I finally had the time to reread H.P. Lovecraft's THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS, and though the majority of HPL stories probably register only as "null-crossovers," since the icons referenced don't appear "on stage," WHISPERER actually qualifies as a full icon-crossover, for reasons set down here.
An example of a time-travel crossover set in modern times:
And just to give an example of a "team" of innominate legends drawn purely from recorded history, here's a 1947 BLUE BEETLE story from ALL TOP COMICS #8. The titular hero encounters, thanks to a time-travel device, a "super-menace team-up" whose members are culled from different eras: the pirate Blackbeard, the serial killer Jack the Ripper, and the wife-murderer Doctor Crippen. In fact, the writer of this tale made an overt attempt to "mythify" the historical Crippen-- who only killed one woman according to the law-- into some sort of odd "Bluebeard" type who killed multiple wives.
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.
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.
I checked one of a series of "pulp heroes meet monsters" series from Moonstone, name of THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE VS. FRANKENSTEIN. It was competent, but I've nothing much to say about it except that I liked the descendant of Dr Frankenstein going by the name "Cushing."
From my review of CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE SLAVE GIRL:
Of the other "name pirates" standing alongside Kidd and Bonney, only Blackbeard (Mike Ross) has anything much to do. The names of Calico Jack, Stede Bonnet and James Avery are tossed out haphazardly and with no real characters attached, while another famous pirate, Bartholomew Roberts, gets both of his names farmed out to two separate characters, a Captain Bartholomew and a Captain Roberts. I guess the writers got a short list of famous pirate-names and ran out. Anyway, as far as crossovers of legendary historical characters are concerned, only Kidd, Bonney and Blackbeard rate.
EC artist Jack Davis did a lot of lobby cards and album covers on "monster mash" themes, but this might be the best of them, even if one doesn't necessarily consider most of the Addams Family "monsters."
