DC and Marvel Comics once created a handful of combination heroes and villains for their Amalgam Universe, with the crossover’s most significant missed opportunity being a teased but never revealed Kang the Conqueror and Reverse-Flash merged villain. In JLX #1, a new villain named Professor Kang is referred to as a villain who took down The Flash and Scarlet Witch. Unfortunately, readers never get to see Professor Kang, as the Amalgam Universe had a different villain combination for Marvel’s premier conqueror.
The Amalgam Universe is arguably the most ambitious Marvel/DC Comics crossover ever. Following the Marvel vs. DC event, which pitted each publisher’s heroes against each other, the two universes were combined to prevent one of them from being destroyed. The result was the Amalgam Universe, which combined each world, creating fused heroes and villains, including Doctor Strangefate (Doctor Strange and Doctor Fate), Dark Claw (Batman and Wolverine), and Super-Soldier (Superman and Captain America). However, one of the most intriguing combination characters never actually appeared in the event, as Professor Kang, who combined Kang the Conqueror and the Reverse-Flash, was only mentioned.
In JLX #1 by Gerard Jones, Mark Waid, Howard Porter, John Dell, Gloria Vasquez, Heroic Age, and Chris Eliopoulos, readers meet a combined Amalgam X-Men and Justice League team called the Justice League X-Men. When introducing Mercury, who combines DC’s Impulse with Marvel’s Quicksilver, he reveals that he wasn’t fast enough to stop a villain named Professor Kang, who nearly killed The Flash and Scarlet Witch. Mercury admits he’d rather be at the “bottom of the ocean than face that failure.”
The tease of a Marvel/DC combined villain who is part Kang the Conqueror and part Professor Zoom (Reverse-Flash) is quite a reveal. Imagine a version of Kang, who also is connected to the Speed Force – it would make for terrifying good fun as the villain would be incredibly overpowered. But unfortunately, the Amalgam Universe never fully revealed the combination villain. Instead, they opted to use Kang as a different combo villain named Kang, the Time Conqueror, who fused the time-traveling villain with the lesser-known Silver Age DC villain, Time Trapper.
While Kang, the Time Conqueror is a cool creation, DC and Marvel Comics’ combined universe really missed out by not fully introducing Professor Kang after he was mentioned in JLX #1. While the chances Marvel and DC ever do another crossover again as they did in the ’90s are slim, if the Amalgam Universe ever makes its surprise return, the Kang the Conqueror/Reverse-Flash combined villain would make for an excellent big bad guy that the combination heroes would need to take down to save their universes. The teased Amalgam Kang remains the crossover’s biggest wasted opportunity.
