PRIME STATURE, DEPENDENT STATUS

In my review of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1930 novel A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, I mentioned that I was reluctant to call the book a crossover simply because the book includes one or two scenes in which new hero Tan Hadron interacts with the main hero of the first three Mars books, John Carter. 

There's no question that in this particular book, Hadron is the main, or Prime, character, while Carter, despite his having greater fame, has been demoted to a subordinate, or Sub, role. This was not by any means the first time Burroughs had employed this technique. In my review of the 1915 SON OF TARZAN, I pointed out that SON was the only book in the series not to star Tarzan, though the original ape man does get more scenes than John Carter does in FIGHTING MAN. But by the logic I asserted in A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 1, Tarzan's role in SON would have to be a crossover just because he does have a little "activity" in the novel. 

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.

Nevertheless, in crossovers of such low charisma, I find myself compelled to speak of such crossovers as "stature-dependent." In other words, Blacula exists because of the stature of Dracula, and Korak exists because of the stature of Tarzan. And so it's easy to see the relatively obscure hero Tan Hadron as being "stature-dependent" on the greater repute of John Carter. But this dependent status, in contrast to crossover-status, would not necessarily depend on whether or not John Carter had any scenes in the new hero's novel. It's been a year since I re-read THUVIA MAID OF MARS, which I reviewed here, but I recorded that John Carter was entirely absent. Yet because the novel's male hero Carthoris was the son of Carter, obviously any fame he accrued was borrowed from his famous peer.

A different form of Prime Yet Dependent Stature can be viewed in some of the hero-groups I've called "Semi-Inclusive Ensembles" in CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 5. In this and other crossover-essays I mentioned that such ensembles were defined by their blending of both new and previously established characters into a new ensemble-franchise. Arguably the most famous example of this sort of franchise in comics history is the Silver Age AVENGERS. For fifteen issues, this series focused on heroes who either starred in ongoing serials (Thor, Iron Man) or who had been franchise-stars but didn't currently have a berth (The Hulk, Giant-Man and the Wasp, and Captain America). Then in issue #16, editor Stan Lee decided to push out almost all established stars, except for Captain America, who became the mentor to three "superhero trainees," Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Though I have not looked at sales figures, I would assume that AVENGERS sold decently after the change, since "Cap's Kooky Quartet" plugged on in this "semi-inclusive" mode for thirteen issues. When the lineup was changed, it was not to bring back relative heavy-hitters like Thor or Iron Man, but to provide a berth for failed franchise-heroes Giant-Man and Wasp (with the former getting a new cognomen, "Goliath.") Without belaboring the obvious, from then on THE AVENGERS continued to follow this model, sometimes cycling in "big name" heroes, sometimes playing up extreme obscurities like Doctor Druid.

This raises yet another wrinkle: since such characters as Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch had no stature prior to the Avengers, is their stature not also dependent upon being members of the super-group? Over time, the Scarlet Witch had a few more stabs at starring status, either by herself or in combination with the Vision, while neither Hawkeye nor Quicksilver ever enjoyed great fame as solo acts. Over time a number of heroes appeared in such semi-inclusive groups who would never have any stature outside such a group, and so they too would be even more "stature-dependent" than a protagonist who does later get a shot at a solo outing. 

In some cases semi-inclusive ensembles might even be used after the fashion of TV's "back door pilots." For three issues of THE INVADERS, writer Roy Thomas took the two juvenile members of the group, Bucky and Toro, and lined them up with two new similarly aged heroes, Golden Girl and the Human Top. The more famous members of the group-- Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner-- did appear in selected scenes within the story, but clearly these issues were meant to emphasize the new team. In a much later interview Thomas admitted that he created the Kid Commandos as a means to shuffle Bucky and Toro out of the group, since he didn't like having to cope with the teenaged characters. Yet for the space of three issues, the Kid Commandos do acquire at least a dependent form of stature. Yet because their group never became independent of the Invaders, they are best seen as an adjunct of the Invaders group.

Next to lastly, I used THUVIA MAID OF MARS as an example of a novel within the "John Carter series" even though Carter did not appear in it. Similarly, the DC comic GOTHAM CITY SIRENS teamed up three of Batman's femme-adversaries: Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. Yet in the third issue of the series, the three of them barely appear, and writer Scott Lobdell focuses rather upon The Riddler as he tries to solve a serial killer case. A version of Batman-- actually Nightwing disguised as the Caped Crusader for continuity-reasons-- has like the Sirens a subordinate role in the story. If anyone behind this comic had some thoughts of giving the Riddler his own series as a quasi-hero, his "dependent stature" role here could have served as an adequate "pilot."

I might also add that "dependent stature" also attends to a lot of characters without their own serials who appear in discontinuous team-up titles like THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and MARVEL TEAM-UP. Some of these characters included former villains, also discussed in A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 3, and some were characters who never stood a chance at getting a series, like the entirely forgettable "Bat-Squad" from BRAVE AND BOLD #92.