A vigilante that combines the finest qualities of two different superheroes appears in the Amalgam Comics Universe. Additionally, this crime fighter faces a foe who combines the worst traits of two different supervillains. You must now be thinking that it was most likely the outcome of a lab experiment, yet these bodies were not obtained. They were actually born in this manner.
While Hyena is a combination of the Joker and Sabretooth, Dark Claw is a combination of Batman and Wolverine. Both of these characters exhibit the distinctive qualities of the people they stand in for, and as a result, they develop a mutual hatred for one another. one that has never been seen before. But exactly how did they come into being? And why did they have to end up as rivals? These are just a few of the queries that this video will address. So without further ado, let us watch the video and learn more about these incredible people.
Introducing Dark Claw – the wolverine and Batman hybrid Logan Wayne!
Ray McCarthy, Jim Balent, and Larry Hama are responsible for creating the character of Dark Claw. His tragic tale starts when he is just five years old. Logan Wayne’s parents were murdered in front of him by a disguised robber when he was a little child. He was sent to live with his uncle in Alberta, Canada, even though Alfred is not mentioned in his tale. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was his uncle’s former employer.
Unfortunately, soon after Logan’s arrival, his uncle was also murdered by poachers. Since he was the nephew of a policeman, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent Logan to live in a home run by nuns thinking it to be the next safest place. He lived there until the age of eighteen, and as soon as he was old enough, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. There, he met a man named Creed Harley Quinn, who was in the same unit as Logan.
Soon after spending considerable time in the Air Force, both Logan and Creed were put into the Weapon X project. Until now, Logan was entirely in the dark about the fact that he was a mutant. It is at the Weapon X project that he becomes aware of his special gene and finds out about his regenerative powers through which he can regenerate any part of his body within minutes. Even organs such as his eyes. His healing ability also makes him immune to diseases.
All of his senses were also enhanced and exceeded those of ordinary humans. However, the unknown part about himself that came as a shock to him was discovering the presence of retractable bone claws present in his fore arms. The other guy, Creed, was apparently also a mutant. Soon after, the indestructible metal called adamantium was bonded on a molecular level to both their skeletons and claws.
The adamantium coating allowed his claws to cut through any material when he applied force. It also enhanced some of his other inherent abilities such as superhuman strength. Due to the heavy adamantium inside his muscles, they were now capable of pushing Logan’s strength beyond imaginary levels. They wanted to turn them into their personal killing machines, and with all these powers they possessed, it seemed within reach.
But their plans went wrong because Logan Wayne was still in control of his humanity and would not serve their purpose. Due to the great failure of the Weapon X project, they decided to delete all their files and completely erase their existence from the face of the earth. However, Professor Carter Nichols left a few of his notes which were eventually discovered by the Huntress.
No longer being tied to the Weapon X project, Logan chose to explore the world and improve his new found powers. He ended up mastering 127 different styles of armed and unarmed combat that would suit his mutant powers. He also learned to be a remarkable detective and his path to becoming a vigilante began. New Gotham was a lawless city, that was governed by drug lords and gangsters. Logan became a successful artist upon his arrival in New Gotham.
His abstract paintings were made up of wild slashes and earned him millions of dollars. So, Logan Wayne decided to make New Gotham a better city by using his mutant abilities, paired with his heightened senses and the art of detective work. It allowed him to track down, capture and punish criminals in order to defend the citizens of New Gotham. Finally, this was when he adopted the name Dark Claw and would be dressed in a black and yellow outfit.
Logan’s constant efforts in order to improve his abilities have now made him the epitome of a crime fighter. As for Dark Claw, he could now outsmart his opponents. He would also often take on a fake identity as Patch Malone when he wanted to gather information discreetly. He put all of his money to good use by attaining a variety of specialized gadgets. These are, his utility belt, claw-arangs, claw computer, claw scanner, and claw radar.
