Amalgam Comics



Fictional origin

The two comic universes came together when the incarnations of their respective universes (referred to as "the Brothers") became aware of each other after aeons of slumber. To prevent the Brothers from destroying each other, characters from each universe battled to determine which universe would survive; several of the matches were determined by online voting.

Axel Asher, a character created for the event (co-owned by Marvel and DC), served as a gate keeper who became stuck while traveling between both Universes.
When the fights concluded (including controversial victories by Wolverine and Storm, over Lobo and Wonder Woman respectively), neither universe was willing to go. To prevent total destruction, the Spectre and the Living Tribunal created a merged universe, in which only Axel Asher and Dr. Strangefate knew the truth. Each struggled against the other to reverse or preserve the change.
Eventually, Axel Asher, now called 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 Batman and Captain America, and, once he discovered 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.

Amalgam characters

During the event, pairs of Marvel and DC characters or teams were merged into single characters. Usually they had something in common to start with (for example, the Jack Kirby creations the Fantastic Four and Challengers of the Unknown, or water-themed heroes Namor the Sub-Mariner and Aquaman), or their names or themes allowed for clever combinations (such as Superman and Captain America's amalgamation, Super Soldier, a reference to the Super Soldier serum that created Captain America; Bat-Thing, an amalgamation of Man-Bat and Man-Thing; or Shatterstarfire, the amalgamation of Shatterstar and Starfire).

Publication history

For two weeks, 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 fictional history stretching back to the Golden Age of Comics, as well as retcons and reboots, such as the Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour (an amalgam of Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet and Zero Hour), including an Amalgam version of the cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, with Super-Soldier holding his sidekick's body. The books even went so far as to have letter pages with readers talking about stories they had read for years from the company line.

Amalgam books

Main article: List of Amalgam Comics publications
The first Amalgam event occurred near the end of the Marvel vs. DC crossover event in 1996. The first twelve Amalgam titles were released in a single week, temporarily replacing both publishers' regular releases. Half the comics in the event were published by Marvel and half by DC. A year later, the stunt was repeated, but without the crossover as background. Later, both publishers collected their issues into trade paperback collections.
In the 24 Amalgam Comics printed, one-third of those printed included letter-columns by fictitious fans to give a larger background to the stories and to help give hints of what might
happen in the next issue. The "fans'" hometowns were usually fusions of existing American cities.