Dark Claw

Origin

When Logan Wayne was only five he witnessed his parents murder at the hands of a masked robber. Logan was sent to live with his uncle in Alberta, Canada. His uncle was a Royal Canadian mounted policeman, after a short time after Logan arrived in Canada his uncle was murdered by poachers. Logan was sent to a home ran by nuns, this would be his home until he was eighteen. When he left the home he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Logan was placed in the same unit as a man called Creed H Quinn.

Character Creation

Dark Claw was created by Larry Hama, Jim Balent, Ray McCarthy.

Story Arcs

Weapon X

 

After a short time in the Air Force, both Logan and Creed were placed in the Weapon X project. It was here where Logan learned that he was a mutant, with the power to regenerate any part of his body [limbs, soft tissue, bones and vital organs] in a matter of minutes. He also had enhanced senses [hearing, smell, taste and sight]. But probably the most shocking of these new found powers, was that of his retractable bone claws housed in his fore arms. Later in the project, Logan and Creed [who was also a mutant with a healing factor, enhanced senses, super human strength and small retractable finger nails] have the indestructible metal known as adamantium bonded to their skeletons and claws.

Logan and Creed would have been perfect killing machines, but Logan still had shreds of his humanity left, while Creed was the complete opposite; he had gone increasingly insane. Creed would later become Dark Claw's most dangerous and deadliest foe, Hyena.

The Weapon X project was terminated due to lack of success, all files where deleted, and the existence of the project utterly expunged with the exception of a few notes left by Professor Carter Nichols, which later are uncovered by the Huntress.

The Birth of Dark Claw

 

After the collapse of Weapon X, Logan traveled the world, mastering 127 different types of armed and un-armed combat, and learned to be brilliant detective. This, combined with his enhanced senses, made him able to hunt down any criminal. On his return to New Gotham, Logan became a wealthy artist. His pieces where composed of feral slashes, and eventually made him millions.

New Gotham was a crime-infested city. It was run by drug lords and pimps, but that changed when Logan Wayne decided to use his mutant gifts to protect the people of New Gotham and punish the criminals. He took the name Dark Claw and donned a black and yellow costume.

Sparrow

 

On one of his missions Dark claw was lured into New Gotham’s biggest shopping mall by a band of criminals. In the same mall, a young girl called Jubilation Lee [a combination of Robin and Jubilee] was hiding from the mutant-hunting sentinels, who had just killed Jubilation’s parents. While wandering the mall, Jubilation stumbles into a trap set for Dark claw. Jubilation panicked and blinded the group with her firework-like powers, but this didn't last long. The group recovered and chased her through the mall, until Dark claw swung in a rescued her. Impressed by her powers and attitude, he starts training her to be his apprentice.

After months of hard training Jubilation is ready to help Dark Claw in his cause and takes the name Sparrow.

Hyena and the Pack

 

On one of the Sparrow's first missions, Dark Claw and Sparrow go to the White House to try and stop the assassination of the President, when they arrive they find that Hyena and his vicious mutant clan called the Pack. Hyena runs off to kill the President, leaving the Pack to fight with Dark Claw and Sparrow. Knowing there is no time to spare, Dark Claw slaughters most of the group and chases Hyena. In one of the corridors, Hyena ambushes Dark Claw and they start to fight. Dark Claw easily over powers Hyena by slashing and stabbing him. Hyena falls out of a window and escapes, and the President is safe once more.

Powers & 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 super human 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 infused with adamantium at a molecular level, 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.

Costume

Dark Claw's costume is a mixture of traditional Wolverine’s yellow and blue and Batman’s traditional dark scallop hemmed cape version. 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: Dark Knight Gallery.