What’s Your Amalgam?

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Oct 192011
 

So even though it was a crass marketing-ploy crossover by many lights, I always liked the idea of the “Amalgam” universe that existed briefly when DC and Marvel joined up to create the ultimate mash-up of their two universes. Remixing is powerful methodology, and to be honest it’s that drive to remix that beats at the heart of my World War G idea.

My love of remixes came up again today on twitter. Cam Banks, who’s leading the team over at Margaret Weis Productions on the next Marvel universe RPG, said something about a “doom pool” when alluding to mechanics getting playtested. Being a big fan of the Doom Patrol run that Grant Morrison did in days of old, I misread it as an implication of the Doom Patrol showing up in the Marvel universe and, well… I was off to the races:

In my amalgamverse the Doom Patrol has everything to do with Dr. Doom.  They’re like an International special forces Hulkbuster unit. One of them is a reprogrammed Doombot code-named Robotman.

I can leave it just there and feel the larger shape, iceberg-like, of the whole of that thing. Negative Man as a stealth operative flitting between bodies in the Latverian Underground. Elasti-Girl as a legacy-of-Reed-Richards type passionately committed to stopping Dr. Doom’s agenda on the global scale and less distracted by wild science. And so on.

Mash-ups are powerful juju. And they can get a little addictive once you get started.

So there’s your mission for this Wednesday. In the comments, mash up concepts from two comic book universes and show me the even more awesome amalgam that results! Bonus points for finding an “overt” connection that joins the two universes together (the way I used “Doom” from one to connect to the “Doom” of another).

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 Posted by Fred Hicks at 12:10 pm  Add comments  Tagged with:
  • Chad Underkoffler

    My idea: Spider-Man Beyond.

    A teen-aged genius discovers the “Iron Spider” suit 50 years later, and reprograms/improves it with later Stark- and Richards-tech to mimic the original Spider-Man’s powers.

    Soon after unveiling himself, he sees an old man in an alley being attacked by members of the Goblinz street gang (who use Osborne-influenced MGH). To SMB’s surprise, once the old man notices he is there, he quickly decimates the Goblinz.

    “Jeez Louise, kid. You know how many nights I’ve been wandering around looking helpless trying to attract your attention?” The old man smiles. “Name’s Parker. Peter Parker. Come with me.”

    • http://www.deadlyfredly.com/ Fred Hicks

      When does this show premiere? Dammit.

    • http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin Paul (@princejvstin)

      I’d watch/read that!

  • http://www.critical-hits.com Dave T. Game

    Building on the research of Ted Knight, Dr. Bruce Banner tapped into a near limitless energy source in a distant galaxy. Believed by some astrophysicists to be the center of the universe, Dr. Banner believed he could draw upon this energy source to help solve the upcoming energy crisis.

    When conducting testing using an experimental apparatus of his own design on a planetary observatory, Dr. Banner’s research was interrupted by an unexpected visitor in the testing site, and was forced to interrupt the process, leading to the green energy from beyond cascading into Banner’s body. This caused a rapid mutation. Banner was transformed into a hulking monster empowered by the green energy. For reasons he would not understand for many years, the energy responded to his willpower: more precisely, when his willpower failed him such as in times of great stress and anger, the green energy would take over.

    Meanwhile, the owners of said energy were not pleased with being tapped as they had been, so they dispatched a local representative of the sector to investigate… unfortunately, a similar apparatus to Banner’s disrupted his spacecraft, causing it to crash on Earth…

    • Chad Underkoffler

      Niiiiice.

  • Jeff

    Hulk: Man of the Atom

    Dr. Bruce Banner, a sufferer of gigantism with the cruel nickname of The Hulk, experimented on his pituitary gland with gamma irradiated dwarf star material, trying to make himself normal sized. It changed him, and his size, but only when he is angry.

    As he becomes angry, he gets smaller and stronger.

    He tries to retain a Zen calm, worried what would happen if he got angry enough to shrink too small to see.

  • MT Fierce

    My, alas still embryonic idea: The Invisibles (Grant Morrison) meets Jackie Chan Adventures (cartoon universe).

    I had a sudden irrational thought while watching the cartoon that King Mob and Captain Black of the Section 13 spy organization were actually the same person. King Mob is described via Wikipedia as, “a practised Chaos Magician, psychic combatant, gunfighter, martial artist and time traveller.” Captain Augustus Black once stated that the only king he bows to wears Blue Suede Shoes.

    Somehow it fits. Alas, because it’s Morrison, explaining it lucidly might still require the ingestion of hallucinogens. Or entheogens. It does make the JCA a lot more surreal (but after the druid episode, “The Chan Who Knew Too Much,” there’s no denying the possiblities.)

