Showtime's new series Penny Dreadful takes place in a world where Oscar Wilde's character Dorian Gray coexists with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's vampires and a motley crew of other baddies from Victorian pulp fiction. Character crossovers and storyline mash-ups are nothing new. But if the premise has been done before, are the character overlaps and reincarnations worth a watch? Angry Nerd is here to make the case for metaphysical mashups—from the Anno Dracula book series to, yes, Penny Dreadful.