Dark Claw

Dark Claw

Dark Claw is an Amalgam of Marvel's Wolverine and DC Comics' Batman

Dark Claw's first real appearance was in Legends of the Dark Claw #1 (1996), though his first (metafictional) appearance in the Amalgam Universe was in Sleuth Comics #27. Combining two of each universe's most popular characters was quite successful, as Dark Claw proved to be one of the most memorable and popular creations of the Amalgam Universe.

Biography

At the age of 5, after witnessing his parents' murder at the hands of an armed robber, Logan Wayne was sent to live with his uncle in Alberta, Canada. His uncle was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and was ambushed and murdered by poachers a short time after his arrival in Canada. After the death of his uncle, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent Logan to live in a home run by nuns and as soon as he was old enough, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, landing in the same outfit as Creed H. Quinn.

Both Logan and Creed were submitted to the Weapon X project, the Canadian Super-Soldier program. It was here that Logan had adamantium bonded to his bones and he learned of his metamutant nature. Throughout the course of the project, the other subject, Quinn, became increasingly insane and would later become Dark Claw’s most dangerous foe, the Hyena.

The Weapon X project was terminated due to its dual failure: Logan was ineffective as a weapon because he possessed a conscience, and Creed was criminally insane. The files were deleted and the existence of the program was utterly expunged with the exception of a few fragments of notes by a Professor Carter Nichols later uncovered by Ms. Huntress.

After the collapse of the Weapon X program, Logan decided to fight crime to avenge his parents’ death. He spent years traveling the world, training himself to intellectual and physical perfection and learning a variety of crime-fighting skills, including criminology, forensics, martial arts, gymnastics, and disguise. Beyond academia, Logan acquired more "practical" skills. While abroad, Logan learned all 127 major styles of combat, from Aikido to Yaw-Yan. Frenchman Henri Ducard made him an apprentice in manhunting. The Ninja Clan Yoshinda schooled Logan in stealth and the ways of the shadow warrior. African Bushmen taught hunting techniques, while Nepalese monks revealed healing arts. He even studied ventriloquism from practitioners of the art.

To the world at large, Logan is an irresponsible, superficial playboy artist who lives off his family's personal fortune and the profits off the sales of his paintings.

In a possible future, Dark Claw becomes the father of Dark Claw Beyond.

Secret identity

Logan guards his secret identity well, as only his sidekick Sparrow and the Huntress know of his superhero alter-ego. However, Hyena also knows his secret as he was also a part of the Weapon X program which gave Dark Claw his adamantium skeleton and awakened his latent metamutant powers.

Dark Claw also uses the name "Patch Malone" when going undercover; a combination of Wolverine's occasional disguise as the eyepatched "Patch", and Batman's undercover identity of "Matches Malone".

New Gotham City

Dark Claw's base of operations, while solo, is New Gotham City, a fictional city modeled primarily after the Marvel Universe’s New York City and the DC Universe’s Gotham City. New Gotham City is specifically altered to emphasize the "dark side" of an urban environment.

Powers and Abilities

Dark Claw is a mutant with a number of both natural and artificial improvements to his physiology. His primary mutant power is an accelerated healing process widely known as a "healing factor" that regenerates damaged or destroyed areas of his body far beyond the capabilities of an ordinary human and renders him immune to most toxins and diseases.

He can regenerate organs such as eyes and large portions of his body. For example, he can regenerate all of his soft body tissue after having it incinerated from his skeleton within a matter of minutes.

Dark Claw's healing factor affords him increased physical attributes such as superhuman levels of stamina as well as superhuman agility and reflexes.

Dark Claw also possesses superhumanly acute senses of sight, smell, and hearing. He can see with perfect clarity at greater distances than an ordinary human, even in near-total darkness. His hearing is enhanced in a similar manner, allowing him to both hear sounds ordinary humans can't and also hear to greater distances. Dark Claw is able to use his sense of smell to track targets by scent, even if the scent has been eroded somewhat over time by natural factors.

Dark Claw's entire skeleton, including his claws, is molecularly infused with adamantium, rendering it practically indestructible. Due to the adamantium coating, the claws can cut almost any known solid material. The only known exception is adamantium itself. Dark Claw's ability to slice completely through a substance depends upon both the amount of force he can exert and the thickness of the substance. The adamantium also weights his blows, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of his punches and kicks.

Dark Claw's healing factor allows him to push his muscles beyond the limits of the human body without injury, granting him some degree of superhuman strength. This is augmented by the constant demand placed on his muscles by over one hundred pounds of adamantium, which also removes skeletal structural limitations. As a result, he can lift or move weight that would damage a human skeleton.

Dark Claw is physically at the peak of human ability in dozens of areas, notably martial arts, acrobatics, and escape artistry. Intellectually, he is just as peerless; Dark Claw is one of the world's greatest scientists, criminologists, and tacticians, as well as a master of disguise, often gathering information under the identity of Patch Malone.

Dark Claw often uses cunning and planning to outwit his opponents.

Dark Claw utilizes a large arsenal of specialized gadgets in his war against crime. He has a utility belt and claw-arangs. He has a claw-computer, claw-scanner and a claw-radar.

Vehicles

Dark Claw's major mode of transportation is his stealth-like helicopter the "Claw-Copter" which is mostly piloted by his sidekick, Sparrow.

Costume

Dark Claw's costume is a mixture of Wolverine’s yellow-and-blue Uniform and Batman’s traditional dark cape. The cowl on this costume takes its shape from Wolverine, but incorporates the fangs and bone structure of a bat's face along with its wings going up the cowl. The latter part of the mask was taken, in part, from a design for an alternate Batman costume seen in the one shot book Batman: KnightGallery.