GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN

 So, Batman. He spends about a year fighting crime on his lonesome. According to my system of interordination, he's the sole superordinate icon, and everyone in his orbit, whether allies like Commissioner Gordon or adversaries like Doctor Death (the crusader's first super-villain), are subordinate icons, aligned to his cosmos and that of no one else.

Then Robin appears in early 1940, and for whatever reason, the creators behind the comics also begin churning out many of the important adversaries-- Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Scarecrow-- and at least one of the most important allies, a tubby butler named Alfred. Now, because Batman and Robin have become the two members of a bonded ensemble, all of the icons in Batman's cosmos are also icons in Robin's cosmos. This state of affairs persists until about 1970, when the original Batman-and-Robin team is essentially terminated, perhaps to help scrub the comic-book features from lingering associations with the 1966 teleseries.

A fine point of this shared cosmos, though, is that Robin, by virtue of being in a bonded ensemble with Batman, also shares all the icons he never actually encounters, and the same is true of Batman.

For instance, Robin does not meet the aforementioned Doctor Death in either of the villain's two 1939 exploits. Dick Grayson doesn't meet a villain of that name until the 1970s. Nevertheless, by the transitive effect I've outlined elsewhere, Doctor Death is a "Robin villain" as much as he is a "Batman villain," even though Robin never meets him.

On a similar theme, Robin had his own stand-alone series in STAR-SPANGLED COMICS, beginning in 1947. Batman occasionally guest-starred in some stories but in general Robin handled each story's conflict on his own, such as the Boy Wonder's first encounter with a recurring, generally unimpressive criminal called The Clock. Nevertheless, by the same transitive property, The Clock is also in Batman's alignment-cosmos even if Batman never meets the evildoer.

All that said, the bonded ensemble of the Dynamic Duo comes to an end in the 1970s, For the remainder of that decade, Robin either operates alone, or in two other forms of ensembles: 

--the "unbonded" ensemble in which he has brief, semi-regular teamups with Batgirl II--

 --or the semi-bonded ensemble, in which he gravitates to two different iterations of the TEEN TITANS: one iteration a huge successful, the other a pathetic flop.

During this time, when he's no longer in an ensemble with Batman, no subsequent Bat-villains are within Robin's cosmos. So, even though Original Doctor Death is in the Batman-and-Robin cosmos even though Robin never meets him, Ra's Al Ghul is not in Robin's separate cosmos even though Robin DOES meet the villain when he Robin is guest-starring in one of Batman's stories. 

Robin-on-his-own does not lose his alignment with any earlier B& R villains, like Poison Ivy. Second Robin Jason Todd is immediately aligned with all previous Bat-villains as soon as he's part of the official Bat-ensemble, of course, because Jason inherits the transitive effect of the bonded ensemble through his relationship with Batman. But any villain encountered first by the Bruce-and-Jason team in the eighties, such as Black Mask, is outside the cosmos of Dick Grayson, who by that time takes on the distinct identity of Nightwing.

Now, this gets amusingly complicated with respect to those allies who weren't designed to be part of the bonded ensemble. The Barbara Gordon Batgirl is an ally, and a subordinate icon, to the Batman-Robin team for roughly the first five years of her comic-book existence. Because the character receives an ongoing series within five years of her last peripatetic appearance, all of her appearances in any BATMAN features, or in titles like JUSTICE LEAGUE or BRAVE AND BOLD, can be deemed "stature-crossovers" between her, the Batman-Robin team, and any other stature-character, because the Gordon-girl does get a clear path to the stature of a featured character. 

Because Batgirl Number Two exists in her own separate cosmos, and is not part of the bonded ensemble,a Batman-and-Robin villain like Killer Moth is in no way aligned with the Batgirl cosmos as it eventually develops, even though he's the first costumed villain Gordon-girl literally encounters. Even when Killer Moth eventually encounters the "Dominoed Dare-Doll" in a story within her own feature, the Moth remains unaligned with Batgirl and remains a "guest villain."

HOWEVER, in the 1967-68 season of the BATMAN teleseries, Batgirl becomes part of the bonded ensemble with the season's first episode, and within that separate media-cosmos, the "Dynamic Duo" becomes "the Terrific Trio." I have deemed the initiating episode of that series to be a stature-crossover, based on the separate status of the characters in the comics, but after that every subsequent episode is a non-crossover because Batgirl *has* joined a bonded ensemble within the context of the TV show. Thus, when Batgirl meets, say, Catwoman for the first time, Catwoman is immediately just as much Batgirl's foe as she is that of Batman and Robin-- and so there is no villain-meeting-unaligned-hero vibe present.

NULL-MYTHS; BATMAN: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM (2015)

Someone somwhere might be able to do something worthwhile with the idea of overlapping Batman's Gothic horrors with the cosmic calamities of H.P. Lovecraft. But neither artist Troy Nixey nor writers Mike Mignola and Richard Pace came anywhere near the mark.

So it's another Batman Elseworlds. This time Bruce Wayne and his parents are around for Gotham City's founding in the early 20th century, and twenty-plus years after the death of the Waynes, Bruce launches his career as Batman. He even has two wards this time, Tim Drake and Dick Grayson, though neither is being prepared for sidekick status. He has no rogues' gallery, nor does he get involved with any form of street crime, and yet, when a Lovecraftian doom comes to Gotham, many analogues of the rogues show up in new guises: Penguin, Two-Face, Man-Bat, and Mister Freeze. At least the authors didn't resort to the overused Joker and Catwoman.

Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia are fundamentally responsible for unleashing some sort of demon-gods. None of them are given the same names as the Lovecraft myth-figures, and though I tend to think there's no copyright protection for the original stories, it's possible that some gaming concern has control of, say, the name "Yog-Sothoth," which might be the reason the raconteurs came up with a facsimile fiend. Of course that means that these aren't even weak templates of the Lovecraft monsters, and so there's no crossover potential with any of these new creations. 

