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The Amalgam Age of Comics
Return to the Amalgam Age of Comics: The DC Comics Collection
In RETURN TO THE AMALGAM AGE OF COMICS a cosmic catastrophe causes legendary super-heroes of two different universes to be combined into new yet strangely familiar characters. With reality inexplicably distorted, Batman and Wolverine combine to become Dark Claw, Superman and Captain America fuse into Super-Soldier, and the members of the Justice League and the X-Men merge together to become teammates in the JLX. With new histories and powers, these altered super-heroes continue to fight for justice unaware of their true origins or the horrific event that has thrown their worlds into disarray and threatens to destroy all existence.
160 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1997
1 person is currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Larry Hama
1,924 books151 followersLarry Hama is an American writer, artist, actor and musician who has worked in the fields of entertainment and publishing since the 1960s.
During the 1970s, he was seen in minor roles on the TV shows M*A*S*H and Saturday Night Live, and appeared on Broadway in two roles in the original 1976 production of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures.
He is best known to American comic book readers as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro action figures. He has also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: the Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He created the character Bucky O'Hare, which was developed into a comic book, a toy line and television cartoon.
During the 1970s, he was seen in minor roles on the TV shows M*A*S*H and Saturday Night Live, and appeared on Broadway in two roles in the original 1976 production of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures.
He is best known to American comic book readers as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, where he wrote the licensed comic book series G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, based on the Hasbro action figures. He has also written for the series Wolverine, Nth Man: the Ultimate Ninja, and Elektra. He created the character Bucky O'Hare, which was developed into a comic book, a toy line and television cartoon.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 7, 2017
Up, up and Excelsior!
I bought this in its single comic books, but I chosen this TPB edition to make a better overall review.
Combining both TPBs (the one of DC and the one of Marvel) those TPBs include: Bat-Thing, Dark Claw Adventures, Generation Hex, JLX Unleashed, Lobo the Duck, Super-Soldier: Man of War, Challengers of the Fantastic, Exciting X-Patrol, Iron Lantern, The Magnetic Men featuring Magneto, Spider-Boy Team-Up, Thorion of the New Asgods.
IN BRIGHTEST DAY, IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!
Since the first Amalgam event resulted so popular and best-selling, DC and Marvel got together once again and they published a second run of merged unique comic books, where fusions of characters of both comic book houses becoming new unique characters.
One of the funniest was certainly “Lobo the Duck” (fusion of Lobo and Howard the Duck), what else can you ask?!
Since Dark Claw (Batman plus Wolverine) resulted in the most popular character of the first event, they leveled up the hype publishing Dark Claw once again BUT using the art style of Batman: The Animated Series, oh yeah!
And one of the most ambitious comic books, in the angle of presentation of characters, was the one with Spider-Boy (Spider-Man plus Superboy (Connor Kent)), already created in the first year of the event, but here in “Spider-Boy Team-Up”, he joins the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099 (Triple fusion of Legion of Super-Heroes, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Marvel 2099 future).
Maybe the second year of the Amalgam event wasn't that solid like the first year, but still is one cool run of comics to get!
I bought this in its single comic books, but I chosen this TPB edition to make a better overall review.
Combining both TPBs (the one of DC and the one of Marvel) those TPBs include: Bat-Thing, Dark Claw Adventures, Generation Hex, JLX Unleashed, Lobo the Duck, Super-Soldier: Man of War, Challengers of the Fantastic, Exciting X-Patrol, Iron Lantern, The Magnetic Men featuring Magneto, Spider-Boy Team-Up, Thorion of the New Asgods.
IN BRIGHTEST DAY, IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!
Since the first Amalgam event resulted so popular and best-selling, DC and Marvel got together once again and they published a second run of merged unique comic books, where fusions of characters of both comic book houses becoming new unique characters.
One of the funniest was certainly “Lobo the Duck” (fusion of Lobo and Howard the Duck), what else can you ask?!
Since Dark Claw (Batman plus Wolverine) resulted in the most popular character of the first event, they leveled up the hype publishing Dark Claw once again BUT using the art style of Batman: The Animated Series, oh yeah!
And one of the most ambitious comic books, in the angle of presentation of characters, was the one with Spider-Boy (Spider-Man plus Superboy (Connor Kent)), already created in the first year of the event, but here in “Spider-Boy Team-Up”, he joins the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099 (Triple fusion of Legion of Super-Heroes, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Marvel 2099 future).
Maybe the second year of the Amalgam event wasn't that solid like the first year, but still is one cool run of comics to get!
September 21, 2022
One review for all four Amalgam collections since I kind of just read them all in short order:
Fun. Hit or miss for quality in writing and art, but overall it was just a lot of fun. I wish that we could do a new round or two with the current style of writing and art which I think could be amazing. Anyway, worth checking out if you are a fan of both worlds.
