ESCALATION PROCLAMATION PT. 2

 My original formulations with respect to the principle I called "escalation" in this 2012 post had nothing to do with centricity or crossovers, but I've decided to adapt the principle with respect to the concepts of high and low forms of both stature and charisma.

Since beginning the crossover-series, I've mentioned that every narrative presence, whether a Prime or a Sub, can change the form of its stature or charisma when a given presence migrates to another narrative. In Part 1 I observed that Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu started out with a high level of stature in his own series, and I compared him loosely to Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

One of the main determinants of a character's "high" scores in either stature or charisma is that of sheer *durability." Whether he's a character with just one narrative, like Ivanhoe, or with several, like Fu Manchu, the character may have greater stature or charisma due to his, her, or its role in popular culture.

This is the most important aspect of escalation with relevance to cultural significance. It does not matter that Ivanhoe had just one literary outing while Fu Manchu had twelve novels and four short stories; what matters most is that they became cultural touchstones. Once this happens, these iconic characters, no matter how much they may be changed in later adaptations, have had their stature escalated to the highest level possible for a purely literary character; the level of Qualitative Escalation.

Now, the vast majority of literary characters don't become cultural touchstones. Walter Scott published a lot of other one-shot novels in addition to IVANHOE. But if for some reason he had chosen to make even a brief series out of some character-- say, Guy Mannering-- then arguably Guy Mannering would have a little more stature than an equally non-iconic Scott character still confined to just one adventure like, say, Quentin Durward. This sort of escalation I call Quantitative Escalation.

Similarly, no one aside from readers with very antiquarian tastes remembers Rohmer's serial detective Gaston Max. But in his day, he enjoyed four novels and a handful of radio-plays, so that puts him ahead of a one-shot figure like the starring villain of Rohmer's 1932 YUAN HEE SEE LAUGHS, who might be best described as a "fat Fu Manchu."

For that reason, in Part 2 of my crossover-series, I noted that I deemed the now obscure Golden Age heroine Miss Victory to have accrued a moderately high level of stature-- one related purely to how often she appeared-- so that when she was revived in the 1980s series FEMFORCE, her original stature "crossed over" with the new heroes created for the series, even if this "crossover" existed only in the initiating episode of the FEMFORCE series, since the character, re-dubbed "Ms. Victory," became thereafter absorbed into the Femforce mythos.

On the other hand, in Part 3 I mentioned that I didn't think Marvel's character Magik had accrued much stature in her one four-issue series, and so I assigned her a low level of stature in her initial crossover with the already established New Mutants team, and this too would be based on the principle of Quantitative Escalation.

The same dichotomy applies to characters who are dominantly Subs, whether they possess high or low levels of charisma. I also mentioned in Part 3 that of the three Batman villains who formed temporary team-ups with the crusader in the original BRAVE AND BOLD series, the Joker had enjoyed nine issues of a series, unlike the Riddler and Ra's Al Ghul. Yet the meager stature that the Joker garnered from his series did nothing to erase his dominant image as a subordinate figure, and so I would tend to regard even the temporary escalations of these three Subs to Prime status to be equally negligible. 

By the 1970s, though, all three possessed comparable levels of high charisma resulting from multiple appearances as subordinate character in the Batman features (as well as occasional guest-shots in other features). Such figures, having negligible stature, don't fit the category of even the low-stature crossover. However, they may generate a high-charisma crossover when comparable figures cross paths with one another, as per my example of the Joker and the Penguin in Part 4.  

The same applies to a multi-villain crossover like THE LONG HALLOWEEN-- but only to those villains-- Joker, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow et al-- who have "made their bones." This same story introduces a new villain, Holiday, but since he never appeared before or after that story, he has negligible charisma and so is not part of the charisma-crossover per se. 

Lastly, a well-traveled Sub can generate a low-charisma crossover when he appears outside his normal bailiwick in some other character's mythos, such as we see when the Riddler crossed paths with the Elongated Man.

There are certainly other permutations to consider, but I'll leave things there for the time being.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE SHADOW OF DUSK" (THE SPIRIT SECTION,, 6-16-42)

 Though READ COMICS ONLINE has become my go-to site for scans of obscure comics, even they couldn't provide assistance for this essay: reviewing "The Shadow of Dusk," thus far reprinted only in the fifth issue of THE SPIRIT ARCHIVES, and nowhere online.

