JLX in The Amalgam Age of Comics: The DC Comics Collection (1996)

The plan for yesterday was to draft a larger post on the background of the Amalgam Comics stunt, halve that as appropriate, and then spin off narratives for the Wonder Woman titles and Martian Manhunter in JLX. What I hadn't considered was that Wonder Woman was far more central to the Marvel Versus DC event, and had more expansive lore within the Amalgam Comics pseudo-verse, meaning her side of the story dominated so fully that I simply ran out of time and energy to give a Martian perspective. There's an additional, anniversary-appropriate irony... I apparently never covered DC Versus Marvel on this Blogspot/Blogger/Google incarnation, only my oft-referenced-during-anniversaries WebTV incarnation from the late '90s / early '00s. What a reminder that I've been doing this too long, that I assume the presence of my DC Message Boards-era, 20th Century content here. One of the running jokes was that I was supposed to migrate all that WebTV content here and save myself work, instead of re-doing... well... clearly not everything. I wonder if I can even still run the CD a buddy burned to back the site up using a web crawler in 2000? Anyway, I'm not inclined to repeat myself, so if you want background, read it at Diana Prince as the New Wonder Woman.

While there are some notable characters dating back to the (falsified) Golden Age of Comics like Super-Soldier and Diana Prince, Amalgam Comics seems largely built on a (retconned) Silver Age. Super-Soldier (human Clark Kent given powers from materials found by scientists in a Kryptonian rocket) was put on ice until modern times, awakening to find his powers diminished by lingering radiation from Lex Luthor's K-bombs. In order to combat superhuman menaces, Kent put together a team that would counter them "without alliances to a particular country or political group." This team would be the Judgment League Avengers, or "JLA" for short. They consisted of Dark Claw, Captain Marvel, Angelhawk, Canary, Goliath, and Hawkeye. Their sometimes ally was Mariner, a combination of Namor and Aquaman who lived in the undersea city of Poseidonis with his wife and child. Poseidonis was mysteriously destroyed, taking everyone by Mariner in a cataclysm. The mourning Mariner launched two mission: to combat pollution to his water by the surface world, and to find the lost city of Homo Superior, Atlantis.

Mutants are present in Amalgam Comics, but seem to be more marginalized there than at Marvel. Even the JLA are somewhat discriminatory towards them, with members hiding their mutant genes from fellow heroes. However, the JLA also battle anti-mutant bigots like Will Magnus, who used his technological genius to build mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels. Will Magnus was motivated by his hatred of his brother Erik, who in the guise of Magneto formed The Brotherhood of Mutants. Will Magnus also created more humanoid automatons, like the Setinel Jocasta, who he tested by having her infiltrate the modeling industry under the name Millie. At one point, Will Magnus tried to infiltrate the JLA with a synthezoid spy called Crimson Whirlwind, but creation was turned against creator. Another mutant group was X-Patrol, led by a time-traveler from an apocalyptic future named Niles Cable. They are attempting to improve the fate of their kind, with each successful mission changing the history of Cable.

In the series JLA: The New Blood, the Avengers started to address the rising visibility of mutants by adopting more out members to the team. Among the earliest mentees were Firebird (The Green Flame + Phoenix,) Apollo (The Ray + Cyclops,) and Wraith (Obsidian + Gambit.) They were soon joined by Mercury (Impulse + Quicksilver,) Runaway (Gypsy + Rogue,) and Nightcreeper (The Creeper + Nightcrawler.) Among their enemies and frienemies were Lord Nimrod and his X-tremists, Ms. Tique's Brotherhood of Injustice, Sunstorm, and Metamimic, while a rival JLA spin-off group was Extreme Works. I'm not clear on their relationship to The Brotherhood of Mutants, but that team was murdered by Sentinels. Recently, the members were reborn in robot form as Magneto and the Magnetic Men.

Most recently, Mariner was framed for a mass murder, and the U.S. Government ordered his capture and imprisonment without trial. This created a rift between the Judgment League Avengers and their mutant new blood, who under the guidance of the notorious criminal mastermind Mr. X, orchestrated a jailbreak for Mariner with the renegade "JLX."