Spider-Boy Team-Up #1

History

The issue was produced under the Amalgam Comics joint imprint, a collaboration in which DC and Marvel each published six one-shots in June 1997 — a repeat of the 1996 wave that had grown directly out of the DC vs. Marvel crossover event, but this time released without that crossover as scaffolding. Writers Roger Stern and Karl Kesel — whose combined credits spanned Roger Stern's long Marvel tenure and Karl Kesel's own creation of the 1990s Superboy — collaborated under the shared pen name 'R.K. Sternsel,' a house pseudonym that maintained the fiction that Amalgam Comics was a publisher with its own stable of writers. Penciler José Ladrönn, inked by Juan Vlasco, provided cover and interior art, with editors Ralph Macchio and James Felder overseeing the Marvel side under editor-in-chief Bob Harras. The issue shipped on April 2, 1997, with a cover date of June 1997.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Silver Racer (William Lincoln), an amalgam of Marvel's Silver Surfer and DC's New Gods character Black Racer.
• First appearance of Spider-Boy 2099 (Mig-El Gand), an amalgam of Spider-Man 2099 (Miguel O'Hara) and DC's Mon-El (Lar Gand).
• First and only appearance of the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099 as a team, an amalgam fusing DC's Legion of Super-Heroes with Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy; the team formally disbands within the story.
• Co-written by Roger Stern and Karl Kesel under the shared Amalgam house pseudonym 'R.K. Sternsel'; Karl Kesel was also the creator of the 1990s Superboy, one half of Spider-Boy's source DNA.
• Pencils and cover by José Ladrönn, inked by Juan Vlasco; published April 2, 1997, with a June 1997 cover date under the Amalgam Comics joint DC/Marvel imprint.
• The story features three distinct temporal versions of the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099, mirroring the real-world Legion of Super-Heroes' own much-mocked reboot history — a piece of in-universe meta-commentary.
• Villain Kang, the Time Conqueror is an amalgam of Marvel's Kang the Conqueror and DC's Time Trapper; when unmasked he is revealed as Chronos-Tut, himself a triple fusion of DC's Chronos, Marvel's Rama Tut, and the likeness of Richard Nixon.
• Reprinted in the Marvel trade paperback 'Return to the Amalgam Age of Comics: The Marvel Comics Collection' (October 1997), in a Mexican edition by Grupo Editorial Vid (February 1998), and in a French edition in Marvel Crossover (Panini France, 1998); a Facsimile Edition was announced by Marvel for release in early 2026.

Full credits

Variants (1)