As for his costume, the yellow and blue clearly reflect the presence of Marvel’s Wolverine and the classic black is a touch of DC’s Batman. This costume’s cowl is shaped like Wolverine, and at the same time, it contains the fangs and bone structure of a bat’s face while its wings run up the cowl. The latter half of his mask was actually inspired by a concept for an alternate Batman outfit which is shown in the one shot book Batman: Dark Knight Gallery.
Dark Claw’s nemesis – Hyena the Psycho killer
Now let us take a look at the fate of the guy Logan Wayne met in the Air Force, Creed Harley Quinn. He was also chosen for the Weapon X project in order to turn him into a living weapon. While their experiments and adamantium bonding happened at the same time, the results were quite different for Creed. Logan went on to deny their weapon plans, and Creed became the exact opposite. He accepted it but he was also not in control of the project specialists.
He turned into a psychotic and remorseless killer and saw Dark Claw as his competition. His obsession with defeating him began and he adopted the name Hyena. He is a perfect reflection of his amalgamations as he possesses the savagery of Marvel’s Sabretooth and on the other hand has the deranged wit of DC’s Joker. Like the Joker, he has a white painted face with wild green hair and he never stops grinning. Along with that, similar to Sabretooth, he wears an orange outfit and has long deadly claws. He carries explosives which he likes to call frolic frags, and he is also the leader of a gang called the Pack.
Being a mutant gives him the same inherent powers and abilities as those of Dark Claw. To top it off, his claws and different gadgets make him a very strong opponent. The fact that he also leads a whole gang of miscreants is suggestive of his ability to take control and an obsessive need to defeat Dark Claw.
One time Dark Claw was on a mission with his sidekick, Sparrow, to save the life of the president. Upon arriving at the White House, he realized that his opponent was Hyena and his mutant clan, the Pack. Hyena continued to pursue the president and ordered the Pack to deal with Dark Claw and Sparrow. But Dark Claw butchered more than half of Hyena’s mutants and went after him. They clashed in one of the corridors and had a one on one fight.
Dark Claw was able to overpower Hyena by cutting and stabbing him. The president was saved by the hybrid vigilante whereas Hyena fell out of a window and escaped.
Amalgam comics was a unique idea
Amalgam comics gave birth to the Amalgam universe which was presented to us as a shared publishing imprint by DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Just like Dark Claw and Hyena are amalgamations of characters from both DC and Marvel, through this venture, these publishers opened our eyes and imagination to a variety of new characters born out of the already known ones. Although their existence was short lived, it certainly provided a new perspective on the familiar characters.
It was released as 24 one-shot first issues under the Amalgam Comics imprint. The first 12 comic books were published in 1996, six issues by Marvel and six issues by DC. The rest of the 12 comic book issues were released the following year. So, the Amalgam Universe stayed with us only for a year.
The story of how the Amalgam universe came into existence in comic books is quite unique. The DC and Marvel comic book universes each had two physical incarnations known as the Brothers. Now, the universes have started to come together after the Brothers learned of each other’s existence. There was a fight among the characters from each universe in order to judge which one would survive so that the Brothers would not end up destroying each other.
Marvel and DC then created a character that is co owned by both, called Access. Access was a character developed particularly for this event and functioned as a gatekeeper who became trapped while traveling between the two universes. Now, the respective characters never reached a conclusion because neither of them would back down. So, the Spectre from the DC Universe and the Living Tribunal from the Marvel Universe formed an amalgamated universe in order to avoid their ultimate annihilation.
They sort of left Access and Doctor Strangefate in charge as they were the only ones who would know the reality of the merge. Doctor Strangefate is the amalgamation of Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, and Professor X. With the assistance of the Amalgam Universe’s superheroes, Access was able to separate the Brothers. He also put shards from the two universes into Batman and Captain America prior to the merge so that later they could be used to save them.
Now, as we know, in the Amalgam Universe, Dark Claw is part Batman and part Wolverine. Similarly, another character named Super Soldier is part Superman and part Captain America. After a lot of effort, when Access finally found these two heroes, he used the power from those shards inside their bodies to grant the Spectre and the Living Tribunal the ability to bring back both of the universes.
The two universes were eventually separated once again through the efforts of Batman, Captain America, and Access as they managed to convince the Brothers of their worthless dispute.
