Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World #2

Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World

by Win Scott Eckert

From the mid-Twentieth Century, when The Spider clashed with Mr. Hyde; The Domino Lady worked with The Black Bat, The Avenger, and Airboy; Batman variously teamed up with The Shadow, Captain America, The Spirit, and Sherlock Holmes; Philip Marlowe had a brush with the Deep Ones and later worked with Sam Spade; the Nyctalope teamed up with Professor Quatermass; Bulldog Drummond combined forces with Richard Hannay for one last adventure; Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, Lord Peter, Perry Mason, and Mike Hammer solved a murder; and Vampirella teamed up with or fought just about everyone... ...To the Twenty-first Century, when Frankenstein's Creature battled Dracula and Mr. Hyde, and traveled to the Lost World; Witchblade and the Darkness joined forces with Vampirella; the worlds of Boston P.I. Spenser, Sheriff Jesse Stone, and detective Sunny Randall came together; and a modern-day Van Helsing went up against the current incarnation of the Black Coats... ...To the far-flung future, when Spock claimed Holmes as an ancestor and Ishmael flew with the wind whales... Crossovers is a massive timeline of crossover stories in which characters, situations, or universes are linked together in order to build the Crossover Universe. Lovingly compiled by crossover and Wold Newton expert Win Scott Eckert, Crossovers lists upwards of 2000 crossover stories, with innumerable additional timeline entries which outline the secret history of the land of fiction. With an introduction by Jess Nevins, this volume is illustrated with over 300 book and magazine covers, and contains an appendix covering Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series.

Genres: Nonfiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2010

About the author

WIN SCOTT ECKERT is a novelist, editor, essayist, and author of short fiction. He is steeped in the works of famed science fiction writer Philip José Farmer, particularly Farmer’s shared universe literary-crossover Wold Newton cycle and the Lord Grandrith/Doc Caliban series. He has a deep interest in studying fictional biographies, creating detailed chronologies of fictional characters and universes, and exploring the metafictional connections between seemingly unrelated works, which resulted in MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER’S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE (MonkeyBrain Books), a 2007 Locus Awards finalist, and the critically acclaimed, encyclopedic CROSSOVERS: A SECRET CHRONOLOGY OF THE WORLD 1 & 2 (Black Coat Press, 2010).

Eckert is also an expert on many of the authors and characters who inspired Farmer—such as Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, Pellucidar, John Carter of Mars, and more), the pulp heroes (Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger, etc.), Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, Ian Fleming’s James Bond, and Sax Rohmer’s Denis Nayland Smith, Fu Manchu, and Sumuru—as well as other heroic characters whose adventures Eckert has chronicled, including Zorro, Sexton Blake, the Phantom, Honey West, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Domino Lady, and the Green Hornet, all of which can be found in the pages of anthologies from Moonstone Books, Meteor House (THE WORLDS OF PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER), Black Coat Press (TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN), and Titan Books (TALES OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE).

An accomplished essayist, Eckert contributed a new foreword the 2006 edition of Farmer’s well-known fictional biography, TARZAN ALIVE: A DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF LORD GREYSTOKE (University of Nebraska/Bison Books), as well as several forewords and afterwords to Titan Books’ reissues of Farmer’s novels. As Executive Editor for Meteor House, he played a key role in reissuing definitive editions of Farmer’s fictional biography DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE (2013), and Farmer’s authorized Burroughs novel, TARZAN AND THE DARK HEART OF TIME (2018).

Eckert is the authorized legacy author of Farmer's Patricia Wildman series (THE EVIL IN PEMBERLEY HOUSE, THE SCARLET JAGUAR). His latest releases are an authorized Avenger book from Moonstone, HUNT THE AVENGER (2019); an authorized novel in the new Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe, TARZAN: BATTLE FOR PELLUCIDAR (2020); and, as coauthor with Farmer, the fourth novel in Farmer's Secrets of the Nine series, THE MONSTER ON HOLD (2021), furthering the titanic saga of Doc Caliban's battle against the dark manipulators who hold the secret to eternal life, the Nine. His Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe novel KORAK AT THE EARTH'S CORE is forthcoming in April 2024.

Find him online at winscotteckert dot com

Reviews

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting curiosity of a book and much more fun to read than I expected. I think most are aware of crossover books in literature like when Sherlock Holmes goes up against Fu Manchu or when Batman teams up with the Green Hornet. While volume one of the two-volume set took us from the dawn of time up through 1939, this second volume catalogs thousands of crossover situations from 1940 through the far future (including quite a lot from the Star Trek universe).

This was clearly a labor of love for the author and compiler, Win Scott Eckert. The book is arranged like an encyclopedia, chronologically listing all the crossover events along with what books they’re from as well as the authors. This would be a great resource even if that’s all this was. But it doesn’t stop there. Eckert uses all these crossover situations and develops what he calls the “Crossover Universe” (CU). Once a character has been identified as part of the CU, then when they are found to crossover with a third character, that third character is also now part of the CU. And thus, the CU has grown to thousands of characters. It’s just plain cool to read about that time when Lara Croft teams up with Captain Nemo, Lew Archer, Monk Mayfair (an aid of Doc Savage).

