Black History Month – Cloak

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Real Name: Tyrone “Ty” Johnson
Aliases: None
Identity: Secret
Occupation: Vigilante
Citizenship: United States Citizen
Place of Birth: South Boston, MA
Known Relatives: The Johnsons (parents), Otis Johnson (brother), Anna Johnson (twin sister) *
Group Affiliation: the Secret Avengers; Partner of Dagger (Tandy Bowen)
First Appearance: Spectacular Spider-Man #64 (1982)
History: Raised in a poor South Boston neighborhood, Tyrone Johnson was a good student despite his chronic stutter, a disability he struggled to master with the support of his best friend, Billy. When Tyrone was 17, he and Billy witnessed the robbery of a local store and the fatal shooting of its clerk. The thieves fled, and Billy ran as well, fearing that he and Tyrone might be wrongly suspected of the crime. When a policeman ordered Billy to stop, Tyrone tried to proclaim Billy’s innocence; but his stuttering made it impossible to speak clearly, and the officer shot Billy dead. Feeling responsible for Billy’s death and afraid of the police, Johnson ran away to New York City.

Arriving at Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, a penniless Tyrone considered robbing Tandy Bowen, a rich girl who had also run away from home; yet when someone else robbed her first, Tyrone impulsively tackled the thief and returned Tandy’s purse. The two teens became fast friends. When the naïve Tandy accepted an offer of shelter from some strange men, a wary Tyrone went along to protect her; however, the two teens were soon forcibly delivered to criminal chemist Simon Marshall.

Marshall was developing a new synthetic heroin for the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results. Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled. During their escape, Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger which eased in the presence of Tandy, who was glowing with a brilliant light. Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall’s thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light. The two teens dubbed themselves Cloak and Dagger and declared war on drug crime.

Cloak and Dagger started out as merciless vigilantes, killing Marshall despite the interference of Spider-Man, who saw the duo as misguided innocents and gradually became their friend. After ill-fated assassination attempts on the crimelords Silvermane and Kingpin, Dagger became less ruthless and tried to steer Cloak in a similar direction; however, since his power compelled him to consume living beings, Cloak found it more difficult to follow this gentler path, even though Dagger’s light could satisfy his hunger temporarily.

Cloak and Dagger befriended the super-powered preteens Power Pack and twice aided the New Mutants, junior trainees of the X-Men. The duo eventually learned they were mutants themselves, and that Marshall’s drug had awakened their latent powers. Though they tend to target ordinary street criminals, they have faced such diverse foes as Doctor Doom, the Beyonder, Vermin, the Zapper, the Disciplinarian, the Warlord of Kampuchea, Set, Mephisto, Thanos, the Assembly of Evil, Firebrand, and Lightmaster.

Cloak and Dagger found sanctuary at the Holy Ghost Church with the sympathetic Father Francis Delgado; but over time, Delgado became romantically obsessed with Tandy. Regarding Cloak as a demonic influence, Delgado tried and failed to split up the duo, going mad in the process. After Delgado was institutionalized, Cloak and Dagger found a new mentor in Tandy’s uncle, Father Michael Bowen. Tandy’s father, meanwhile, had become a cult leader as the Lord of Light in India. A “light vampire” who fed on others’ life force, he clashed with Cloak and Dagger until he realized what he had become and tried to atone by hurling himself into Cloak’s ebony abyss.

Police detective Brigid O’Reilly regarded the duo as a menace until they helped her capture serial poisoner Duane Hellman and told her of their origins. Later, when O’Reilly was betrayed and left for dead by corrupt cops, Cloak and Dagger used their powers to save her life, but the experience mutated Brigid’s body and warped her mind. She became the vicious superhuman vigilante Mayhem, often fighting crime alongside Cloak and Dagger. O’Reilly’s former partner, police detective Rebecca “Rusty” Nales, would become an ally to Cloak and Dagger as well.

Cloak continued to struggle with his power, and with the hungry Predator within his darkness. During a period when Cloak swore off consuming living beings, the Predator released the spirit of legendary killer Jack the Ripper to torment Cloak; however, when Jack betrayed the Predator in search of personal power, Cloak absorbed the madman and the Predator consumed Jack again. The drug-dealing crime boss Ecstasy (Renee Deladier) twice stole Cloak’s powers for herself, largely because the Predator preferred the more ruthless Deladier as a host body. Cloak regained his powers both times, thanks in part to Doctor Strange. When the dream-demon Nightmare targeted Cloak, Tyrone prevailed with the aid of Dr. Strange and Dagger, who even managed to nullify Cloak’s darkness altogether for a time; however, Tyrone feared that Dagger could only relate to him as Cloak, and he was soon manipulated into reclaiming his dark powers by the malevolent mystic Mister Jip. Tyrone’s willing resumption of his Cloak form estranged Dagger, who briefly worked with the Black Cat before going back to Cloak, who had tried and failed to find a new partner in Dazzler. By this time, Jip was trying to usurp Cloak’s body with the aid of his agents, Night and Day. Dagger defeated them all with the aid of the Predator, and the partners were reunited. Jip would continue to hound them, striking Dagger blind for a time, using the mad Delgado as a pawn, temporarily corrupting Dagger through the power of Night, and killing both Delgado and Father Bowen by mystically usurping their bodies. Cloak and Dagger would thwart Jip’s plots again and again.