Troy Nixey's art sometimes achieves a good creepy vibe, but he draws a lot of characters off-model, and his demon-gods aren't particularly compelling. The story's hard to follow thanks to the authors' desire to play to Bat-fans by injecting rogue-analogues all over the place. Not only is the story a disservice to the concepts of Lovecraft, it's even dull as a Batman story. I only read it because it's been adapted into a DTV animated film and I may want to review that in future.

DEPARTMENT OF COMICS CURIOSITIES #23: WEIRD MARVEL HOUSE-AD

 While scanning through the 1975 b&w magazine KULL AND THE BARBARIANS for my Red Sonja piece, I came across this oddball house ad for Marvel's b&w line.

I've seen a lot of weird approaches to getting readers to subscribe, but invoking the analysis of dream symbols takes the proverbial cake. And the art in which the "dream symbols" appear like nothing more than a standard fantasy-trope: a doughty hero being attacked by a curvy female sending snake-phantoms his way.

Moreover, the art used sports the copyright "1972 by Gary Groth and Bob Kline." What? The enfant terrible of comics fandom, Gary Groth of THE COMICS JOURNAL, once worked for the Evil That Was Marvel Comics?

Well, probably only in a loose technical sense. I don't think Groth was ever an artist, but he had published various fanzines by 1975, and Bob Kline, whom I didn't know, was a popular fan-artist of the period. Probably Kline had some of his art published in one or more of Groth's fanzines, and one or both of them managed to re-sell some of that fan-art to Marvel Comics for spot illustrations like the one in the house ad. That would mean that neither Groth nor Kline had any say as to how the art was used, though it's the only time *I* have seen a spot-illo in a Marvel book being copyrighted by someone outside the company purview. Here's an example of a Kline cover for Groth's FANTASTIC ADZINE, which had a circulation of a thousand copies back in the day.

In 1975, I'm sure the name Gary Groth meant nothing to Marvel employees beyond his fanzine activities. One year later, Groth, Michael Catron and Kim Thompson bought a failing adzine, THE NOSTALGIA JOURNAL, which probably meant they also acquired TNJ's mailing list. The trio then re-fashioned TNJ into THE COMICS JOURNAL, which, whatever Groth claimed in later years, was predominantly just another fanzine back then. Only over time did TCJ become the scourge of industry mediocrity and so on. 

NEAR-MYTHS: "THE DAY OF THE SWORD" (KULL AND THE BARBARIANS #3, 1975)

As I noted at the end of my analysis of Red Sonja's first appearance in the CONAN comic, the heroine enjoyed about five stories, either solo or in tandem with Conan, that never explained her strange declaration that no man would ever enjoy her body unless he first conquered her "on the field of battle." Various comics readers found this less than salubrious, since it suggested that the heroine was daring the male sex as a whole to attempt raping her. This is not quite the tenor of the origin story, though one can see why that reading might occur to some readers.

"Day of the Sword" is plotted by Thomas but scripted by Doug Moench, while Howard Chaykin provided the art. And to be sure, rape is foregrounded in the story's first pages. While riding through a forest, Sonja comes across three highwaymen torturing a helpless man whom they've just robbed. The robbers threaten to despoil Sonja of her maidenhead, so the warrior woman kills all three. Then she turns to their trussed-up victim-- only to find that she knows him.

This cues a lengthy flashback, showing that five years ago she was a humble farm-girl in Hyrkania, living with her parents and brothers. The text stresses that she envied the boys for being given swordplay lessons by their father, but that being a girl she couldn't even lift a broadsword.

Then the father's past as a mercenary invades the quiet farm-life, as his old comrades track him down. Apparently the unnamed leader bears some unexplained grudge, for after Sonja's father declines to join the raiders on their next job, the commander gives the order to kill all of Sonja's family. As for Sonja, the commander satisfies his lust with her, and then burns down her house, expecting her to die as well.

Sonja saves herself, at which point an unnamed deity appears to her. In contrast to some later retellings, the deity is not specified to be either a god or a goddess, but rather "shaped of neither man nor woman, yet embracing all the strength and beauty of both." The deity then makes a confusing declaration: that Sonja, by the act of saving her own life from the fire, has tapped into her hidden strength. The deity doesn't say that he/she is bestowing any special powers on the young woman, in contrast to the 1985 movie. In fact, the deity indulges in some confusing double-talk, suggesting that Sonja can, if she has the will, embrace the destiny of "a wanderer, the equal of any man or woman you meet"-- but only if Sonja vows to the deity that she will never allow herself to be "loved by another man, unless he has defeated you in fair battle-- something no man is like to do after this day!"

The origin, then, changes the implications of "The Song of Red Sonja," where the heroine says "no man" shall get busy with her unless he defeats her, not "another man." The original line implies that Sonja is an Atalanta who won't yield her favors to anyone but a superior male, and that she's implicitly a virgin. "Day" states outright that Sonja has had her virginity stolen by an unworthy man whose only advantage was biological strength. She can't change what has already happened to her, but she can become a new paradigm, that of a woman with unparalleled strength. After the deity disappears, Sonja gets the chance to test her new power, when a straggling mercenary happens across her, and she swiftly kills him.

But is it her strength, or something the deity gave her? Thomas and Moench play it both ways, having Sonja wonder at the ease with which she wields the sword and kills the raider: "A savage thrust-- learned by watching her father-- by long practice under darkness? Or was it, perhaps, a skill granted to her by a vision?" She even has a "Joe Chill" moment, swearing to find her rapist again someday. 

Then the flashback ends, and Sonja briefly exults that she's caught up with her rapist at last. But then she realizes that the man can't understand her, for the robbers' torture has unhinged his mind. (That was some really effective torture; one wouldn't expect someone to lose their mind from pain except from days and days of torment.) Sonja laughs at the cosmic comedy of it all, and then departs, leaving the still bound man to be slain by approaching wolves. I take the closing line about how the rapist's face is no longer "hideous" to her simply connotes that he no longer holds any capacity to haunt her dreams.

