a mad killer. More a joke than a real crossover is the last page, where what might be "the spirit of THE SPIRIT" makes an appearance.

MONSTER MASHUPS #104

DC's hoary BOB HOPE tried to appeal to monster-loving kids by injecting famous fiends into the stories. Not sure if it started in #95. but this issue also shows a faculty of fiends meeting a goofy teen named "Super-Hip." This dopey character, who could change into any form, was created by writer Arnold Drake, who one year later would become the scripter on DC's first version of PLASTIC MAN. Not sure if the monsters helped, but the HOPE title managed to soldier on until 1968.

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #100

 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.

NOTE: There was a short-lived musical group called the Bop-Kats, but it was brief and the main guy behind it was born in 1939, so in 1954, the year MADHOUSE #4 was published, he would have been 15 or 16-- not exactly primed to hit the top of any music charts. But it's still more likely that the story's author made up the term on his own. 

Also, I got it backwards, MADHOUSE #4's cover used the interior splash art for the first appearance of "Real Gone" in 1954, and then used some other cover for a reprint misleadingly labeled #2, in 1957.

MONSTER MASHUPS #94

 See WEIRD MYSTERIES #6. Read, read, read. Read story "Full Moon," see hitchhiking man accept lift 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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

This post should win my blog a prize for "Most Obscure Crossover No One Cares About." Timely's funny-animal superhero Super Rabbit first appeared in COMEDY COMICS #14, getting his powers via a magic ring (which in some manner is also the bathtub ring of the witch who gives it to him)...

But though the witch is not named, by her design it's clearly "Widjit Witch," who had her own very irregularly published feature in COMEDY COMICS and other Timely features, not to mention appearing on things like puzzle pages. Here she is in CC #13, descanting on the subject of how Adolf Hitler won a medal.

ADDENDA: The two characters later have an explicit crossover in this text story from SUPER RABBIT #2.