Keep in mind that Byrne was the creative mind behind the AMAZON Amalgam title. But I’m sure he was dissenting loudly the entire time, as his arms were wrenched behind his back to coerce the issue out of him.

When the first SUPERMAN vs THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was published, it was a mind-blowing event. First, because almost no one outside the industry knew anything about it until a few short months before it hit the stands. Second, because it was presented as a fate accompli, and no need was felt to explain how Superman and Spider-Man could suddenly be in the same “universe”.

Alas, there were incredibly anal fans who had to ask, who could not simply accept the fun of it all. One of them was a good friend of mine, Mark Gruenwald. And Mark Gruenwald eventually came to occupy a position from which he could answer the question he had himself posed. And so we got “Amalgam”.

For all his years at Marvel, Mark was a DC guy. He loved the DC characters. He loved Earth 2 and all the rest of the “multiverse”. Before he turned Pro, he published fanzines dedicated to just these subjects. He wrote essays that rivaled doctoral theses. He was the champion of quantification, and much as I loved him, there were days (weeks, months) when I wished he had never come to work for Marvel. Or in comics at all.

For one who had so much fun with the stuff, he was amazingly adept at sucking the fun out of it. With stuff like Amalgam, that had to explain things.

The astonishing magic of that first SUPERMAN/SPIDER-MAN book is something that can never be recaptured. Crossovers — because of stuff like Amalgam — actually reached the point where the fans were bored with them. Where they were greeted with a shrug, instead of astonishment.

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