The titular adversary featured in "Shadow," in fact, was only used four times by Will Eisner (and any collaborators involved). Mister Dusk first appears in June 1941, and appears to be a loony who kills a man for no particular reason. He then comes across the Spirit, invites him to his lair to meet his crazy wife Twilight (called a "savage" but not given any particular nationality). Inevitably both Dusk and Twilight try to kill the hero, who captures them and has them put away in an asylum. The two of them get free that same year for a Halloween story and then obligingly go back to the asylum once the holiday is over. Both of these are amusing but not particularly mythic.

The third story, though, shows Eisner in a different sort of antic moon-- metaphysically antic, that is. He starts out with a splash panel that shows the Spirit standing in a roughly cruciform position with his own amplified shadow behind him, while to the right appears a quote from a Walt Whitman poem about the questionable identity between the speaker and his own shadow.

The story proper opens with a thunder-storm erupting over the asylum where Dusk is imprisoned. (His wife Twilight is mentioned but not seen.) The madman dances in his cell to the "symphony" of thunder and  lightning, only to stop when he notices that his shadow has wandered off. Providentially the storm then blasts open Dusk's cell, so that he can go looking for his missing other half.

Meanwhile, at the Spirit's lair, his buddy Ebony sees a menacing shadow show up and try to strangle Ebony's own shadow. The bad shade disappears when the Spirit shows up.

Dusk goes looking for his other half at police HQ, and Commissioner Dolan, apparently infected by the villain's nuttiness, takes Dusk home with him. Dusk then handcuffs and slugs Dolan and abducts the cop's daughter Ellen. Moments later the Spirit shows up at Dolan's house, bursting to tell the commish about Ebony's weird experience and to go into a diatribe about shadow-folklore-- at least until the hero finds out his girlfriend has been kidnapped.

The Spirit and Dolan decide to check out the villain's former hideout, and the Spirit is highly amused to see that Ellen has somehow turned the tables on Dusk, threatening him with nothing but her fists. Possibly Dusk was de-powered by the loss of his shadow? In any case, Dusk's shadow appears and starts strangling the shadow of the hero, who chokes as if personally assaulted. However, the Spirit just happens to have brought along a camera, and he "captures" the spirit in the camera-film. (Here one presumes Eisner was playing around with the belief attributed to primitives, that a camera could capture the spirit of anyone photographed.) 

Dolan then hauls Dusk back to the asylum. The Spirit shows the camera-film to a scientist, who confirms that the image of the shadow is there. However, somehow the shadow gets loose again, and when it's seen elsewhere, the Spirit and his scientist friend confirm that the image has vanished from the film. At story's end the shadow remains on the loose and is never reunited with Dusk.

With or without his shadow, Dusk makes one more appearance, but in reduced stature. In a story spoofing the late forties' rise of Jane Russell's star, Dusk tries to kill the Spirit and launch a blackmail operation-- all far from the sustained looniness of his first three appearances.

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 5

 Last and sort of least is the LOW CHARISMA crossover. 

I've already mentioned one example of this category in Part 3, that of Wolverine in his first interaction with the X-Men. Having been only a Sub, he had no stature, but he did have a degree of charisma simply from his having fought the Hulk in one story, With the exception of Cyclops, who possessed both stature and charisma by virtue of his long career with the hero-team, all of the other characters were new and only accrued charisma as the original story progressed. Some of the other established X-people appear in the tale as well, but their status is that of "guest stars" rather than functional members of the team-- a point underscored in the next installment, where all the old X's are given their walking papers for the time being. (To be sure, Jean "Marvel Girl"  Grey does get invited back rather quickly,)

NOTE: just after I wrote this, I remembered that Sunfire and Banshee, who were also in the New X-Men, had pretty much the same Sub-status as Wolverine, though the two of them had enjoyed perhaps three or four Sub-appearances apiece. Rather than rewrite the paragraph, take it as a given that what goes for new member Wolverine also goes for new members Sunfire and Banshee-- though Sunfire was quickly disposed of, ending his brush with Prime status almost as quickly as it began.

