Shade

The Shade (Richard Swift) is a comic book character developed in the 1940's for National Comics. Debuting as a villain, the Shade was best known for fighting against two generations of superheroes, most notably the Golden Age and Silver Age versions of the Flash. He eventually became a mentor for Jack Knight, the son of the Golden Age Starman Ted Knight, a hero the Shade had also fought. Though initially portrayed in the Golden Age comics as a thief with a cane that could manipulate shadows, the character was reinvented in 1994 as a morally ambiguous Victorian era immortal who gained the ability to manipulate shadows and his immortality from an unexplained mystical event. In 2009, the Shade was ranked as IGN's 89th Greatest Villain of...