Shroud

Origin

Orphaned at the age of ten, wealthy Max Coleridge dedicated his adult life to the opposition of crime, studying criminology and subjecting himself to a strict exercise regimen. He traveled throughout Asia and underwent unrevealed adventures, eventually studying for seven years with the Cult of Kali. Branded by the cultists, Coleridge lost his physical sight but gained a mystic compensation. Setting his sights high, he began his career as the Shroud by targeting Doctor Doom, a perennial world menace, only to end up allying with Doom and Namor against the Red Skull.

Exposure to one of the Skull's devices either granted or awoke in the Shroud the power to summon and control darkness. He then altered his methods and vowed to undermine crime from within.

Creation

The Shroud was created by Steve Englehart and Herb Trimpe and made his first appearance in Super-Villain Team-Up issue 5 from 1976.

Major Story Arcs

Avengers and Night Shift

Becoming a feared L.A. gang lord, he secretly allied with Spider-Woman, the Avengers, and other heroes when possible. He was offered the chance to become a founding member of the Avengers West Coast team, but he turned them down. He continued to assist the team when he could and was given clearance to access to Avengers resources when he needed to. He eventually gathered several superhuman misfits as the Night Shift, most of whom genuinely believed he targeted criminals as a rival, not a hero. The team helped Captain America, D-Man and Ms. Marvel uncover the Power Broker's operation and it's ties to government programs trying to create super soldiers. The Shroud was eventually abandoned by the team when his true agenda was eventually uncovered, briefly relocated to New York but soon returned to California. The Night Shift continued to operate with a new leader; Hangman, and directly opposed Shroud's former team-mates in the Avengers.

Civil War and the Initiative

When former Avenger Julia Carpenter lost her powers, the Shroud hired scientists to synthesize the formula that had original empowered her, enabling her to return to action as Arachne. She and Shroud also became lovers, but when she was recruited by the Initiative to locate and apprehend Super-Human Registration Act violators, she secretly worked with Shroud to help others escape capture.

Following her exposure, Shroud attempted to flee with Arachne but ultimately sacrificed his freedom to allow her escape. Although held as a registration violator, he was cleared of earlier criminal charages due to Tony Stark's knowledge of his motives as a gang leader.

Shroud escaped captivity later on and escaped to Canada where he reunited with Arachne and discreetly assisted Omega Flight on a regular basis. He eventually joined the team full time when the team became undermanned during the Secret Invasion.

Shadowland

After Omega Flight eventually disbanded after another member left, leaving only himself, Julia and Sasquatch, and after the Super-Human Registration Act had been abolished, the Shroud returned to New York. investigating several murders supposedly related to The Hand and Daredevil's Shadowland in Hell's Kitchen and New York in general. This leads to a conflict with Paladin, who ambushes him during his investigation. Paladin was hired by one of the victims, a gangster, who wanted Paladin to kill his brother. Paladin believed Shroud was hired by the brother to do the same thing. He intended to rob both Paladin and the brother of the money the victim owed him. However, Paladin's original target turned up dead under the same circumstances.

The two of them would fall in with Misty Knight and Silver Sable, who had each been independently investigating similar murders. They believed Daredevil's Hand was being framed by someone going after criminals that managed to escape justice in court. To stop the killings and save whoever was doing them from The Hand's form of justice, the quartet created a trap to lure them out. Unmasked, they were NYPD investigators, including Liuetnenant Scarfe, who failed to make charges stick on all of their victims.

Fear Itself

When the Norse god of fear, The Serpent, is released from his prison, enchanted hammers fall from the sky to turn chosen ones into his seven generals. One such hammer landed on The Raft prison, destroying it. Misty Knight, who had restarted Heroes for Hire, hired Shroud and Elektra to investigate the attack and contain any escaping prisoners. Unfortunately, they were being controlled by Purple Man. To even the odds, Shroud expanded his darkness since Elektra was trained to fight in darkness. Purple Man then attempted to control the two heroes. He managed to control Shroud, but not Elektra, who held her breath. She was able to force Purple Man to retreat and then knock Shroud out of his catatonia.

