From one viable POV, most of my meditations on "base iconicity" and "elevated iconicity" in Part 1 were meant to lead to the subject of this post: to clarify that there are three types of crossover-stories, and one type of story that only superficially appears to be a crossover.
The first type involves two or more "familiar" icons, meaning icons that appeared in two or more separate venues, usually both serial in nature, available to consumers prior to the crossover. When the original Human Torch contended with the Sub-Mariner in the 1940s, both icons were familiar to the comic-buying public. Both of those characters happened to be widely popular prior to the crossover. However, the same principle prevails when a publisher launches a new series within the context of an established one, and then immediately launches the standalone series as well. One mostly forgotten launch of the Golden Age appeared in the popular feature KID ETERNITY, the main star of Quality Comics' title HIT COMICS. The Kid had barely been introduced himself when his creators had him encounter two humorous ladies of larceny, Her Highness and Silk. Almost immediately after that, Her Highness and Silk got their own backup feature in the HIT title, where they survived for the remainder of the title's run. Their guest-shot in the Kid's feature might have made no difference, but even that early in the history of superhero comics, creators understood the appeal of advance publicity.
The second type of crossover is what I've termed the "proto-crossover." A novel icon appears within the sphere of a familiar icon's world, but the novel icon does not get a featured venue right away. As long as such a venue does eventuate within (as a rough measure) five years, then all of the novel icon's previous appearances are retroactively crossovers, looking back on the icon in terms of his/her/its history. The guiding example here is Marvel's Black Panther, who only received a regular venue in the title THE AVENGERS, four or five years after the character debuted in the FANTASTIC FOUR comic.
Usually, there is some authorial intent to launch the novel icon in a starring venue. Yet this doesn't always happen. The history of television is replete with "back-door pilots" in which a producer sought to use a regular episode of an established series to debut one or more icons in the hope of selling said icons to networks. When no separate venue comes to pass, the novel icons just remain Subs within the established series and nothing more. However, audience intent can take the place of authorial intent. When the creators of Hillman Comics' feature SKY WOLF introduced a muck-monster named The Heap, those creators meant the creature to be a one-shot opponent. But the readers wanted to see more of The Heap, and so he got a backup series in the same magazine publishing SKY WOLF.
In both of these forms, all of the characters start out with basal iconicity but then attain elevated iconicity if they even appear in two serial adventures. Their iconicity is elevated by the quantitative form of escalation whether the stories possess any standout quality or not. Most serial icons require more than two adventures to deserve qualitative escalation, though Wally Wood's WIZARD KING duology is a noteworthy exception.
The next type is purely monadic and therefore not capable of having its status being altered by quantitative escalation. Walter Scott wrote one story of his knight Ivanhoe, and Ivanhoe's novelty becomes a crossover only by dint of his association with a previously established icon, in this case, Robin Hood. (As I've said in earlier essays, other historical figures in IVANHOE do not have iconic status, but Robin of Loxley does because he had attained the status of a legend long before Scott wrote IVANHOE. Yet here is a point I never elaborated before: the only way the Ivanhoe-icon can be one-half of a crossover-dyad is if he does, in his sole appearance, merit a high level of qualitative escalation-- which Ivanhoe, apart from his association with Robin Hood, does.
The fourth form-- the one that only looks like a crossover-- is a monadic work in which an established icon-- whether entirely fictional or based in history but given legendary status-- meets a novel icon lacking any claim to qualitative escalation. For instance, even though Billy the Kid was a real historical personage, he's become the stuff of legend due to many fictional iterations of his persona. So anytime the Kid appears in any story, even one that purports to be closely based on real history, the Kid-icon carries crossover-potential-- even in a work like the 1970 feature film CHISUM. Though this film, dealing with the Lincoln County Cattle Wars, includes many historical personages other than Billy the Kid, the Kid alone has crossover-potential-- but none is sustained, given that the novel icon of the movie (and, I assume, of the prose source material) is the fictional cattle baron John Chisum. Chisum is not only nowhere close to the qualitative level of Scott's Ivanhoe, he's not even close to some of the better characters essayed by actor John Wayne, such as Quirt (ANGEL AND THE BADMAN) Evans or Ethan (THE SEARCHERS) Edwards. Had either of those monadic luminaries happened to have crossed paths with a legendary Western character, *that* might have been a crossover. But John Chisum is just another routine character, undoubtedly selected for film adaptation because it was the sort of character John Wayne could play in his sleep.
This line of thought occurred to me in part because of multi-character crossovers like the 1948 oater RETURN OF THE BAD MEN. This film was a crossover because of the "team-up" of several famous outlaws-- but the eminent icon of the story, Vance Cordell, is just one of the many stolid heroes played by Randolph Scott. Cordell and Chisum are novel monadic icons, but they lack the special qualities of even the better monad-westerns of the time. It's not impossible that there might be a crossover monad that depends on an outstanding hero and some legendary figure, but at the moment, nothing occurs to me.
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