But there is one person who took the crossover idea to a new level, Philip Jose Farmer. In 1972 Farmer wrote Tarzan Alive. This novel was a biography written as if Tarzan had been a real person. This alone made it an interesting book as Farmer attempted to reconcile several of the inconsistencies in the Tarzan novels, such as claiming the apes that raised him were not actually apes but something closer to an African species of Sasquatch. Towards the end of the book and in his follow up the next year Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life farmer formed the basis of what would come to be known as the Wold Newton Family. This concept would be an attempt to tie Victorian and Pulp era heroes together in one great shared universe.
The concept takes its name from a real world event. On December 13th 1795 a meteorite fall just a few miles away from the small Hamlet of Wold Newton in Yorkshire, England. It was the first intact meteorite to be found in England and of great scientific interest.
What Farmer did was to take this event and use it as a jumping off point. According to Farmer when the meteorite struck two coaches were nearby carrying a group going on holiday at a county estate. Due to some unknown effect of the meteorites landing the people in the coaches had their DNA altered leading to their descendants being extraordinary individuals. Amongst the passengers were the following:
John Clayton, the third Duke of Greystoke, and his wife, Alicia
Sir Percy Blakeney, (the Scarlet Pimpernel), and his second wife, Alice Clarke Raffles
Dr. Siger Holmes and his wife, Violet Clarke Raffles
Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife, Elizabeth Bennett
Sir Hugh Drummond, and his wife, Georgia Dewhurst
George Edward Rutherford, and his wife, Elizabeth Cavendish
Honore Delagardie and his wife, Philippa
Sebastion Noel, a medical student of Dr. Holmes
The coachmen were Louis Lupin, Albert Lecoq, Arthur Blake and Simon MacNichols
You may have notice some familiar sounding names in there. The idea from here is that the descendants of these individuals would be great heroes and villains.
An example is the family of John Clayton. Clearly he is the grandfather of Tarzan, but as it turns out Doc Savage, James Bond and even Fu Manchu can claim him as an ancestor.Sebastion Noel’s family line includes Professor James Moriarty (who for a time went by the alias Captain Nemo), Dr. No, and Lex Luthor.
Sir Percy’s family includes the Shadow. Sir Hugh’s family has Bulldog Drummond, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Captain America.
I could go on but why don’t you go here and here to look at the vast family trees involved.Here is a good time to point out that Farmer may have started this, but others have picked it up. It has become a literary game. People will go in and try to find connections to bring new characters into the Wold Newton family. Originally it was just Victorian and Pulp era characters but it has expanded to include modern characters from novels, TV, movies, video games and comics.
Example: Indiana Jones is a Holmes as is his nephew, Daniel Jackson of Stargate SG-1. In what should surprise no one Lara Croft was one of his students.Additions have been made that incorporate Star Trek, Lovecraft’s Mythos and Doctor Who.
And the monsters, oh the monsters.The amount of detail some people have gone to in order to include the Universal Monsters is truly amazing.
There are a chronicles for the families of Frankenstein, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll.
Conceits are created to explain different versions of the characters. For Dracula the idea is introduced that he could turn a person and then imprint his mind on theirs (a process he called soul cloning). Since the process was not exact it could explain differences in how the character acts in difference versions.For Frankenstein you have the idea of the family having an obsession that carries from generation to generation.
And then there are the attempts to tie things together. Let’s look at the story of the creature created by Frankenstein’s Great-Grandson Peter Frederick Frankenstein, which you will all know from the movie Young Frankenstein. According to Wold Newton Elizabeth, the fiancé of Frederick who fell in love with creature was in reality named Lilith and was the daughter of one of Dracula’s soul clones. When Van Helsing’s organization the League of Anti-Diabolists learned of their attempt to lead a peaceful life they stepped in to help, hoping to see if monsters could be rehabilitated. They were moved to America along with Lilith’s father and given guardian ship of a young orphan named Edmond who was infected with lycanthropy. A league member Marilyn Krough was placed with them to observe their attempts at domestication. The creature adopted the name Herman. Thus they became the Munsters.Try to tell me that is not a cool concept.
One more I really like.Henry Jekyll’s formula did not work with way he thought it did. All it did was trigger his latent Therianthropy. This is a trait he would pass down to his offspring, many fathered as Mr Hyde. His decedents would include Bruce Banner and Ben Grimm.
I’m sure many of you have noticed similarities to both Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series. Both Authors have stated that the Wold Newton Families were an influence.
And all this just scratches the surface. You can spend hours going over all the details people have added to this particular academic exercise. Go here for the best web site resource I know of. Also check out the book Myths of the Modern Age which is a collection of articles edited by Win Scott Eckert. Now all we need to do is figure out which family tree Gibbs from NCIS belongs in.
Clearly, Jethro Gibbs is a bridge of the Super-Soldier line of Holmsian decent. I could not tell exactly where or how, or if this bridge exists earlier in WN Time. I would be surprised if those were not the minimum elements to his association.
ReplyDelete