Amalgam Comics

Amalgam Comics was a collaborative publishing imprint shared by DC Comics and Marvel Comics, in which the two comic book publishers merged their characters into new ones (e.g., the DC character Batman and the Marvel character Wolverine became the Amalgam Comics character the Dark Claw). These characters first appeared in a series of 12 one-shots which were published in April 1996 between Marvel Comics versus DC #3 and DC versus Marvel Comics #4, the last two issues of the DC vs. Marvel crossover event. A second set of 12 one-shots followed one year later in June 1997, but without the crossover event as a background. All 24 of these one-shots took place between the aforementioned issues of DC vs. Marvel Comics. Marvel Encyclopedia: Fantastic Four (2004) originally designated the Amalgam Universe as Earth-962 in the Marvel Multiverse, then The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005 re-designated it as Earth-9602. The Essential Wonder Woman Encyclopedia (2015) designated the Amalgam Universe as Earth-496 in the DC Multiverse. In Dark Crisis: Big Bang #1 (February 2023), it was re-designated as Earth 1996.