The same principle applies to the first crossover of the Joker and the Catwoman in BATMAN #2: neither had accrued much charisma at the time of that story, though obviously the writers meant to build up both characters as consequential to the Bat-mythos.

The subject of Subs being nurtured within a particular mythos is relevant to another species of crossover: the old-villain-meets-new-opponent crossover. As I also noted in Part 3, the tag-team villains Mister Hyde and the Cobra had been regular foes of Thor for a short period, and in DAREDEVIL #30, Stan Lee evidently felt that they would be a better fit for Daredevil. In the process of making the transfer, their villain-charisma had to start interacting with the very different charisma of Daredevil.

I should include a parallel to the discussion from Part 4 as to how former Primes might become Subs in another work, but could still enjoy high charisma, as with Dracula's appearance in a Billy the Kid movie. In cases of low charisma, one may have either new or established characters cross over with former Primes for the sake of brief bits of business rather than for major plot-functions. Examples include:

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (in which the main characters are Roger and Eddie Valliant)

THE BOOKS OF MAGIC (in which the main character is Tim Hunter, and the vast panoply of the DC Universe exists as background to his decision)

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.

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 3

The second crossover-category corresponds to the basic pattern of the first one, except that at least one of the stature-bearing characters has been compromised in some manner, making at least one of the characters of LOW STATURE. The most frequent manifestations of the low-stature crossover are usually termed "guest starring roles" or "cameos."

"Guest stars" are often considered to be the same as regular crossovers, but not infrequently guest stars appear in some ancillary role. I mentioned the example of the Golden Age Human Torch-Sub-Mariner crossovers. These took the shape of one of the two heroes appearing in an issue of the other hero's magazine, but the narrative emphasis is clearly on their interaction.

In contrast, the appearance that I'm calling the "guest star" is only moderately important to the plot. One of my favorites of this type appears in the Silver Age DAREDEVIL #30. For some reason, the titular hero decides that he wants to take on Thor's sometime foes Mister Hyde and the Cobra-- which is the main plotline of the narrative. But author Stan Lee, wanting to play the idea to its most absurd lengths, first has DD masquerade as the Thunder God to lure the villains out-- to which deception the real Thor takes exception. What follows is a sublimely silly encounter between the two heroes, which is not strictly necessary to the plot, though it's certainly a lot of fun.

Cameos are even more "throwaway" in nature, usually lasting only a few diegetic "moments." One of the dippiest I've recently encountered was in a 1944 issue of Quality's FEATURE COMICS, in which the almost forgotten comical character "Blimpy" became reduced in (physical) stature and so rang up another Quality character, Doll Man, in order to get some advice about getting small. 

Turning to another manifestation of the low-stature category, I didn't discuss in the previous post the concept of "rotating team" franchises, though I established in this 2019 post my estimation that the characters in each of these temporary teams shared equal stature (although, just to be totally confusing, at that time I was using the term "charisma" in place of what I now call "stature.") However, I made a few exceptions, saying of Batman's co-stars in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD:

Most of the time, the co-stars either had their own franchises, or had enjoyed such regular berths at some point in DC's history. However, on a few occasions the Bat teamed up with one of his famed enemies, and I would consider all of these to be subordinate rather than coordinate figures, because the villains had not previously enjoyed their own franchises.

 

Even then, I had to further admit that although this was true of two such co-stars, the Riddler and Ra's Al Ghul, but that one other co-star, the Joker, actually had enjoyed a series of nine issues, wherein he usually contended with other Bat-villains. I made the comment that the Joker's series had not done anything to dispel his dominant image as a subordinate character, or Sub, but now I would rephrase that to say that nine issues were not enough to endow the Clown Prince of Crime with the stature one should perceive in a Prime. 

