Shroud (comics)

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Shroud
Darkforce dimension energy
into anything imaginable and "see" through walls and darkness

The Shroud (Maximillian Quincy Coleridge) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

Publication history

The Shroud first appeared in Super-Villain Team-Up #5 (April 1976) and was created by Steve Englehart and Herb Trimpe.[1]

Englehart has acknowledged that the character was intended as a "mashup" of DC Comics' Batman and The Shadow. "As a Marvel writer, I thought I'd never get to write the Batman, so I took some Bat-traits and mixed them with some Shadow-traits so as not to get sued and made my own homage to those dark night characters."[2]

Fictional character biography

At the age of 10, the child who would grow up to become The Shroud saw his parents gunned down right before his eyes. He decided to dedicate his life to fighting crime. Upon graduation from college, he joined the mysterious temple called the "Cult of Kali", where he studied various styles of martial arts. After seven years of intense training, he graduated from that temple. During the celebration ceremony, he was branded with the "Kiss of Kali", a red-hot iron. He had the image of the goddess Kali imprinted in livid scar tissue on his face from nose to hairline and from cheek to cheek. Following a period of intense pain and hospitalization, he realized that his eyesight had been replaced by a mystic extrasensory perception. Traveling back to the United States, he adopted the masked identity of the "Shroud".[3]

In his first appearance as a hero, he encountered the

Darkforce dimension.[volume & issue needed
]

The Shroud later recruits

Dansen Macabre.[9] The Shroud aided the Avengers and Doctor Strange against Morgan le Fay. He helped restore the former Spider-Woman's astral self to her body.[10] He later refused Hawkeye's offer to join the West Coast Avengers.[11] Shroud assisted a depowered Jessica Drew against some crooks.[12] He assisted the West Coast Avengers against Graviton and the Blank.[13]

The Shroud went undercover in

Taurus's offer to join the new Zodiac.[17] He teamed with Hawkeye against the gang leader, Speedo.[18] Behind the scenes, Shroud made a deal with the West Coast Avengers not to interfere with his activities underground, but during a battle, Shroud went missing and the Night Shift battled the Avengers, causing a strain between the groups when the Shroud stopped the battle.[19] When Shroud returned to action, it was revealed that he had spent some time with his family, though no actual names of that family have ever been revealed.[volume & issue needed
] Shroud made few appearances in the years following.

When the

Superhero Registration Act was proposed by the United States during the Civil War storyline, Shroud refused to accept the proposal to give up his secret identity, and sided against heroes such as Ms. Marvel and Iron Man. He is also in a romantic relationship with Julia Carpenter (now known as Arachne). With Julia's help, Shroud managed to escape from Ryker's Island, injuring a number of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the process. The two of them planned to flee to Canada with Rachel (Julia's daughter), but Wonder Man and Ms. Marvel captured Shroud,[20] and Julia the following issue. He is then broken out,[21] in order to join Captain America's anti-registration army and takes part in the final battle.[22]

During the Shadowland storyline, Shroud is paired with Silver Sable, Misty Knight, and Paladin when Daredevil's Hand ninjas target members of the mafia.[23]

Following the death of Marc Spector, a new individual takes up the Moon Knight moniker. After coming into conflict with Spector's allies running his Midnight Mission, he is eventually unmasked and revealed to be the Shroud.[24]

Powers and abilities

Exposure to bombardment of the Red Skull's hypno-ray triggered a latent power over darkness in the Shroud. Shroud possesses the mystical ability to create an aperture into Darkforce Dimension and to project the thick, inky gas-like substance of the Darkforce Dimension into Earth's dimension for his own use. This darkness is not simply the absence of light, but the negation of it. No illumination can penetrate it. It is unknown how much of this darkness Shroud can summon at once. He can blanket a small auditorium in darkness within several seconds. The darkness he projects does not fill a volume instantly: it is possible to see its hazy boundary move like thick, black smoke in the air. There appears to be no limit to the length of time Shroud can maintain the darkness. However, loss of concentration can disrupt his power to summon and control darkness, and if Shroud is rendered unconscious the darkness seems to be naturally drawn through the portal from which it came.

The Shroud has control over the darkness so as to create hazy-edged, featureless black shapes with it, the complexity of which is limited only by his imagination. For example, he once created two discs that covered Captain America's eyes, preventing him from seeing anything or becoming hypnotized, yet so small that they were indistinguishable from the pupils of his eyes.

Cloak, Shroud is unable to travel into and out of the dimension from which he draws his darkness. He eventually learned to give his darkness enough mass to serve as a low-level thruster. Together, with the properties of his cape, this allows him to fly at least at walking speed.[23]

The Shroud was blinded in a mystic ceremony by the Cult of Kali. As a result of this ceremony, he possesses a mystical sense of extrasensory perception enabling him to "see" through walls and even through his own mantle of darkness. This mystical sense gives him psychic impressions of his environment within a radius of about 100 feet (30 m). Not unlike Daredevil, Shroud can receive non-visual sensory impressions through solid objects. Thus, he can perceive people and objects in the room next to him with the ease that he can perceive the contents of the room he is in.[citation needed] His mystic senses can even enable him to detect the internal hardware components of a computer.[25]

The Shroud is an Olympic-level athlete with extensive training in several fields of East Asian martial arts, and is adept at acrobatics and infiltration. He possesses a college degree in law and criminology. Shroud carries explosive "bombarangs" as weapons, and flies in a personal one-man aircraft.

Other versions

Ultimate Marvel

An

Kitty Pryde.[26]

In other media

The Shroud appears in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2.[27] He appears in the "Cloak and Dagger" DLC.

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-4654-7890-0
    .
  2. ^ ""I Liked Superheroes the Best": An Interview with Steve Englehart". 21 September 2020.
  3. ^ origin revealed in Super-Villain Team-Up #7
  4. ^ Super-Villain Team-Up #5
  5. ^ Super-Villain Team-Up #6-10
  6. ^ Super-Villain Team-Up #11-12
  7. ^ Spider-Woman #13-15
  8. ^ Marvel Preview #21
  9. ^ Marvel Team-Up #94
  10. ^ The Avengers #240-241
  11. ^ West Coast Avengers #1
  12. ^ Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #67
  13. ^ West Coast Avengers #3-4
  14. ^ a b Captain America #330
  15. ^ Captain America #330-331
  16. ^ Solo Avengers #3
  17. ^ West Coast Avengers (vol. 2) #29
  18. ^ Solo Avengers #9
  19. ^ West Coast Avengers (vol. 2) #40
  20. ^ Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #7 (Marvel Comics, November 2006).
  21. ^ Civil War #6 (Marvel Comics, December 2006).
  22. ^ Civil War #7 (Marvel Comics, January 2007).
  23. ^ a b Shadowland - Blood on the Streets #1
  24. ^ MacKay, Jed (2024). Vengeance of the Moon Knight.
  25. ^ Spider-Woman #15
  26. ^ Richards, David (2009-08-11). "Bendis Talks "Ultimate Comics Spider-Man"". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 2009-08-13.
  27. ^ "Cloak & Dagger Join LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2". CBR. 20 March 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2018.

External links

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