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The Mother of All Crossovers
You’re reading this, so I can only assume you like science fiction, fantasy, mythology, horror, superheroes, and/or classic pulps. Do you like crossovers? Interested to see just how far down the rabbit hole some of your favorite characters can take you?
This is for people who are interested in all manner of adventure, absurdity, wonder, and limitless possibility. This is for those who are mind-numbingly bored with the endless sea of reboots, retellings, reimaginings, castrations, and sterilizations of otherwise great stories that were told quite well the first time through. This is for those who aren’t afraid to put on their thinking caps and dive in feet first to a concept that makes less sense the further into it you go, unless you force it to do so. It’s a world with no excessive lens flare, no loss of identity, and no political correctness whatsoever. It’s a world where the geekier you are, the better you’ll be at finding your way through it all.
For those who aren’t yet initiated in this idea, I’d like to introduce you to what I call the Mother of All of Crossovers. It’s called the Wold Newton Universe. Think of it like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… only bigger.
The WNU supposes the idea that absolutely every story written (or filmed) about a famous character is actually based on a true (and probably exaggerated) story that happened (is happening / will happen) in our own real world. And it’s all connected.ÂÂ
It all started with P.J. Farmer’s fictional “biographies” of Tarzan and Doc Savage. From there, it became a monster, hungrily claiming as its own virtually any and every comic book, pulp, serial, cartoon, novel, TV show, or movie you can name from our favorite genre-related material. It’s a great way to find things you never knew you loved by connecting it to things you might already know.
To give you an idea of what got tossed together, here are but a few of the characters you may encounter in the WNU: Cthulhu, Sherlock Holmes, Superman, the Shadow, the Phantom, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Dracula, Captain James T. Kirk, Indiana Jones, King Kong, Dr. Fu Manchu, Captain Nemo, Questor, Remo Williams (the Destroyer), Conan the Barbarian, Frankenstein, James Bond, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, Connor MacLeod, Sam Spade, Solomon Kane, Colonel Jack O’Neill, Buckaroo Banzai, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Captain America, Robin Hood, Hondo Lane, the Phantom of the Opera, Hercule Poirot, Tom Swift, the Three Musketeers, the Cisco Kid, Fred Flintstone, Barnabas Collins, John Carter of Mars, Godzilla, Agents Mulder and Scully, Luke Skywalker, Zorro, The Wizard of Oz, and the Doctor and his companions. You get the idea. Much of it shouldn’t belong in a single, self-contained universe. Half the fun is figuring out how it should. The other half is rediscovering the source material in the first place.
I recommend starting with the Wiki page, to get an idea of how this all works. Then if you think you’re ready to go deep, all I can say is here’s the website, and may the Force be with you. You’ll probably need it to navigate around in here and out in the various webrings, but it’s completely worth it.
I remember the first time I delved into the official Wold Newton website. If you can call it official. lol I didn’t realize going through link after link, reading up on connections between heroes and villains, that I’d spent 4 hours sitting in my seat. I was captivated by the sheer imagination of what these people attempted. Sometimes I had to squint my eyes and look sideways, but it was all there and in the context of ONLY Wold Newton could it ever make sense.
As mentioned above, there are two “biographies” of two characters that are worth reading on this subject. There’s Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and Tarzan Alive. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t own the Tarzan book. Still, if you can get your hands on them; I highly recommend it! Wonderful stuff, that Wold Newton!
According to the official WNU website the Newtonverse is one of several alternate universes that the Doctor is known to frequent. The Doctor has the Whoniverse, but he will periodically pop into other Universes to give them a hand.