10 Incredibly Weird Comic Book Timelines

Even from the perspective of comic books, the origin of the Amalgam universe is honey roasted nuts.

Two brother universes, representing DC and Marvel (and both companies' desire to raise struggling sales figures), get into a row and decide to have a fight using their respective universes' heroes as proxies.

This starts the limited run of DC vs. Marvel which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Batman fights Captain America, Superman fights Hulk; it's fantasy matchups with a pretty weak story.

As the fights continued and the series made pretty good money, the aftermath was the creation of the character Access who combines different characters into amalgamations.

What followed was a short run of issues from Amalgam Comics where the heroes, villains, and background fodder were made of horrible hybrids. Captain America and Super Man become Super-Soldier, Spider-man and Superboy become Spider-boy; there's even a Lobo The Duck. Mental.

Amalgam only published 24 issues across two years, but if you can find them, they're worth a look for how much time and care went into making each character an even representation. They were a bit too fair really, some of the names are just brutal: Mandarinestro is a particular low point.