VARIANT REVISIONS PT. 2

 Some of my current terminology re: "originary and variant propositions" was preceded by the two essay-series CRYPTO-CONTINUITY AND DOPPELGANGBANGERS, starting here. In those essays I more or less used "template" to stand in for the current "originary proposition," "template deviation" to stand in for "variant propositions," and "total deviation" to stand in for "null-variant propositions." All of these terms, though, are predicated on analyzing the propositions "from outside," seen from the POV of the "real" reader.

However, it's not impossible to see many if not all such variations "from inside," as if all of the propositions weren't just created by isolated raconteurs but were instead variations on archetypal tropes that precede even the first "originary proposition." 

It's true thar often the originary proposition is the strongest one in terms of evoking one or more of the four potentialities, which is why I previously compared such propositions to the sort of template used, say, in early printing technology. I mentioned in the CRYPTO series major icons like KING KONG and DRACULA, and it would be hard to argue that any of the variations on these figures, however entertaining, exceeded the originals in any way. 

      

  However, there are times that the originary proposition is not the most compelling, even on simpler levels. The durable Terrytoons stars "Heckle and Jeckle" are known by most viewers as a pair of wisecracking male magpies. However, the first cartoon in the series, 1946's "The Talking Magpies," posited them as a married male-and-female couple that caused no end of trouble for Farmer Al Falfa. Paul Terry then chose to issue a "rebooted" Heckle and Jeckle that same year with "The Uninvited Pests," and as two identical males with differing accents, the characters enjoyed another 51 theatrical cartoons. So in terms of popular success, the variant proposition was the more successful, not least because two obnoxious males could be used in many more slapstick situations than a married magpie pair.

Now, if one wanted to take the archetypal perspective I suggested above, one could imagine two parallel worlds, one in which Heckle and Jeckle were both male, and one in which they were a married couple. Most fictional propositions regarding parallel worlds are not much less chimerical. The parallel-world explanation for duplicate versions of DC characters such as Flash and Green Lantern sometimes verged on expressions of archetypal realities, though usually in fairly clumsy terms. The first Green Lantern begins very poorly-- I read the first volume of Golden Age reprints and could barely see any reasons for the success of the character beyond the base idea of a hero with a wonder-working "magic ring." Later in the series writers conceived a few subordinate characters-- Solomon Grundy, Vandal Savage-- evocative enough that DC Comics made them major figures in the company's later cosmology. But I'm not sure that, taken just on their Golden Age appearances, Grundy or Savage were as good IN THEIR TIME as the better villains of that era, from serials like Batman, Wonder Woman, or even Airboy and The Hangman. In contrast, the Silver Age Green Lantern, which crossbred the rudimentary Alan Scott concept with the "space ranger" ideas of the prose "Lensmen" series, displayed excellence in the kinetic and mythopoeic potentialities within a few years.

Even "soft reboots" within the same cosmos-- which make no use of "parallel worlds" as such-- are often treated as constituting variant propositions in, say, fandom-wikis like the DC Database. The 1988 ANIMAL MAN, reviewed here, dispenses with any idea that two separate Animal-Men co-exist in two distinct worlds. Rather, the first one knows that he was created by one author and rejected in favor of an updated hero with the same name by another author. Yet at the same time, Grant Morrison suggests that there's some loosely archetypal limbo where even the lamest characters ever created (hello, Ultra the Multi-Alien) continue to exist. And some soft reboots are performed not through intention but through error. In the first VARIANT REVISIONS, I took pains to analyze how Bob Haney first created a reasonably evocative mystery villain in one TEEN TITANS story. Yet when Haney later needed a make-work villain to plug into a hastily conceived scenario, the writer simply rewrote the established character's motivations to suit his current needs. As if to compound the error, George Perez constructed yet another ramshackle artifice on top of Haney's blunder and, to the extent that DC fans think of The Gargoyle at all, they probably defer to the Perez interpretation.

Some soft reboots even occur simply in response to changing tastes or priorities. Jerry Siegel's original Superman, while always devoted to justice, sometimes played fast and loose with legalities. DC editors didn't like that, possibly fearing a profitable character would get targeted by moral watchdogs-- which eventually happened anyway-- and so Silver Age Superman became an absolute stickler for obeying the law, even the law of made-up planets. Here too I would probably argue that Silver Age Superman surpassed the originary proposition in many though not all respects-- though the more creative Golden Age concepts of Siegel and his collaborators became the essential foundation for the Silver Age proposition.  

More to come.

