Complicated Crossovers

So far today, I have published six posts before this one, four here on Poul Anderson Appreciation and two elsewhere. See:

A Complicated Comics History

A Complicated Comics History II 

 

Multi-authored narratives become complicated in ways that no single author, not even Poul Anderson, can match. Characters from different series meet? Sure. Poul Anderson does this in the Old Phoenix but not on the scale of a comic book universe. An Unexpected Crossover, occasioned by Anderson's incorporation of Beowulf into Hrolf Kraki's Saga, quotes Alan Moore's explanation of comic book crossovers. Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy refers to Shakespeare characters who turn out to have historical originals. See Macbeth. So Anderson does it. However, whenever you reread van Rijn in the Old Phoenix, remember Alan Moore suggesting a Holmes-Poirot team-up investigating Frankenstein kidnapping one of the Little Women. The republic of letters is one and some authors know how to show it.