Marvel’s Most Powerful Hero Based On Junk Food

Combo Man was the result of some mid-’90s synergy between Mars, the parent company of Combos, and Marvel Comics. The idea was to create a new Marvel character inspired by Combos that would help promote the salty snacks. Combos—for anyone unfamiliar—are, as Wikipedia puts it, “cylindrical tubes of cracker, pretzel, or tortilla, available with various fillings (usually cheese-based).”

Based on that, you might wonder how Marvel went about creating Combo Man. Is he made of pretzels and cheddar or something else food-related? Nope.

Marvel decided to eschew the food angle and instead focus on the mashup nature of Combos. As a result, the hero is a combination of 14 different characters, both heroes and villains. And Marvel didn’t go subtle with Combo Man either. We’re talking about some of the biggest names in the Marvel roster—whether they make sense together or not.

Marvel’s Combo Man is a mixture of the Hulk, Cyclops, Iron Man, Magneto, the Punisher, Captain America, Sabertooth, Carnage, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Century, Human Torch, Silver Surfer, and last but not least, Gambit. Whew. At first glance, that’s a pretty impressive list until you realize how useless some of those powers would be in conjunction with the others.

Conceivably, the power inherited from Daredevil is his radar sense. However, Spider-Man’s spider-sense has roughly the same function and, if anything, is slightly better. Meanwhile, the Hulk’s strength combined with Cyclops’ blasts and the three or more flying heroes on the list pretty much trump anything Iron Man is bringing to the table.

Also, why is the Punisher there? Seriously, why would this guy need to use handguns when he has the power cosmic thanks to the Silver Surfer?

The truth is Marvel chose the characters based on what would look the coolest when combined. Cyclops’ visor over Iron Man’s helmet does admittedly look kind of awesome. Why, of all the heroes, they chose the Hulk’s hair, though, is anybody’s guess.

If it feels like Marvel just gathered a bunch of random characters to create Combo Man, just wait until you hear how much care went into his canon origin.

Rick Wilder is a mild-mannered college student who discovers a bunch of A.I.M. goons threatening his professor. Like most people, Rick turns to food in times of crisis, which in this case happens to be the Combos in his backpack—a backpack also filled to the brim with Marvel Comics.

You can probably see where this is going. There’s a weird experiment that gives off some kind of energy, combos, and comics combined, and then BDOOM (the actual sound effect from the comic). Rick is transformed into Combo Man!

The hero had his own comic, Combo Man, for one issue in 1995, trading cards and—we kid you not—a bunch of merch. There was a Combo Man hat, a Combo Man jacket, and a Combo Man, t-shirt. Why Marvel and Mars went all in on Combo Man, we have no idea, but we’re willing to bet the idea was not focus-tested ahead of time.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this whole thing is that Combo Man appears to be canon. He’s from Earth 616, Marvel’s main comic universe, and he’s even made a few appearances since his one self-titled comic, albeit in the form of questionable Easter Eggs tucked away in single panels.

While we highly doubt that the character will ever have another starring role or wind up in the MCU or anything just knowing that a guy with the combined powers of Gambit and the Human Torch is out there lets us sleep a little easier at night.