The five biggest dorks in Marvel & DC's Amalgam Universe (Hero Edition)

Eric Halliday
Feb 24
4 min read

A promotional image for the Amalgam Universe comics from the 90s with MANY characters charging towards the reader. — There is a LOT of nonsense happening here.

Marvel and DC recently announced that they are working on a project together and it made me think of a project they did in the 90s called the Amalgam Universe.

Way back in the era my 11-year-old calls "the nineteen hundreds" just to spite me, there was a project betwixt Marvel and DC and it was HUGE. The universes were going to crossover, which, admittedly had been done. But they were not just going to meet, they were going to merge.

Wolverine and Batman became Dark Claw. Superman and Captain America became Super Soldier. Stuff like that.

It had a LOT of cool moments outside of the merging also. My personal favorite was a Romeo and Juliet style relationship between Tim Drake (Robin) and the X-Men's Jubilee.

But there was also a LOT of bad. Firstly, there was zero communication between creative teams so characters were over used constantly. There were at LEAST five terrible characters that were merged with Harley Quinn. Half the universe seemed to be part Spider-Man. The character designs on a lot of them were terrible. And to make matters worse, Rob Liefeld was involved.

A poorly drawn woman in a light blue outfit. Her right arm is hidden behind her, possibly because it appeared to be a foot longer than her left arm.

If you're unaware of the artistic styling of Mister Liefeld, here's Lark. An Amalgamation between Marvel's Dagger, and DC's Dove. Try not to think of her eight foot long left arm.

But if we ignore the tiny feet and long heads of Liefeld's additions, we still got a slew of problems as the Amalgam universe seemed to be the ugliest comic universe ever created.

For this article we're looking at some of the heroes as we look at the five biggest dorks that the Amalgam Universe gave us as well as a little bit about each character.

Without further ado.

Golden Shield (Marvel's Blue Shield and DC's Golden Guardian)

A dork stands in a mustard yellow outfit. He had blue underpants on with white boots and gloves. A picture of a sun sits on his chest, a hardhat on his head, and also he's an idiot.

A weird thing about Amalgam is that EVERYONE seemed to want to mix a character with DC's Golden Guardian. I'm not entirely certain why as the dude was like a V-List character but there were a ton.

This one however is EASILY the worst though. He's just so fucking bad.

He looks like a superhero designed to teach elementary school kids about "fun in the sun" with a hardhat added because someone didn't know how to draw hair.

Apparently Joseph Harper here was created when Tom Harper, former adventurer, cloned himself and gave him a force field belt. And the costume shows us why you shouldn't breed with your own genetic material.

He looks like a Care Bear themed pervert and I hate it.

U.S.Annihilator (Marvel's U.S. Agent and DC's Annihilator)

A superhero in black flies towards the reader. He also had red and white stripes across his chest with a red cape. A shield made of energy is on his left wrist.

I feel like I didn't even need to give you a history of the Amalgam Universe for you to guess it was the 90's. It was a confusing time. And nothing was cooler than tough anti-heroes who were just like the heroes we were familiar with but also stupid and lethal.

U.S. Agent (from the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie) was a version like that of Captain America. And Annihilator was a clone of Superman that killed its foe.

Put them together and what do you got, bippity, boppity, bullshit.

He was created by taking a member of the Super Soldier program and merging him with...a program they found on the computer inside the ship that carried baby Super Soldier to Earth. And stupid plans yield stupid results and we were left with this absolute edgelord.

Human Lantern (Marvel's original Human Torch and DC's original Green Lantern)

Several awful looking heroes are talking to each other as they surround a nasty green cake. The focal point is on Human Lantern, a man made out of green fire with a purple cape and orange belt. Nothing works together.

I remember the first time I saw this guy I legit thought he was a being of grass. Or like...Moss Man from He-Man. I hated it.

But apparently he was green flame. A being made of flame was created by a man who could not draw fire. Tell me again why DEI didn't help comics.

When an android was giving a random power source when its creator found a weird green element and thought "screw it, it goes in" it came alive and became a being of green mystical flame.

It can fly, burn things, and create Green Lantern like constructs that look like anything it can think of beyond a good outfit.

Whiz (Marvel's Whizzer and DC's original Flash)

A man leans forwards pointing. He's wearing all yellow with a yellow helmet on his head with a big W on it.

Who was that quick fellow zooming through the plain yellow background in the picture of the Human Lantern? Why that's none other than Piss!

Hold on. checks notes Sorry, Whiz. His name is Whiz, that's my bad. They mixed Whizzer and Flash and decided to name him Whiz. I guess it's better than going the other way and naming him Flasher.

Robert Gerrick was fatally poisoned and when he took an antidote that was designed specifically for him, it cured him AND gave him incredible super speed.

Though, apparently it also effected his brain REALLY hard because he decided to dress in all yellow and call himself Whiz.

Nightcreeper (Marvel's Nightcrawler and DC's The Creeper)

An awful looking green superhero sits like he's about to use a Japanese urinal. He has a green goatee and long green hair.

Listen, I LOVE Nightcrawler but Nightcreeper is the wooooooorst. They took the best parts of both characters and just said "screw it" and got rid of everything good.

Look at this guy.

He looks like he ALWAYS reeks like skunky weed. He looks like if you opened his glove compartment you'd find an old sticky hackey sack. He looks like he's currently taking a break from his band that never performed live to focus more heavily on his job at the local haunted house.

Even his story seems to hint at the fact that they knew they created a trash monster. Kurt Ryder, before he became a hero, worked at a circus until they kicked him out for...*checks notes*...smelling too "freakish". He smelled to bad for a CIRCUS. This dude sucks and even if the Amalgam Universe could exist without destroying reality, I'd want it gone just to assure we never see this guy again.