LEGENDS OF YESTERYEAR

In COSMIC ALIGNMENT I addressed the way certain real-life historical figures generated innominative characters based on them, but I didn't try to address what if any limits I might place on the simple appearance of historical figures of any kind within a fictional context. In the essay I spoke of four Old West figures in terms of the enduring "folk-legends" they had engendered in addition to their appearances in nominative fictional works.

... these [four characters] would all be high-charisma crossovers, since all of the folk-legends attached to these westerns would be *innominate* by nature.

I won't pause at this time for a rigorous definition of what I mean by "legends," but I think it important to stress that though there are hundreds of famous historical figures who have been committed to fiction, very few of them have taken on the quasi-unreal status of legends. Billy the Kid is such a legend. A later author can imagine him doing all sorts of unhistorical things-- becoming a vampire who fights Bloodrayne, or being taught gunmanship by the Two-Gun Kid, but each fictionalized Billy has that legendary quality. Thus even a story in which the Kid is a superordinate character, Billy sustains only a "crossover-charisma" when he appears alongside a stature-bearing character like Bloodrayne or Two-Gun.The vast majority of historical figures, even when they're shown doing unhistorical things, are still no greater than what the reader/audience knows of the originals. Winston Churchill is just Winston Churchill even if he's seen consulting with The Invaders. Adolf Hitler is just Hitler, even if he's depicted as the secret creator of The Red Skull.

This idea of "legendary stature/charisma" came to mind as I considered a pair of early seventies films by junk-auteur Jesus Franco. The first of the two, DRACULA PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN, was indubitably a crossover of two nominative icons from particular fictional works.

However, the quasi-sequel THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN depends on mixing the nominative figures of Frankenstein and his Monster with a brand-new character given the name Cagliostro. The movie uses the same pair of actors who played Frankenstein and Dracula in the earlier film, and a version of a character from the Stoker novel DRACULA also appears in both films. Franco's Frankenstein has a qualitative level of stature, but Cagliostro-- who isn't even explicitly compared to the 18th-century occultist-- lacks either stature or charisma capable of sustaining a crossover. Even if there had been some explicit connection to the historical figure, though, I would say, "Cagliostro is no Billy the Kid." 

The occultist only gets a few popular-fiction incarnations. He appears in a 1970s DOCTOR STRANGE continuity, for example. Wikipedia mentions several usages of Cagliostro's historical personage in various works, but  the only book I'd heard of was Alexander Dumas's 1846 BALSAMO-- and this was used as a partial basis for the oddball Orson Welles swashbuckler BLACK MAGIC. The latter two works may be the closest the historical character came to having "stature" in particular nominative texts, but they aren't sufficient for me to think of him as a figure of "legendary" status. Ergo, in Franco's RITES the intersection of Doctor Frankenstein with a man who might be the 18th-century occultist is at best a mashup, not a crossover.

The same would apply to any number of interactions between stature-icons and whatever historical figures they cross paths with-- Doctor Strange and Ben Franklin, Superboy and George Washington, or any time-traveling icon meeting any number of famous historical people-- on which I may expound further later on.

ADDENDUM: Of course when Adolf Hitler becomes a super-villain, as when a version of Der Fuhrer got turned into Marvel's "Hate-Monger," then the real historical figure has become totally subsumed by a fictional character. This type of fictionalized character becomes nominative, not innominate, and said character can be a "charisma-crossover" with another repeat-villain, as he is in SUPER VILLAIN TEAM UP. Also, if Hate-Fuhrer had been the star of his own villain-centric series, or part of an ensemble, for an impressive amount of time, he would obtain stature and would qualify as a stature-crossover with any other character with stature, much as Deadshot acquired stature and keeps it after his respectable run in the SUICIDE SQUAD ensemble.