San Francisco

Shroud moved out to San Francisco, where he would eventually be upstaged by another blind vigilante, Daredevil. Matt Murdock had moved out there after his identity was outed. Shroud targeted Daredevil for some quick street cred that could con his way to The Owl, who also set up shop in San Fran. Daredevil saw right through him and believed he was attempting suicide by supervillain. Matt convinced him to team up against Owl.

This plan would fail when Owl revealed he could reunite Shroud with his lost love, Julia Carpenter, if Shroud helped him connect to a new technology that could upload data directly to the brain as photons. Daredevil managed to track them down before Shroud could take advantage but not before Owl was exposed to the technology. After Daredevil left Owl for the cops, Shroud disappeared.

Months later, Shroud would resurface. Secretly, he had kidnapped Owl from prison and was using him for his tech omniscience. Headquartered on Alcatraz, Murdock would eventually find him with help from Owl’s daughter, Jubula Pride. Jubula decided to work with Shroud for her father’s freedom. He eventually located Julia, who was about to get off a plane in San Francisco. The heroes tried to find her, but Kingpin had kidnapped her and Daredevil’s girlfriend, Kirsten McDuffie, to hold as leverage over the vigilantes.

Reluctantly, the two heroes teamed up once again. Daredevil would pose as Kingpin’s newest assassin to get close to the hostages, and Shroud would use Owl to dump all of Kingpin’s secure data on the internet. Once the ladies were secure, Julia coated her lips with tranquilizers so her kiss with Shroud would knocked him out. Daredevil intended him to go to prison.

Fist of Khonshu

After the death of Marc Spectre, Shroud assumed the identity of Moon Knight. He tried to evict Marc’s allies from the Midnight Mission for himself, however, the House of Shadows rejected him. He relented, leaving them the mission as long as they stayed out of his way. Unfortunately, the aggressiveness with which he went after petty criminals put a target on the mission as well as the community members who had taken residence inside. Marc’s team could not ignore Shroud’s behavior any longer.

Powers & Abilities

The Shroud possesses the mystical ability to summon the absolute darkness of the Darkforce Dimension by opening a mystical portal into the Darkforce Dimension and drawing its thick, inky atmosphere in various quantities into Earth's dimension. 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 the Shroud can summon at once. He can blanket a small auditorium in darkness within a 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 the Shroud can maintain the darkness. However, if the Shroud is rendered unconscious the darkness seems to be naturally drawn through the portal from whence it came.

The full offensive capabilities of Shroud's darkness have yet to be fully explored, but he has used it to physically incapacitate foes. One such example of this would be during the Civil War arc, when Wonder Man (who has extreme levels of durability) was momentarily incapacitated by a one-handed darkness attack released by Shroud. One may theorize that his power does not pack direct, kinetic force but rather, an intangible strength that can directly interfere with a individual's physical mass.

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. He frequently forms the darkness into his own shadow in order to serve as a decoy. Unlike Darkstar's Darkforce, the darkness possesses no mass, and unlike Cloak, the Shroud is unable to travel into and out of the dimension from which he draws his darkness.

The Shroud possesses a mystical sense of perception enabling him to "see" even through his own mantle of darkness. This mystical sense gives him psychic impressions of his environment within a radius of about 100 feet of him. Unlike Daredevil, the 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.

Other Versions

Ultimate Universe

In the Ultimate Universe, Shroud is a mysterious person who watches Spider-Man fighting crime several times, saves Mary Jane from being attacked, and even saves Spider-Man from Mysterio when he's almost defeated. Although Peter Parker suspects Shroud to be Iceman, this is disproved when Iceman and Shroud both appear when Peter is attacked by a Spider-Slayer.

After short-circuiting the Spider-Slayer, Shroud goes and changes behind the school, the character is revealed to be Kitty Pryde.