SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

Somehow, when I posted the art I picked up at WonderCon last spring, I absent-mindedly missed a piece. (What can I say? Senior moment.)

Well… better late than never.

This nifty sketch (and yes, I am old enough to still say “nifty”) of Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger came my way courtesy of Ian D. Walker, a talented local artist whose work was unknown to me before this drawing caught my attention. I have no idea what the D. in Ian D. Walker stands for, but I’m thinking it might be “Darned good.”

Cloak and Dagger first showed up in a Spider-Man story in the early 1980s (Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #64, March 1982, to be precise). Originally, Ty Johnson and Tandy Bowen were just a couple of teenage runaways from opposite sides of the tracks, until forced injections of a synthetic opiate unleashed their superhuman powers. Ty became Cloak, who can create an opening into a “dark dimension” — an opening through which he can teleport himself and his allies, or banish his enemies. Tandy became Dagger, who generates (wait for it…) daggers made of luminous energy. As representatives of darkness and light respectively, Cloak and Dagger enjoy a symbiotic relationship — Tandy’s ability to create light feeds Ty’s craving for it.

As superhero teams go, Cloak and Dagger have always been an intriguing one, even though Marvel’s repeated efforts to kick them up to a higher profile have mostly been met with underwhelming enthusiasm on the part of the comics-buying public. A couple of years ago, Marvel announced that a Cloak and Dagger TV series was being developed for the ABC Family cable channel, but so far, nothing tangible (pun intended) has come of that.

In the meantime, there’s a Common Elements commission in the works featuring the duo. You’ll see it in a future post here, once it’s ready for public view.

For now, that’s your Comic Art Friday.

Oh, wait… one more thing.

If you check out Ian Walker’s website (not-so-subtle hint) and you like his work, shoot him a line and order up a commission. I’m sure Ian would be delighted to hook you up with some funk of your own. (You can tell him your Uncle Swan sent you.)

This entry was posted on March 2, 2012 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Comic Art Friday, Hero of the Day, SwanStuff, That's Cool!. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.