It's a strange story, particularly since the mysterious deity gives no reason for demanding that singular vow. (By contrast, the 1985 movie suggests that maybe Sonja comes up with the vow on her own, not through any supernatural inspiration.) But on balance I think Thomas, Moench and maybe even Chaykin meant it to be empowering. The seventies were the first time American culture as a whole seemed to accept the necessity for women to learn martial skills to protect themselves, and Sonja finding her own strength, with or without a deity's help, seems in tune with these sentiments. Other iterations on the origin may improve upon the sketchiness of "Day," but for my money, it's unlikely that anyone has done better, or will do better, than Frank Thorne. Following his much celebrated tenure on the RED SONJA feature, he came up with a rewriting of the Thomas-Moench tale, in the superlative debut story of GHITA OF ALIZARR.

MYTHCOMICS: ["THE SONG OF RED SONJA"], CONAN THE BARBARIAN #23-24 (1973)

 Not only must I preface my remarks by saying that I'm using the title of one of two stories as an umbrella for both, but also that the two stories involved are part of a larger mosaic of CONAN stories by the celebrated team of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith. I don't know if anyone has coined a formal name for these interrelated stories, but since they're related to Conan's participation in a city under siege, one might call it "The Siege of Makkalet." It was an ambitious multi-part story, and yet another of Marvel Comics' experiments with longer continuities like the Lee-Kirby "Inhumans Saga" and Steranko's Yellow Claw continuity.

The most mythic stories within the greater mosaic are the two related to Thomas and Smith's introduction of the sword-maiden Red Sonja to Conan's Hyborian era. At some point in the Mythcomics Project, I stated that I wouldn't consider simple adaptations of stories from other media as "mythcomics." However, even though one of the two stories considered here derives from Robert E. Howard's prose tale  "The Shadow of the Vulture," Thomas and Smith ring in enough changes to the original tale that it's no longer a straight retelling. I've already included at least one derivative-yet-original mythcomic before this, when I analyzed George Perez's take on Hesiod's myth of Pandora.

Three previous stories established Conan's enlistment with the forces of Makkalet as a mercenary, defending the city against the invader Turan. Thus Conan becomes a loose parallel to Howard's Germanic hero Von Kalmbach, while Turan stands in for the real-world Ottoman Empire. The ruler of Turan has a slightly different reason for his enmity toward the Cimmerian, but his arc is the same as that of Suleiman I, sending the (fictional) assassin Mikhal Oglu, "The Vulture," to collect Conan's head. Original to the above exchange between Mikhal and his liege is Mikhal's remark that "no night is dark enough to hide [Conan] from me."

Conan is forced to flee the Vulture's forces to beseiged Makkalet, and it's there that the barbarian meets fellow mercenary Red Sonja, who is pretty close visually to Howard's description but lacks any backstory, least of all that of her having become a warrior because her sister became the harem-favorite of an Eastern ruler. The burly Cimmerian doesn't immediately show gratitude for his rescue by Sonja's forces, passing a sexist remark about "a wench who should be tending a hearth somewhere." Sonja doesn't hear the jibe, but he does belatedly attempt to render thanks, only to have the martial maiden reject his overtures. In the short story Howard writes a line meant to establish that his "Sonya" was purely a warrior who had no dalliances with other soldiers. Thomas rewrites this line, making Sonja more ambivalent: "She's all men's delight, and no man's love"-- which fits with some of Red Sonja's greater use of feminine wiles, if not actual selling of her services.

In the short story, Sonya shows some belated appreciation for Von Kalmbach's prowess, and that's the reason she's watching him when the hero's abducted by some of the Vulture's pawns. Thomas doesn't explain exactly how Sonja came to be watching Conan when he gets kidnapped, but her rescue makes it possible, as in the Howard story, to lure the Vulture into a trap where Conan uses his Cimmerian super-sight to gain a fighting-advantage. 

The second story, the one literally entitled "The Song of Red Sonja," is entirely original, and puts a new complexion on the heroine's attitude toward the barbarian. But first, Sonja is seen doing something that the all-business Red Sonya would never have done: dancing on a table for the applause of her fellow soldiers, including Conan. 

Sonja's dance foments a brawl at the tavern, but she remains in Conan's company as they depart to avoid being arrested by the city's guards. Surprisingly, given what we later learn about Sonja's motives, it's Conan who suggests that they should take a dip in some local pool. Sonja doffs her mail-shirt, and Conan takes that as a go-ahead signal. Then Sonja suddenly remembers that she has a task to perform that very night, and she uses her sexiness to lure the barbarian into helping her. 

To his credit, Conan soon figures out that the she-devil wants him for his Cimmerian climbing-skills, so that both of them can rob a local treasure-tower in Makkalet. He goes along with her plan, though, hoping to lure her into a sense of indebtedness, and therefore, into sex. However, Sonja has a secret mission. She hasn't come to Makkalet simply as a random mercenary, but has been charged with recovering a magical item from the treasure-house by another ruler, the humorously named "King Ghannif." (In Yiddish, a "goniff" is a dishonest or disreputable person.") 

The magic item, as it happens, conjures a magic serpent, allowing Conan and Sonja something to fight for the next five pages. Thomas throws in a reference to Howard's concept of a race of serpent-men, but the serpent has no independent mythic value, and once the heroes force the creature to retreat back into the bauble, the beast and its talisman are never referenced again in the Marvel CONAN series.

Once Sonja has what she wants, she decides to "burn her bridges," so to speak, with the somewhat gullible barbarian. It's at this point that Thomas has the sword-maiden utter her famous line--

"No man's lips shall ever touch mine, Cimmerian, save those of him who has defeated me on the field of battle!"