  • John Powell

    John and Martha Kent were driving their old truck past the Xavier Orphanage when they noticed the flames. They attempted to rescue the crippled man running the orphanage, but he exhorted them to save the children… and succumbed to the smoke.

    Later, after the public foundling hospital reported “difficulties” handling the children from the fire, The childless Kents decided to adopt them all and raised them on their farm.

    • http://www.deadlyfredly.com/ Fred Hicks

      They are… the Krypto-Knights!

  • http://docblue.posterous.com/ David ‘Doc Blue’ Wendt

    Power Girls. After the original Power Girl is killed by Doomsday downtown New York, two heroines step up to take her place.

    All grown-up and now a professional engineer, Kate Power is on the scene when Power Girl falls. Having felt a hole in her life since Power Pack ‘retired’, Kate collects the Kymellian powers of her siblings and claims the name Power Girl. She begins patrolling the city in a significantly more modest version of the original’s costume.

    For months, 16 year old Dani Cage has been arguing with her parents (Luke Cage and Jessica Jones) to allow her to use her inherited superpowers to fight crime. They have consistently refused, stating that she was too young, but she had been secretly operating at night, honing her skills. Dani took the death of Power Girl as a sign and claimed the legacy as her own. Wearing face-concealing goggles and a trendy take on the original costume (including a white leather jacket in place of a cape), she began publicly patrolling the city.

    It was only a matter of time before the two heroines would run into each other in the course of fulfilling their self-appointed roles. After a brief, obligatory, fight, they agreed to team up to fight a third claimant to the legacy – a brutal Power Girl who turned out to be a member of Darkseid’s Female Furies.

    Eventually, the two formed a detective agency, Power Girls, which they used as a base of operations to help those who slipped through the cracks between the larger super teams. Recently, the agency has fallen on hard financial times (largely due to the fact they refuse payment for their work) and was purchased by a mysterious woman by the name of Karen Starr who bears an uncanny resemblance to the original, deceased Power Girl.

  • http://rickj.livejournal.com Rick J

    Around the time DC Adventures came out, I had the idea to take that slice of JLA/Avengers #3 where Earth-DC and Earth-Marvel crossed over much like the pre-Crisis Earth-1 and Earth-2. I never did much Amalgamation so much as cross pollinated the two.

    (1) The Negative Zone is also known as Qward. Also, there’s only one Asgard and Olympus and you can get to either Earth from there.
    (2) During a crossover between the Avengers and the Marvel Family, the Wizard Shazam gives power to the Marvel Rick Jones, and he becomes Earth-A’s Captain Marvel.
    (3) John Henry Irons is the Iron Man of Earth-1.
    (4) John Constantine of Earth-A is called The Devil-Slayer.
    (5) The Earth-1 Challengers of the Unknown are Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Susan Storm and Johnny Storm.
    (6) DC’s Blockbuster got his power from Gamma Radiation and is, of course, green.

    • http://docblue.posterous.com/ David ‘Doc Blue’ Wendt

      I like this. A lot.

      You get a No-Prize.

  • http://memento-mori.com Jared A. Sorensen

    Patrick “Logan” O’Brien was a petty thief involved in the Weapon 11 program, a top-secret military project designed to create super soldiers. After scientists attempted to lace his bones with adamantium, an allergic reaction caused him to expel the metal and regenerate his body into a malleable, rubbery substance that can take any form. Weirdly, this substance can explode with a detonation velocity rivaling that of C-4. When he hits, he hits hard; bits of his anatomy explode and then regenerate, making him the ultimate weapon.

    His code-name: Plasticine.

  • http://www.superpheemy.com Super Pheemy

    I take my mashup from a post from the HERO boards from years back…

    Balseraph – A mashup of Darkseid, Dormammu, and Dark Seraph. The Demonic God-Ruler of the Dark Apocalypse Plane in Hell.

  • http://www.rpmarsh.com Marsh

    Hellfire Blazer
    Johnny “Blaze” Constantine is a cynical ex-biker turned detective. After tricking the devil into granting him power he has the agents of heaven and hell as well as everything in-between knocking on his door to resolve unnatural problems. While most would favor the side of angels he soon learns that between the black and white there are plenty shades of grey. When things get tough Constantine drops his glamour and shows burning skull that has become his head; the price to wield hellfire.

  • Scott Messer

    Once upon a time the four elements existed harmoniously with man. In those days the world was graced by benders, heroes born with the ability to wield the elements and the Avatar, the master of all the elements maintained the balance. I use to think that it was just a myth, little kids stuff like the Monkey King or Dormamu. That was before Project Wideawake; before Erik Lensherr, the Lord of Iron, and his army of Benders laid siege to the world. The war has thrown the elements into chaos and unless I stop him our world is doomed. My name is Franklin Richards, and I am the Avatar.

