Combinations

Believe it or not there was an attempt to combine both DC and Marvel characters into one back in the 1990s, with people coming up with their own combinations years later and this is known as Amalgam Comics. It’s kind of influential in its own right, inspiring fans to create their own versions of it in some way. Here are my attempts at creating my own Amalgam comics, some combinations may even be strange for some. Dark Claw is one official attempt at mashing up Wolverine with Batman, with Jubilation Lee being analogised to Tim Drake. There was somebody at a forum who suggested Shadow Bat (combination of Kitty Pryde and Cassandra Cain) but I don’t think it’s a good or even creative combination, given how Cassandra Cain regrets killing people whereas Kitty Pryde doesn’t hesitate to do the same, especially at this point.

She’s killed somebody in anger before, she’s beaten up people in anger a couple of times, she’s even killed Emma Frost at some point, she habitually throws fits, frequently gets angry at Professor Xavier (and Emma Frost), she threatened to kill somebody, landed in therapy for anger management and as of 2023, she has massacred an entire group of people. So analogising her to Jason Todd would be more suitable, since he’s also got a temper and doesn’t hesitate to kill people too. Cassandra Cain’s way too much of a goody two shoes to pull off the things Kitty Pryde has no shame in doing, whereas Jason Todd would do just that despite not having superpowers himself. So this amalgam would be Alley Cat (hood is also an abbreviation of neighbourhood), in real life his name would be Jason Pryde because Jason Todd takes pride in killing people.

Imagine a gunman who goes through walls, looking for people to shoot or murder in some way. Since Kitty Pryde pointed a gun at somebody before, Jason Pryde would do the same thing because he’s really more of the same thing too. Remember cats have nine lives, so Jason Pryde phasing out of his coffin fits. Analogising Cassandra Cain to Jubilee is suitable because considering how fireworks can injure or kill somebody, Cassandra Lee would be very judicious and cautious with how she uses this ability for fear of repeating the same thing again and again. Despite or rather because of having a more lethal ability, Cassandra Lee would never be as ruthless as Jason Pryde is when dealing with enemies. So it’s something this poster didn’t consider regarding Cass Cain’s own conduct.

Another combination would be mashing up the other X-Man Cannonball with Firestorm to get something like Warhead, but since the other half is a scientist so the latter could be mashed up with Roberto Da Costa to yield Robert Stein. Mashing up Tabitha with Plastique would be easy, ability wise but she’d be willing to kill lives this time. Mashing up Rahne Sinclair with Killer Frost yields Snowdrop because wolfsbane’s also the name of a plant, assuming if the latter also becomes a werewolf then it would be too seamless. Mashing up Thinker with Dani Moonstar would be interesting in that Clifford Moonstar has issues with Warhead for tinkering with his reservation’s territory, considering the problem with nuclear colonialism onto indigenous lands. I could be wrong about certain things, so bear with me.

Now as for Mystique, there’s a missed opportunity in mashing her up with either the Joker or even Harley Quinn to get something like Brighella. Both the harlequin and the brighella come from Italian street theatre (commedia dell’arte) but the brighella is clad in mostly white. Mystique also usually wears white clothing, so mashing her up with Harley Quinn to get Brighella is something not many have considered. Even if this is a very interesting combination that if Sabretooth’s analogised to the Joker, shouldn’t Mystique be analogised to Harley Quinn by then? One would only wonder why nobody bothered to analogise Catwoman to Sabretooth, if because they’re both cat-themed in some way or another.

Considering that the sabretooth is also a felid, one could mashup Catwoman with Sabretooth to get Smilodon. Mashing up Wolverine with Batman has already happened before, but I feel calling this combination ‘Dark Claw’ sounds really stupid in my opinion. Renaming him to something like Lynx works in that it’s a predator that hunts at the wee hours of the morning, it also has retractile claws so it kind of does sum up the things he does. Much like the wolverine, Canada does have at least a handful of lynx species but most notably both the Canada lynx and the bobcat. Apparently we’ve got three felids around in the forms of Smilodon, Lynx and Alley Cat.

I’m at a loss to give Cassandra Lee a codename, whereas analogising Harley Quinn to Mystique to get Brighella is an interesting combination. Now as for X23 who’s a proper female counterpart to Wolverine, even when Kitty Pryde could’ve easily be her and at some point did come close to it a couple of times before in the X-Men canon, mashing up her with Spoiler to get something like Polecat. Polecats hunt by stealth and surprise, a spoiler is something or someone that spoils. Also polecats, like wolverines, are mustelids despite the name. Polecats were also used to hunt mice before the introduction of cats to Europe, much like how dogs were used to hunt mice and rats in China before the same thing happened.