Nothing in "Song" sets up this unusual declaration, and the five Sonja stories that followed show no sign of following up on the statement. Not until Sonja got her own origin in the 1975 story in KULL AND THE BARBARIANS #3 did Thomas return to the subject, so it's difficult to say what he, or possibly Barry Smith, might have been thinking of when the line was coined. Thomas had dumped Original Sonya's motive of fighting the Ottomans because of her personal sense of affront (though strangely, not on behalf of her abducted sister). My best guess is that, although Thomas could not have known that comics fans would want to see more of the red-haired vixen, the writer knew that if he brought her back, he would eventually have to come up with a new backstory to explain why Red Sonja had rejected the traditional role of women in a barbaric world. Thomas could easily have borrowed the "no sex without physical conquest" from the Classic Greek tale of Atalanta, who would not marry any man except one who could best her in a foot-race. (The swain who does outrace her, BTW, does so by means of a trick.) The subsequent origin-story, however, would take the concept in an entirely new direction.

DEPARTMENT OF COMICS CURIOSITIES #22: COVER OF SPOOKY HAUNTED HOUSE #3

 Most Harvey Comics covers are generic in their tedious cuteness, but this one shows a little imagination, managing to be at once a little funny and a little creepy.

THE READING RHEUM: "THE SHADOW OF THE VULTURE" (1934)

After re-viewing the 1985 RED SONJA film, I became more curious about the possible evolution of the Marvel Comics character from Howard's one-shot character "Red Sonya of Rogatino." She, along with her male compatriot Gottfried Von Kalmbach, appeared only in the above-titled short story in the pulp magazine MAGIC CARPET, which was published by Popular Fiction Publishers. The same publisher brought out WEIRD TALES, the magazine that published the majority of Howard's Conan stories.

Here's my initial writeup from FEMMES FORMIDABLES regarding the story's significance in terms of Red Sonja's evolution:

I mentioned in my first 1934 post that Robert E. Howard had authored at least three significant femmes formidables in the same year, but one of them, "Red Sonya of Rogatino," gained more fame in a derived form, that of Marvel Comics' "Red Sonja."  Since Red Sonja only borrowed a few motifs from Howard's character, as well as appearing in a thoroughly different milieu, it seems sensible to give the earlier Sonya separate consideration.  The French reprint book above, which retitles the Howard story "Shadow of the Vulture" into "Sonya la Rouge," looks as if it's illustrating the Marvel version more than Howard's.

One surprising facet of "Shadow" is that Red Sonya is at best a secondary element of the tale.  The bulk of the story is Howard's rewriting of the history of the 1529 Siege of Vienna, the last attempt made by the Ottoman Empire-- then under the command of Suleiman the Magnificent-- to extend its power into Europe.  Robert E. Howard, being an ardent Celticist, had his own fictional version of "how the Irish saved Europe," often sending Celtic, English, or roughly related racial types into the mysterious East.  This time Howard sends a German hero, Gottfried von Kalmbach, to personally twist the tail of the ruler Suleiman.  Suleiman responds by sending a hitman, the "Vulture" of the title, to bring him Gottfried's head.

Sonya becomes embroiled in this conflict only because she comes to have some regard for Gottfried as a fellow warrior, and possibly (though it is not stressed) as a man.  Sonya saves Gottfried twice from his enemies, and displays fearless prowess on the battlefield, but her own character-arc is dubious.  She claims to be the sister of Roxelana, a historical Polish woman who became the real Suleiman's primary wife.  Howard devotes nearly no space to describing how this state of affairs came to be, though there's a mention that Roxelana was abducted in a Muslim slave-raid. To modern ears, this sounds pretty exculpatory for most sins that Roxelana would have committed in order to survive.  Yet Sonya refers to her sister as a "slut," apparently for not having chosen death over bedding a Muslim potentate.  It's possible Howard had some notion of pursuing this plot-thread in a separate story, but "Shadow of the Vulture" remains the only story about the woman from Rogatino.

Naturally, given Howard's great talent, there are other mythic aspects of "Vulture" aside from its introduction of the Polish femme formidable. MAGIC CARPET was probably interested in the story only because it offered readers some violent, exotic adventure, but as I noted above, Howard was a history-buff who believed in what a later author called "the clash of civilizations." He quite clearly took pleasure in the failure of the Ottoman Empire to secure a foothold in 1529 Austria, which would have put Islamic rule within the perceived boundaries of Europe proper, and Howard explicitly took it as the good favor of fate that the Muslims had been thwarted by "the yellow haired Aryan barbarian." (I'm not sure what Howard made of Islam's domination of the Iberian Peninsula for several centuries.) I should not need to point out that Howard 's mention of "Aryan" is not covalent with formal Nazism. Within the context of the story, which is not a racist story as such, the term only means that the author advocated the fading of the East's power as the West came to prominence.

The Ottoman failure to take Austria loosely parallels the failure of Suleiman I to take the head of German mercenary Von Kalmbach, even though Suleiman sends one of his foremost warriors, Mikhal "The Vulture" Oglu, to accomplish the deed. In a broad sense, Suleiman does Von Kalmbach a favor by persecuting him, for the German, though prodigious in battle, is something of a rebel without a cause, sneering at both the Ottomans and his own "Frankish" allies. Von Kalmbach seems content to spend his whole life fighting and then drinking like a sot.

While fleeing from Oglu's forces, Von Kalmbach takes refuge in an Austrian siege-city. One of the city's foremost defenders is Red Sonya, and though the German is fascinated with the red-haired fury, she seems initially scornful towards him. However, it eventually comes out that she does hold high regard for Von Kalmbach's battle prowess, and she ends up saving the mercenary's hide twice. Howard shows no literal romance between the two of them, but it's likely he meant to suggest that they were both alpha-types who sublimated their sexual feelings through constant quarreling. That said, the story ends without depicting even a symbolic union, such as a partnership, between the mercenary and the Polish warrior-woman.

