Comics Merger

When two comics merge into one. Usually a more popular comic incorporates another less popular one and it goes by a name combining the both for a while until the less popular comic has its name dropped from the title. Ocassionally two comics merge into one and they are of equal popularity so no name is ever dropped.

Examples of Comics Merger include:

Comic Books

• There are many British Comics examples of this:
  • Tornado and Starlord which merged with Two Thousand AD.
  • Hoot and Nutty which both merged with The Dandy.
  • The British Comic Buster, a spin off of sorts of Andy Capp, merged with probably the largest number of comics during its run than any other comic; the final merger was with Whizzer and Chips in 1990. Many of the comics it merged with had already merged with other comics especially Whizzer and Chips which had merged with four comics during its lifetime one of those four (Whoopee!) had also merged with another three comics.
  • It's worth noting that Whizzer and Chips was not a merged title, but always consisted of two titles under one cover.
  • The Beano arguably Britain's most well known comic has had no official mergers over its life time however it has absorbed characters from comics which have ended such as The Numskulls from The Beezer and Fred's Bed from The Topper.
  • The merger of the aforementioned Beezer and Topper is another odd example with the two comics merger in 1990. The new comic formed was called The Beezer and Topper and unlike many other mergers both comics where given equal billing until the comics end in 1993.
  • The final survivor of the five Power Comics (Smash! which later merged with Valiant) absorbed the other four power comics and for a brief time went by the name Smash and Pow incorporating Fantastic.
• Perhaps the most famous American example is the merger of the Marvel Comics series Luke Cage, Power Man and Iron Fist in the late 1970s, which worked so well the characters still turn up together more often than not.
  • Earlier in the decade, there was briefly a plan to do this with Daredevil and Iron Man slated to become parts of a single "double feature" title due to their solo comics' failing sales. Instead, both went bimonthly for awhile instead, and both recovered thanks to well-received runs featuring instances of My Real Daddy.
• Following the so-called "DC Implosion" in the late 1970s in which many lower-selling titles were cancelled, completed but unpublished stories of several solo characters including Black Lightning saw print as backups in other characters' comics.
• Cable and Deadpool had their solo series merged into Cable and Deadpool for a while; the fact that these characters didn't go together well was part of the humor.
• The Atom and Hawkman had their solo titles merged into Atom and Hawkman for a while; not as successfully as Power Man and Iron Fist, but it still made them canonically best friends for years thereafter.