        

ICONIC PROPOSITIONS PT. 1

"The original King Kong has but one story, at the end of which he perishes, never to return, at least not at the hands of his creators. However, when the company that owned Kong leased him out to Toho Studios, Kong was revised in many respects-- most significantly, making him large enough that he could stand toe to toe with the Big G. This Kong is not really the original Kong, but there exists a sort of "crypto-continuity" between the two, so that I regard this crossover as a crossover of two Primes, simply because Kong II is meant to be a strong echo of the original icon." --A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 2 (2021)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   "Lastly, a great deal of "icon emulation" relies on at least a superficial level of recognizability, even where that recognizability contradicts everything known about the icon's established history. For instance, the film BLOODRAYNE: DELIVERANCE pits its heroine against a vampire named Billy the Kid, ostensibly four hundred years old. If this version of Billy has been around that long, then clearly he has nothing to do with either the real or folkloric history of Billy the Kid, and the film-script makes no attempt to rationalize the discordances. But because the writer sought to make his villain recognizable, the film nevertheless delivers a "strong template deviation" type of crossover."" --THE DANCE OF THE NEW AND THE OLD (2022)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 Since in 2021 I started assiduously pursuing the narrative pattern-analysis I *may* dub "crossology," I've struggled somewhat with trying to account for the situations described in the examples above. In both, some raconteur executes a version of an established icon that strongly deviates from previously established descriptions of the icon in one or more ways. In the case of Kong in KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, no change was more monumental than the idea that Kong II, unlike the Kong of the 1933 film, was alive. The script for the 1962 movie could have specified that this was a different Kong than the earlier one, just as the Godzilla of GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN is a different but essentially identical "Godzillasaurus" as the one in the 1954 original. But the writers of KING KONG VS GODZILLA did not make any such distinction. In my view the writers wanted to encourage the identification of Kong II with Kong I, the better to sell to audiences the mythic battle between the foremost kaiju of America with the pre-eminent monster-child of Nippon.                                                                                                       

The example of Billy the Kid in BLOODRAYNE DELIVERANCE is arguably more extreme: not only was this Billy a bloodsucking vampire, he didn't even originate in the era with which both the real William Bonney and his fictional congeners are associated: the Old West. Yet the writers of that movie also wanted more recognition-value out of associating "Vampire Billy" with the legendary outlaw, or else they too could have pursued the strategy I described for Kong II: just say it's some bloodsucker who came along and assumed the identity of a famed gunfighter. I tried to rationalize this narrative identification with phrases like "recognition of motifs" and "template deviations," and while those aren't precisely wrong, they may not get to the heart of the problems inherent in the process of icon emulation. My current solution will phase out the term "template deviations" in favor of a brand-new headscratcher, "variant propositions," which Part 2 will attempt to justify.                                                                                                                                                                             

THE DANCE OF THE NEW AND THE OLD

Though there are ways in which my new categories, "novelty" and "recognizability," apply to stand-alone works (henceforth called "monads"). the categories are intended mostly to describe the dynamics of old stuff and new stuff in a serial format.

I.A. Richards, summing up his definition of all mental activity as "sorting," imagines the response of a single-celled organism to a stimulus and recognizing it as something encountered before.

...the lowliest organism-- a polyp or an amoeba-- if it learns from its past, if it exclaims in its acts, 'Hallo! Thingembob again!' it thereby shows itself to be a conceptual thinker.

Such a sorting, of course, is only possible if the organism can distinguish between things it has or has not encountered before. I think Richards is correct in his intuition, though with the caveat that the amoeba can't conceptualize anything about the things it finds familiar or unfamiliar.

Serial franchises depend on a constant "new and old" dynamic. The majority of serials focus on a particular character or ensemble of characters. (I have addressed the concept of non-character icons here.) Even if no other elements are repeated within the serial, the main character(s) provide the reader with "recognizability." In adventure-oriented serials, "novelty" is most often supplied by the hero's opponents, though after a time they too may take on a strong aura of recognizability.

To be sure, serials with a domestic tone may focus not upon opponents but upon foils. The comic strip BLONDIE stars the duo of Blondie and Dagwood, and most of their conflicts with other characters stem from stock figures in the subordinate ensemble: the neighbors, Dagwood's boss, the mailman. New characters may appear-- for instance, Dagwood constantly faces an onslaught of annoying salesmen who importune the house-holder with aggressive sales techniques-- but usually these characters have no names and never make a second appearance as such.

Crossovers exist to extend the "cosmos" of a given icon by relating it to the "cosmos" of another icon. Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel IVANHOE is one of the first such crossovers. The entirely fictional main character encounters a few historical characters, such as Richard the Lion-Hearted, but they are not crossovers because they are aligned with the cosmos of Ivanhoe. However, Scott also works the mythology of Robin Hood into the narrative, and Robin Hood even in 1819 was a highly recognizable figure with his own "cosmos." Since IVANHOE is a novel without sequels, everything aligned to the knight's mythology-- the hero himself, his romantic interests, and his enemies-- are all "novel" compared to the mythos of Robin Hood, at least from the viewpoint of most readers.

In serial narratives, it's more often the case that the author seeks to promote two separate fictional universes by having them intersect. Often this means the encounter of two characters-- She and Allan Quatermain, Daredevil and Spider-Man-- though it can also mean a crossover of a character and an established physical environment. TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE does include David Innes, one of the heroes of the "Earth's Core" series, but Innes barely appears in the story, and the greater focus is upon Tarzan's encounter with the savage world of Pellucidar.

Now, while the author of such a work knows that the intersecting icons may both be recognizable to some readers, the base idea is to interest those readers to whom one of the icons is "novel," the better to convert that audience. Usually, within the diegesis of the story, the first meeting of two icons is marked by novelty, just as it is in real experience, though afterward the icons are generally familiar with one another, and within the diegesis they become recognizable, even if their next interaction may provide some elements of novelty.

