CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Within a year of MLJ launching the first comic-book crossover. they used their new feature "Steel Sterling" to debut a villain who would reform and get his own feature as a costumed hero in a scant few months.

First, in ZIP COMICS #10 (1941), Sterling battles a trio of circus-skilled thieves: strong man Hefto, rubber-man Twisto, and fire-breather Inferno. Hefto dies in that story while Twisto and Inferno escape.

In ZIP #11, Twisto and Inferno part ways. Twisto is captured by the law, but as in compensation, a new, more formidable villain takes his place: the devilish, poison-using Rattler. Sterling masquerades as a crook in order to trap Inferno, but the two of them end up battling the Rattler. Inferno gets poisoned, but after Sterling saves his life, the fire breather swears to reform. His intent to reform cancels him out as a "villain," but the story still registers as a villain-crossover thanks to the presence of both Twisto and The Rattler, while Inferno's grooming as a future hero makes his presence a proto-crossover of two heroes.

In ZIP #12 Inferno helps Sterling capture the Rattler and then surrenders to the law. However, in #13, Sterling goes under cover in prison to catch another bad guy, and once again Inferno, in the same prison, renders aid. A possible parole is mentioned by the warden.

In BLUE RIBBON #13. Inferno's still in prison, but he breaks out in order to foil the plan of other prisoners to kill the judge who sentenced them, and Inferno as well. Once the threat is neutralized, the judge suggests that Inferno (no other name is given) should remain a fugitive while taking up the superhero game. He only enjoyed six more solo adventures, but at least in the last one, it was stated that the governor has pardoned the former felon. And as far as I know that ended the character's Golden Age adventures, though he was revived in the Silver Age once to team up with The Web, and may have been revived elsewhere in other unsuccessful reboots of the MLJ line. (In the 1967 story, yet another hero, the Fox, has a non-speaking cameo.)

CROSSOVER MADNESS

Usually in the Golden Age villains didn't often cross from one feature to another. One of the few exceptions was the villain Crazy Quilt, who was allegedly created by Jack Kirby in BOY COMMANDOS #15 (1946). He went on to three more appearances before his last one in BOY COMMANDOS #33 (seen above, possibly drawn by Curt Swan), just three issues before the title was cancelled in 1949.

There was no reference to the villain's history with the Boy Commandos when he was introduced as a new villain for Robin the Boy Wonder in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #123 (1951), but the theoretical storytellers John Broome and Jim Mooney had nothing to do with the Commandos features so far as I know. Possibly, because the Commandos title was dead, someone decided that Crazy Quilt was worth re-using instead of making up a new pattern-criminal. This was the colorful crook's final Golden Age story, not least because STAR SPANGLED COMICS was cancelled in 1952, leaving Robin to return to his status as Batman's partner. However, DC reprinted the Boy Wonder's combat with the multicolored menace, and this resulted in CQ getting revived in a 1979 BATMAN issue, so that from then on he was defined as a de facto opponent for the Dynamic Duo.

NULL-CROSSOVERS #17

I almost never bother with crossovers between fictional characters and "celebrities playing themselves," all of which I deem null-crossovers. But here's a peculiar forgotten null-crossover from BOY COMMANDOS #22 (1947). I was reading all of the stories in which the Commandos encountered the florid fiend Crazy-Quilt, but in #22 the heroes also met cornpone singer Judy Canova. In fact, "Real Judy" forms a passion for girl-hating teenager Brooklyn. She also helps him bust a crime, though this doesn't make Brooklyn any more receptive to female attentions.

I wonder if DC got permission to use Canova's image. Possibly they were floating the idea of a Canova comic? The first and only comic book devoted to the persona of the hillbilly songstress came out in 1950 from Fox Features and only lasted three issues.

MONSTER MASHUPS #98

Technically this is just a "gallery of monsters" in a Charlton kiddie-comic, but here 'tis anyway.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

Here's my review of KLAUS AND THE WITCH OF WINTER, in which the best moment is Grant Morrison's version of Santa Claus meeting Gepetto of PINOCCHIO fame.

And here's KLAUS AND THE CRISIS IN XMASVILLE, wherein the titular hero meets one of his folkloric analogues, the beneficent Russian spirit Grandfather Frost.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

I've completed my review of GOTHAM SEASON 2 here.

As explained therein, the season consists of two separable story-arcs. But the first, "Rise of the Super-Villains," only has intermittent crossover-episodes, given that the Big Bad of the story, Theo Galavan, is not an icon emulation of a comics character. Thus crossovers only exist in the arc when a "new" villain crosses over with an "established" villain, as in the three-part opener featuring Jerome "Maybe-Joker" Velaska, and the episode "By Fire," in which Catwoman and Firefly explicitly team up to pull off a crime.

The entire eleven-episode arc "Wrath of the Super-Villains," qualifies as an ongoing crossover, in which mad scientist Hugo Strange is responsible for creating or empowering such template deviations as Mister Freeze, Firefly, Clayface, and Azrael. (Also, the comics character Cornelius Stirk appears for a small role as an Arkham inmate.) The concluding episode suggests other, unspecified menaces released on Gotham thanks to Strange, but until I've watched the other seasons I can't determine if any of those shown in that episode are later specified.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 

Going by the logic of my discussion of superordinate and subordinate ensembles in ICONIC BONDING PT. 4, the first episode of the first season, "Pilot," qualifies as a crossover in that this show introduces the show's versions of Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler as permanent members of that superordinate ensemble. 

ADDENDUM: I neglected to add "The Court of Owls," whose presence is only implied in the first episode, but who are later identified as the killers of the Waynes. They too are "crossovers" only for the first episode, albeit by implication only.

There are only two other crossover possibilities. One is the minor character of Victor Zsasz. In the comic books, he's an independent serial killer, but the TV series, emulating the film BATMAN BEGINS, turned the character into a hitman for the mobster Carmine Falcone. In the show he also works under Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, In both capacities, he's semi-bonded to the service of his bosses, and so is subsumed by their natures, just as, in Kirby's NEW GODS, villains like Kalibak and Desaad are subsumed by the long shadow of Darkseid.

The other potential crossover appears in just one episode, "The Blind Fortune-Teller," where Gordon and company encounter Jerome Velaska, a circus clown who confesses to murdering his mother. Had the show's producers never done anything more with Velaska beyond this episode, I would deem him to be merely an unreasonable facsimile of the Joker, not unlike a similar one-shot figure in Season 2. But at the start of Season 2, Velaska gets bumped up to full supervillain status, and that makes him a "strong template deviation" of the original character, not just a doppelganger.