I was asked today to make some comments on the Spider/Bat story for a pulp publication. Here's what I gave them:

I was asked to contribute a story where the Spider meets the Black Bat, which was quite challenging for me since I'd not written either character previously.

There were a few things to consider. First off, both characters have somewhat similar backgrounds and situations. One's a criminologist who occasionally helps out the police. The other's a former DA who occasionally helps out the police. Both have dazzling female accomplices with whom they have "irregular" relationships. Both have a team of allies and agents upon whom they call at need. Both disguise themselves and use terror to bring a brutal justice to criminals. Neither is in what we would nowadays call good mental health.

Moreover, both are now being developed by Moonstone, who quite rightly want their series to build upon the original works but still offer development and new directions. So the continuity needed to respect the stuff established by the original creators (I wouldn't have been interested in the project otherwise) and to encompass what has already been done with Spider and Black Bat in their modern publication history. Since this was to be their first encounter with each other, it also had to answer some pragmatic questions including why hadn't they met before? And because I like to leave things tidy for the next guy behind the typewriter, it had to set up why these two men wouldn't keep bumping into each other every adventure afterwards.

Moonstone had established very firmly that Richard Wentworth operates out of his 5th Avenue penthouse, just as he was described in Steeger's original series. It seemed best to me if the Spider and the Black Bat didn't occupy the same city regularly, because every time there was a rash of mysterious murders in the mean streets thereafter they'd be constantly tripping over each other to solve the case. The Black Bat from Thrilling Publications, usually written by Norman Daniels under house name G. Wayman Jones, was less firmly rooted in a real-life city, so it felt acceptable to establish that he came to New York "from out of town" for the purposes of my story.

It also seemed important to show the differences between two characters that were superficially near-identical. Moonstone had helped a little with this; their version of Tony Quinn was suffering from a developing multiple personality disorder, exemplified in some publications by different internal voices playing out each of the pasts of a court case inside the Bat's head: a prosecutor making accusations, a defender mitigating, a judge sentencing and so on. Wentworth, meanwhile, had a different kind of personality discontinuity. He changed his character when he donned his mask, almost becoming possessed by his alternate identity. I tried to play upon the differences in their methods of operation too. The Spider, Master of Men, tends first to pursue people to interview - or beat up - for information. He is a consummate psychologist. The Bat is a little more into forensic clues, and may chase up a piece of physical evidence before descending like the wrath of God on an unsuspecting perpetrator.

Of course, part of the fun for fans of both characters is seeing how the two heroes interact, and how their supporting casts might get on together too. I wasn't about to miss the opportunity for the deadly Ram Singh to encounter the hulking Butch O'Leary. They at least got to do the traditional fight-then-team-up scene that I didn't do with their bosses (my view was that a battle between the Bat and the Spider ends with at least one corpse). Likewise I wanted to put Quinn's sneaky "valet" Silk Kirby in a scene with Wentworth's impeccable butler Jenkyns. If the word count would have allowed me to sit Commissioner Kirkpatrick with Commissioner Warner I'd have done that too.

Then there were the women. Exquisite socialite Nita van Sloan had to meet tough policeman's daughter Carol Baldwin. They had a lot in common. Both enabled very complicated and driven men. Both regularly got involved in crimefighting missions, and each had at some point even donned a mask themselves. Both had somewhat disgraced themselves in society by their romantic liaisons with their men. Both lived with the probability that they, or the man they loved, would die violently and possibly soon. I wanted to show these strong women coming to a mutual alliance (even though neither knows the other dates a vigilante) in a storyline where an enemy is actively trying to find and destroy the heroes' loved ones.

And I wanted to touch on all of that while trying to bring readers unfamiliar with the characters up to speed without bombing them with backstory.

The key to this, I determined, was to have the right kind of villain. I needed an enemy who could analyse the methods of his adversaries, even seek to manipulate them through his understanding of how they operated. I needed a foe who could offer a very real menace if he managed to determine the heroes' true identities; I established that he had already captured, tortured, then murdered (and eaten) the families of a dozen mystery-men and women before going after the big guns. His attacks weren't merely to eliminate the heroes, but to destroy their belief in their missions. That way we got to see the Spider and the Black Bat reflecting on - or getting on with - those missions. And the darker the villain, the darker these vigilantes will go to reach and eliminate him.

Anyway, "Prey of the Mask Reaper" is there in the anthology if you want to see how it turned out; although some fellow named T.A. Watson wrote it according to the back cover. I can only hope he succeeded in wrestling with all the things he felt a crossover deserved to have in the work count available.

All views on how to run a proper pulp crossover gratefully received.