In the first CONAN story that births Red Sonja, the heroine voiced her determination never to yield her favors to anyone save "him who has defeated me on the field of battle." There's nothing remotely like this declaration in "Vulture." The only remotely similar statement comes from a bit-player who tells Von Kalmbach that Sonya "marches and fights like a man," but is "no man's light o'love." Howard probably only included this observation to make sure readers understood that Sonya was not a camp-follower. If anything, Sonya is an antitype to her sister Roxalana, who, though never "on stage," allowed Suleiman I to take her maidenhead. (Possible pun-alert here: the Ottoman ruler can take a woman's "head," but not the head of a superior warrior.) I won't say categorically that Howard never wrote any character who might have challenged one or more males after the fashion of Marvel's Sonja. But Red Sonya of Rogatino is wholly defined by her mission to take the role of a male warrior in order to defy the Turkish ruler who despoiled her sister, so there's a loose opposition between the worlds of war and of sexual conquest. In later years Red Sonja would sometimes become a symbol of feminist liberation, yet the lady from Rogatino says nothing against the dominion of the male of the species. For such protests, one would have to seek out a character Howard created around the same time, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, whose first of two adventures deals with her escaping an arranged marriage and imprisonment in a brothel. 

Next up: Red Sonja Risin'.

THE READING RHEUM: DAGON (1919)

 This short story, published in a fanzine in 1919 but also given a professional reprint in a 1923 WEIRD TALES, seems to be the first "Mythos Tale." The unnamed narrator, adrift on the ocean, happens on a strange black terrain thrown up by volcanic activity. He also finds a pagan shrine, and then witnesses a colossal fish-thing rise from the sea, possibly to worship at the shrine. The narrator somehow gets back to the States (paging Arthur Gordon Pym) and tells people that he beheld either the ancient Philistine god Dagon or one of his worshipers. No one believes him, but possibly the god or one of his emissaries overtakes the man and shuts him up. Because the creature seen at sea is so big I would tend to say it was the god himself but opinion is divided on this point. However, the Philistine deity is the central icon of the story whether he appears "on stage" or not, since he's the dominating force behind the shrine. 

The name "Dagon" is referenced in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" but I don't believe the god himself manifests therein. 

Since "Dagon" is a fairly sketchy notion, I judge that it does not possess high mythicity.

THE READING RHEUM: THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH (1926/1943)

 Here's the one HPL story that's unquestionably a crossover, which I first examined on OUROBOROS DREAMS.

___

As I said in this essay, I find that only one Lovecraft story really presents what I may end up calling a "centric crossover:" one that specializes in bringing together two or more characters or milieus that have been, or are intended to become, the central attractions of a given narrative. (The "intended to become" application shows up most prominently in "back-door pilots," which I discussed here.)  This story is THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, initiated by Lovecraft in 1926 and published posthumously by Arkham House in 1943.

Technically I must admit that the protagonist of DREAM-QUEST, Randolph Carter, is not the central attraction of the story of the only story in which he appears previous to DREAM-QUEST. This story was "The Statement of Randolph Carter," finished by Lovecraft in 1919 and published in 1920. The story, whose full text can be found on various Internet sites, follows the mold of many Lovecraft stories about foolish occultists who blunder across nameless horrors. Carter's companion Warren is lost to these horrors when the two of them investigate a cemetery near the Big Cypress Swamp in Florida; only Carter lives to make his "statement." The story bears no relationship to any of the so-called "dream-cycle" of Lovecraft stories, mostly written in the 1920s, in which Lovecraft's protagonists encounter evanescent fantasy-worlds that can only be reached through what moderns now call "lucid dreaming." However, Lovecraft must have liked the name-- he uses a protagonist named only "Carter" in a 1923 story, "The Unnameable"-- so when he began work upon DREAM-QUEST, it appears that he simply refashioned the viewpoint-character of "Statement" into a full-fledged central character, one who now possessed a singular ability to project himself into, and navigate within, the worlds of dream. This version of Randolph Carter seems patterned after that of "King Kuranes," an otherwise nameless man of 1920s England who projects himself into the world of dreams and never leaves it; he first appeared in the short story "Celephais," written in 1920 and published in 1922.

Kuranes, who is the central attraction in his original appearance, is one of five entities, or groups of entities, who had stories devoted to them, all of whom Randolph Carter encounters in DREAM-QUEST. The second of these is artist-turned-ghoul Richard Pickman of "Pickman's Model." Third and fourth are the Cats of Ulthar and the Other Gods, both of whom appear as the central attractions in eponymously titled short stories. And for the fifth, Carter meets Nyarlathotep, often mentioned as one of the deity-like alien beings called "the Great Old Ones," though he was also the focus of his own eponymous story as well.

In general I prefer Lovecraft's stories of cosmic horror over his dream-fantasies, written in a studied imitation of the fantasy-writer Lord Dunsany. DREAM-QUEST is, perhaps fittingly for a dream-narrative, rather rambling in its structure. Carter has one intense dream of a marvelous "sunset city," and years to visit it within the worlds of dream. However, he's unable to locate it despite copious interviews with the inhabitants of the dream-countries, though he's given tantalizing clues that lead him from place to place.  Ultimately the Dunsanian mood of generally charming fantasy-worlds changes to one of horror as Carter encounters sinister beings allied to the Great Old Ones, culminating in a fateful encounter with Nyarlathotep, and the revelation of the true nature of the sunset city.

DREAM-QUEST's great problem is that while Lovecraft's delicate fantasies work well in short stories-- also the primary form in which Dunsany worked-- the conceit proves harder for him to pull off at novella-length, and one fantasy-realm seems pretty much like another. The forbidding mood-pieces prove more compelling, and I was particularly piqued when the author speaks of "the horror of infinite form." I might have thought that an experienced dreamer might have enjoyed his mind's ability to play with the finite forms of reality-- but it seems, given the novella's conclusion, that Lovecraft was primarily attracted to images of stability and comfort, while images of variability suggested ghastliness-- which, to be sure, made him one of America's premiere horror writers.

