Members: Cloak, Dagger
History:Tyrone Johnson was a 17-year old high school student who lived in a low-income area in South Boston. He was successful in his studies despite the difficulties presented by his disability, a stammer which he sometimes found impossible to control. His best friend was a school mate named Billy, who encouraged him in his struggles. One day, Tyrone and Billy were walking by a neighborhood store when two thieves burst out from it. A man working in the store pursued them to the doorway, only to be shot dead by one of the thieves. The thieves ran out of sight, and Billy told Tyrone they had better leave as well. Billy began to run, but just then, the police arrived and ordered him to stop. Tyrone tried to explain that Billy was innocent, but his nervous stammer prevented him from getting the words out. Billy continued to run, and the policeman, thinking he was the thief, shot and fatally wounded him. Johnson was overcome with guilt over his inability to prevent Billy’s death, and also feared that the police would come after him as well. So Johnson became a runaway, and boarded a bus for New York City.
Johnson arrived at Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal penniless. Another teenage runaway, a 16-year-old girl named Tandy Bowen who had grown up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a wealthy suburb of Cleveland, arrived at Port Authority about this same time. Bowen was running from her mother’s emotional neglect, her real father’s desertion, and her own inability to accept her new stepfather or to deal with her boyfriend leaving for college. Johnson was about to rob Bowen when another person snatched her purse. Johnson tackled the thief and returned the purse. In reward, Bowen bought Johnson some food at a nearby restaurant and they talked about why they had become runaways.
Upon leaving, the two teenagers were approached by men working for criminal pharmaceutical chemist Simon Mar shall. The men offered the two runaways a place to stay. Johnson knew the men’s offer was spurious, but went along to protect Bowen, who accepted the invitation.
Marshall was working for the Maggia to develop a new synthetic addictive narcotic drug which the mob hoped would be a cheaper substitute for imported heroin. Marshall, who experimented with the drug by injecting it into the blood streams of captured runaways, administered it to Johnson and Bowen as well. All of the other runaways who had been injected with the drug died, but Johnson and Bowen somehow survived. The two escaped their cell, and pursued by gunfire, were forced to dive into the river.
As they attempted to swim to Manhattan, Johnson found himself engulfed in total blackness. Then he saw Bowen, glowing with light. He went to her, and her light dispelled the blackness. They reached the shore, where Johnson began to feel a strange hunger. Seeing his reflection in a window, he realized he now looked like a living shadow. John son and Bowen were then found by the mobsters who had taken them to Mar shall. Johnson began to swallow them within his blackness, now contained within the confines of a piece of discard ed cloth he was wearing as a cape. At this point, Bowen regained conscious ness and instinctively struck out at the mobsters with daggers of light which she projected from her fingertips. The two runaways realized that the drug had transformed them into super-humanly powerful beings. Calling themselves Cloak and Dagger, they dedicated their lives to using their powers to save other children from being harmed by drug dealers and other criminals.
Though this is what happened at Bowen and Johnson’s first meeting, it is by no means what should have happened. In their last encounter with the extra-dimensional being called D’Spayre, Cloak and Dagger learned that Johnson’s Darkform and Bowen’s Lightform were actually fragments of D’Spayre’s own being. However, Johnson and Bowen did have latent mutant tendencies of their own and which without D’Spayre’s “inspired interference,” would have activated upon proximity to one another, before Marshall’s drugs could warp their natural abilities and allow D’Spayre to make his addition of his dark and light form. This would have produced a quite different pair of super beings.
Johnson would have become Dagger, the creature of light with the power to fire light-blasts and move at super speed, while Bowen would have become the creature of Darkness with the ability to fire Darkbolts, called Cloak. D’Spayre al lowed Cloak and Dagger to learn a their true origins and even experience life in these physical incarnations so that they could truly feel the pain of what they had lost.
D’Spayre feeds on the pain and anguish of others. Even the grief D’spayre felt over the death of his servant Avanda ha, which happened at the hands of Mayhem while he was revealing their true origins to Cloak and Dagger, served only to strengthen him. Similarly, he sought to draw strength from Dagger’s grief and frustration over the death of her step-father. This death was caused by an overdose of the drug D’light and Dagger’s inability to purge his body of the substance. D’light was a designer drug created by D’Spayre. A hybrid of heroin and crack, it was far more powerful and addictive than either alone. Dagger refused to allow her grief to overwhelm her, knowing D’Spayre would only feast upon it. Instead, she turned her controlled rage into a positive asset and she and Cloak engaged D’Spayre in combat. Seeking to weaken his opponents, D’Spayre attempted to recall or reclaim his own Dark and Light forms from Cloak and Dagger. Though he was successful in stealing Dagger’s energy form, which started her on a metamorphosis in which her own light over whelmed her and made her unable to access her powers, Cloak’s Darkform was reluctant to return to its maker.
The Dark and Light forms had been D’Spayre’s ultimate contingency plan. They had been “storage batteries” for all the emotional turmoil Cloak and Dagger had ever suffered. He had chosen Johnson and Bowen because, as mutants, their lives were destined to be particularly difficult. Dagger’s pure influence on the light form made it difficult for D’spayre to digest. This momentary distraction was all Cloak need to fully accept the Darkform once again and in an attempt to save Rusty Nales, who had been cured of her own addiction to D’light by facing her worse fears within Cloak’s Dark Dimension, surrounded D’Spayre in his cloak. Dagger then used her elevated power to force D’Spayre inside the cloak and into Cloak’s Dark Dimension. There, the in sane Darkform attacked its former master, intent on consuming him. Ultimately, the two creatures destroyed one another and with them the Dark Dimension. This destruction of his dark form initiated a metamorphosis in Cloak similar to the one Dagger was experiencing, but as his own shadows engulfed him, Cloak realized he would not live through it. Tandy Bowen, unwilling to lose her friend Tyrone, threw herself on his body in an at tempt to burn out one another’s excess energies. This attempt was ultimately successful and the new incarnations of Cloak and Dagger continued their war on drugs.
Their first mission was to take out the last known manufacturing plant for the drug D’Iight. Though Dagger is unable to help those addicted to D’light, some of them can be helped by facing them selves in Cloak’s Dark Oblivion. Cloak and Dagger have once again taken up residence at Holy Ghost Church and represent a chance to the troubled streets of New York City.