Lastly, a great deal of "icon emulation" relies on at least a superficial level of recognizability, even where that recognizability contradicts everything known about the icon's established history. For instance, the film BLOODRAYNE: DELIVERANCE pits its heroine against a vampire named Billy the Kid, ostensibly four hundred years old. If this version of Billy has been around that long, then clearly he has nothing to do with either the real or folkloric history of Billy the Kid, and the film-script makes no attempt to rationalize the discordances. But because the writer sought to make his villain recognizable, the film nevertheless delivers a "strong template deviation" type of crossover.

QUICK DEMIHERO POST

 In PERSONA-TO-PERSONA CALLINGS, I wrote:

In some of my earliest writings on crossovers, I distinguished between "static crossovers" and "dynamic crossovers." I won't repeat those particular observations, but the salient aspect of that theory was that the static crossovers were those that were fairly regularized, like Donald Duck appearing in Uncle Scrooge's feature, while dynamic crossovers were those that spotlighted a more unusual meeting, say, of Spider-Man and Daredevil. I would now tend to state that, in contrast to the crossovers of the other three persona-types-- of heroes, villains, or monsters-- demiheroes only sustain crossovers of a dynamic kind, because most of them function as support-characters. Returning to the Batman cosmos, a story in which Alfred simply met police detective Harvey Bullock would not be a dynamic crossover. 

 

I'll make this observation short and sweet: though it's possible for the continuing demihero star of a series to sustain a crossover-vibe with an innominate character-- that is, a character drawn from myth, legend or imagined history-- one-shot demiheroes cannot sustain such a vibe.

Some examples of non-crossovers include:

A couple of nugatory Abbott and Costello characters meeting Mister Hyde is not a crossover. 

However, a movie in which a nugatory viewpoint character meets SEVERAL monster-icons-- who are all supposed to be strong template deviations of the original icons-- IS a crossover. 

The 1959 ALIAS JESSE JAMES causes a nugatory Bob Hope character to cross paths with the innominate icon Jesse James. The film is not a crossover for that reason.

But the same movie is a Low-Charisma Crossover thanks to one scene in which several western-heroes, played by actors associated with those characters, make cameos. These cameos included both innominate characters based on historical figures, such as Fess Parker's Davy Crockett, and nominative characters totally original to fiction, such as Ward Bond's Major Adams from WAGON TRAIN.

A bunch of nugatory characters essayed by The Three Stooges do not carry the vibe of a crossover when they meet Hercules.

HOWEVER--

If you have demiheroes who exist in a loose serial continuity, then you do get such crossovers, as when we have the cartoon demiheroes Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse encounter such innominate characters as Robin Hood--

Or a nominative character like Sherlock Holmes.

I hope that clears that up.😝

PROTO CROSSOVERS AND SUCH PT. 2

 As a result of my refinements in Part 1 of this series, I'm overturning some of the conclusions I made in COSMIC ALIGNMENT PART 2:

Marvel's Inhumans debuted in a 1965 issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, and the Black Panther appeared in the comic in the following year. It practically goes without saying that Lee and Kirby intended for both the Panther and the Inhumans to appear in serials at some point, but neither did for some time, and so for all of those appearances they register as Subs. In a special FF issue dated November 1967, both the Inhumans and the Black Panther crossed over with the Fantastic Four in fighting Psycho-Man. The Black Panther would not get a regular berth for another year, when he became a regular member of the Avengers in 1968, so within the compass of that story, he remained a Sub type. However, the special placed a more immediate push to see if readers wanted an Inhumans series, since in an issue of THOR, also dated November 1967, the denizens of Attilan received their first feature, albeit only a backup strip. So the FF ANNUAL would be a High-Stature crossover because the Inhumans had just become Primes around the time when the issue came out, while the equally enjoyable Panther had to wait another year for Prime status. 

This section is not incorrect with respect to the Black Panther and the Inhumans being Subs within the cosmos of the Prime stars, the Fantastic Four. However, the overall intent of the essay was to state that the debut stories of the new heroes did not count as crossovers because it took considerable time for any of them to get their own features. However, now I would consider that the debuts of both characters would count as "proto-crossovers," and so would any other stories produced before the "future Prime stars" got their own berths. 

Such a "proto-crossover" appears in a Captain America continuity from late 1967 through early 1968 (though all of the issues were dated1968). But Marvel did not wait to see whether or not the issues teaming up Cap with the Black Panther sold well, for the storyline culminated with the star-spangled crusader recommending the Panther for admission to The Avengers. The admission took place about a month or two later in AVENGERS #52, and this comprised the African prince's first role as a Prime in any series.

Now, all these "retroactive proto-crossovers" raise a question: if the debut of Black Panther in FANTASTIC FOUR is a proto-crossover, is the same true of an ADAPTATION of that story, such as the one that appears in an episode of the 1994-96 FANTASTIC FOUR animated series. But my answer to this question is NO. For one thing, within the corpus of existing episodes in this series, the Black Panther never had the chance to ascend to Prime status, so he's just a Sub within the series, in contrast to the comic book universe from which he comes.

