Amalgam Comics

[PeeDee]

Remember them?

No? (http://www.answers.com/topic/amalgam-comics)

You didn't miss much then. (http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-amalgam-comics-characters)

[Inkdaub]

I've never even heard of this. This must have come out during the time I was away from comics. It looks awesome in a kitschy sort of way, though. I also have to say the names rule...Galactiac! Mandarinestro! Ra's-A-Pocalypse! Lobo the Duck...!

Good stuff.

[Stacia Kane]

I have this really great image in my head of Wonder Woman and Storm running into each other hard, spinning around, and emerging as one person.

With the attendant "All of Me"-style problems. Plus the *ss-kicking! What's not to love?

[PeeDee]

I think during that...period....of comics everyone went away. But I kept reading! I read things like the Batman/Wolverine combo! I was scarred for life by it.

(and Lobo the Duck was the most obscene thing I've ever read.)

[wordmonkey]

I remember Batverine (Younger brother of Ben). It all came off as a bit desperate by the big two, to me.

Indies were exploding and they no longer had the monopoly they once had. Instead of go for quality as a way back, they went for gimmicks.

I think it made some indies seem better than they were, just because they were different and brought about the early decline of some publishers, titles and creatives when the Big Two got their act together again and readers realized that different is OK, as long as it's quality different.

But that's just my take.

[PeeDee]

Your take's accurate, and I think it's part of why the comic market crashed around that time. Honestly, you had things like Amalgam comics, you had DC's Tangent series (when they reimagined each character for no apparent reason for a few issues. Wonder Woman was a geeky green alien with a big stick, for example)

The eighties were good to comics. The nineties were much less so. Thus far, this decade, we seem to be in the "decade of Events," between Civil War, House of M, World War Hulk, Infinite Crisis, One Year Later, Disassembled, and probably a half dozen I'm forgetting.......

[jnesvold]

I remember both Amalgam and Tangent. Tangent had Green Lantern as a weird, robe wearing woman who carried a green lantern on a stick, but that's about all I remember of that.

I recall things like Super Soldier (Superman/Captain America), Amazon (Wonder Woman/Storm), Dark Claw (Wolverine/Batman), and Spider-Boy (Spider-Man/Superboy). The comics weren't great themselves, but the miniseries they were spun off of wasn't bad in and of itself.

[PeeDee]

I don't know. I thought the whole storyline that led up to the mini-series was just...weird.

ANd I was holding out for the Wonder Twins to combine with Element Man and Sandman to produce Captain Planet, or something. :D

(I should add that, complain and mock though I might...I read Tangent and Amalgam pretty consistently.)

[Inkdaub]

Galactiac is now my dog's nickname.

[PeeDee]

It sounds like a really epic indigestion medicine...

[Excelsior]

I remember the Amalgam's. Some of them I actually liked (I remember Speed Demon being one of them), but most were just ill conceived.

I'd like to see Marvel vs DC II (only done a bit better, of course).

Oh, and Lobo the Duck's got nothing on the Howard the Zombie Duck, as seen in the current Army of Darkness/ Marvel Zombies crossover:

http://www.newsarama.com/dynamitenew/Mvl_AoD/02/MZvAOD2p22.jpg

[PeeDee]

I love how there's all sorts of characters they keep Not Bringing Back in order to smooth the realism of the Marvel universe (like the Eternals, until recently) and yet...Howard the Duck is always around.