TIMELY MEDITATIONS

 So far my most extensive ruminations about how icon-crossover is affected by temporal considerations appeared in last June's TIME OUT OF ALIGNMENT. And now, as if so often the case, I find myself repenting at leisure some of the proposals I put forth-- though in my case I've never explicitly been "married" to any of them.

So in ALIGNMENT, I said:

 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.

So, in re-assessing this theory, I ask myself: why was it important to me that all subordinate icons in a serial narrative should be aligned in terms of time? Arguably, there are many serial narratives wherein the superordinate icons are not aligned with the subordinates in terms of space. All of the adventures in the 1960s STAR TREK take place within a certain time-frame, roughly aligned with the life-spans of the main characters. But the TREK superordinates never visit the same precise location once, aside from appearing on Earth, but in different time-frames. A couple of times, Enterprise heroes meet figures that appear to be such innominate legends of history as Genghis Khan and the Clanton Gang, but these are merely lookalike constructs.

I suppose my basic feeling was that protagonists who traduce the boundaries of time aren't "playing fair." Such TREK antagonists as the Metrons and the Excalibans are so separated by the gulfs of space that they're unlikely to meet-- but as long as they're in the same time-frame, they COULD. But there would normally be no way that a 20th-century "Time Tunnel guy" could meet the legends of other eras, like Ulysses, Merlin, or Billy the Kid, without crossing the gulfs of time. Conquering space with the use of a star-drive may be sheer fantasy in reality. Yet it seems a believable extrapolation from the way Planet Earth has grown "smaller" thanks to technological advances that allow, say, James Bond to jet over to Italy or Japan. 

Nevertheless, I have to admit that in my ALIGNMENT statement I accidentally alloted crossover-status to a different form of "time-travel." I said that Bloodrayne's meeting with Billy the Kid counted as a crossover. But the heroine is only able to meet her universe's version of the  Kid in the late 1800s because she's an immortal dhampire. Bloodrayne becomes a mature female in the early 1800s, but she looks the same age in the late 1800s, and the same is true in her final cinematic adventure, where she's still unaltered age-wise, in WWII, kicking Nazi ass. So, if I'm going to allow for Bloodrayne meeting The Kid thanks to a fantasy-factor, I suppose I ought to make the same allowance with regard to time tunnels, TARDIS-machines, and the like. 

However, not all fantasy-factors are equal. I would maintain that non-legendary historical figures still carry no innominate crossover-mojo when they appear in modern times, whether it's Ben Franklin whammied up by Samantha Stevens or Bill and Ted using their time-traveling phonebooth to summon Napoleon and Socrates. But Billy the Kid remains a legendary historical figure, so I guess his meeting with the excellent dudes-- who, to be sure, are both superordinate icons-- does count as a crossover. And the same would be the case for their interactions with innominate figures of myth and legend, like Satan and the Easter Bunny-- particularly when Bill and Ted meet both in the same narrative, giving rise to a "Super-Legend Crossover."

I also raised issues with the Quality Comics character Kid Eternity, whose super-power allowed him to call upon various figures of myth and fiction to fight on his behalf. I even cited a page from one adventure in which the hero calls up Sherlock Holmes. A side-character rightly remarks that Holmes was created in fictional stories, and Holmes answers that "Doyle's stories made me seem real to so many readers that I became a real person." Because of this sort of jiggery-pokery, I'd speculate that the hero's power didn't summon actual humans or deities from the past, but merely images of them, who were able to flawlessly emulate the skills or powers of their models. 

If these figures were all just spectres of the original models, then Kid Eternity isn't actually summoning anyone from any time-frame, not even contemporary heroes like Blackhawk and Plastic Man, and thus that they aren't any more diegetically "real" than the illusions of Genghis Khan and the Clanton Gang in STAR TREK. So it might be the case that none of the characters the hero summons are crossover-figures-- and the same would be true of legendary evildoers called forth by the Kid's polar opposite, Master Man from KID ETERNITY #15 (1946).

However, if the time-travel summoning is veracious, then innominate  manifestations can be crossovers. This would include such interesting if quirky examples as AVENGERS #10, in which newly-minted super-villain Immortus invokes innominate figures of fiction and history such as Attila the Hun, Paul Bunyan, Merlin, Goliath, and a version of Hercules presumably unrelated to the Marvel-Earth incarnation that would debut a year or so later.

And just to give an example of a "team" of innominate legends drawn purely from recorded history, here's a 1947 BLUE BEETLE story from ALL TOP COMICS #8. The titular hero encounters, thanks to a time-travel device, a "super-menace team-up" whose members are culled from different eras: the pirate Blackbeard, the serial killer Jack the Ripper, and the wife-murderer Doctor Crippen. In fact, the writer of this tale made an overt attempt to "mythify" the historical Crippen-- who only killed one woman according to the law-- into some sort of odd "Bluebeard" type who killed multiple wives.