Fun. Hit or miss for quality in writing and art, but overall it was just a lot of fun. I wish that we could do a new round or two with the current style of writing and art which I think could be amazing. Anyway, worth checking out if you are a fan of both worlds.
December 6, 2024
Nel 1997 avemmo la seconda ondata di one shot della Amalgam, questo volume raccoglie quelli prodotti dalla DC.
Super-Soldier: Man of War #1, di Waid, Gibbons e Palmiotti, ambientato nella WWII è carina, ma nulla di più. Ha il pregio dei buoni disegni, ma rifà il verso un pò troppo alle storie moderne delle due major ambientate in quel periodo. 2 stelle.
Dark Claw Adventures #1, di Templeton e Burchett, rifà il verso alla famosa serie animata, ma manca completamente il bersaglio. Questo lo pensavo già all'epoca, ma dopo quasi due decenni i disegni sono invecchiati proprio male. Mezza stella basta.
Generation Hex #1, di Milligan, Pollina e Morales, è un'altro albo veramente scarso sia per storia sia per disegni. Davvero gli americani non sanno fare un fumetto di ambientazione western. Mezza stella.
Bat-Thing #1, di Hama, Damaggio e Sienkiewiz alle chine, ha almeno il preso di trasmettere un poco di pietà per la creatura del titolo. Inoltre i disegni rimangono buoni ancora oggi. 2 stelle.
JLX Unleashed #1 di Priest e Jimenez. Come albo non mi è mai piaciuto, ma devo ammettere che oltre che ben disegnato, ha colto bene l'intento di dare un senso di profondità, di continuity, a questi personaggi. 2 stelle.
Lobo the Duck #1, di Al Grant e Val Semeyks, è l'albo migliore di questa raccolta. Gli autori hanno ben compreso lo scopo di scazzo e presa in giro di tutta l'operazione Amalgam, e riescono a creare una storia assurda, di presa in giro e di scazzo totale. Questa storia merita le 4 stelle.
Il volume nel complesso, grazie a Lobo The Duck, raggiunge le 2 stelle.
Super-Soldier: Man of War #1, di Waid, Gibbons e Palmiotti, ambientato nella WWII è carina, ma nulla di più. Ha il pregio dei buoni disegni, ma rifà il verso un pò troppo alle storie moderne delle due major ambientate in quel periodo. 2 stelle.
Dark Claw Adventures #1, di Templeton e Burchett, rifà il verso alla famosa serie animata, ma manca completamente il bersaglio. Questo lo pensavo già all'epoca, ma dopo quasi due decenni i disegni sono invecchiati proprio male. Mezza stella basta.
Generation Hex #1, di Milligan, Pollina e Morales, è un'altro albo veramente scarso sia per storia sia per disegni. Davvero gli americani non sanno fare un fumetto di ambientazione western. Mezza stella.
Bat-Thing #1, di Hama, Damaggio e Sienkiewiz alle chine, ha almeno il preso di trasmettere un poco di pietà per la creatura del titolo. Inoltre i disegni rimangono buoni ancora oggi. 2 stelle.
JLX Unleashed #1 di Priest e Jimenez. Come albo non mi è mai piaciuto, ma devo ammettere che oltre che ben disegnato, ha colto bene l'intento di dare un senso di profondità, di continuity, a questi personaggi. 2 stelle.
Lobo the Duck #1, di Al Grant e Val Semeyks, è l'albo migliore di questa raccolta. Gli autori hanno ben compreso lo scopo di scazzo e presa in giro di tutta l'operazione Amalgam, e riescono a creare una storia assurda, di presa in giro e di scazzo totale. Questa storia merita le 4 stelle.
Il volume nel complesso, grazie a Lobo The Duck, raggiunge le 2 stelle.
February 4, 2015
I think all things considered this was probably the best of all the amalgam comic collections. More of the comics aged well than among the others and they in generally held up better.
This story of Bat-Thing has some small problems, like how can fat Bullock get under the car at all and so quickly and some of the exposition could be handled better via narration boxes or thought bubbles.
But all in all, this story aged the best of all of them and had the best structure and pacing. I still like the artwork and I think this combination of Marvel's Man-Bat and Marvel's Man-Thing probably works better than either of them, even Man-Thing's burning touch when you feel pain probably works better here due to Bat-Thing's looks. Let me show you:
This is the classic Man-Bat:
Yeah it might look threatening, but the wings are kind of silly (some incarnations have them more chiropteran and it works better there in my eyes). And you could say the same about Man-Thing's bulky form and "trunk" face:
Now Bat-Thing not only has fully human-like clawed hands, but big wings on his back, a slicker form and a sickly green color, highlighting its monstrous status:
Its whole look basically taps into old images of winged fiends and dangerous predators thereby practically ensuring that you will feel some fear when this thing comes at you. The time frame was probably early 90s or late 80s and it has a very dark stile and excellent pacing with lots of the artwork in combination with the text leading you astray and in the end when it's revealed you notice that you simply looked at it from the wrong angle.