Now, had the MCU adapted the FF continuity for a full-fledged FANTASTIC FOUR movie, and then spun BLACK PANTHER off into his own series, THAT would have made the hypothetical FF film a proto-crossover. CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR was the MCU movie that launched the company's version of the Panther, but it's not a straight adaptation, but a new story, and is therefore governed by a different set of rules. The MCU always had the intent to spin the Panther off into his own film, and since CIVIL WAR sets up the storyline for the 2018 BLACK PANTHER, I don't deem CIVIL WAR to be a proto-crossover, just a Full Crossover in which the MCU Panther is a strong template deviation of the one in the comic books.

However, when one is dealing with "strong template deviations" rather than the weak type seen in a direct adaptation, it isn't strictly necessary for a character to get his own feature. Nick Fury is a Prime star within Marvel comic books, though his career in the comics has probably put him most often into the role of a Sub support-character rather than that of a Prime. To date the MCU has produced a strong template deviation of Fury, and there are no indications that he's EVER going to be anything to the MCU but a Prime demoted to the level of a Sub. Yet thanks to his comic-book career Nick Fury has enough stature that even his first appearance in the 2008 IRON MAN qualifies as a Full Crossover. 

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 3

 At the end of A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PART 2 I said I would next discuss "non-distinct replacements," but a better term would be "non-differentiated replacements."

In Part 2 I mentioned two examples of differentiated replacements from comic books: the forties hero The Black Owl and the Marvel villain The Molecule Man. I paid particular attention to the latter, noting that even though the first and second versions of The Molecule Man had no personal names in their debuts, and barely any personal history, they are nevertheless differentiated in that the reader assumes that they are living human beings with distinct backgrounds. Such differentiations are harder to make, though, with respect to non-human entities, because their non-human nature confers an aura of otherness that obscures differentiation. 

The most visible example of such a non-differentiated replacement is that of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. The first monster to go by this name perished at the end of his debut film, presumably because his creators had no idea that he was going to be bigger and more sequel-worthy than any other giant monster from any country. When the 1954 GODZILLA scored big, Toho Studios quickly followed up with GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. Instead of finding some way to reconstitute the dissolved body of the original King, the producers simply had another "Godzilla-saurus" emerge from the bowels of the Earth, and for the remainder of the original series, this pinch-hitter became, to all intents and purposes, the only Godzilla whose adventures anyone followed, even though hardcore viewers were entirely aware that the first rough beast had long passed on. A much later film purported to revive the first Godzilla, but for a couple of decades, no one cared about the debut creature.

Aliens are even more susceptible to becoming non-differentiated characters. The Martians of H.G. Wells, the archetypal alien invaders, are not differentiated from one another in either the original novel or in latter-day creations like Marvel's KILLRAVEN serial. Thus if Killraven fights a horde of Martians in New York, and then travels down to Tallahassee to fight a separate horde, both sets of Martians are essentially coterminous. The same principle applies from the ETs from the ALIEN film franchise, even though there are some morphological differences between particular representatives of the species, such as the male warrior from the first film and the Alien Queen from the second. 

The ETs of the PREDATOR series have the potential to be more individualized, though the hunters in the first and second films are not significantly differentiated from one another. I recall one comic-book story which made a minor attempt to distinguish two Predators within the context of that story, making one a "hero" and the other a "villain." But from what I can judge, the Predators' appeal lies in the fact that they're cookie-cutter menaces, whose raison d'etre stays the same regardless of any particular movie, even when played off against another "swarm" type of ET in the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films.

Other examples include the various sharks in the JAWS franchise, at least two loosely related "killer bee" movies, and assorted fantasy-creatures like Al Capp's Shmoos.

Of course, it's not impossible for one film to coast on another's rep, using the name of a somewhat-established monster but substituting a beast with a different origin. The producers of the 2000 DTV film PYTHON in 2000 came out with another giant snake film, BOA, in 2002. Then the filmmakers engineered what looked like a crossover of the two serpentine beasties in 2004's BOA VS. PYTHON. However, though the Python used was essentially coterminous with the one from the 2000 film, the modern Boa had no connection to the prehistoric giant from the 2002 film. However, the two Boas are still the same species, and so it's arguable that the second one is a non-differentiated replacement of the original.  

CROSSING GODS

 As in "crossing guards," get it? Ah, well.

Thus far the only thing I've written on the interaction of deities from different mythoi is this section from COSMIC ALIGNMENT:

In conclusion, I will admit that full-fledged myths are harder than folk-tales to judge in terms of alignment. Suzanne Langer and others have noted that in mythology proper figures like gods and their monstrous antagonists often become set in their own "continuity," however often this or that detail may change. Yet some gods and heroes, theoretically in the same universe, never really cross paths, despite "continuities" like those of the Iliad or the Argonautica. Does it count as a crossover if Perseus and Jason, who never meet in the old myths, appear in the same story? I would not tend to consider it a crossover if some ordinary schmuck conjures up the goddess Venus. But Venus crossing over with the mythology of Satan would certainly be a different matter. More on these matters later, perhaps.

Before going into further discourse on the crossovers of gods, demigods, and other characters from myth proper, I want to re-emphasize my earlier statement that a given character does not accrue either stature or charisma just because he either assumes, or is bestowed with, the name of a mythic character. A quick example is the Two-Gun Kid villain Goliath, who was simply a big, strong man who'd acquired the nickname at some point.

