Amalgam Comics was an American comic book publisher of metafiction; it was a collaboration between Marvel Comics and DC Comics, in which the two comic book publishers merged their characters to create new ones (e.g., DC Comics' Batman and Marvel's Wolverine became the Amalgam character Dark Claw). These characters first appeared in a series of twelve comic books which were published in 1996, between issues 3 and 4 of the Marvel vs. DC miniseries. A second set (of another twelve comic books) followed a year later.The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005 designated the Amalgam Universe as Earth-9602.