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."  

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 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.

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.