Now how Bat-Thing came to be is kinda a silly, but not more than usual for comics, actually here it gives a nice further touch to the monster aspect of it.
The next best story was Generation Hex. Even though its portrayal of the town of Humanity (yes that is really the name, but hey the USA has towns with sillier names) is kind of stereotypical, it does set a good starting point for the later mood of the story.
What you have here is basically a dark and gritty, slightly insane western story mixed with super-powers and steam-punkish robots. And trust me it gets very violent in the end of this.
A problem with this story is that it probably moves too fast and the art style is sometimes a bit too surreal to be fitting for it.
Lobo the Duck was just so incredibly goofy you won't care its completely off-continuity and plothole ridden, the story is just so insane and Lobo is such crazy bad-ass that it won't matter. It is obvious it is supposed to be this way and the comic goes all out with it and you notice that the writers had a ton of fun with it.
Now the story with Dark Claw is in its basics a pretty good story but it's ruined due to its silly artwork and the author's apparent inability to remember the extent of Claws healing ability. Or maybe it was just ignored due to it being unfitting for the plot. Also the cyborg assassins here are really shitty, they get dismembered in mere seconds. Also the combination of one Marvel and DC villains here lead to something that is rather a bunch of clowns than threatening antagonists. The cartoony art style doesn't help either.
The story of JLX unleashed, like the comic of X-Patrol in the Marvel collection, seems to have forgotten or retconned some powers of its characters, like the former "Wonder Woman" suddenly being called Amazon and using a sort of electric lasso instead of her weather controlling powers or Mr. X being much weaker than before in the JLX comic. Also they should have shown us how Fin Fang Flame had overtaken all the other superhero teams und give us some more of an epic fight than what we got at the end where it works rather due to luck than anything else. Also he had a pretty cool design so why not show it? They also had the art-skills for that:
And that they did not do something like this is the basic problem of that story. While the basic premise and lots of its elements would make for pretty good stories, it feels a tad cramped and the powerful dragon got down way too easily, you have to wonder why the other teams and Shield did not manage that.
The last story with Super Soldier was probably the most forgettable and stupid of them all. It's February 1942 and Super Soldier is in America instead of the Pacific, demonizing and slaughtering Japanese and collecting their boy parts as trophies, or in North Africa or maybe Italy, you know claiming to fight against Hitler but actually being pretty irrelevant for the slowing of the Nazi advance (also remember that he isn't in Leningrad either, nor are they doing anything against death camps). But nope we get to a story of "Somewhere in the heart of Nazi Europe"… aka Germany. Seriously, where else would it be?
This comic is just another stupid story for Americans to feed their own myths about World War II and make them feel good about it by employing a bunch of stereotypes that are not even consistent. They have one of the Nazis we see first named Fritz and why the two great Baron Zemo with "ze commandoes" when all are Germans is probably a result of bad writing.
This story of Bat-Thing has some small problems, like how can fat Bullock get under the car at all and so quickly and some of the exposition could be handled better via narration boxes or thought bubbles.
But all in all, this story aged the best of all of them and had the best structure and pacing. I still like the artwork and I think this combination of Marvel's Man-Bat and Marvel's Man-Thing probably works better than either of them, even Man-Thing's burning touch when you feel pain probably works better here due to Bat-Thing's looks. Let me show you:
This is the classic Man-Bat:
Yeah it might look threatening, but the wings are kind of silly (some incarnations have them more chiropteran and it works better there in my eyes). And you could say the same about Man-Thing's bulky form and "trunk" face:
Now Bat-Thing not only has fully human-like clawed hands, but big wings on his back, a slicker form and a sickly green color, highlighting its monstrous status:
Its whole look basically taps into old images of winged fiends and dangerous predators thereby practically ensuring that you will feel some fear when this thing comes at you. The time frame was probably early 90s or late 80s and it has a very dark stile and excellent pacing with lots of the artwork in combination with the text leading you astray and in the end when it's revealed you notice that you simply looked at it from the wrong angle.
Now how Bat-Thing came to be is kinda a silly, but not more than usual for comics, actually here it gives a nice further touch to the monster aspect of it.
The next best story was Generation Hex. Even though its portrayal of the town of Humanity (yes that is really the name, but hey the USA has towns with sillier names) is kind of stereotypical, it does set a good starting point for the later mood of the story.
