Welcome to #AmalgamAgain part three. This mash-up is brought to you by Newsarama and our own George Marston.
You can check out exactly what Amalgam Again is here, and our first mash-ups, the Mighty Mortal and Recurve. Then check out our latest amalgam below.
The Who: The Iron Bat
The Inspiration: DC’s Batman and Marvel’s Iron Man.
The logline: Heir to a billion dollar fortune, boy genius Anthony Wayne did not follow in his parents’ (Doctors Maria and Howard Wayne) footsteps into medicine. Instead he started up a cutting-edge weapons design firm in his mid-teens.
When a domestic terrorist attack targeting him results in his parents’ death by weapons of his own design, a nearly-dead Tony is hidden in a secret cave under his family’s estate by their longtime loyal butler Jarvis Pennyworth.
While recovering from his wounds in seclusion, Tony designs and builds the first Iron Bat armor, and then takes to the streets of New Gotham to bring down the terrorist cell that murdered his parents, rid the city of the weapons of his design and protect innocent lives.
The Meta: Well you knew we were going to get to both Batman and Iron Man sooner or later, so we just saved time and mashed them together into one.
For the record, this was the first amalgam conceived of when discussions about the project began and it really calls attention to the 24 years that have passed since the official Amalgam Comics event, which for us was all part of the fun.
At the time Batman was combined with Wolverine (Dark Claw), which was a reflection of the status of Wolverine as arguably Marvel’s most popular character and part of their most popular franchise at the time.
Iron Man’s pairing with Green Lantern (Iron Lantern) was a reflection of his, with no offense meant to Green Lantern.
But the MCU and Robert Downey Jr. flipped the script entirely.
And it’s not just the respective current popularity/status of the characters that make them a logical fit.
To quote Tony Stark in Marvel’s Avengers, he’s a “genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist.”
Sound familiar?
The parallels don’t end there.
That both of their superhero careers kind of/sort of began in a cave was something that hadn’t occurred to us before.
But more to the point, both characters exist in their respective universes in very similar group dynamics.
Iron Man is a futurist. Batman is famously one step ahead of everyone – often including his own friends and allies – and anticipating and planning for every contingency.
And like one another (to some mutual degree narcissists),they’re both arguably their team’s most valuable members and centers of gravity, but also their biggest wildcards, ready to pursue their own secretive agenda at a moment’s notice.
Iron Man’s more recent mentorship of Spider-Man in comics and movies also reminds us of Batman’s penchant for having teen protégés, which is something that may pay off in the future if we do more Amalgam Again (hint, hint).
The Artist: Our own George Marston brought the Iron Bat to life. We think George nailed the mix of tech and gothic which we think of as ‘contemporary steampunk,’ particularly illustrating this would be Iron Bat’s armor in one of its earliest forms.