Spider-Boy Team-Up #1
“Too Many Heroes – Too Little
Time!”
Writers: Roger Stern and Karl Kesel
Penciler: Ladronn
Inker: Juan Vlasco
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Colorist: Joe Rosas
Cover: Ladronn, Vlasco and Kesel
Editor: Ralph Felder
Editor-in-chief: Bob Harras
Published by: Marvel
Released: April 2, 1997
For the finale of my Amalgam read-through, it seemed fitting to jump to a further-off future than the one glimpsed in Lobo the Duck, with perhaps the most amalgamated characters per page of any of the two dozen installments.
“Spider-Boy Team-Up” may not share their names, but the format of one star with a rotating cast of allies calls to mind two of my favorite series: “Marvel Two-in-One,” in which the ever-lovin', blue-eyed Thing shared the page with a host of heroes, and “The Brave and the Bold,” which I only recently came to appreciate for the measured madness of Bob Haney thanks to Magazines and Monsters host Billy Dee. And it's brought to us by comic legends Stern and Kesel, under the amalgamated pen name of R.K. Sternsel.
The titular returning star is Pete Ross, the mash-up of Spider-Man and Superboy we met back in “Spider-Boy*" #1. There are references but no direct continuation from that issue, although it does look like he is going to tie the knot with the Insect Queen, who we met on the last page.
This story opens with Spider-Boy taking on the Scavulture, who looks like a combination of the Vulture, Baron Strucker and I'm sure somebody from DC. Fandom says the Scavenger, who is... an enemy of Superboy I hadn't heard of.
Scavulture gets the upper hand, or wing, on Spidey, thanks in part to a member of the Yancy Legion (Yancy Street Gang + Newsboy Legion … or is it?) snatching his web-shooter. It looks like the end of the line for the mall-crawling wall-crawler until he's encased in a translucent cube and time seems to stand still.
After an interlude with some members of his supporting cast and an appearance by the Silver Racer to establish this is happening at the same time as "Challengers of the Fantastic" #1, we rejoin our hero in the year 2099. He's introduced to the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099, mixing DC's most famous future do-gooders, the Legion of Super-Heroes, with two Marvel fast forwards, the Guardians of the Galaxy and 2099. But really it's just a medley of all sorts of amalgams courtesy of Stern and Kesel. I could double or triple my usual word count running them down, so instead I'll just share the image below and hit some highlights as we go.
The Legionnaires tell Spider-Boy he was an inspiration to them – and that he has 10 minutes to get back to his original time, lest they risk a chronal collapse. But Universe Boy (I'm guessing Ultra Boy and Captain Universe?) accidentally lets the cat out of the bag that there isn't much future left when he returns to the point from which they plucked him.
That drama is interrupted by the arrival of the Frightful Five, who take their name from Marvel's Frightful Four and DC's Fatal Five. The individual members are:
Valinus – Validus plus, I'm thinking, Terminus? (Fandom says … yes!)
Tharlock – Tharok and Deathlok? (2 for 2!)
Manorb – Mano,** who I only know from Heroclix, and the Orb? (If this was NBA Jam, I'd be on fire!)
Sparticus – Persuader and Executioner? (Whoops, Persuader and Gladiator, the Daredevil foe)
Agamotto Express, which I think has to be a typo because she's a combination of the Emerald Empress and, I dunno, Umar? (Fandom says “Empress” and that her Marvel half is … Agamotto. Ok)
The Time Square Generator, aka the time machine that brought Spidey here, is destroyed in the ensuing fracas. As Spider-Boy and Martinex 5 try to figure out what to do, a hooded figure makes a grab for the visitor from the past, and a dude in a time square/cube who kind of reminds me of Guy Gardner yoinks the hero away.
Spider-Boy pops out five years later in a dystopian city suffering the ravages of the chronal collapse that happened back in 2099. The only name dropped here is Salu Van Dyne, a cross between Marvel's Wasp and DC's Shrinking Violet. Spider-Boy takes a quick look around, jumps back in the Time Square, ready to accept his fate...
...and returns to 2099, albeit a little different.
Time travel!
