The Shade
The Shade (Richard Swift) is a comic book character developed in the 1940s for National Comics, first appearing in the pages of Flash Comics in a story titled "The Man Who Commanded the Night", scripted by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Hal Sharp. 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 portrayed in Silver 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 immortality from an unexplained mystical event. In 2009, the Shade was ranked as IGN's 89th-greatest villain of all time.
The Shade appeared as a major character from the season 1 finale onwards in Stargirl, played by Jonathan Cake.
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