Shade (comics)
- The Shade is quite distinct from Shade, the Changing Man, who was a separate character entirely.
The Shade is a DC Comics character, a villain created in the 1940s who would fight against two generations of superheroes, most notably the Golden Age and Silver Age Flashes. Initially a man with some unexplained control over the dark, his powers were increased over the years to allow him mastery of darkness in all its forms. He would serve as a member of several ad hoc super-villain teams and played a role in the first meeting of the Golden Age and Silver Age Flashes. In the 1990s, writer James Robinson, launching a new Starman series, took the liberty of reviving the Shade and adding him to the cast of the new comic. During the course of the seven-year run of Starman, the Shade went from a routine villain to an ambiguous figure of mystery, honor and guile. Robinson borrowed from Charles Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop for many of the details (telling readers that the Shade's life inspired some of the events in his friend Dickens's book) and drew on actor Jonathan Pryce for inspiration in fleshing out the Shade's voice. The Shade was actually Richard Swift, an English gentleman present at an undetailed mystical tragedy. He (as well as the mysterious dwarf Culp) survived the event, but was left linked to a reservoir of darkness, a man but also a monster of sorts, never aging and rarely feeling any pain or true connection to others. In Victorian London, he would make enemies of the corrupt Ludlow family, whose efforts to kill him would span 150 years (and would be recounted in a 1997 miniseries). As time passed, Swift would come to call himself the Shade, and move to the frontier town of Opal City in America. He would often play the rogue - although never in Opal City itself - but just as often play the hero, befriending Opal City's sheriff, Matt Savage (once DC's Western hero, Scalphunter). All the while, he would amass a personal fortune while rejecting conventional morality. When the age of costumed heroes began, the Shade sought combat for its own sake, but left Opal City alone, never seeking to fight Ted Knight, the original Starman. The Shade would interrupt his career as a 'super-villain" to aid the Allies in England, where he came into battle with his dwarfish opposite number. Unknown to the Shade, the battle left him fused together with Culp, who could take control of his host on occasion. (This was a cunning way for Robinson to explain how a character he wrote as amoral at worst could have been a fairly repulsive villain in many appearances over the years.) With the arrival of Jack Knight, star of the new series and son of the original Starman, the Shade cultivated an unlikely friendship with the new hero. Jack (and the reader) would be privy to the Shade's diaries, learning much of his life. The Shade's pivotal role in rescuing Ted Knight from another villain gained him the provisional trust of Jack and the Opal City police. The Shade's behavior would still come under scrutiny, however, and for good reason as Culp was laying the groundwork for his re-emergence. Near the end of the series, Robinson and artist Peter Snejbjerg tied up the history of the Shade as part of the 13-part "Grand Guignol" story, allowing the Shade to rid himself of his archfoe for good and to perhaps leave his villainous ways behind. The Shade still makes occasional appearances in DC's comics, most notably in Brad Meltzer's run writing Green Arrow in 2002, but he is generally out of the picture, regarded at this point as being perhaps a creation of James Robinson.
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