Ever since I was a kid, my friends and I would play games where we asked what would happen if characters from different fictional universes met. What would happen if Batman met The Green Hornet? What if Captain Kirk and the Doctor from Doctor Who shared an adventure? Who would win if the Predator and Alien came into conflict? It can be great fun to imagine these possibilities and these ideas have indeed been brought to life in different media. Of course, authors who have several fictional worlds, also have the opportunity to make this happen.
An early example of an author who brought characters from multiple worlds together is L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Oz books. Of particular note is his novel The Road to Oz, where Princess Ozma throws a huge birthday bash and many characters from Baum’s other worlds attend, including Queen Zixi of Ix, the Candy Man from Merryland, the Braided Man from Boboland’s Pyramid Mountain and even Santa Claus and the Knooks from Baum’s Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. At the time The Road to Oz came out, the Oz books had become much better known than Baum’s other fantasy series. It’s pretty clear that Baum wrote this scene as a sly way to advertise his other worlds. Still, it works because Baum established that the other fantasy lands all border Oz. Now, if you’re wondering why I’m speaking about the Oz books in a horror blog, I’ll have to unleash my flying monkeys on you. If flying monkeys don’t scare you, Baum definitely unleashed plenty of other horrors from the evil Wheelers, who have wheels instead of hands and feet, the Scoodlers, who can remove their Janus-like heads and throw them at you, to a scene in The Tin Woodsman of Oz when the tin man has a chat with his disembodied, human head!
Anne Rice brought her Mayfair Witches and Vampire Chronicles together in a few books. The first was Merrick. In the novel, Merrick Mayfair is on the trail of the vampires Lestat and Louis in New Orleans because she believes she can help them resurrect the Vampire Claudia. I enjoyed the novel, even though I hadn’t read any of the Mayfair Witch novels at that point. The crossover works because you don’t need to be familiar with the characters of the other worlds to understand them and, again, it’s natural for the characters to have met each other. After all, Anne Rice’s witches and vampires both spend a lot of time in a New Orleans where the supernatural and magic are commonplace.
Another author who has allowed characters from different novels to meet is Stephen King. Of course, many have met through the Dark Tower series, but the first one I remember encountering is Dick Hallorann, who has a big part in The Shining. He’s the character who helped Danny unlock his psychic powers. Hallorann also appears in the novel It, where we learn that he saved the life of Mike Hanlon’s father, by helping him escape white supremacists who were trying to burn him alive. This is a nice small nod that just confirms that The Shining and It take place in the same world.
I have also had fun bringing characters together on the page. Most notably, I brought my Scarlet Order Vampires into conflict with the Clockwork Legion in the short story “Fountains of Blood,” which appears in the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone published by Baen Books. You might think this is cheating since the Scarlet Order vampires exist in our world and the Clockwork Legion exists in an alternate history where the world changed significantly in the 1870s. However, I bring historical figures into my Clockwork Legion novels all the time, so it makes sense that if the Scarlet Order vampires were lurking in the shadows of the real world, they would also lurk in the shadows of the Clockwork Legion world.
Not only was it fun to bring the characters into conflict, it amped up the danger for both sets of characters. The Scarlet Order vampires proved a creditable threat for Billy and Larissa of the Clockwork Legion, while Billy and Larissa also proved to be a serious danger to the Vampire Rosen.
Recently, I wrote a story where my Victorian spiritualist character Dinella Stanton had the opportunity to encounter Lord Drake from the Scarlet Order novels in a story that’s an homage to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” Again, it allowed me to ramp up the danger for both characters. It also gave me characters I knew well. Once I set up the situation, the story practically wrote itself because I know the characters so well from other stories I’ve written. This story is scheduled to appear in an anthology called A Cry of Hounds, which will be released early next year. The anthology is being Kickstarted right now and this is a great opportunity to help support the book and also get ahold of many bonuses, such as a copy of my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. To support the Kickstarter, visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/e-specbooks/picking-up-steam
Threads that Bind 
3 responses to “Crossover Characters”
What a fabulous article! This has been popular (with me, at least) since early childhood. I was an early child in the heyday of the TV western. Every young boy and some of the girls had a collection of gunbelts and cowboy hats, and fading memory suggests that every day that play was available, we’d strap on our guns and meet up for quick draw contests, poker games, and range wars in the canyon at the end of the street. And no one was ever a generic cowboy. The pre-game conversation always went, “I’m Josh Randall,” “I’m Paladin,” “I’m Maverick,” and so on. Early in my story telling days, I’d write tense scenes between these TV heroes for the enjoyment of my friends. No samples. I was about 12; you can’t imagine how bad these were! But how we longed to see Steve Donovan, Western Marshall team up with Shotgun Slade to bring down a gang of rustlers.
But TV properties are mostly owned by different entities and never the twain shall meet. A couple of rare treats were an ER episode that concluded on Third Watch, a Las Vegas that concluded in Crossing Jordan, and a Hawaii Five-0 that wrapped up on NCIS Los Angeles. These are rare treasures that are revered and cherished. Books are more common, as you point out, but can be hard to find with their much more subdued promotion than TV shows use. Video games have these in droves. Wikipedia lists over 120 primary titles that feature crossover characters, and I didn’t even start to count the third-party offerings.
The point seems to be that these endeavors are amazingly popular, or they wouldn’t keep doing them. Hmmm… That gives me an idea. Don’t worry, though, most of my ideas don’t go anywhere these days! But yeah, you’ve defined a rich field for authors to explore. Most authors have taken many paths. Who’s to say some of them might not converge somewhere down the road. How about it, you writers of many properties? Might this inspire you to tell a supertale or two?
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We absolutely played those games as a kid. In my generation, Captain Kirk might easily have met up with Luke Skywalker to fight Ming the Merciless. The beauty of using your own characters is that you don’t have to worry about getting permission, unless, of course, you signed exclusive rights to your characters to a particular publisher (that’s rare, but it does sometimes appear in contracts).
I’ve also been invited to play in sandboxes created by other characters. My story Revolution of Air and Rust is set in a world created by Bob Vardeman and my story “Horse Feathers” is set in a world created by Patrick Thomas. So-called shared worlds is another way authors can play together without treading on other people’s toes. Perhaps the most famous shared world in the horror realm is H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. He created the characters but invited anyone to write in the world who wanted to.
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