Similarly, a featured hero who only enjoyed a piddling few Prime stories, either as a solo protagonist or as part of an ensemble, would also possess only a very low level of stature. Prior to the Blue Diamond's appearance in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE alongside the Thing, the Diamond could only boast a couple of Golden Age appearances and a couple in Roy Thomas's retcon team-title "The Liberty Legion"-- and so his Prime status is dubious. In fact, TWO-IN-ONE became something of a dumping-ground for short-lived Prime characters such as the Golem, the Living Mummy and Skull the Slayer, none of whom went on to rekindled fame after their TWO-IN-ONE outings. The same applies to the Sub character Jocasta, who got a brief shot at Prime status before returning to intermittent obscurity.

Some obscure characters, however, went on to respectable fame once they'd been inducted into regular teams. Magik had made a few minor Sub appearances before getting a four-issue mini-series. This series made the character a Prime, but had she never been inducted into a group-- be it the one she did join, the New Mutants, or some other team-- she probably would have returned to Sub status. An even more noteworthy example of a lowly Sub rising to superstar Prime status is Wolverine. At the time of the taloned terror's induction into the 1970s X-Men, he had only appeared in one adventure, as an opponent for the Hulk. Not only did Wolverine become a stellar member of the X-Men, he went on to enjoy a wide number of solo adventures. So Magik has only a little stature when she joins the New Mutants, and thus only her first alliance with that team can be called a Low-Stature Crossover at all. Wolverine's induction into the New X-Men does not qualify as a stature crossover, but would possibly qualify for a Low-Charisma type.

 

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 2

My first crossover-category is that is THE HIGH STATURE CROSSOVER. This is usually a crossover of two or more characters/presences that have embodied PRIME stature in earlier narratives, though there are some exceptions to this rule.

An early example of a literary crossover is that of Rider Haggard's SHE AND ALLAN, in which Haggard's two most famous characters encountered one another for the course of one novel.

In comics, of course, Timely Comics provided a major model for the future when its editors crossed over two of its continuing features, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. However, the character's intermittent encounters were not limited to one interaction, but went on for much of both characters' original runs.

These characters also briefly crossed over in the very short-lived team title, ALL WINNERS SQUAD-- which factoid leads me to mention that I've reversed the position I expressed in THE LOGIC AND APPEAL OF CROSSOVERS, where I said that I did not deem "hero-teams" to be crossovers. Now I tend to say that they definitely are when the majority of the team-members maintain their own separate features. The principle may even extend to characters who had moderately substantial features of their own before being revived by other publishers. Thus the Golden Age character "Miss Victory," who lasted for about five years as a backup feature in an anthology comic, was "ret-conned" to stand alongside a bunch of newbie characters in the Americomics title FEMFORCE (which would later pursue many other similar public-domain revivals).

All of these characters are incidents of two Primes interacting. However, in some cases a Prime may appear in another Prime's series in such a way that the former becomes a Sub-- but without a concomitant loss of charisma. For instance, Donald Duck was conceived as a 1931 animated cartoon character long before Uncle Scrooge appeared in a 1947 comic book. Yet whenever Donald and his three nephews appeared in the UNCLE SCROOGE stories, Scrooge was the Prime, as the stories were primarily about him. Yet in a sense Donald and the nephews were an integral part of the Scrooge mythos, in part because regular readers always had some knowledge that Donald existed in his own cosmos alongside that of Scrooge.

To conclude this post, I'll add that on occasion an iconic character will be partly revised for the needs of a later crossover. 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.

More to come.

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 1

My currently definitive statement on the factors that distinguish superordinate from subordinate characters, formulated in EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL PART 2, comes down to this: only the superordinate presences, or Primes, can possess *stature,* which indicates their role as the organizing factors of the given narrative. Subordinate presences, or Subs, possess only *charisma,* which term I evolved in response to, and in disagreement with, Nancy Springer's tendency to locate centricity in the most charismatic characters of a narrative, her example being Scott's IVANHOE. To reiterate the "vector" argument, the Primes possess *stature* solely possess the unique vectors of the type of authorial will relating to centricity, while the Subs possess *charisma* simply because they exist to play off the activities of the Primes. 

Now, I have not devoted more than a handful of ARCHIVE posts to crossovers, even though that literary phenomenon has some interesting applications to my many posts on the concept of centricity-- not least because when a character created for one narrative crosses over into another narrative mythos, the character may either retain the same stature, have slightly less stature, or may simply have variable degrees of charisma but no stature at all. 