Though Cloak and Dagger once rescued homeless youth Anna Johnson from cultists, only Anna herself was aware of the fact that she is Tyrone’s long-lost sister. Tandy did stay in touch with her stepfather Philip, who persisted in offering Tandy moral and financial support. He even moved to New York City to be near her, caring for her during her temporary blindness, and the two gradually developed a real father-daughter relationship. Sadly, he was killed by an overdose of the designer drug D’Lite, a creation of the demonic D’Spayre, who feeds on human misery. D’Spayre revealed that he had helped create Cloak and Dagger, whose powers would have been quite different had they developed normally. Apparently, their powers would have activated naturally through contact between Tandy and Tyrone; but D’Spayre inhibited this reaction, allowing Marshall’s drug to trigger their powers instead. D’Spayre also secretly placed two aspects of his own power–one light, one dark–within the teens, reshaping their mutant powers. These dark and light forms were meant to act as storage batteries for D’Spayre, accumulating pain and suffering he could tap for future use. He had selected Tyrone and Tandy as host bodies since he thought mutants were especially prone to suffering. When D’Spayre tried to reclaim the light and dark forms for himself, Cloak and Dagger resisted, and D’Spayre was seemingly destroyed. In the process, Cloak’s and Dagger’s powers were altered, though their original abilities reasserted themselves over time.

Cloak and Dagger are devoted to each other, but the lonely Dagger often wants more from life. While on an international case, Tandy performed with Eurocirque as Lady Light and shared a romance with supposed FBI agent Bill Clayton, who was exposed as a criminal but ultimately sacrificed himself to save Cloak and Dagger. Tandy found new friends in the New Warriors, who teamed with Cloak, Dagger and other heroes to defeat the shadow-lunatic Darkling.

Cloak and Dagger teamed with Spider-Man and others to halt a murderous super-villain rampage led by metahuman serial killer Carnage. Dagger was supposedly killed by Carnage’s “wife” Shriek while saving an injured Spider-Man, but was later revealed to be severely wounded and recooperating within Cloak’s shroud, and was the key instrument in breaking up the Carnage “family” and ending the “Maximum Carnage.” Later, Dagger helped rescue the New Warriors from the supremely powerful Sphinx. She accepted an offer of New Warriors membership, though Cloak declined to join. Serving as a Warriors reservist, Dagger also undertook a single mission with the informal Secret Defenders group.

Bloodthirsty fellow vigilante the Punisher has been both an ally and an enemy to Cloak and Dagger over the years. When Cloak went missing recently, Dagger helped form the unofficial “Marvel Knights” alliance with the Punisher and other vigilantes, and joined most of the other Knights in hunting the rogue Punisher after he left. Meanwhile, a Nightmare-manipulated Cloak embarked on a mad quest to consume all lawbreakers, absorbing the Punisher and many others until Dagger teamed with Dr. Strange to purge Cloak’s corrupting darkness and rescue his victims. In the process, Cloak reverted to his human form as Tyrone Johnson, though this condition would prove temporary. Shortly thereafter, the Marvel Knights disbanded.

More recently, the secret criminal group known as The Pride tricked Cloak and Dagger into trying to retrieve their super-powered children. An encounter with these young Runaways soon convinced Cloak and Dagger of The Pride’s true nature, but before they could act on this knowledge, the villains erased the duo’s memories of The Pride. Cloak and Dagger continue to roam the mean streets, bringing the light of hope to the innocent and dark justice to the guilty.

Later, Norman Osborn tracks down Tandy and Tyrone in Colombia, continuing their war against drugs, by burning down drug fields and approaches them to join his new team of “X-Men.” Initially against the idea knowing Osborn’s past; Dagger is persuaded when Osborn tells them that they can take their war on drugs to a global scale as well as having no trouble with police anymore.

Cloak and Dagger are then recruited into the “Dark X-Men” by Norman Osborn. On their first mission, they take down Hellion, Sunspot, Match, Meld, Lorelei Travis, Adam-X, and Avalanche, who are protesting against Osborn’s reign.

Emma Frost eventually offers them a place with the real X-Men, to which their agree. During her time with the X-Men, it is revealed by tests conducted by Dr. Nemesis, that neither Tandy nor Tyrone are actually mutants, as they had previously believed. When Cloak later vanishes, Dagger tracks him down and with the help of the X-Men, Anole and Dr. Nemesis, is able to free Cloak from his captors. Cloak and Dagger decide to depart the X-Men’s home base of Utopia, and return to New York City to continue their fight against the war on drugs.

