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 Comics character the Batman and the Marvel Comics character the 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. Marvel Encyclopedia: Fantastic Four (2004) originally designated the Amalgam Universe as Earth-692 in the Marvel Multiverse, then The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005 re-designated it as Earth-9602. Page 436 of the book The Essential Wonder Woman Encyclopedia (2015) by Phil Jimenez and John Wells (under the entry "Wallis, Angelica" in the "W" section) designated the Amalgam Universe as Earth-496 in the DC Multiverse. Publication history On two separate occasions – April 1996 and June 1997 – DC and Marvel co-published a total of 24 one-shot "first issues" (12 in April 1996 (six by DC and six by Marvel) and 12 in June 1997 (again, six by DC and six by Marvel)) under the imprint Amalgam Comics. The issues were all presented as if the "company" had existed for decades, with stories and editorial comments referring to a fictional history stretching back to the Golden Age of Comic Books, including retcons and reboots; for example, they referred to Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour (an amalgamation of Marvel's Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet, and DC's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!, respectively), which featured the well-known cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, but with Super-Soldier holding the dead body of his sidekick (who is female and wears a costume similar to that of Marvel's Captain Marvel), instead of Superman holding the dead body of Supergirl. Nineteen of the 24 issues included phony letter columns to provide the illusion of background to the stories, with the fans' hometowns formed by amalgamating the names of existing American cities. The first Amalgam event occurred near the end