Now, when dealing with a character who is supposed to be even a strong template deviation of a myth-character, that character possesses at least some minor charisma. In ACTION COMICS #320 (1965), Superman uses a time-travel device to draw three famous strongmen of myth into present-day Metropolis for some damned reason.

Writer Otto Binder doesn't make any effort to emulate more than superficial aspects of Atlas, Hercules and Samson, and he even gives all of them special powers that they didn't have in their original stories. (Two years later, Binder would show somewhat greater myth-fidelity in the three-part Zha-Vam story.) Yet the extra powers are Binder's clue to the reader that the three strongmen, who immediately start trying to take over Metropolis, are not from Earth's past, but from a parallel world where the trio were evildoers. Nevertheless, because even evil parallel-Earth versions participate in the charisma of the original innominate myths, these dumbbells have more charisma in their first appearance than, say, Brainiac does in his first appearance, or the aforementioned Goliath.

The same principle holds for the first adventure in which Marvel's version of Hercules appears in Thor's first annual, also in 1965. Had this version of Hercules only appeared once, he would still have a degree of innominate charisma because he's linked to the classical Greek hero, in contrast to some other first-time villain, such as the above-shown Radioactive Man. However, when Hercules begins to appear as a guest-star in various THOR tales, he doesn't accrue any more charismatic value than any other character making one or more return appearances. But once he begins to be used repeatedly, Marvel-Hercules makes a transition from an innominate figure to a nominative one. Successive writers may continue to draw on the myth of the archaic Hercules to gloss the exploits of Marvel-Hercules, but he's become nominative because readers can trace exactly where he began as a comics-character, and the allusion to the legendary past of the original myth-figure is not as significant.

During this period, Hercules is aligned with the mythos of Thor, so when he "crosses over" into a  mythos like that of the Hulk, he becomes even more firmly imbricated within the greater Marvel Universe. The icing is fully on the cake when the demigod becomes an Avenger, which is the first time Marvel-Hercules accrues the stature of a starring character. (I should note that Thor also becomes a nominative character as the creators elaborate his history apart from that of the archaic Thor, but the process is easier to illustrate with Marvel-Hercules.)

Given that Thor and Hercules become nominative characters rather quickly, they don't have as much of a "myth-crossover" aspect as my earlier post suggested one might find in the conflicting mythoi of Venus and the Son of Satan, if only because the latter character never makes another appearance. Innominate charisma tends to remain stationary in non-serial formats, such as the Neil Gaiman novel AMERICAN GODS. I can't speak for the streaming series-adaptation, which I've not seen. But the stand-alone novel would be high-charisma-- unlike any of the works I've discussed here-- because even though they may be gods in decline, they are supposed to be the real things, and Gaiman ups the charisma by showing intersections between mythoi as different as Odin and Anansi.

Kevin Hearne's novel HOUNDED also takes place in a world where all of the archaic gods still exist in modern times. The first book in this series, entitled "The Iron Druid Chronicles," focuses not on the gods but on Atticus, a druid who's become immortal enough to live into contemporary times. In the first novel, Atticus' mythos is almost entirely made up of Celtic deities, and since Atticus is Celtic himself, they are all aligned to him in a "Sub" relationship. One of the more entertaining allusions to gods from other mythoi is a reference to how a bunch of death-goddesses-- the Celtic Morrigan, the Nordic Valkyries, and the Hindu Kali-- allegedly hang out together. But since the meeting is merely talked about, there's no crossover-charisma. Hearne only works one myth-crossover into HOUNDED, and it's a minor one. Atticus's Celtic enemy Aengus Og makes common cause with a bunch of demons from the Judeo-Christian Hell, though the demons only appear for a few pages. In addition, when Aengus is slain he's claimed by a Christian myth-figure, the pale horseman of Revelation. That's not much myth-charisma to be had, but I imagine later books in the series will expand on Atticus's encounters with figures out of other myths-- though I expect them to be as lightweight as HOUNDED is.

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 2

Another type of doppelganger that cannot be deemed a "template deviation" and so qualifies rather as a "derivative," would be the "replacement character." All of these doppelgangers are always diegetically distinct from whatever character they replace, as opposed, say, to being "retconned" as distinct individuals. The 1950s version of Captain America was not a replacement, since the original idea of the writer was that Cap and his pal Bucky were just slightly older versions of the WWII heroes. A later retcon then claimed that these costumed crusaders were distinct from Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, which clearly was not the original intent.

In the Golden Age, it was rare for a writer to bother having a new version of a character replace another. Often, as I noted in THE THREE CAMILLAS, a creator would just try out different versions of a same-name series-star, barely if at all caring that this played merry hob with "continuity." 