What you have here is basically a dark and gritty, slightly insane western story mixed with super-powers and steam-punkish robots. And trust me it gets very violent in the end of this.
A problem with this story is that it probably moves too fast and the art style is sometimes a bit too surreal to be fitting for it.
Lobo the Duck was just so incredibly goofy you won't care its completely off-continuity and plothole ridden, the story is just so insane and Lobo is such crazy bad-ass that it won't matter. It is obvious it is supposed to be this way and the comic goes all out with it and you notice that the writers had a ton of fun with it.
Now the story with Dark Claw is in its basics a pretty good story but it's ruined due to its silly artwork and the author's apparent inability to remember the extent of Claws healing ability. Or maybe it was just ignored due to it being unfitting for the plot. Also the cyborg assassins here are really shitty, they get dismembered in mere seconds. Also the combination of one Marvel and DC villains here lead to something that is rather a bunch of clowns than threatening antagonists. The cartoony art style doesn't help either.
The story of JLX unleashed, like the comic of X-Patrol in the Marvel collection, seems to have forgotten or retconned some powers of its characters, like the former "Wonder Woman" suddenly being called Amazon and using a sort of electric lasso instead of her weather controlling powers or Mr. X being much weaker than before in the JLX comic. Also they should have shown us how Fin Fang Flame had overtaken all the other superhero teams und give us some more of an epic fight than what we got at the end where it works rather due to luck than anything else. Also he had a pretty cool design so why not show it? They also had the art-skills for that:
And that they did not do something like this is the basic problem of that story. While the basic premise and lots of its elements would make for pretty good stories, it feels a tad cramped and the powerful dragon got down way too easily, you have to wonder why the other teams and Shield did not manage that.
The last story with Super Soldier was probably the most forgettable and stupid of them all. It's February 1942 and Super Soldier is in America instead of the Pacific, demonizing and slaughtering Japanese and collecting their boy parts as trophies, or in North Africa or maybe Italy, you know claiming to fight against Hitler but actually being pretty irrelevant for the slowing of the Nazi advance (also remember that he isn't in Leningrad either, nor are they doing anything against death camps). But nope we get to a story of "Somewhere in the heart of Nazi Europe"… aka Germany. Seriously, where else would it be?
This comic is just another stupid story for Americans to feed their own myths about World War II and make them feel good about it by employing a bunch of stereotypes that are not even consistent. They have one of the Nazis we see first named Fritz and why the two great Baron Zemo with "ze commandoes" when all are Germans is probably a result of bad writing.
November 11, 2023
Maybe the better DC Amalgam collection. The shining jewel here is Dark Claw Adventures, done by the same team as Batman Adventures, leading to a TV tie-in comic for a show that doesn’t exist and entirely believable as a B:TAS style story. Generation Hex rides on its “mutants in the Old West” concept, Super Solider: Man at War is a fun Silver age-style story, and Lobo the Duck isn’t super funny but it has its moments. The two whiffs here are slight. Bat-Thing is an entirely acceptable Man-Bat story but has none of the Amalgam feel to it. JLX Unleashed just never becomes entertaining. Out of all of Amalgam, the team books tend to feel the weakest.
September 21, 2021
When the whole Amalgam Comics idea emerged in the 90s, I loved it, had most of the books and looked fondly forward to this edition beyond the original run.
I felt this collection was uneven, the "golden age" heroes felt dated in a way specific to DC comics, though the horror and more spoofy (is that a phrase) like Bat-Thing and Lobo the Duck were fun. Generation Hex had a nice High Plains Drifter feel to it.
I felt this collection was uneven, the "golden age" heroes felt dated in a way specific to DC comics, though the horror and more spoofy (is that a phrase) like Bat-Thing and Lobo the Duck were fun. Generation Hex had a nice High Plains Drifter feel to it.
June 5, 2025
Look, I know these comics are empty fan boy nerd calories, and I can't expect much more than a series of ultra nerdy Easter eggs. And maybe I'm not the audience for that kind of comic book. But man, these are some boring comics. Ty Templeton's "Dark Claw Adventures" and Larry Hama's "Bat-Thing" (with superb inking from Bill Sienkiewicz) are the only mildly entertaining yarns in this mess.
Want to read
March 9, 2015Un vistazo rápido ala descripción me dice que la mayor parte de este tomo lo tengo en revistitas de Vid. Chequeo, revuelvo alguna caja en la casa paterna y veo si actualizo...
September 11, 2011
This is a reprint of some of the Amalgam comics printed during the crossover. I was a kid when I read them, and most of them were ok.
September 19, 2015
Strange and entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews