Monday Memories #23 - Return To The Amalgam Age Of Comics

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

RETURN TO THE AMALGAM AGE OF COMICS - December 1997

Ah, the late 90's . . . seems so long ago now, doesn't it? A time when DC and Marvel were friendly enough to co-publish a whole string of books that grew out of the DC vs Marvel event of 1996. That original series, of course, had the premise that the heroes from both universes had to fight against each other in the hopes of saving one of them. Along the way, the universes were temporarily amalgamated, giving birth to a host of one off comics featuring characters that were a mixture of DC's and Marvel's.

So successful were they that the companies did it again with DC/Marvel: All Access, then another round of Amalgam titles, then again with Unlimited Access. Heck, the main character from those two miniseries - Access - even appeared in an issue of Green Lantern for one or two panels.

The one-shots from both rounds of amalgamations were collected and in the DC collection of Return To The Amalgam Age Of Comics we have a mix including a horror theme with Bat-Thing:

animation inspired grittiness with Dark Claw

angst ridden superheroics with JLX:

and the sublime Lobo the Duck:

Sad to say, I think the days of inter-company collaboration between the big two are long gone.