The Shade

Wizard’s 200 Greatest Characters of All Time (200 items)
list by moviebuff

IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time (100 items)
list by moviebuff

There aren't very many people who can rock a top hat and not come off looking like a complete idiot. In fact, unless you're Fred Astaire, Slash, or Johnny Depp, we would absolutely advise against it. Just don't tell The Shade, one of DC Comics' oldest supervillains, that we bagged on his headwear of choice.The Shade, created by E.E. Hibbard and first appearing in Flash Comics#33, was introduced a... read more

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 initially portrayed in the Golden 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 his immortality from an unexplained mystical event. In 2009, the Shade was ranked as IGN's 89th Greatest Villain of All Time/