Whilst mashing up Wolverine’s son Daken with Damien Wayne is nice, one would wonder why nobody bothered to mashup Forge with Tim Drake since both tend to be tech-orientated, though mashing him up with Barbara Gordon would work just as fine. Though I think an indigenous woman working in tech would be really interesting to consider, given how underrepresented this is and especially so in fiction. I actually know two Native American women (who are also white-passing) who have an affinity with video games, but only one of them knows her way around technologies meant to do drawing with. Also both Forge and Barbara Gordon are/were disabled, though in their own respective ways.

Whilst mashing up Barbara Gordon with Charles Xavier would be the more predictable conclusion, but I don’t think Charles is really this technology-orientated. Forge would be a more interesting and suitable character to mash her up with, if because indigenous women working in STEM are ridiculously underrepresented. Now that’s something not many have considered or contemplated, even moreso considering that there are Native American women who do know their way around high-tech devices. It’s something that does deserve more creativity and thought put into it, because these characters are practically absent in superhero media (well, as far as I know about it).

Mashing up Rogue with Tim Drake to get something like Carrion Crow or even Magpie is another combination that not many considered, even if some birds have a habit of stealing things from others (aka kleptoparasitism). Combining Rogue’s ability to absorb others’ abilities with Tim Drake’s high intelligence would lead to interesting ways of undermining opponents, something like Hunter x Hunter’s Chrollo Lucilfer who kind of does the same thing really. An interesting combination that wasn’t considered or done in the original version of the Amalgam stories, even if this would be interesting to portray really.

I don’t read comics that often, and even then a good number of them leave much to be desired. Especially the Marvel and DC Comics wherein if they make a lot of comics, they’ll also make a lot of stuff that’s kind of mediocre or bland. But amalgamating characters seem to be an interesting exercise and one that’s even accomplished in the real world, especially when it came to both DC and Marvel back in the 1990s. More recently both DC and Marvel have done some crossovers this year, though it remains to be seen if there’ll ever be another batch of Amalgam Comics but modernised for 2020s sensibilities.

Cliff Carmichael

Considering he was conceived as a geek who doesn’t like Ronnie Raymond, I think if given the chance and opportunity he could’ve been the character Felicity Smoak got reinvented as on Arrow. Felicity Smoak, as originally presented, was Ronnie Raymond’s stepmother who didn’t always approve of the things he did and was the manager of a computer firm.

Weirdly enough, that’s a step up from being a mere employee for Oliver Queen and arguably more empowered this way. Since I have my own ideas for reinventing Felicity Smoak, my idea for Cliff Carmichael would be ironically similar to what you’d expect Felicity to be. My Felicity Smoak has black hair styled in a David Bowie mullet, watches cricket matches, is Anglo-Indian, sews for a living and rather shy.

My Cliff Carmichael has long blond hair tied in a ponytail, makes sexual innuendo (which angers Felicity a lot), is a computer programmer, drinks red wine, wears sunglasses and is afraid of needles. My Felicity Smoak’s not unintelligent, she uses multiple needles on a single garment at once to get it down more quickly (as her sewing machine broke down). But that’s me speaking from sewing experience.

But if some Arrow fans are fine with changes made to the source material once it’s adapted for television, they should be fine with the reverse. As for Cliff Carmichael, he doesn’t just hack computers but also indulges in lockpicking and phreaking, the latter’s when you hack telephones. He also does social engineering, which’s to take advantage of information by taking advantage of a person.

So this makes him closer to actual hackers than Felicity Smoak will ever be, whose hacking’s only confined to computers and even then it comes off as magic rather than real hacking. This makes one wonder whether if Arrow writers actually knew about hacking, as far as my limited Arrow viewing goes, not helped by that hacking’s portrayed as automatic and magical instead of methodical and tedious as it is in real life.

Very few, if any, stories get hacking right let alone touch on other aspects like lockpicking and phreaking. This Cliff Carmichael, should he reappear in comics, would be the closest to what hackers are like and do in real life. Arrow’s Felicity Smoak is, in some regards, the farthest from actual hackers. But it’s telling that he could be reinvented just as Smoak has been.

Alterations back to the old

I think the real thing about turning Felicity Smoak into an Indian hyena would ironically be a proper update in a way the Arrow version wasn’t and will never be. The fact that both Felicity Smoak and The Hyena both started out as Firestorm characters (as in part of a story featuring a thermonuclear hero) would mean if she ever became an Indian hyena in future DC stories, it would be a proper update.

Whilst DC’s used to reboots and sometimes these involve updating characters (Cheetah went from a woman in a cheetah costume to a half-cheetah but it took time to get it right and have it stick), Felicity Smoak the hyena seems more like what the character could’ve turned into had it not been for the Arrow version. That could be my personal opinion but in a way it seems like a good way of not letting a persona be forgotten.

And perhaps a way to rehabilitate Felicity at this point.