It seems to me that many of the posters to this thread instinctively lean towards brightening up characters. A laudable aim considering the miserable state so many superheroes find themselves in, but the problem with brightness is that it makes truly compelling storytelling quite a difficult task. Not insurmountably difficult, as many fine comics will testify, but tough. Also, well, I just think that some characters work much better when they're all grim and gritty, Cloak and Dagger being a good example.
I entirely agree that redemption is a big part of their thing, but I'd want to see that redemption earned within the shadowy milieu that made those characters work in the first place. For me C&D should have the same uncomfortable appeal of the Punisher or even Morrison's FF (he absolutely _nailed_ the way the comic felt to me as a kid), edgy, dark stuff, with a small side order of weird. And by "weird" I mean the kind of thing Lynch throws up: surreal, irreducible, strange.
To start with their origin story is like some nasty blend of Lilya Forever and Project Mkultra.
Cloak and Dagger were two kids transformed by fire. Runaways fleeing horrific home lives - genuinely damaged goods - who had the misfortune to run into something much, much worse: a hellish experimental programme that ripped away their humanity and replaced it with something so hideous that the entire criminal fraternity was gripped by terror in a matter of months. Something that ate people's souls and burned out their sins.
And let's look at who those street level criminals were, shall we? Street gangs, dealers, kids basically. Of course, you could accuse most street level superheroes of beating on children, but there's something about how C&D's powers operate and how they operate with them, the sheer awfulness of it all, and the inherent message of their origin - that if you mistreat kids they tend not to turn out too well - that forces me to peer closer at the humanity of the people they pursue.
So now let's look at what drove them. A desire to protect the innocent, sure, but more importantly Cloak's overwhelming hunger - a device that, when combined with the drug angle and task they set themselves, works effortlessly as an analogy for a desperate craving for sadistic vengeance. To me the young Cloak and Dagger are monstrous, terrifying hunters (Dagger's eye ring as disco war paint), lashing out at anyone that looks halfway like the people that created them.
But, and this is crucial, they are also very, very damaged kids, looking for a way out and a way home, and that's where the redemption comes in. But that redemption will be very difficult and painful to achieve, just like the chance they offer their victims (intriguingly this is the point where their powers intersect with their humanity and their potential goodness - they might present their enemies with physical and existential torture, but that torture carries within it the power to do some real good. Unlike, say, Spiderman's fists).
So yeah, I would want to tell a redemption story with C&D, in fact I'd want to dangle redemption in front of them for the majority of my fantasy run. Along with the inevitable love story (platonic or otherwise, I haven't decided), it would be one of the key drivers of the arc, and the primary source of much of the drama. To that end I'd want to revisit their origin story and fill in the blanks with some deeply disturbing stuff, and I'd be looking to turn a whole heap of empathy, pity and ultimately horror at their fate into a fear and loathing of what they become, shifting the focus from desperate teenagers to desperate criminals.
Blended into that I'd want to have a look at the pair as we find them today, their ferocity, rage and pain, dulled by the healing power of time, and with the coming of maturity, and consequently I'd want to emphasise their increasing ability to control of their powers which, as far as I'm concerned, have always been a manifestation of their internal/existential states. Of course, with control of their emotions and powers the possibility of some sort of redemption rears its head, so into that mix I'd want to throw a big stinking problem. Very likely the appearance of something that looks a lot like the drug programme that transformed them, and the tragic story of another runaway caught up in it's web and changed beyond all recognition. A storyline that would force C&D to face their demons afresh and potentially whisk the possibility of redemption out from under their feet as they battle to save the new runaway's now monstrous soul, and attempt to stave off the desire to wreak horrible vengeance on the people that perpetrated the crime.
I have more, but I've already spouted enough incomprehensible gibberish, so I think I'll stop |
