A four-issue
comic book miniseries, published jointly by
DC and
Marvel Comics in 1996. It was written by
Ron Marz and
Peter David, pencilled by
Dan Jurgens and
Claudio Castellini, and inked by
Josef Rubinstein and
Paul Neary. It happened during a period when Marvel and DC were being uncommonly
cooperative and putting out a lot of
crossovers between their top characters. So the
managing editors of both companies --
Mike Carlin at DC and
Mark Gruenwald at Marvel -- started pushing the
ultimate Marvel/DC crossover: "Marvel vs. DC" (or on the weeks when DC
published it, "DC vs. Marvel"), in which the biggest characters from both companies would
duke it out to see which was the better company.
Lame? Yes, totally, and their other
gimmick made it even
cheesier -- readers would get to
vote on the winners of some of the
battles.
One of the more
interesting things they did for this series was create a character who was co-owned by both Marvel and DC.
Access was a normal guy named
Axel Asher until he unexpectedly learned that he had inherited a position as one of the
guardians who made sure that the Marvel and DC Universes didn't crossover
unexpectedly, 'cause it'd really screw up the
space-time continuum. Lame? Yeah, pretty much. Access didn't have much in the
superpowers area -- he could
teleport himself or anyone else anywhere he wanted, and he could move between the two
universes at will. Nevertheless, a good portion of the series revolved around Access as he discovered his powers and helped put an end to the
crisis.
The
plot of the series was decidedly
odd: two
cosmic brothers who embodied both of the
comic book universes finally become aware of the other's existence and decide that they hate each other. After
switching characters back and forth between universes for a while, the brothers decide they'll make some of the superpowered residents of their universes
fight each other -- and the universe that loses the most battles will cease to
exist.
The characters who got paired off against each other were:
In the quickest battles, Elektra
stomped Catwoman, the Silver Surfer busted Green Lantern (in a
battle that consisted of one bright flash of light -- LAME!), the Flash ran rings around Quicksilver, and Robin beat Jubilee (apparently, those two were paired up because they both had
red and
yellow costumes -- LAME!). Somewhat better
fights were between Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner (Namor might be superstrong, but Aquaman can talk to
sea animals, so he had a
killer whale kick the Sub-Mariner's ass for him) and between Thor and Captain Marvel -- Thor wins after he's able to use his mystic hammer
Mjolnir to short-circuit Cap's magic
lightning, but he loses the
hammer in the process. When Wonder Woman finds it and picks it up (Mjolnir can only be picked up if the wielder is "
worthy," which makes Wondy one of the few people outside the
Marvel Universe to ever pick it up), it makes her a lot more
powerful, with powers that fuse Thor's and her own (a bit of subtle
foreshadowing of what was coming at the end of Issue #3, maybe).
All the other battles were the ones that the readers got to vote on, and they were all generally
disappointing. Wonder Woman threw Mjolnir away, because fighting Storm when she had all that extra power just wouldn't be fair (LAME!), then Storm zapped her with
lightning bolts 'til Wondy went to sleep. Why? 'Cause Storm was more popular! Superman and the Hulk pounded on each other for a couple of pages 'til Hulky went to
sleep. Why? 'Cause Supes was more popular! Batman knocked out Captain America with a
lucky shot with a
Batarang. Why? 'Cause Batman's more popular! Spider-Man beat Superboy -- which really says bad things about Superboy's
popularity, 'cause at the time, Spider-Man was the infamous and much-despised
Spider-Clone.
And in the lamest fight of them all, Wolverine beat Lobo. Lobo is a big
alien biker thug who could go toe-to-toe with Superman, who'd killed everyone on his home planet, who could completely regenerate himself from a single drop of blood, who was serious
bad news. Wolverine was a
scrappy mutant with a little extra
strength, a
healing factor, a
bad attitude, and
claws -- hell, at the time, he didn't even have his
indestructible adamantium claws. Wolverine should've been a
stain on the floor after one punch from the Main Man. But Wolvie and Lobo
rassle a little in this
interstellar saloon, then they disappear behind the bar, then Wolverine reappears, smokes a
cigar, and looks very satisfied with himself. Gee, I guess Wolverine beat Lobo with
sex or something. That's what happens when you let readers
vote on your plots -- they
always suck.
Then, at the end of the third issue, the creators pulled off their biggest
coup: the two universes were combined into one. (How? Can't say it was ever made clear -- in the third issue, the cosmic brothers did it; in the fourth, they didn't do it) All the characters were
fused together: Batman and Wolverine were turned into
Dark Claw, a
millionaire playboy with
metal claws; Superman and Captain America were combined into
Super Soldier,
World War II's greatest hero, revived in the present day and working as a
mild-mannered reporter; the Joker and Sabretooth became the
Hyena, a musclebound
feral freak with
green hair and a nasty
giggle. Marvel and DC published a week's worth of "
Amalgam Comics," then resolved the whole thing and got everything back to normal in the last issue of the miniseries.
Basically, this whole series was, aside from the
inventive and
fun Amalgam Comics issues, very disappointing. Besides the
overwhelming lameness of many of the battles and the
thundering illogic of the plot (the flip-flop on what caused the two universes to
merge is absolutely
inexcusable), there were so, so many missed opportunities -- team-ups that could have been really cool, but were only briefly pictured or
wasted entirely.
Iron Man and the
Fantastic Four barely show up at all. Battles that could have been great -- Batman vs.
Venom, Captain Marvel vs.
Dr. Doom, Superman vs.
Annihilus -- are given only one
panel. Some of the neatest superhero team-ups --
Supergirl and the
She-Hulk spring immediately to mind -- are just barely mentioned, and the only
supervillains who team up are the Marvel and DC versions of the
Scarecrow. Spider-Man meets the Joker, and they just
talk. Everyone say it with me: LAME!
They still do Marvel and DC
crossovers from time to time, and they're often not bad, mostly because they focus on only a few characters at a time. That's probably the
formula for
success right there.