This altered Legion needs Spider-Boy's help activating a Phantom-Negative Zone Projector, and he obliges before going back to his own time. Fortunately, his knowledge of his fate allows him to avoid it. When Scavulture tries again to take him out, the young Yancy Streeter who absconded with his web-shooter uses that device to intervene, only to take a devastating blast from the villain's Neron Claw (Strucker's Satan Claw + DC devil Neron).
A number of other Yancy Legionnaires emerge to reveal themselves as the Legion of Galactic Guardians. They quickly capture Scavulture and go with Spider-Boy to Fantastic Mountain, the HQ he shares with the Challengers and Project Cadmus.
With the Challengers busy dealing with Galactiac, Spider-Boy isn't able to cure the wounded youngster, just sending him to the Phantom-Negative Zone to “keep him from dying any more than he already has.” Psi-Girl (Psylocke + Saturn Girl) calls him Mig-El, giving a clue to the destiny he'll eventually embrace.
Before Spider-Boy can put any more pieces together, the hooded figure returns and reveals himself as Kang the Time Conqueror, who I presume is a mix of Kang and the similarly cloaked and hooded Time Trapper. Kang wants to pull the hero apart into his components of Spider-Man and Superboy to tap into the energies of the Marvel and DC universes and thus conquer the Omniverse, as one does. But a mysterious masked figure emerges to save Spidey.
The duo webs up the Time Conqueror and pulls off his mask to reveal … Old Man Withers, the owner of the haunted carnival!
Actually, they identify him as Chronos-Tut, the Time Pharoah, combining one of Kang's identities and another DC time-traveling rogue, Chronos. The mask also helped him manipulate omniversal forces and maintain the limbo dimension to which he'd dragged Spider-Boy. Without it, the Conqueror and his pocket dimension go boom.
The heroes emerge back at Fantastic Mountain, where Spider-Boy's new ally is introduced as Mig-El Gand, aka Spider-Boy 2099, a combination of Miguel “Spider-Man 2099” O'Hara and DC's Mon-El. The whole time travel caper was a means of saving Spider-Boy and his future namesake, requiring the Phantom-Negative Zone projector to be activated in the present and the future to both save Mig-El and allow him to access Kang's limbo.
This was a blast, from Stern and Kesel's zany-but-still-logical-for-a-comic-book-anyway plot to Ladronn's pencils that felt Kirby-inspired but also distinctively his. No time for Amalgamath here, with the writers and artist clearly having fun with throwing characters from across both universes into a blender, in some cases multiple times. That means there are plenty of contenders for...
Best Amalgam: I feel like we at least need a top five:
4. Multiple Maid/Myriad – Multiple Man + Triplicate Girl. Sure, it's so obvious it might seem too easy, but the names make it work. Multiple Maid has the perfect retro feel, while Myriad makes you imagine the storyline where they tried to grow her up and make her a little more serious. Not bad depth for a glorified cameo!
3. Timberwolf by Night – Timber Wolf + Werewolf by Night. So seamless it's hard to beat.
2. Bouncing Ball – Bouncing Boy + Speedball. I hadn't really thought about it, but there haven't been many New Warriors references in these straight-from-the-90s comics. Credit to combining two of comicdom's most offbeat characters in one logical amalgam.
1. Paste-Eater Pete – Trapster + Matter-Eater Lad. Who's a weirder Legion member than Bouncing Boy? Matter-Eater Lad. What's a more unlikely super-handle than Speedball? Trapster's original moniker Paste-Pot Pete.
Most Confusing Amalgam: Scavulture, I guess, but that's more due to my DC deficit than anything else. He was an imposing figure, certainly more threatening than I've ever found Adrian Toomes.
That technically brings us to the end of Amalgam. I don't see myself springing for the omnibus collection anytime soon, so I don't know if there's extras I'm missing. I don't have any deep thoughts to cap it off with, other than it was just as fun as I expected. If you haven't gotten a chance to read these yourself, I highly recommend it. Sure, some are better than others – and you can maybe skip Generation Hex – but it's a wonderful project that I kind of hope doesn't get repeated often, if ever. Not because it wouldn't be fun to revisit (I would like some more Iron Lantern) but I think a wider sample size would dilute the dizzying uniqueness of it all.
But I do have one more related comic to write about soon...
* - Not the Marvel-only Spider-Boy introduced in recent years by Dan Slott.
** - Full disclosure, I originally typed Manos, but they're both pretty handsy.
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