Batman Once Merged With Wolverine To Create A Clawed Crusader For A Special Storyline

The eternal "Marvel vs. DC" debate has continued to rage on, uninterrupted, for many, many decades. While there may be superhero fans out there who read Marvel Comics and DC Comics with equal fervor, the two companies tend to remain studiously separated, with loyalists on either side and little peace in between. Each company has its own expansive, long-lived, multiverse lore, and each one has its own panoply of colorful super-powered characters that have seeped into the pop consciousness like coffee into upholstery. 

On the Marvel side of things, you have (generally speaking) stories of ordinary human beings, living in real American cities, discovering that they have superpowers. Spider-Man, for instance, is an ordinary geeky kid who has to deal with the practical ins and outs of being a superhero. On the DC side, you have (again, speaking generally) stories of inhuman gods who rule over Earth, members of a 20th century theogony. Superman is an ultra-powered, godlike alien from deep space. 

Very occasionally, however, the two companies would settle their pop rivalry to produce a lucrative collaboration. In 1975, the two giants teamed up for the first time to make a comic book adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz." In 1976, each company recruited their most popular heroes to make "Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century." There were other such collaborations throughout the 1970s and 1980s, always done as a little wink to fans. 

In 1996, however, Marvel and DC took things to a new level by running a special 24-issue series under the combined banner of Amalgam Comics. As the name denotes, Amalgam Comics physically combined star Marvel and DC characters in singular amalgams of both. Perhaps most notably, Wolverine mushed into Batman to create a new character called the Dark Claw. 

The writers and artists of the Amalgam Comics series were very careful in combining the Marvel and DC universes, ensuring that it was more or less a 50/50 blend of the two. The series was not an ongoing story, but a series of one-shot comics, each one starring a new character. The first wave of 12 titles came out in May of 1996, with a second wave of 12 coming in July of 1997. The Amalgam Universe was actually the result of a larger, fan-friendly series called simply "DC vs. Marvel" (or "Marvel vs. DC," it was published both ways), wherein heroes from both universes were pulled into a pocket dimension to conduct high-powered pugilism contests. It seems that both the DC universe and the Marvel universe existed as sentient, universe carrying cosmic beings, and they prevented their own fistfight by pitting their heroes against one another. This was a fan-driven event, as the victors of the matches were chosen by write-in vote. 

That series ended with an interdimensional cataclysm, overseen by Marvel's Living Tribunal and DC's Spectre, that cause the two universes to merge. The result was a universe wherein singular heroes were born of two others, the same way Neelix and Tuvok became Tuvix in the most famous episode of "Star Trek: Voyager." The two universes were bound together by a new character, one that is co-owned by both Marvel and DC, called Access.

Leading the way was the Dark Claw, which was, as mentioned, the character that formed when Batman and Wolverine became one. The Dark Claw — real name: Logan Wayne — had a sidekick named Sparrow, which was a merging of Robin and Jubilee, one of the X-Men.  

Some of the other combinations in the Amalgam Universe were a blast, as well. Spider-Man and Superboy merged to become Spider-Boy, and he fought a monster named Bizarnage, a combination of Bizarro and Carnage. Ghost Rider and The Flash combined to make a fast-running flame monster called Speed Demon. Superman and Captain American merged into Super Soldier, and he fought the Green Skull, a combination of the Red Skull and Lex Luthor. Wonder Woman and X-Men's Storm became a character called Amazon. The Amalgam Universe writers were not without a sense of humor, either, as they combined DC's violent punker Lobo with the satirical character Howard the Duck (the subject of Marvel's most notorious flop) to create ... well, Lobo the Duck. 

In a more obscure combo, Marvel's swamp creature the Man-Thing combined with DC's Batman monster Man-Bat to create the terrifying Bat-Thing. Iron Man and the Green Lantern combined to form, you guessed it, Iron Lantern. Even teams mashed together. Can you imagine the confusion of the Justice League and the X-Men merging to become JLX?

None of these titles were ever intended to last beyond issue #1, presented more as a big, fun "what if" scenario rather than a new opportunity to tell ongoing stories. At the end of the Amalgam rigmarole, the Access character realized that the DC and Marvel universes didn't need to fight, and he helped the Living Tribunal and Spectre separate the universes once again. The Amalgam universe has remained dormant ever since, a relic of the 1990s. No one has ever seen Amalgam as anything other than a fan event. Although if both Marvel and DC movies are struggling in theaters in the 2020s, maybe we'll see Hugh Jackman playing Dark Claw soon enough.