  • Adam Schwaninger

    Jack Wheeler went to college on a football scholarship but dropped out to join the Marines after he was injured. Working as an EOD tech, he was nearly killed trying to defuse an as-yet-unknown type of IED. Wheeler saved his squad but was blinded, only to find that he was now able to sense his surroundings with a sort of “radar sense”.

    Discharged from the Corps, Wheeler returned home determined to carry on the fight against criminals. Wearing his old football jersey and a blank-faced hockey mask, armed with a variety of weapons, and trained as a Marine, Jack Wheeler fights crime as the Devil Dog!

    (I bet you didn’t think you’d get a Wild Dog mashup in here, huh?) : )

  • Jim Smith

    Master of the Mystic Arts, he was paralyzed in an epic battle with Lucifer. Confined to a wheelchair, he now uses his astral form to fight evil in its many forms. No one knows where he came from, though there are many theories — guardian angel, Wandering Jew, neurosurgeon stumbling into mystic Tibetan training — but none have been confirmed.

    He is… The Phantom Strange

  • sandchigger

    Michael Holt, tired of seeing the damage wrought by the thoughtless actions of the members of the Manhattan Metahuman population has decided that enough is just enough. Espousing the idea of Fair Play, he has turned his physical and mental talents to leveling the playing field between the common man and the so-called supermen and women. Joining together with his fiance, brilliant and beautiful daughter of the NYPD police commissioner, Barbara Gordon and his college roommate Ted Kord they have taken the name The Terrific Three and keep Manhattan safe from rogue superpowers.

  • catastrophe

    Wade Boston was a circuis performer by day, who at night was experimented on by the sinister Weapon A Project- a secret superhuman research project funded by the villain Arcade, who used a traveling circuis as a cover and test-bed for their experiments. Boston was killed after performing a deadly trapeze act as a stubborn form of defiance against the Project, but after dying, he found his spirit wandering in strange places, indeed.

    A supernatural entity called Rama Kali appears to him, professing her love for his death-defying ways, and revealing to him the secret of his existance- his life actually takes place in a comic book, in fact, an amalgamation of two comic book characters.

    He returns to the world, able to posess dead bodies which gain remarkable regenerative capabilities and fighting skills in the process, and embarks on a career of contract killing, sometimes heroism, and general lunacy.

    Fully aware of his nature as an amalgam of Deadman and Deadpool, he names himself POOLMAN, the self-aware hero who deliberatly made his own mash-up name as stupid as possible.

  • http://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/ Sean Holland

    The Space Knights of Oa fight their never-ending war again the Dire Weaponmaker-Sorcerers of Qward. One of their greatest members, badly damaged crashes to Earth, when to survive he is forced to bond with his semi-sentient power battery bathing him in emerald energy and becoming the Emerald Knight.

    Yep, a Rom the Space Knight/Green Lantern amalgam

  • Macguffin

    Every universe has one. From the mystic realms where Mazahs rules from the Brook of Ages, to the hi-tech Empire of the Free, to a world not unlike our own where an everyday police woman found she was chosen for more.

    The Marvelous Captains.

    Their origin varies a bit from dimension to dimension, but in every case they have been exposed to the “M-Force”…. a strange energy that strikes and empowers each individual in a unique manner. Whether lightning bolt or cosmic ray, the M-Force has united these dimensions allowing the Captains to cross into one another dimensions in times of need and provide backup. They have united into an interdimensional corps of heroes, ready to stop any threat… no matter which universe it comes from.

    Captain Marvel (all of them) plus a hint of Green Lantern with a splash of Speed Force. Serve piping hot.

    • http://docblue.posterous.com/ David ‘Doc Blue’ Wendt

      Also Excellent.

  • http://bliumchik.dreamwidth.com Maggie K

    I have long nursed an amazing mashup of the DCU and Discworld (yes, by Terry Pratchett).

    Okay, so imagine an Ankh Morpork with superheroes in it. Captain Carrot is Superman (raised by dwarves = raised by farmers, secretly king = secretly superman…) and Commander Vimes is Batman. Carcer is the Joker. Vetinari is Lex Luthor. (One of the more clever less evil versions, obviously).

    And if Carrot is Clark Kent (Carrot Kent?) then Angua has to be Lois Lane (although I sort of want her to be Black Canary, so… hmm…), which leaves Adora Belle Dearheart to be Wonder Woman (she hangs arouns with golems! there’s a thematic link!) and possibly Moist Von Lipwig as Max Lord (yes, that one’s a brain-breaker).

   
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