THE WEIRDIE FILES

 In keeping with my new determination of "weirdies" as a subcategory of crossovers, THE WEIRDIE FILES are dedicated to this literary phenomenon. 

I'll start with the most recent iteration of JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK.

The superordinate ensemble is made up of Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, and Detective Chimp.

The subordinate ensemble consists of The Demon, John Constantine, Blue Devil, and the late great Zatara.

Subordinate guest stars with stature include Zauriel, Deadman, Phantom Stranger, Madame Xanadu, Andrew Bennett, and five Justice Leaguers. A few such characters show up for one panel and have no lines.

Subordinate guest stars possessed of only charisma are Traci Thirteen, Klarion the Witch Boy, Morgaine LeFey. Felix Faust, Nabu the Wise, Mordru, and the demonic trio Ghast, Rath, and Abnegazar. Traci, daughter of the ghost-buster Doctor Thirteen, attained a little stature in the backup series ARCHITECTS AND MORTALITY but I'm not sure it's consequential enough to designate her a stature-type.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Woody Woodpecker started out as a proto-crossover, popping up in the Andy Panda cartoon KNOCK KNOCK in 1940, and quickly eclipsing all the other characters in the Walter Lantz studio.

For years to come Lantz would continue having his characters cross over in comics and cartoons. FOUR COLOR COMICS #21 is devoted to Oswald Rabbit and his friends, and Woody appears just for about three or four pages, just because.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Since the historical character of Rasputin has IMO acquired what I deem a "legendary" status, I consider that both the 2004 HELLBOY and the graphic novel on which it's based to be charisma-crossovers.

The situation is a little different with characters that are based on myths but who are given some sort of gimmick that doesn't have anything to do with their original stories. For that reason, I don't consider the film's seqjuel GOLDEN ARMY to be a crossover of any kind. However, the 2019 reboot, which mixes at least two figures from disparate mythologies-- Nimue from Arthurian tales, and Baba Yaga from Russian folklore-- does count as a charisma-crossover.

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.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 BETTY BOOP AND THE LITTLE KING is a curiosity with nothing much to recommend it but whatever story might lie behind the mundane details of how it came to exist.

 

To be sure, at least Betty is central to the action of this 1936 short, in contrast to her being a glorified guest-star in POPEYE THE SAILOR WITH BETTY BOOP in 1933. Ostensibly the animators made a cartoon sex film in which the sailor-man and the Boopadoop girl got it on, which if extant would probably constitute their most interesting crossover.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

I've now reviewed the three Famous Studios cartoons that led to the ascension of Herman the Mouse to his small degree of stardom. None of these are crossovers, but because they give Herman stature, he's a star when he's teamed up with his most famous adversary. Once or twice Herman, or other mice from the same studio, encountered a cat that some fans label a "Proto-Katnip," but I've looked at these and don't think that there's sufficient resemblance, even if the same voice actor who later did Katnip may have been billed for the earlier cat. So as far as I'm concerned, the Katnip who first appears in MICE MEETING YOU (November 1950) is the only Katnip. He becomes a co-star in these cartoons, as he is in his slightly later teaming (December 1950) with "Buzzy the Crow." MICE MEETING YOU is not any kind of crossover, but the first Buzzy/Katnip cartoon, SOCK-A-BYE KITTY, is a stature-crossover because Katnip had become a co-star in the Herman series first and remained the dominant co-star in the HERMAN series. One might argue that though none of the Herman-Katnip cartoons are crossovers, all of the Buzzy-Katnip cartoons are stature-crossovers-- though I don't plan to watch any more of them to find out.

Herman also made a couple of cameo appearances, notably in the 1946 banned POPEYE short THE ISLAND FLING.

And here's Buzzy and Katnip teamed for the first time.

CROSSOVER MADNESS

The Grant Morrison run on ACTION COMICS, reviewed here, contains various crossovers of heroes and villains with the main hero, but the oddest revival is that of super-obscure Super-villain Ferlin Nyxly.