This is not the first time this has been done. In fact, Eckert based the CU on author Philp Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton universe. (For the uninitiated, in real life a meteorite, called the Wold Cottage meteorite, fell near Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795 causing genetic mutations in the occupants of two passing coaches due to ionization. Many of their descendants were thus endowed with extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and drive to perform good (or evil) deeds.) The Wold Netwon Family tree includes such larger-than-life fictional characters as Lord Greystoke (Tarzan), Doc Savage, James Bond, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sherlock Holmes, Solomon Kane, Sam Spade, The Scarlet Pimpernel and so forth.

Eckert admits that not everything can be included in the CU for fear of overwhelming the system. Some comic book characters are included but to try to include all of the multiple crossover events from DC and Marvel universes would be impossible. Other characters are also problematical, such as Dr. Who, a character that has no bounds and could theoretically make CU characters of everyone. But an additional fun part of reading this book is to see how Eckert justifies an inclusion or not. Additionally, this volume includes an extensive appendix listing numerous crossover novels and short stories that for one reason or another don’t quite fit the CU, but are fun reads anyway.
I actually read this book from cover to cover, taking my time, reading just a few pages at a sitting. I imagine most people would choose to just dip into it here and there and sample the delight within or perhaps use it merely as a reference book. The only negative I have is to say that I really wish it had an index so I could look up a character and see all the interactions they have.

Of course, this is a book that must always be expanded, as more books are written, and more crossovers are discovered. I’ve listed examples of characters most readers are familiar with, but this volume goes deep into hundreds of characters that are much more obscure. There is already an expanded version of both volumes, compiled by Sean Levin but the real answer lies in the on-line searchable database where entries are constantly updated and built upon. But still, to read through this book and see all the crossovers chronologically is a blast.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Philip Jose Farmer created (or perhaps just formalized the concept of) a world in which the greatest Pulp and Gothic fiction characters in literature were literally related, thanks to a group of people in carriages passing the site of a meteor strike near the town of Wold-Newton in England in the 1795. Farmer built on the concept in a number of his own books, and has left the concept in excellent hands through folks like Win Scott Eckert, Christopher Paul Carey, Jess Nevins, the Lofficier brothers who run Black Coat Press, and too many others to name.

The concept behind Eckert's current massive work (this volume, and a second coming later in the year) is to catalog all of the places where fictional characters have crossed over with each other, expanding Farmer's Wold-Newton Family into what is usually called the Wold-Newton Crossover Universe. It's a huge undertaking, based off of the Crossover Timeline on the Farmer website, and an impressive one. An almost too brief essay at the beginning explains the limits Eckert has placed on the Crossover connectivity. The idea is to remain true to Farmer's concept that despite the supernatural and super-science aspects in the original works this is still a world largely similar to our own, and therefore most of the canons of the Marvel, DC and Doctor Who universes are not included simply because Spiderman regularly teams up with Wolverine, or Batman with Wonder Woman, etc.

My only quibble with the book is the way the entries are annotated. I think Eckert makes his case in his introductory essay that, for instance, any time a Real Person (Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, Winston Churchill, etc) is mentioned as taking part in a story, we are obviously talking about the Fictional, Wold-Newton version of that person and not the version from Our World. I don't think comments like that were necessary within various entries -- it distracts more than clarifies, in my opinion.

While I could have wished for a bit more consistency in the way the entries are source-noted, overall the book is an easy read and one I'm sure I'll be referring back to (as much as I have the original website) whenever I read anything related to this world (or when I write anything that might cross-over). I definitely highly recommend the book to genre fiction fans (not just Pulp and Gothic, but comic book, fantasy, science fiction and horror fans as well).


Volume 2 covers 1940 through the far future, and has appendices that list books and stories Win opted to not include in the Crossover Universe timeline for a variety of reasons. I liked this particular touch, pointing people to stories he felt were just too hard to reconcile with the relationships and histories originally laid down by Philip Jose Farmer and acknowledging that in many cases the stories are well told (and that for the most part, quality is not the reason some crossovers are excluded).

I did find myself disagreeing on a few points of inclusion or dis-inclusion. For instance, there are a number of times where Win suggests that stories happened, but were greatly exaggerated by the authors who told those stories (a good example: The Day of The Triffids probably happened on the Crossover Earth, but with nowhere near the level of carnage and mayhem the movie ended with) while others are dismissed for similar reasons. But that's the joy of a project like this: my own version of which crossovers to include could certainly diverge from Win's at any point and neither of us is hurt by it. For instance, I would personally choose to include the characters of Arn Munro and Neptune Perkins, from Roy Thomas' Young All-Stars comic series, because of their connections to Philip Wylie's GLADIATOR and Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym, but would note that not every issue of that comic series is automatically incorporated into the CU because of the rule about limiting the proliferation of super-heroes in the CU. But that's just me.

As I said about the first volume, Eckert has done an absolutely amazing job synthesizing over 100 years of meetings between fictional characters to come up with a cohesive storyline in which there is something for everyone, from Conan to Holmes to Batman to Spenser, to Charlie's Angels to Lost to Star Trek. The book is also lavishly illustrated with book and magazine covers featuring the characters mentioned throughout.

True mystery/gothic/horror/sf/pulp/comics/crime/literature geeks can't really do without this two volume set.