Amalgam Comics - Who was on Crack / Cocaine?

A while ago I picked up the vast majority (if not all) of the Amalgam comics off E-Bay. I had read one or two when they came out and remembered them as fun. The Super-Soldier comic I believe was the one I remembered most and time had eradicated memories of any of the other books that I had read.

Well let me tell you after actually reading most of these books I came up with the question who was on crack/cocaine when they decided these books would be a good idea. It reminds me of the bass-o-matic from Saturday night live where you put in water, vegetables and a bass into a blender and grind it up into a "wonderful" drink.

This stuff was a waste of some terrific talent. The artist roll call is Bryan Hitch, John Romita Jr., John Byrne, Phil Jiminez, Tom Grummett, Gary Frank and many other excellent artists. The writers were Mark Waid, Karl Kesel, Christopher Priest, Peter Milligan, Kurt Busiek and many others. Some real "A" list teams were create to produce some of the most convoluted and crappiest pretty books ever made.

It must have been an internal contest to see what the most bizzaro melding of Marvel and DC you could come up with. The characters are so bad and they used different aspects of the same character across different books. Dark Claw was Batman and Wolverine, Bruce Wayne, Agent of Shield is Nick Fury and Bruce Wayne, Thorion - Thor and Orion, Bat-Thing - Manbat and Man-Thing. Generation Hex combined the Generation X characters with DC's old west characters. Spider-Boy was a combination of Superboy and Spider-Man and then they tried to blend all the supporting cast together and it just made your head hurt. Right now I'm looking at a picture of Challengers of the Fantastic where Ace Morgan and Sue Storm are "amalgamated" and the villain at the end is a combination Doomsday, Doctor Doom and the Black Racer.

This was from 10 years ago and I believe at the low point of all times for sales of comics, so I assume the companies were desperate and tried any gimmick to generate sales, but wow were these comics bad.

Really, this stuff must have been written in a room where everyone was drunk, high or both. I can only imagine how much insane giggling went on when these grown boys merged Lobo and Howard the Duck.