What do a super-speed hero and an executioner who lives in a forest in early 19th century America have in common?
Apparently nothing, but if you want to make a crossover, the points in common are found.
And so Flash-Zagor, the first of three crossovers (also called team-ups) between the characters of the American DC Comics and the Italian Sergio Bonelli Editore, has recently been released in the bookstore and comic shop.
Seguiranno Justice-league-Nathan Never e Batman-Dylan Dog..
They call them Interecompany crossover: they are encounters between characters of different ownership and are quite common in the States, for Italy it is a first time.
Flash-Zagor, written by Giovanni Masi and Mauro Uzzeo and drawn by Davide Gianfelice, is a very interesting volume beyond the decidedly unlikely encounter.
It is up to a normal story of Zagor a bit like Paperinik (Donald who with a costume becomes a bit avenger of the wrongs he suffers, first of all from his rich uncle Scrooge, and a bit of an executioner against the underworld of Duckburg) is to his version superhero, PK.
Zagor always lives in Darkwood, he always has an adventure companion, the Mexican Cico, but the narrative and graphic style is that of a DC or Marvel superhero comic. The plot is the usual one of events of this type: the heroes (Flash thanks to its super-speed from his manages to arrive in the parallel world of Zagor) unite against their enemies who have allied themselves and in this case threaten to change the whole universe. , Gorilla Grood (a clever and evil gorilla) for Flash and the mad scientist Hellingen for Zagor.
But it’s really as if Zagor had entered a superhero comic: an old enemy of his also appears, Thunderman, conceived in the early Eighties by a young Tiziano Sclavi before creating Dylan Dog, here transformed in all respects into a classic supervillain. .
An all in all fascinating Italy-USA hybrid.
In addition to PK-Paperinik, the operation also recalls two memorable cartoon episodes of 1972 with Scooby-Doo and Batman.
If in the comics of the time Batman was already a dark vigilante, especially in the stories of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, here he becomes a character of Scooby-Doo in all respects, also thanks to the fact that Hanna & Barbera at the era, in addition to Scooby-Doo he also dealt with the Superfriends, series with Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and precisely Batman (and the graphics of the Batman here are the same as in the Superfriends). An enjoyable team-up even if in the end they are Scooby-Doo episodes with dudes dressed as Batman and Robin.
‹‹ Batman has long ago been the oldest profession in the world. And he’s not the superhero ›› commented an old fan alluding to the often unlikely team-ups collected by the Bat Man (even with Ninja Turtles).
Yet the first legendary crossover between a DC and a Marvel character did not have him as the protagonist but Superman who met with Spider-Man in a special issue released in 1976 and significantly titled “The battle of the century”.
Written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano, it featured the two superheroes allying themselves against their classic enemies Lex Luthor and Octopus: same storyline as Flash-Zagor and many events of this type.
The latest Marvel-DC crossover dates back to 2003-2004 and remains the most important: it was between the Avengers and the Justice League, for the texts by Kurt Busiek and the drawings by George Perez.
For veteran Perez, a superhero comic legend who has worked for both Marvel and DC, it was probably the crowning glory of a long career.
Now that sadly the artist is suffering from terminal cancer, the story has been reprinted after years.
In reality in the Marvel Universe there is a kind of version of the Justice League, the Supreme Squadron: Hyperion would be Superman, Power Princess Wonder Woman, Batman the Batman, the Flash Top and so on.
When Stan Lee’s right-hand man Roy Thomas wanted to pay homage to a friend who dressed up as Batman on Halloween, the co-creator of the Marvel Universe had replied that it was not good to have a DC character appear on a Marvel book and so Thomas had done it. dress up as a Nottolone.
Avengers-Justice League is a spectacular story and gives way to an old nerd like Busiek to make Avengers Hawkeye say this line:
‹‹ The Justice League looks like a bad copy of the Supreme Squadron ››.
Crossover in cinema and on TV
In the Anglo-Saxon world, crossovers are not uncommon. They even happen between literary characters. In the 1950s Ian Fleming and Rex Stout had thought of bringing together their characters, respectively Agent 007 James Bond and gourmet detective Nero Wolfe and his right-hand man Archie Goodwin. But then nothing came of it. “Bond would have taken all the girls” was Stout’s comment
The most interesting crossover in 1980s TV was probably the one between Jessica Fletcher, the Lady in Yellow (the investigative writer played by Angela Lansbury) and Magnum PI, the series starring Tom Selleck.
It was the encounter between Jessica Fletcher’s classic English thriller (Lansbury herself is of British origin) with the action, the so-called hard-boiled of the hard-boiled school of American writers such as Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, of Magnum (it is no coincidence that Magnum recounts his adventures as Chandler’s Marlowe).
At the TV series level, it is the same operation done by himself by Rex Stout in his novels starring the sedentary Nero Wolfe (the classic thriller) and the action man Archie Goodwin (the hard boiled).
At the cinema there were, for example, ‹lievo Freddy vs Jason ›› (2003) in which Robert Englund reprized (for the eighth and last time) the role of the dream serial killer Fred (Freddy) Krueger of ‹Nightmare› ›a about twenty years after its premiere, clashing with Jason Voorhees from another famous horror saga, ‹‹ Friday the 13th ››.
Too bad that due to the pandemic one of the most anticipated crossovers came out last year only in streaming and not in the cinema. It is “Godzilla vs. Kong ›› with the two famous monsters, the first Japanese and the second American.
In recent years, the most unlikely crossovers have come true. Who knows if it’s not finally the turn of Star Wars-Star Trek. If Jessica Fletcher-Magnum P: I. it was the meeting between the classic yellow and the hard-boiled one, this would be between the science fiction mixed with fantasy of the George Lucas saga and the classic one of the Gene Roddenberry series.
Very unlikely, it’s true: but after Flash with Zagor and Scooby-Doo with Batman, everything is possible.