Exploring the comic book that brought about this nail-biting rivalry
Let us explore the Amalgam Comics Legends of the Dark Claw, Volume 1, Issue #1, which was published in April 1996. The issue begins with Dark Claw fighting the Hyena at a newspaper printing press. Hyena had left a hint for Dark Claw to find and that is how he was lured in, but Hyena refuses to explain why he attacked the Gotham Gazette. Hyena uses his frolic frags on Dark Claw as Sparrow is on standby on the roof of the building.
Their fight appears to have turned in Dark Claw’s favor but soon Hyena’s pack arrives and starts shooting Dark Claw. Luckily, he is saved by Sparrow in the claw copter. Meanwhile, in another place in Gotham, we see the Huntress, whose original identity is Carol Danvers. She has made a smooth entry through the window into the penthouse loft of Logan Wayne, a techno wizard, painter, and sportsman.
She crosses his art studio and makes her way into his bedroom, where she finds a lot of personal pictures of Logan. Pictures of him with his parents, in the Royal Canadian Air Force uniform, and also a photo in the uniform with Creed Harley Quinn. She is shocked to discover all of this as there have been no records of him being in the Royal Canadian Air Force. She then walks into his closet, where she stumbles upon a lot of spare Dark Claw costumes and masks and figures out Logan Wayne’s hidden identity.
Just then, Dark Claw bursts in through the back wall of the closet. As it turns out, there is a secret passage and an elevator behind the closet wall which he uses to go in and out. He immediately recognizes her and sees her as a threat as she finds out about his secret identity. The two end up getting into a fight, and Dark Claw has the lead. She then reveals that she has no interest in his double life.
In fact, she was actually looking for information on Hyena, whose paths always happened to cross with Logan’s. Dark Claw then tells her the story of how he became this crime fighting vigilante and Creed became the remorseless killing machine, Hyena. He takes her underground through a tube where hangs a large portrait of his parents and all of his claw equipment. Quite similar to Batman’s Batcave.
Sparrow and the Huntress meet as Sparrow is trying to figure out what Hyena plans on doing next. Sparrow has successfully hacked into the typesetting computer at the Gotham Gazette. While fighting Hyena earlier, Dark Claw noticed that Creed was wearing a static electricity discharge wire on his wrist. So, he clearly was not there to plant a bomb but to get inside the guts of a computer and extract some information.
It appears that he was messing with the headlines for the morning paper because it reads AF1 + NaCN. Dark Claw cleverly deduces its meaning and tells us that the AF1 stands for Air Force 1, which is the plane that the President is about to fly on. And the NaCN stands for Sodium Cyanide, a deadly poison. At this point, it is evident that Hyena intends to kill the President, who is about to fly back to Washington in 20 minutes.
Dark Claw, Sparrow, and the Huntress arrive at Gotham International Airport in his Claw copter, where the president’s plane is about to take off. Dark Claw makes a jump for it and enters the airplane. Even though he tries to warn them about Hyena’s attack, the security on the airplane considers him to be a threat and starts shooting at him. At the same time, we find out that Hyena is already inside the plane and opens a poisonous gas grenade in order to kill the president.
Dark Claw gets a hold of him, and before you know it, the explosive decompression blows the two out of the plane because of the adamantium. The poison gets sucked out along with them and the president is saved. The issue ends with Hyena escaping through a parachute as the Sparrow brings the Claw copter around to catch Dark Claw in mid air.
The characters of Dark Claw and the Hyena are built with the right amount of detailing based on the superheroes and supervillains that they are made up of. Dark Claw has the vigour of Wolverine and the inherent drive of Batman. Similarly, the Hyena reflects the deranged aspects of the Joker as well as Sabretooth. It certainly would have been a lot more fun if we got to watch them go up against Batman, Wolverine, the Joker, and Sabretooth at the same time. But, as the saying goes, good things do not last forever.
Well, guys, that is all for today; we have come to the end of another origin video with Marvelous Videos. We hope you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed making it for you. Have a fantastic day ahead!