Top 5 Fridays: Favorite Amalgam Comics

Welcome back all you Weirdos!  For this installment of Top 5 Fridays I figured we get a little weird and nostalgic.  With this week's issue of The Multiversity Guidebook hitting the shelves, I was thinking a lot about Universes that didn't make the cut for Grant Morrison's Multiverse or just happen to be one of the seven mystery worlds we don't know about yet.  The one that I thought about the most, you know besides the Miller-verse, was something that I loved as a not-so-wee boy, which was brought to us in the aftermath of DC Versus Marvel.  For those of you who aren't old enough to remember......... or for some reason weren't reading comics at the time, DC Versus Marvel was HUGE!  I mean, it was the thing that every comic book fan had been clamoring for and would debate about ad nauseam.  Finally we would get to see which heroes would win against another property's heroes............... and then we got pissed because there was no winner between Batman and Captain America.  Anyway, for some fun one-shots, both companies put out comics under the Amalgam Comics banner and featured the combinations of characters from both Marvel and DC......... It was a good time and my boy brain could barely handle the excitement.  So for this installment of Top 5 Fridays, I figured I'd look back and list the Amalgam Comics that made me shake uncontrollably with glee.  Let's check it out and remember the 90's fondly.






#5.  Lobo The Duck

Now this spot on the list might piss people off because I never actually read Lobo The Duck.  But before you get all hot under the collar, I just want you to remember being a kid and how hard it was to come by money when you were that kid......... you know unless it was your birthday or something and your grandmother sent you a five dollar bill.  Unlike that dude in the KFC commercials, I was using that money for action figures or comic books............or thinking about the pudgy kid I was, probably ice cream and soda pop.  The point is, I couldn't always get every comic I wanted and I remember staring at this book and desperately wanting it.  So because of my fond memories about how I learned you don't always get what you want, Lobo The Duck takes the #5 spot here.  It's funny too, after doing some research on this book I wanted so bad as a kid, apparently Lobo The Duck takes place in an alternate Universe from the Amalgam Universe, due to him investigating the deaths of many prominent characters.  Oh Multiverse!





#4.  Bruce Wayne Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

For some reason it took me until I put this picture up to realize that for all my complaining about Dick Grayson becoming a secret agent in Grayson, instead of being his Nightwing persona that I love........  It's already been done and I enjoyed the hell out of it.  It really made sense to me that if Bruce Wayne existed in a more Marvel like Universe that he would become an agent of Shield and avenge his parent's deaths using a government agency.  I told you that I complained about Grayson but that was before the comic actually came out and before I fell in love with it.......... Fanboys are the worst aren't they?  So yeah, Grayson is Bruce Wayne Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I'm a complete idiot for never putting it together since I loved this title so much as a kid.  Just a really fun spy title, that combined characters from both universes........ like every other comic in this line but for some reason felt the need to tell you again and now I want to go back and reread it.  It also doesn't hurt that Tony Stark is the Q to Bruce Wayne's Bond.  So cool.

#3.  Magneto and The Magnetic Men

This one was a no brainer for me as a kid because Magneto was one of the coolest bad asses around back then and teaming him up with robots he controlled, just brilliant.......... plus when I was a kid, I always read the title as Magneto and The Metal Men.  Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see or maybe I was just a shit reader but it didn't matter because that's essentially what we got by combining the Metal Men with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Magneto and his team would go out and fight for the meta-mutant cause and man it was a good time.  Come on Grant Morrison, bring back The Amalgam Universe!

#2.  JLX

During the time of the Amalgam Universe, I was a huge Marvel fan and loved me the hell out of Uncanny X-Men.  The only DC books I would pick up would be the Justice League of America and Green Lantern, so when JLX came out, I damn near had a heart attack.  Combining two of my favorite things from both companies and shoving it down my throat.  Not only did we get an origin to a team with this but we saw the members leave their previous team to start JLX and then we saw the JLA (Judgement League Avengers) have to fight against their former allies the new Justice League X-Men.  I know a lot of people complain about the over saturation of comics in the 90's leading to the market crashing, but man was it a good time to be a comic book fan........ Unless you're the cynical sort that only remembers the bad times.  Knock that shit off.

#1.  Spider-Boy

Look at that costume.......... That's the 90's right there and man is it bad ass....... Okay I promise I won't talk about the 90's anymore.  More than anything else that the Amalgam Universe offered us, Spider-Boy was the thing that I NEEDED to have.  My entire life I've been a huge Spider-Man fan and seeing this cloned boy with gravity powers that allowed him to jump high and walk up walls and sporting an actual web shooter was just what I needed when these one shots came out.  As it was back when Amalgam Comics first came out, Spider-Boy is my favorite comic from the line, I also think that it's because of this comic that I became interested in Superboy and for that alone; I owe this comic a lot.  Honestly though, there isn't much to this story except for actually just combining Spider-Man and Superboy.  He's a clone that was created using half of Super Soldier's DNA and half from a researcher named Peter Parker and he decided to avenge his adopted father's murder by putting on a costume and he made a living by selling pictures of Spider-Boy......... It's that simple and somehow it's awesome.  Hell, the tagline alone sells the comic in my mind.  "With Great Power Comes Great Possibilities!"


That's it for this installment of Top 5 Fridays and let me just end this by saying......... Man, Multiversity is weird as hell, but you know what?  It's gotten people discussing and debating what's going down and that's what it's all about.  I hope you enjoyed this list and I hope that you all have a safe and wonderful weekend.  See you in seven.  Boosh!