>
I’ve possessed a soft spot for alternate worlds and divergent realities for as long as I can remember. Whether it was an issue of “What If?” or a trip over to Star Trek’s Mirror Universe, part of me always enjoys seeing the changes to the characters and their worlds regardless of how bad the story actually is. While this fascination may not lead me to falling in love with every alternate take that is printed, I more than likely have at least taken a glimpse at it. When letterer Todd Klein ran a retrospective on the logos for the DC/Marvel crossover Amalgam Comics, I was reminded of one of the most fan service filled alternate takes of all.

The crossover event contained a series of one-shot comics, each one starring the characters that combined Marvel and DC proprieties into brand-new creations. As a result, the comics featured characters like Dark Claw (a Wolverine/Batman hybrid) and Speed Demon (a Flash/Ghost Rider/The Demon combo character). Beyond creating some pretty bizarre looking characters with some of the most unwieldy names in comics (Shatterstarfire, really?), Amalgam provided a fun game of trying to sort out just who made up these Amalgam characters. A few of the Amalgam mash ups were strokes of pure genius, like teaming Fantastic Four villain Red Ghost with Flash staple Gorilla City to form communist ape nation of “Gorillagrad.”

Amalgam titles weren’t all novelty, however. A few titles managed to produce decent stories under the gimmick very premise. One of the most critically acclaimed Amalgam stories was Doctor Strangefate. The mystical comic penned by Ron Marz and with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan mixed master mages Doctor Strange and Doctor Fate. The story, tying into Marvel and DC’s greater crossover plans, presented a hero that calculatingly manipulated agents for the greater good and turned his deeds into a stand-out issue. Writer Kurt Busiek and artist Paul Smith teamed up to produce Iron Lantern. The Iron Man/Green Lantern hybrid combined Iron Man’s technology-heavy adventure with Green Lantern’s space-focused exploits to create a pretty fun read that only experiences a little bit of awkwardness due to the co-mingling of properties.

Titles like Thorion (combining Thor and the New Gods) and the Superman/Captain America mash up Super Soldier join Doctor Strangefate and Iron Lantern as some of the experiments successes. Any of the solid execution in these books, however, almost feels like an afterthought. These comics exist to feed the fanboy desire to geek out over self-referential creations. They would provide little entertainment value to readers not in the know and that is just how they should be. They were created as a fun novelty for the fans of DC and Marvel Comics and, lucky, at that they succeed.

-Nick

---

Both comments and pings are currently closed.