QUALITY COMICS as an entity has largely been forgotten with the passage of time, although a number of their most popular characters still get some notice from time to time. But in the 1940s and 1950s, Quality was one of the most stable and reliable outfits in the business. Their output was sharp and clean and fun, and they had a house approach to storytelling that separated them from their rivals, a baked-in streak of playful comedy among even their most serious adventure series. One of their most popular characters was Kid Eternity. The Kid had met his death before his time, and so to balance out the scales, he was allowed to return to Earth as a kind of human ghost. He was accompanied by his guardian angel, Mr. Keeper. Whenever the Kid got in a jam, he could say the magic word ETERNITY and summon assistance from any historic or mythological figure from the past, summoning them to his aid. As a rule, Kid Eternity couldn’t summon the living–but that limitation was somehow suspended for this one story.
The author of this story has been lost t the mists of time, but the artwork was produced by Alex Kotzky, a regular contributor to the Quality stable He contributed to BLACKHAWK and PLASTIC MAN, and also assisted Will Eisner on his weekly newspaper circular, THE SPIRIT. He would later go on to greater fame as the cartoonist of the newspaper strip Apartment 3-G.
Yes, here, just pages into this adventure, Kid Eternity defies convention and summons forth Plastic Man, the star of Quality’s POLICE COMICS, to assist him.
And that’s it! The entire crossover seems to be little more than a plug for the ductile hero and his POLICE COMICS home, but it’s a fun and unexpected diversion in the midst of an otherwise standard Kid Eternity adventure.
Howard Thurston was one of the greatest stage magicians of his age. He died in 1936, only a few years before this story was created.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
That’s a bit of a weird one, isn’t it? I suppose you might say that Kid’s “history or legend” powers extend to anyone who appears in contemporary comic books, but I think it must be some unique property of Plas himself. After all, he showed up in Dial H For Hero that time too, along with all the previously unheard-of heroes – Plastic Man must be some kind of universal default setting for this kind of magic!
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I’ve always enjoyed Kid Eternity reprints. I didn’t know the Eisner connection but it would explain why the strip was almost head and shoulders above other properties in the art department.
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One oddball crossover (sort of) was a short meeting between Doc Savage and the Shadow in Shadow Comics Vol 4 #7 in 1944. Just a couple panels but as a big Doc Savage fan I had to find the issue once I learned about it. Doc Savage also crossed over in SuperSnipe #9 for an actual story, at first it looked like he was also in SuperSnipe #7 but it was an actor playing Doc Savage.
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I know this is decades before my points of reference, but Alex Kotzky’s art makes me think of work by Dave Stevens, David Lloyd, & even Bob Burden. I’m sure those artists were pulling from influences & inspiration from Kotzky’s generation.
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