Author Archives: Sean Ian Mills
My Top 6 Funnest Amalgam Comics Combinations
Newsarama spent all last week designing and showing off their own Amalgam characters, and that’s got me in the mood to keep talking about Amalgam Comics and characters! For those not in the know, Amalgam Comics was a joint project between Marvel and DC in the mid-90s where they merged their characters and put out a couple random, stand alone issues.
The world needs Amalgam now more than ever!
Amalgam Comics is everything I love about comic books. Two rival companies came together with their best talent to produce this insane project. Pepsi and Coke have never come together to create some blended soda. But Amalgam was real, I owned and read a bunch of issues, and the world is a better place knowing this existed. So let’s celebrate Amalgam with a list of my favorite characters, and some of the ones that I think are just a great combination!
Please feel free to share your own favorite Amalgam character combos in the comments!
Let’s Revisit Amalgam Again with Newsarama!
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.
————————
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 5/9/20
Would you like at that, we’ve got a normal comic book today! The news in the world is that comic books are going to come back towards the end of the month. Marvel and DC are making plans, releasing schedules and putting some comics digital-first. So we will have new comics again!
The return starts this week with a new issue of Grant Morrison’s The Green Lantern! Too bad it’s probably the weakest issue yet! Man, if this is what comics are going to be like coming back, we should be worried…
Happens to the best of us, Hal
Meanwhile, life goes on in quarantine. I’ve started walking, finally. I splurged on some LEGO, finally. I watched The Midnight Gospel, which was good. I didn’t realize when HBO’s free streaming would end, so I didn’t get to finish the first season of Succession. And I’ve been playing XCom 2, which is really fun! So at least I’m keeping busy.
Comic Review: The Green Lantern: Season 2 #3
Holy Moly! They’re Bringing Back Boba Fett!
Color me surprised! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney and Star Wars are bringing back Boba Fett for reals finally in the second season of The Mandalorian! Not only that, but he’s going to be played by Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett in the prequels!
He’s not dead!
Jeez louise! This is madness. Great, but madness. It makes total sense, too. Considering all of the things that Disney has made in Star Wars, The Mandalorian has to be everyone’s favorite, right? And it looks like Disney is going all-in on fan-pleasing excitement. They’re bringing in a live action Ahsoka Tano, and now they’re finally bringing in Boba Fett!
There are two important things. One, The Mandalorian takes place after Boba Fett was supposedly killed in the Sarlaac Pit. So this is finally, Disney-canon confirmation that Boba survived and is back to kick butt and take names in the galaxy. Two, they cast the guy who played Jango Fett! Which is important, since Boba is his cloned son! So somebody out there is clearly paying attention to what people want these days: continuity. They could have cast anybody to play Boba Fett and nobody would have batted an eye. But somebody, somewhere, in the depths of Disney, knew they needed to appease fans by keeping the continuity of the whole ‘clone’ thing going. Fancy that.
As a Star Wars fan who loves the minutiae of the lore, this pleases me.
——————–
There Are New Video Games Coming Out After All!
We have not been completely abandoned! There will be new video games coming out in the near future, so at least that’s something to get excited about. I still haven’t bought that Nintendo Switch, but new games for some of the consoles I do own will be great!
Like The Last of Us II! I have avoided all of the leaked plot details, so I’m still excited about this one.
That video is called an “official story trailer”, but I don’t think it tells us the story at all. Other than Ellie is up against some more trouble in the fungus zombie apocalypse.
The Last of Us II comes out on June 19.
Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat 11 is apparently going to drop some new story DLC. Has Mortal Kombat ever done that before?
I could be interested in that. I usually only play the new Mortal Kombat games for the characters and the story. They’ve been adding new firefighters right along for the past year, which amazes me. Is the Mortal Kombat gaming community so strong that people are still excited about random new character additions all these months and months later?
Perhaps that’s why they’re going with full story DLC this time, to entice people like me back. The addition of Sheeva doesn’t hurt. I’ve always liked her as a character. But Fujin is a weird choice to add. And I could care less about Robocop. I have never been interested in the non-MK characters in the game.
Either way, the new Mortal Kombat 11 expansion will arrive on May 26.
———————–
Henchman-4-Hire 