A rare Golden Age example of an overt replacement occurred in the magazine PRIZE COMICS. In the first issue of PRIZE, playboy Doug Danville elected to play superhero, first using the forgettable name "K the Unknown" for his debut, and then changing it for the next thirty-something adventures to "The Black Owl." In issue #13, the magazine introduced the juvenile twin-heroes "Yank and Doodle," whose father Walt Walters was not aware of their double identities. Then in issue #34, someone decided to jettison Doug Danville and to have Walt Walters take over as The Black Owl. This allowed for a little melodrama as the father-hero sometimes crossed over into the adventures of his sons, and vice versa, without the kids knowing who the new Black Owl actually was. I imagine, though, that after a short time the young PRIZE readers probably forgot that there ever was a Danville version of this owlish hero.

In the Silver Age, it was common for villains to be be endlessly recycled, and barely any super-crooks ever succumbed to either imprisonment or death, no matter how seemingly irreversible. A notable exception, though, was the Lee-Kirby creation The Molecule Man. Despite making a powerful debut in FANTASTIC FOUR #20, neither his creators nor anyone else rescued him from his fate at the end of the story: that of being exiled to another world by the heroes' friend The Watcher.

A replacement version, however, showed up in 1974, for the debut issue of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE. Writer Steve Gerber showed readers the previously undisclosed fate of the villain, first seen dying on an alien world and charging his unnamed son to take over his mission to gain vengeance on his old foes, the Fantastic Four. To the best of my knowledge, this is substantially the only Molecule Man extant at Marvel.

Why didn't Gerber decide to simply revive the original malefactor? I theorize it's because he wanted a new angle on a rather colorless original. After Molecule Man Two duplicates the experiment that gave his late father his molecule-altering abilities, he travels to the Earth-plane. However, once he gets there, he finds that because he grew up in a different time-continuum, on Earth he ages rapidly when he doesn't have his wand to replenish his body. This makes for a stirring conclusion when he fights both the Thing and the Man-Thing, and the former hero deprives the villain of his revival-tool.

Molecule Man Two survived his temporary death in the approved comics-fashion and went on to other adventures, and without checking, I assume that the aging-on-Earth angle was quickly dropped. But his relevance to my idea of replacement characters is to ask what if any "cosmic alignment" he had, according to the principles I laid down in this essay. The original Molecule Man was aligned with the Fantastic Four, and no one else. But though his replacement goes looking for The Thing to satisfy his father's grudge, Molecule Man Two is not his father, and so he's not any more aligned to The Thing-- who he meets for the first time in his debut-- than to The Man-Thing. In the long run, Molecule Man Two didn't end up being aligned with any hero in particular, and so became an example of what I've termed "floating alignment." Given that in his debut Molecule Man Two has a weaker charisma than his father, he doesn't provide even a low-charisma crossover when intersecting with the stars of the team-up title, as would be the case whenever two or more team-up characters encountered a villain foreign to both of their mythoi. Here's a quick example of a valid low-charisma crossover, MARVEL TEAM-UP #22, in which another all-purpose villain, the living computer Quasimodo, tilts his lance against both Spider-Man and Hawkeye, neither of whom had met the villain before.

Next up: non-distinct replacements.

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 1

The essays in this series will deal with general permutations of the practice of crossing over previously established characters.

I'm henceforth replacing the term "total template deviation," put forth in this essay, for the simpler term "derivatives." Derivatives may include not only faux versions of well-known fictional characters-- some named earlier being Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Captain America-- but also separate characters who in some other way ride on the coat-tails of an established fictional figure.

Now, when discussing the 1966 film BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA in this essay, I called that version of Dracula a "strong template deviation" because the character strongly deviated from the depiction of the king-vampire in the original source material. However, the same producers who came out with BILLY also inflicted upon the world JESSE-- that is, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, patently another crossbreed between western and horror film-tropes. 

Now, the latter-billed character in the film, Doctor Maria Frankenstein, certainly can't be called a "total template deviation" with relation to the original Mary Shelley Frankenstein, because she's supposed to be the mad scientist's equally mad daughter. But she is derived, very loosely, from the history of the original character, and so that makes her in my book a "derivative." The same holds true for the "Frankenstein" creature who appears in the 1965 FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER, who is only likened to the Shelley monster by the title of the film. The l965 film would not be a crossover, but JESSE would be at least a "low-charisma" crossover, because both title characters are only loosed related to their supposed originals.

Moving to a somewhat higher level of filmmaking, the word "derivative" also applies to the 1936 film DRACULA'S  DAUGHTER. The titular monster, Countess Zaleska, is not mentioned in the 1931 film DRACULA, to which DAUGHTER is theoretically a sequel, nor is there any sort of reference to any such offspring in the pages of Bram Stoker's novel. 

Further complicating the 1936 film is that, because it follows fast on the heels of the events of the 1931 film, Dracula-- or rather, his staked corpse-- does appear briefly in DAUGHTER. Is the film a crossover between the new character and the old one? But no, I determined that being a dead body in a given work carries no more crossover-potential than had Dracula merely been referred to, or shown in a flashback. Now, had Dracula been walking around doing something for a few minutes, I might have at least deemed the 1936 film a "low-charisma" crossover, based on the brevity of the vampire-lord's appearance. But in the absence of any "real-time" activity, DAUGHTER is a derivative but not a crossover.

