Newsarama is one of those comic book news sites that’s always got some solid content on whenever you’re blandly surfing the internet — which I do all the time. It’s also one of those sites that this blog was created for, like my own personal resume for being able to write comic book news and features that should get me hired! But I never pursued any of that, so here I am excitedly sharing a Newarama feature on Amalgam Comics instead of writing it for them myself!

During these crazy quarantine times, the staff at Newsarama apparently took it upon themselves to revisit Amalgam Comics and come up with a bunch of their own combined characters. Like the Iron Bat!

Billionaire, playboy, genius, philanthropist

Beautiful.

For those who don’t know, Amalgam Comics was this glorious moment in comic book history when Marvel and DC Comics were working together for the greater good of humanity. Amalgam spun out of the Marvel vs. DC event in the 90s, during which the two companies merged their characters and actually jointly published a line of comics about these new oddities.

You had Dark Claw, the combination of Wolverine and Batman. You had Super Soldier, the combination of Superman and Captain America. You had Iron Lantern, the combination of Iron Man and Green Lantern. You had Lobo the Duck, the combination of Lobo and Howard the Duck! Seriously, Amalgam Comics were a perfect sort of thing that only comes along once in a lifetime. I owned a couple issues myself.

Too bad all of the collections have been out of print for decades and cost a princely sum on Amazon.

So kudos to Newsarama and their art teams for having a little fun this quarantine.

The Mighty Mortal: Thor and Shazam!

They did five characters total, which you can check out on their website. This is exactly the sort of fun, creative silliness we should all be doing in quarantine.

Amalgam was everything I love about comics. And I know I’m not the first online to suggest another crossover between Marvel and DC would be a great way to bring the comic book industry back to life following this shutdown.

————————