On a side-note, I see on Wikipedia that some critics have compared DREAM-QUEST's structure to that of Burroughs' Barsoom books, and to Baum's WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. But given that one of Lovecraft's greatest literary idols was Edgar Allan Poe, I think it more likely that Lovecraft borrowed the rambling plot of DREAM-QUEST from Poe's only novel: the macabre NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM.

THE LOVECRAFT CONUNDRUM

The works of H.P. Lovecraft present a challenge to the newly born science of crossover-ology. Though there were assorted crossover stories in prose fiction prior to HPL, the Providence author, along with Cross Plains scribe Robert E. Howard, was among the first to tie together several fictional narratives with a common mythology.

But are all of those references true crossovers? I've formulated the theory that such crossovers require "agency" between at least two distinct icons or icon-groupings. A simple reference to the activity of a given icon in one narrative within a second icon's narrative is not sufficient, as per my reading of Dennis Wheatley's 1953 novel TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER.

Many Lovecraft stories don't directly show the horrific beings invoked in the narrative. THE DUNWICH HORROR is about the half-human spawn of a human woman and the extradimensional demon Yog-Sothoth, so the spawn is an icon, but Yog-Sothoth is never seen, and so has no agency in the story. "The Whisperer in Darkness" references most of the Great Old Ones of the so-called "Cthulhu mythos," but they're not actually in the story, and so that too may not be any sort of true crossover, but only a "null-crossover."

I've fantasized about doing a massive re-read of HPL, but that doesn't seem likely at present, However, a tome called THE NEW ANNOTATED H.P. LOVECRAFT has gathered together all the stories that editor Leslie Klinger thought most relevant to the Mythos, which, as Klinger helpfully notes, HPL only called "the Arkham Cycle" in his correspondence. Klinger does not include every story with a "Cycle" reference, for he omits the short novel DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. But the 22 stories selected probably comprise the better part of the Cycle, and so may be useful for my purposes here.

Just to bring up a minor comics-context, the annotated collection sports an introduction by Alan Moore, but IMO he doesn't say anything of importance about Lovecraft, much less crossovers (though Moore did work various HPL references into his LOEG works, including a "true crossover" appearance for Nyarlathotep in BLACK DOSSIER.

R.I.P. JOHN ROMITA SR.

 I've no special observations on the significance of Romita's contribution to mainstream American comics, and I'm sure countless fans are singing his praises on that score. I will say that DC had his talents at their disposal in the early sixties, but they neglected to keep giving him work and so steered his course toward Marvel. There he became an inestimable asset to the company in his interpretation of Spider-Man. None of the other artists then available to Marvel-- Andru (who seems to have auditioned for the post), Kane, Kirby, Colan, or any of the DC stalwarts-- could  have channeled the sexy soap opera of Spidey in the late Silver Age. 

It wasn't a smooth transition. Lee, possibly anticipating difficulties with Ditko on the Spider-title, had Romita pencil a Spider-Man guest-shot in DAREDEVIL in 1966, apparently a few months before Ditko departed Marvel entirely. But it's a pretty pedestrian outing.

But Romita grew into the job quickly. In SPIDER-MAN #40-- incidentally, the second Spider-comic I ever owned-- Romita served up great action in the then-final Spidey-Goblin climax, but the soap operatics were more intense than they'd been under Ditko.

Romita was never known for huge fight-scenes like Kirby and Kane, but he outdid himself with Spidey's new villain The Rhino.

Not to neglect the girls of gorgeosity at all...

Here's a neglected moment in history: Gwen Stacy getting fed up with Aunt May and her apron strings.

And just to indulge a private theory... Romita has stated that he designed the Kingpin on his own in 1967, with no input from Stan Lee. I don't disbelieve his assertion that Lee gave Romita no description, since Lee wasn't an artist. But I've always thought Romita might have modeled his "my-fat-is-all-muscle" sumo-gang-boss on a slightly earlier character. To be sure, I can't imagine Romita going out of his way to read KID COLT as a regular thing. But he could have just seen the issue in passing on visiting Marvel offices, with the result that one "my-fat-is-all-muscle" tub o'lard begat another. From KID COLT #117 (1964), written by Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Keller:

MY TEN FAVORITE BATMAN '66 EPISODES

 Going in each case by the first episode-title of each multi-parter...

DEATH IN SLOW MOTION-- the best Riddler episode, adapted from a comics-story in which the villain was the Joker. All the tropes referencing silent cinema-- damsels in distress, pie-fights-- are perfect for the camp nature of the series, and for Riddler's more frenetic style. The "slow motion" reference is odd because undercranking often made re-screenings of silent flicks look like they were moving too fast, not too slow.

HIZZONER THE PENGUIN-- Penguin runs for mayor. Lots of good jabs at the political process.

THE JOKER IS WILD-- the first Joker is the best Joker, and even improves on the comic-book original, "The Joker's Utility Belt."

THE ZODIAC CRIMES-- the best villain-teamup, as Joker and Penguin devastate Gotham with a series of astrological crimes. The first three-parter.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION-- the best (and only) hero crossover, with some good interplay between B&R and GH&K. Roger C. Carmel chews the scenery mightily as one of the few Bat-villains who doesn't leave clues for the Dynamic Duo.

THAT DARN CATWOMAN-- the best Catwoman episode, in which she turns Robin evil and tries to force Batman to become her partner in crime. And also-- "one night in the Batcave makes a hard crime-fighter humble." 

THE DEVIL'S FINGERS-- Lorenzo Semple took a so-so John Broome comic script and made it into the dismal "Zelda the Great" in the first season. But he redeemed himself by reworking the script into this camp masterpiece, with dueling Liberaces, a trio of Scottish-themed beauties with killer bagpipes, Aunt Harriet packing heat, and both the most magnificently absurd death-trap and equally absurd heroes' escape from same.

THE SPELL OF TUT-- Tut tries to enslave Gotham with the hypnotic drug "Abu Rabu Simbu Two." I think this is the one where Tut whines, "everyone's being mean to me!"

TRUE OR FALSE FACE-- a vast improvement on a very forgettable Batman comics-story featuring one-shot villain False Face, who gets a humiliating unmasking at the end. The show's False Face is also a one-shot but he comes off as a wily, masterful opponent, even though actor Malachi Throne had to wear a thick face-mask and only communicated his menace through his voice and actions. And even though he's captured at the conclusion, the heroes DON'T unmask him, which would have spoiled the illusion of his mastery of the deceptive arts.

THE LONDINIUM LARCENIES-- the only Batgirl episode that I found outstanding (though the "Shame" episode's a good runner-up). "England Swings Batman," with mod British fashions, bad British accents, a cool pub-brawl and smoking English hotties.

DEPARTMENT OF COMICS CURIOSITIES #21: "MEN IN BLACK" (MENACE #3, 1953)/"THE HIDDEN FACE" (TOS #25, 1962)

 I found this minor story looking at early works by the newly-deceased John Romita Senior. It's not symbolic enough to stand as a near-myth or a null-myth, but is pretty much a straight "social relevance" story by Stan Lee and Romita. I would guess that the anti-bigotry message is something Stan could have been emulating from EC Comics, though this story predates EC's best known story about the rebounding of vigilante justice, "The Whipping," from a 1954 SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES. Stan's story, interestingly, has the bigot even hating on foreigners of Caucasian ancestry, for when his wife leaves him, he rails against her for being "a Swede."

It's also of minor interest to see the now famous phrase "Men in Black" used with zero E.T. connotations. The reference is to the fact that the main bigot and his buddies don imitation KKK robes, but black instead of white. This leads to a Poe-esque orgy of self-flagellation, as the bigot punishes himself by imagining that he can't take off his black mask.

ADDENDUM: Stan Lee later recycled this story with a new SF-angle in "The Hidden Face," TALES OF SUSPENSE #25 (1962), with art by Steve Ditko.

TIME OUT OF ALIGNMENT

 A major aspect of my crossover-theory is that of alignment; the principle that every literary cosmos, particularly with regard to serial concepts, is dominated by one or more superordinate icons whose are the "center" of the narrative, while all subordinate icons orbit around the central icon or icons. In CROSSING GODS I gave several examples of innominate figures from mythology being "crossed over" with one another, and sometimes with newly created serial characters, the example of the latter being Atticus of "the Iron Druid Chronicles." In COSMIC ALIGNMENT PART 3 I spoke of a different form of innominate character, that of a fictionalized version of a historical personage. I asserted that no crossover took place when a narrative associated legendary characters already associated in history-- Jesse James and Cole Younger-- but that it was one if the author depicted an association between characters not known to have encountered one another, like Jesse James and Belle Starr.

Characters involved in time-travel, though, break down normative categories of alignment, and for that reason even figures I've rated as properly "legendary" don't rate as crossovers when they interact with characters who (more or less like authors) are no longer bound by restrictions of the time-space continuum. Thus, a goodie-good Billy the Kid meeting a version of Dracula? Crossover. A vampire-version of Billy the Kid, who has no real connection with the historical figure, meeting Bloodrayne? Crossover. But Billy the Kid, as portrayed by Robert Walker Jr. in the scene above, meeting one of the Time Tunnel guys? Not a crossover. And the same principle applies to works in which the time-travelers bring together assorted characters from different eras, as Billy the Kid, Napoleon and Socrates are brought together by those excellent time-dudes Bill and Ted.

The same applies to figures of myth and folklore, as when Bill and Ted take a bogus journey that brings them into contact with both the Easter Bunny and Satan, or when the Time Tunnelers meet the equally innominate figure of Merlin.

There's also a cognate figure of characters who summon up innominate characters without those icons leaving their own time-frame. In comics the hero who did this most often was Quality's Kid Eternity, who was forever enlisting characters from both myth (Nepture, Midas, Achilles) and from history (Annie Oakley, Abraham Lincoln). None of these would even be charisma-crossovers, either with one another or with Kid Eternity.

However, unlike the time travelers Kid Eternity did possess the power to plumb the vasty deeps of fiction as well-- and so, when he conjured up Sherlock Holmes or (more amusingly) Blackhawk, THOSE would count as crossovers with nominative icons.

SILVER SCREEN PSYCHO KILLERS

 Responding to remarks about the influence of Hitchcock's 1960 PSYCHO on the history of the psycho-killer subgenre...

I'm only aware of one year-by-year "psychofilmography" of this subgenre, and that's the one compiled by John McCarty in his 1993 MOVIE PSYCHOS AND MADMEN. I don't agree with a number of his inclusions, such as "Jekyll and Hyde" films and "evil mastermind" films like those of Fu Manchu and Doctor Mabuse. But he's generally good about focusing on killers who seem motivated less by gain than by some mad pleasure in killing, usually more than just one victim. His list suggests that, aside from Mister Hyde, supernaturally-endowed psycho-killers barely existed in any quantity before the 1980s, so that most of the malcontents on the list are either uncanny or naturalistic. 

According to McCarty, there's barely anything relevant in cinema's silent years, though Hitchcock's 1926 THE LODGER builds on the legend of Jack the Ripper. I don't consider the original LODGER a true psycho-killer film, though, because the evildoer is mainly important as a catalyst, causing an innocent man to be falsely accused.

