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Spider-Boy is Dead, and Everything is Worse Now
Sometimes something happens in a comic book that chills me to the bone. That really stabs the dagger and twists it. Something happens that is so outside the pale that I take a break from posting movie trailers to share it with all of you. Apologies if this is a spoiler, but I don’t care. The truth must be heard. You must be made aware.
Spider-Boy, the Amalgam Comics combination of Spider-Man and Superboy, has been killed in the Spider-Verse.
This was a blow, let me tell you. Spider-Boy is awesome. All of Amalgam Comics is awesome. And to lose him like this…
It’s definitely him. Just take a look. That’s definitely his arm.
So let me set the scene as best I can. This is a couple of panels from Spider-Man #2, a current comic book telling the End of the Spider-Verse story. I’m not reading and I don’t know what it’s about. But that is Morlun, and he seems to have killed Spider-Boy off-screen.
I understand. Marvel can’t exactly use Spider-Boy freely. So the fact that they’ve used this Easter Egg is actually really awesome! An Amalgam Comics Easter Egg in 2022? My wildest dreams are coming true! But man…why’s he gotta be dead? Couldn’t someone have made a handshake agreement and let him be a full-on character? Can’t we have nice things?!
Either way, the moment needed to be noted. Let’s get some more Amalgam Easter Eggs into our comics.
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The 6 Funkiest Knock-Off M.O.D.O.K.s
Against all odds, the M.O.D.O.K. TV show arrives on Hulu this week! The only survivor of that wave of wacky Hulu shows Marvel TV announced a couple years ago, M.O.D.O.K. looks to be a fun and super-weird family comedy starring Patton Oswalt. It all sounds great to me! And to celebrate, we’re gonna look at some funky M.O.D.O.K.s!
M.O.D.O.K. stands for “Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing”. He’s been around since the late 1960s, a creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. And as you can see, he’s this giant head dude in a mechanized chair! Heck, he was the big bad villain in that recent failed Avengers video game. The dude has chops. He’s put in the work over the decades. And a new TV show starring him as a suburban dad sounds like the apex of his career!
Over the years, there have been a ton of knock-off M.O.D.O.K.s in comics. With an acronym for a name, it’s easy to come up with knock-offs. And we’re going to take a look at the best ones! Join me after the jump for some M.O.D.O.K. madness!
Read the rest of this entryMy 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.
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Henchman-4-Hire 