Take as a quick example the character of Fu Manchu. Within all of the Sax Rohmer stories, the "devil doctor" is without question the superordinate character. Rohmer often brings in other heroes to assist the doctor's implacable foe Sir Denis Nayland Smith, mostly in order to pursue new romantic arcs for the younger men, but even Smith, who appears in all of the stories, cannot surpass Fu Manchu in either stature or charisma. So in the original stories, the doctor is a Prime.

However, when the character was licensed to Marvel in the 1970s, he became a Sub, a subordinate presence, to his son Shang-Chi in the comics series MASTER OF KUNG FU. Some stories pitting son against father were quite good while many were inferior, though it's arguable that even in the worst stories, Fu still displayed a greater vector of charisma than your average toss-off villain. 

All that said, it's certainly not impossible for someone to use Fu Manchu-- or any other narrative presence-- as a figure with a very small vector of both stature AND charisma. In the 1938 theater-cartoon HAVE YOU GOT ANY CASTLES, four "literary monsters"-- Fu, Mister Hyde, Frankenstein and the Phantom of the Opera-- appear in one small vignette where they start out roaring at the audience, and then perform a foofy minuet to undercut their own fierceness.

Yet in 1984, Fu finally received at least co-starring Prime status in a crossover novel, Cay Van Ash's TEN YEARS BEYOND BAKER STREET, in which the doctor crosses swords with an aging Sherlock Holmes.

Most of my posts on crossovers appeared on what I like to call my "junk-drawer" blog, OUROBOROS DREAMS. I pursued a "best crossovers" project for a time, but the essay that concretized my earliest thoughts on the subject appeared in a 2014 post. The relevant insights are as follows:

Some Marxist critics will view such character-crossovers as one of many strategies by which the evil Masters of Mass Culture manipulate their audiences. While such explanations may seem to answer all questions as to the motives of the stories' producers, they don't say anything substantive about why the audiences choose to patronize not just works of mass culture in general, but works in which characters or concepts from different storylines happen to intersect. The usual Marxist explanation is that these audiences want nothing more than mindless divertissement. However, the overlapping of distinct storylines would seem to intensify the degree of mental effort an audience-member must exert in order to participate in the crossover's intersecting universes.  For instance, when Rider Haggard takes a character who exists in a moderately realistic universe, i.e., Allan Quatermain, and causes him to encounter a character whose nature is overtly supernatural, Haggard must find some way to treat both characters with integrity, even though the ground rules of their universes are in conflict.  I'll discuss this particular example in more depth in an essay devoted to this novel.

It's something of a given in literary criticism to state that audiences, literary or sub-literary, maintain interest in fictional characters by identifying with them.  This commonplace observation is not so much wrong as overly simple. As I am what has been called a "myth-critic," I assert that the process of identification comes about as a reader (or viewer) realizes what kind of role the character plays in the story, and what that fictional role means to the reader. This does not mean "identification" in the simple-minded sense of "I want to be like this person," for identification can take place with any number of villains (the Joker, Freddy Krueger), monsters (Godzilla) or even mysterious locales (the subterranean domain of Jules Verne's "Center of the Earth.")  It is more properly an appreciation of what I will call the "mana" appropriate to the character or concept's role in the story. 

A crossover features at least two characters who have established-- or will establish-- the "mana" that has or might make them popular. In the above example, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed has one type of "mana," while Quatermain has a different type.  It is this "clash of energies" that I believe readers enjoy in crossovers, a clash that is radically different from the normative encounters of a hero and his villains.

I would say that what I called "mana" in this post is essentially the same as what I'm now calling "charisma." However, not all crossovers maintain the same levels of stature or charisma. For that reason, I find myself making a major distinction about whether or not the narrative presences within a crossover are HIGH in stature, LOW in stature, HIGH in charisma or LOW in charisma. One of the main determinants of a character's "high" scores in either stature or charisma is that of sheer *durability." Whether he's a character with just one narrative, like Ivanhoe, or with several, like Fu Manchu, the character may have greater stature or charisma due to his, her, or its role in popular culture.

I will devote the next four posts to various examples of each of the four constellations.