Amalgam Comics: Can You Combine The Best?

[Amalgam Comics: looks familiar doesn't it?]

Written by GL

Did you know that at one time, Marvel Comics and DC Comics collaborated to create several comic books? No. Then you're lucky that The House Of El is here to impart new knowledge for you to show off.

Amalgam Comics a collaboration between Marvel Comics and DC Comics in which the two comic book publishers merged their characters to create new ones (as amazing as that sounds). These characters first appeared in a series of twelve comic books which were published in 1996. A second set (of another twelve comic books) followed a year later.

The actual biography of this new Universe goes like this:

The two comic universes were incarnated into characters know as The Brothers. The Brothers became aware of each other's existence after thousands of years of slumber. To prevent The Brothers from destroying each other, characters from each universe battled each other to determine which universe would survive (several of the matches were actually determined by fans through online voting). Axel Asher, a character created for the event (co-owned by Marvel and DC), served as a gate keeper who became stuck between traveling through both Universes.

When the fights were all concluded, still neither universe was willing to go. To prevent total destruction, the Spectre and the Living Tribunal created a merged universe. This merged universe is not known to the characters that exist within, but this plan is known by Axel Asher and Dr. Strangefate only. Each struggled against the other to reverse or maintain this change.

Eventually, Axel Asher, now known by the name Access, managed to separate The Brothers with the help of Amalgam's heroes. Before the merge had taken place, he had planted 'shards' of the universe in the original Batman and Captain America, and, once he discovered the new Amalgam characters known as Dark Claw and Super-Soldier, he used those shards to give the Spectre and the Tribunal the power to restore the universes. Batman, Captain America and Access were thus able to make The Brothers realise that their conflict was pointless, and all went back to normal.

And that's how it goes.

During the event however, pairs of Marvel and DC characters or teams were merged into single characters. Their names or themes allowed for clever combinations (such as Superman and Captain America became Super Soldier, or Man-Bat and The Thing became Bat-Thing).

For two months, Marvel and DC published Amalgam Comics. During the publication of Amalgam Comics, the companies treated it as if it had always existed, giving it a fake history stretching back to the Golden Age of Comics. It was a big affair. It was so big that reboots of storyline versions were even made - such as the Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour (a mix of Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet and Zero Hour). The books even went so far as to have fake letters written by fans talking about stories they had read for years from this merged company line. Now that's good marketing.

Just for a taste of what characters you might expect from such minds:

[Dark Claw: like Batman after too much chilli padi]

You have Amazon, a combination of DC's Wonder Woman and Marvel's Storm. You also have the Judgement League Avengers (combining the Justice League and the Avengers) whose powers are actually mutant in origin. And more famously, Dark Claw (that's Wolverine and Batman) who takes on Hyena (a mix of Sabretooth and Joker).

The first twelve Amalgam titles were released in a single week in 1996, replacing both Marvel's and DC's regular publishing releases. Half the comics in the event were published by Marvel and half by DC. A year later, the stunt was repeated. Later, both publishers collected their issues into trade paperback collections.

[Iron Lantern: I know, I know, no need to guess the combination]

It sounds like a very interesting idea and I would like to get my hands on a few issues to try out (or a trade paperback at least). If you super-friends out there have read and have an opinion (good or bad) about this publication then drop us a line. We'd always like to know what you think about it.