The Black Hood

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The Black Hood is the title of a comic book series published by DC Comics under its Impact Comics imprint.

The Black Hood ran for a total of 12 issues, including one annual.

The Black Hood focused on the adventures of a series of vigilante characters with the same name throughout history. Each Black Hood character would somehow come in possession of a black hood and when the character wore the hood, he or she was given heightened awareness, and increased strength, speed, and agility. The hood caused each of its wearers to become a vigilante and fight injustice. An interesting feature of the hood was what appeared to be a curse. After a certain period of time, each wearer of the black hood would meet an untimely death. After the death of the Black Hood, the hood would find its way into the hands of another individual with the potential to become the next Black Hood.

The titular black hood was originally an executioner's mask. As a witch was being executed for the crime of witchcraft, she cursed not the executioner, but his hood. From that point on, whoever wore the hood would be compelled to "do only good".

During the Impact Comics series, there were three major Black Hoods featured: a bitter vigilante who was featured in the other Impact Comics titles and killed in the first issue of The Black Hood; a high school student who reluctantly took the hood and later abandoned it; and a former mobster, the same mobster who killed the first Black Hood. Numerous other Black Hoods from various time periods were featured in stories from the comics annuals, such as a female Black Hood who lived in medieval France patterned after Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) and a western Hood whose adventures served as an inspiration for the fictional adventures of the Lone Ranger.