The idea of having one character appear just long enough to introduce a newer one has precedent in a film like the 1972 BLACULA. In this movie's opening scenes, the original Dracula is around for ten minutes or so at the outset, talking turkey with Prince Mamuwalde. Then the vampire decides to make the African prince into an undead creature, sticks the newly vampirized unfortunate into a tomb for the next seven decades, and even gives the neo-vamp a sarcastic version of Drac's iconic name. During the main action of the film, when Blacula revives in the early 1970s, the Count does not reappear, nor is he mentioned again. To the extent that any viewer thinks about the matter, said viewer probably assumes that the racist vamp gets knocked off some time before Blacula revives in 1972. But because Dracula is such a major fictional figure, BLACULA (but not SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM) is a crossover-- though again, a very low-charisma type, since the iconic vamp makes only a token appearance.

More to come.

CRYPTO-CONTINUITY AND DOPPELGANGBANGERS PT. 2

 

I ended Part 1 on this observation: that even though it was possible for raconteurs to use the name of a famous literary character for any number of secondary doppelgangers, the mere use of the name did not confer a prior status or charisma upon a doppelganger that shared no points of continuity with the original. Thus, a few dozen Dracula-doppelgangers may register as either strong or weak template deviations of the Stoker creation—but “Dracula, Superhero” did not. The latter would be a “total template deviation,” in that he has no gradations of “strong” or “weak” points of continuity.

A similar “total deviation” appears in the case of impostors who assume a familiar guise for some clandestine motive. A few months before Marvel Comics revived the 1940s hero Captain America, Stan Lee had a criminal impostor, the Acrobat, assume the guise of the WII hero in order to deceive the Human Torch. The Acrobat was a total deviation because he clearly shared no continuity with any previous version of the star-spangled adventurer. 

Once a continuity was forged between the forties and sixties version of the character, a “retcon” had to be devised to explain away a previous fifties-era iteration of both Captain American and his sidekick Bucky. Those characters then became demonstrably separate from the original iterations.

The clandestine motive may even remain hidden only from the doppelganger. In the amusing script for issue #4 of THE JOKER, an actor playing Sherlock Holmes suffers amnesia, and becomes convinced that he is Holmes. He then assumes the Holmes persona in order to track down and defeat the Clown Prince, though neither the Joker nor any reader of the comic thinks that the actor is the real thing.

Cycling back in the other direction, it’s possible to have a valid template derivation even without using a famous name, by invoking only images or tropes familiar to an audience. A major plotline of the first LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN sequence includes a turf war in 1890s London between perennial Holmes-foe Moriarty and a mysterious figure called “the Doctor.” Moore used both images and verbal tropes to imply that the Doctor was Fu Manchu, but he never named the character since Fu Manchu is still trademarked, unlike all the public-domain characters in the LEAGUE franchise. 

Similarly, Moore may not have been sure as to whether the prose-and-film character Bulldog Drummond was free and clear. Thus when a version of the character appears in BLACK DOSSIER, Moore changed the doppelganger’s given name from the “Hugh” of the original prose books to “Hugo.” Ironically, the prose character is barely known to modern audiences, having been eclipsed by cinema’s heavily glamorized “strong template deviation,” but Moore’s “Hugo” bears more resemblance to the rude, brutish character in the original prose series.

However, also in DOSSIER we find a “total template deviation” of a different nature: the spoof. The story also includes “Jimmy,” an easily recognizable parody of James Bond, but Jimmy has no significant points of commonality with the Bond of either prose or films. Moore created Jimmy to mock what he deemed the unlikable aspects of James Bond, but he lays it on so thick that the reader no longer believes that there exists any continuity between the two agents, any more than one could believe that “Bats-Man,” a spoof of the 1966 BATMAN teleseries, had anything in common with any version of Batman.

Some points of continuity may exist when the doppelgangers are not merely impostors, but re-creations of the originals that invoke specific memories in those that observe them. In the story “Santa Claus in Wonderland,” Santa never actually meets any denizen of that Lewis Carroll domain; he merely dreams his encounters with Alice, the Mad Hatter et al. But these dream-figures maintain at least a weak continuity with the originals, because Santa imagines that they are like the characters in the books (which for the most part, they are).

However, in SCOOBY DOO 2, the teen detectives and their Great Dane encounter doppelgangers who are artificially concocted versions of ”spooks” who were all originally just costumed human beings. As entertaining as it is to see the Scooby Gang attacked by a “legion of doom” that seems made up of their old enemies, these artificial menaces no more share identity with their originals than a Hulk-robot does with the Incredible Hulk.

One more "total deviation" will suffice for the time being: the type openly based on some familiar characters but who are meant to be entirely separate characters. The four main characters of MONSTERS VS. ALIENS do not claim to be identical in any way with their 1950s SF-movie models, who are, going left from right, the Fly, the Fifty-Foot Woman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Blob. Because they don't share any continuity with their models, MONSTERS VS. ALIENS does not qualify as any kind of crossover, though it is a "mashup," in which diverse characters with some similar aspects but also with different backgrounds are jammed together in one narrative. It might be fairly argued that all crossovers may be called mashups, but that all mashups are not crossovers.