Fritz Lang's M heads up the sound era, but it, like most of the other psycho killer films of the thirties, doesn't beget more of its own subgenre kindred. The strongest pattern I see are a series of one-offs on a theme I would call "the mad hobbyist." This means a character who's so obsessed about his hobby that he makes murder integral to his pursuits, thus taking in 1932's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, 1935's THE RAVEN, and 1936's THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. 

By contrast, the forties really develop the subgenre as cinema never had before. Many years during this decade can boast (according to McCarty's parameters) as many as four or more psycho-killer films each year. Was there an upsurge in the public's perception of psychology, particularly of the Freudian brand, so that ticket buyers took the subject more seriously as a way to explain deviant behavior? Es posible.

In 1944 we get the first psycho-killer film that spawns, not a sequel or remake, but a wholly different movie in the same idiom. John Brahm's THE LODGER is a wholly different film from Hitchcock's, for the psycho-killer is the focus of the story. The killer's mental makeup is described in much more detail than most thirties parallels, even more than in Lang's M. LODGER was successful enough that the studio got Brahm to do an idiom-sequel for 1945 release, adapting the novel HANGOVER SQUARE in such a way as to duplicate the appeal of LODGER.

A lot of crime-films started using crazed killers, too. Scarface and Little Caesar had their obsessions, but they didn't murder for pleasure like the psycho-crooks of BORN TO KILL, KISS OF DEATH, or Hitchcock's ROPE.

The fifties show roughly roughly the same pattern as the forties, though in this decade we get an idiom-sequel to a "mad hobbyist" flick, when the success of Vincent Price's 1953 remake of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM leads to his appearance in 1954's THE MAD MAGICIAN. Toward the end of the fifties we're beginning to get a few films like 1958's SCREAMING MIMI and 1959's HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, which might have encouraged (if not literally influenced) the provenance of not only PSYCHO, but the same-year PEEPING TOM by Michael Powell.

In terms of the history of psycho-killers, PSYCHO's biggest influence was that it provided a pattern that proved easy to follow. Instead of one or two idiom-knockoffs of a successful movie, the "hills" of the 1960s were alive with the sounds of psycho-killings. Going purely by McCarty, year 1966 is the only one that has as few as four such movies, and that's with me eliminating the irrelevant FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN. After 1970, McCarty's list, which concludes with Year 1992, shows almost every year with at least ten such films listed.

And to think-- it all started with a noisy shower.

"MAD LOVE" (BATMAN ADVENTURES, 1994)

I've already done a short review of the animated adaptation of this one-shot comic here and gave that episode a strong mythicity rating. While a number of beat-for-beat adaptations don't necessarily duplicate the myth-discourse of their originals, both original and derivation are equally good at depicting the psychological morass in the mind of Harley Quinn.

Harley's co-creator Paul Dini has stated that he had no notion that the girl in the jester outfit was going to become one of the most enduring characters of nineties comics. Originally Dini only meant to give Joker a female henchwoman loosely akin to the molls who accompanied many male villains on the 1966 BATMAN teleseries. However, even the few molls who patterned their attire after that of their male leader were usually just there to look pretty. Even though Harley was not intended to appear more than once, Dini had her voiced by his college buddy Arleen Sorkin, and even in that one episode there was more back-and-forth between Harley and Joker than one ever found in a 1966 Bat-episode.

Since Harley's character evolved organically, it's possible that Dini never really thought about the Harley-Joker relationship changing in early episodes. However, MAD LOVE shows the writer, teamed with artist/co-creator Bruce Timm, finally decided to portray that interaction as fundamentally toxic. Joker was, after all, a manic killer, and it may not be coincidence that in her animated episodes Dini didn't actually show Harley callously killing anyone, however often she fought with Batman and his allies.

So LOVE starts out showing Joker and Harley trying to knock off Commissioner Gordon. Batman prevents this, but Harley is instrumental in stunning the crusader so that the two criminals escape. (Note: the cartoon improves on the Joker's farewell line, having the villain say, "may the floss be with you.") On the same page, though, Joker is seen to be completely ungrateful for Harley's help.

Batman then converses with Alfred, musing on Harley's origins. Two details that were omitted from the cartoon: that Harley got into college on a gymnastics scholarship, and that she apparently used sex to pad her college resume.

Meanwhile, Joker is taking it hard about getting defeated again, and he's so desperate for a new Batman-slaying scheme that he starts reviewing old schemes he already discarded. After being maltreated by her "puddin'" once again, Harley almost has a moment of clarity about her rotten love-life. 

This leads to an extended flashback, in which she goes to work at Joker's perennial prison, Arkham Asylum. She's secretly hoping to garner big-time secrets from some of the celebrity inmates in order to write a best-selling tell-all book, But Joker sees in Doctor Harleen Quinzell a mark to be played, and he plays her so well that she abandons all her small-time ambitions, making her into what she believes to be the perfect "Clown Princess of Crime."

But at the end of her flashback, Harley ends up blaming Batman for all of her troubles. She uses Joker's discarded piranha-fish death-trap and traps Batman in it. Batman's only hope is to play on her psychological vulnerabilities, in a more honest manner than Joker did, by convincing her to call Joker in to witness his eternal foe's demise.

Joker comes. Joker is not pleased that his girlfriend trumped him.

So Harley's reward for patterning herself after a clown-themed stone killer is almost getting killed. Batman escapes thanks to having brought Joker into the mix, and Joker seems to "die" in his own big fall. At story's end, Harley returns to Arkham but as an inmate. This time, she almost comes to terms with her own egotistical follies. But Dini wasn't quite ready for Harley's reform, and LOVE ends with her re-descent into the best known "amour fou" of the superhero genre.

But she didn't stay lost in that delusion, and over time Harley became the poster girl for women working their way out of toxic relationships with men, as seen in the 2016 SUICIDE SQUAD. (No one seems interested in whether her girl-on-girl friendship with Poison Ivy might prove equally-- or even literally-- just as toxic, but -- baby steps, baby steps.)