During this time, Dagger tries to stabilize her life, despite becoming homeless with Tyrone, by doing what she can to attend College. It’s during this time, that Dagger is captured by Mister Negative, who corrupts her with Negative Energy; her powers become altered, now using the Dark Force, similar to Cloak where she has a hunger for light and begins to die without it. Cloak pleads with Mister Negative to give him the same touch in hopes that it would reverse his powers as well; and it does, so that Cloak now has the same powers as Dagger once had. Cloak quickly feeds Dagger his light to “feed” her and keep her alive.

The two have been seen together, continuing their fight against crime and drugs, with their swapped powers. However, in Shanghai, China, at Parker Industries, Doctor Yao Wu, has discovered an antidote to the drug called “Shade” that Mister Negative had used, which unleashes a person’s darker side. This very drug was used on both Cloak and Dagger that swapped their powers and made them loyal servants to Mister Negative.

When Mister Negative uses Peter Parker as a pawn to slip Shade to a Chinese speaker named Shen Quinghao, he expects it will unleash Shen’s darker side and the world will watch in horror. When Shen delivers his speech without a problem, Mister Negative demands that Cloak to teleport them there. When they arrive, they’re greeted by armed policemen, and Mister Negative realizes it’s a trap. Spider-Man shows up and first hits Cloak with the cure to Shade, which reverses Cloak’s power and appearance, back to his standard Darkforce.

Things seem to be going well, until Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Lian Tang, shows up in the Spider-Mobile, trying to kill Spider-Man. Unbeknownst to Spider-Man, she is being black mailed by a terrorist organization called Zodiac, and they’re the only ones keeping her mother alive, and they have forced Lian to turn against Spider-Man.

In the meantime, Mister Negative tells Dagger to kill Shen Quinghao, and Cloak, now of sound mind once more tries to stop Dagger. Cloak, despite the history of drugs shared between Cloak and Dagger, injects Tandy with the cure to Shade, restoring her powers and appearance.

At that moment, Mister Negative reaches Shen Quinghao, who confesses (though with no audience), that he was indeed, a former gang member known as Silver Fang, and his Snakehead gang was once involved in human trafficking. Frustrated, Mister Negative commands Shen to jump out a window, which he does. Spider-Man, who had been speaking to Lian, explained he knew her situation, just as Shen goes flying by. Lian uses the Spider-Mobile to catch him, but the sudden shift causes it to begin falling.

Cloak and Dagger appear, and teleport them all to safety. Shen is taken to a hospital, where the cure to Mister Negative’s touch was given to him. Mister Negative manages to escape in all the confusion, but now both Cloak and Dagger are immune to his touch, and the drug, Shade.

Height: 5’9?
Weight: 155 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
Powers:

Cloak’s body is a portal to the “Darkforce Dimension,” a world of strange ebony energy. Cloak is linked to a pocket realm of that dimension dominated by the Predator, which compels Cloak to absorb the life forces of other beings; but Dagger’s light can temporarily satisfy this craving. Cloak can channel Darkforce to create a field of darkness in his general vicinity, usually using his cloak as a focal point to manipulate this darkness, though it can spread well beyond the confines of his cloak. People enveloped by Cloak’s darkness feel numbing cold and crippling fear, sometimes seeing disturbing visions. Overlong exposure to the darkness can drive people insane. Dagger’s light renders her largely immune to Cloak’s darkness, and she can extend her light to protect others within Cloak’s darkness if need be. Unprotected victims trapped in Cloak’s dark realm are gradually drained of their life force, and presumably die unless Cloak releases them.

Cloak can “teleport” by entering the Darkforce dimension, moving a short distance within it and emerging back on Earth a great distance from his point of origin. A span of miles on Earth can be traversed in only a few steps via shortcuts through the Darkforce. Cloak can “teleport” other persons or objects along with himself in this fashion, too, a feat usually reserved for Dagger since most beings cannot safely traverse the Darkforce.

As Cloak, Tyrone is usually intangible, though he can solidify through an act of will, or by absorbing enough “light” to saturate his form temporarily. On the rare occasions when he resumes human form, he usually reverts to his old stutter, which vanishes when he becomes Cloak. Tyrone also seems to be physically stronger as Cloak. Tyrone’s link to the Darkforce has been severed on several occasions, but he seems drawn to the darkness and vice versa, and he always regains his Cloak form eventually.

Accessories: None

* Note: In Mutant Misadventures of Cloak & Dagger #4, one of the demons notes that Ty’s brother, Otis, became a drug pusher and got his sister hooked on drugs; and that Ty did not show up to her funeral. Because they don’t name the sister who died of the drug overdose, it’s unclear if it’s Anna, Ty’s twin, or if there is indeed another (unnamed) sister in Ty’s family.