CRYPTO-CONTINUITY AND DOPPELGANGBANGERS PT. 1

In CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 2 I introduced the notion of "crypto-continuity," using the term to describe the way the second cinematic King Kong (of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA) retains some of the stature of the original Kong from the 1933 film, despite all the "irreconcilable differences" between the two iterations. I didn't explain my term, but I simply meant that the continuity shared by the two was partially "hidden" by all the discontinuities. Yet the discontinuities in that case are relatively weak in that they don't keep casual viewers from thinking of Kong II as co-existent with Kong I, which means that Number Two still possesses essentially the same stature as Number One. Ergo, employing the terminology that I introduced in CONVOCATION PT. 4, I consider Kong II as a "weak template deviation" of the original template provided by the 1933 KONG film.

"Crypto-continuity" is certain not unique to crossovers, for the principle pertains to any adaptation in which a secondary work fails to match up with the continuity of the primary one. The 1931 adaptation of DRACULA, for example, possesses several discontinuities with the original 1897 novel. Yet the 1931 film would also qualify as a "weak template deviation" of the original work for the same reason cited above, because the average viewer can see a fairly strong continuity between original and derivation in terms of the plot-action and character-depiction. 

The opposition of the weak type, plainly, is the "strong template deviation," of which I wrote in Part 4:

...there are also "strong template deviations," which often involve authors totally overwriting not totally fictional characters, but characters from myth, legend, and history-rendered-into-fiction.

This was a misstatement on my part, for the passage suggests that my term "strong template deviation" applies only to what I later called "innominate texts." In that section I was principally discoursing on the character of Billy the Kid from the 1966 BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, explaining how this cinematic version of William Bonney had nearly nothing in common with the real gunfighter.

 However, the movie's version of Dracula also has nearly nothing in common with the Dracula of the original Stoker book, so he too is a "strong template deviation." (Certainly no one trying to emulate the Stoker character would have invented a Dracula who's immune to gunfire but gets knocked out when the Kid crowns the vamp with a thrown pistol.) 

That said, even a strong template deviation may display the same stature found in the original template, and this applies not only to the Dracula of the 1966 horror-western, but also to the various counts seen in OLD DRACULA, DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. But to pursue the point I made at the end of WHAT'S  IN A NOMINATIVE TEXT?, it's certainly possible to use the name "Dracula" for some character who has absolutely no resemblance to the Stoker template, as we see with the "bad-but-not-bad-enough-to-be-good" Dell comic book entitled DRACULA, otherwise known as "Dracula, Superhero."

 

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 4

The third and fourth categories deal with narrative presences who are dominantly known for being Subs, which means that they may possess charisma but have rarely or never possessed stature in any iteration. 

Since charisma is judged with regard to the ways in which audiences have received various presences, HIGH CHARISMA crossovers are usually seen in situations where two or more Subs, both of whom have earned considerable approbation from audiences, interact. In the last section I mentioned that the Joker has almost always been a Sub, and since his existence as a Sub largely places him within the cosmos of Batman's adventures, this status gives him no stature.

However, his charismatic qualities may be boosted when he comes into contact with other Bat-villains with similar pedigrees-- though this may depend upon when the interaction takes place. When the Joker first crosses paths with the Catwoman-- one of the first villain-crossovers in comics-- neither has made more than one appearance apiece. It could be argued that at the time this story appeared, neither one had accrued all that much charisma-- and so a better example of high charisma might be the first-time meeting of Joker and Penguin, from 1944:

By the same principle, teams of villains, often meant to parallel those of the featured heroes, also display the same charismatic crossover, as long as some of the members have appeared more than once, as we see with the Injustice Society.

In theory, one might also have a charismatic crossover just from crossing over other types of Subs-- a League of Sidekicks, perhaps, including Snapper Carr, Pieface Kalmaku, and Rick Jones.

Moving away from this type of High Charisma crossover, I want to return to the matter of "crypto-continuity" introduced in Part II, I asserted that "King Kong II," though not technically in continuity with "King Kong I," borrows enough motifs from the original that the later character may be seen as  what I term a "weak template deviation." 

However, there are also "strong template deviations," which often involve authors totally overwriting not totally fictional characters, but characters from myth, legend, and history-rendered-into-fiction.

For instance, the 19th-century outlaw Billy the Kid has a certain documented history, even if there's much about the real-life William Bonney (or whatever his real name was) that moderns will never know. But the cowboy-hero of BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA borrows nothing from the historical personage but the name, I would tend to view this totally fictionalized Billy is the main character of the 1966 film, while Dracula, despite having originated as a Prime character in the 1897 Stoker novel, has been demoted to a Sub, Yet the film's Billy has no more stature than would any cowboy-character who'd had never appeared before. The effect of the title is to suggest that the titular characters intermingle their respective charismas, though only one of the two possesses any stature, albeit minor.

Even more problematic are characters who lack anything more than a circumstantial history. While Dracula is a fictional character whose depiction may change as any author pleases to change him, Jack the Ripper was at least one real person in real history-- but because he was never identified, he becomes in a narrative sense even more insubstantial than the vampire count. In this 1985 mini-series, reviewed here, Dracula and Jack the Ripper do indeed enjoy a crossover. But because the Ripper is different in every iteration, whereas the Count is comparatively stable, I don't think they possess comparable stature-- though they both do possess high charisma, which stems from the investment audiences have in their respective forms of monstrousness.