Shade (comics)
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- The Shade is quite distinct from Shade, the Changing Man, who was a separate character entirely.
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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 revealed to be a connection to the Shadowlands, a dimension of primordial, quasi-sentient darkness which Shade, as well as other characters with similar powers, can channel for various effects.
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' The 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 limited series). He was also an acquaintance of Oscar Wilde, who told him the "true story" behind The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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, Brian 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, in the "Princes of Darkness" storyline in JSA , but he is generally out of the picture, regarded at this point as being perhaps a creation of James Robinson.
Recently, The Shade appeared in JSA #81. He has apparently become Opal City's reluctant hero in the absence of both Elongated Man and Black Condor. Shade briefly visited Stargirl with a heavy heart, informing her that her estranged father had been killed during a disturbance in Opal City.
The first Starman annual shows that the Shade is still alive uncountable thousands of years in the future, where he is the protector of a utopian planet.
[edit] Other media
He has also appeared in the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons, where he has appeared as a member of Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang and Aresia's Injustice Gang. He was later recruited into Gorilla Grodd's Secret Society, where he sided against Luthor during the mutiny in the episode "Alive", and was frozen by Killer Frost. The Shade is voiced by Stephen McHattie.
In the animated series, his powers are a product of his staff, which he calls the "nightstick".
