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.