#scalphunter

Kwannon and John Greycrow in X-Men #29 (2026), art by Netho Diaz.

In issue 53 of Wild Western Tales, Scalphunter arm wrestled President Abraham Lincoln.

I love the Psylocke x Greycrow pairing. 2 hardened killers finding the soft places in one another. I hope they explore their guilt and morality more.

Jonah Hex and Weird Western Tales house ad (circa May 1980)

Psylocke v2 #5, 2025

(An image of the shade, dated to the late Victorian Era) Nobody publically knows much about the man who calls himself The Shade, who has also been known under the names Mr. Black and Richard Swift. By some mysterious method The Shade became an immortal, floating about the upper society of his native England for decades until moving to what is now Opal City. He fell in love with the city, becoming a friend and confidant of the city's original protector, Brian Savage, the gunslinger known as "Scalphunter" (That is a WHOLE unpacking for another time). Over time he amassed a small fortune, using his seemingly inherent ability to control shadows and darkness as a contract killer, a guise he continued in for decades. However it was here that he first adopted his strange code of honor, including the fact that he never worked or committed any crime WITHIN Opal City itself considering it "neutral territory" which he jealously guarded from organized and small time criminality alike. His odd moral framework was also awakened by the onset of WWII where he spent 1939 and 1940 in his native England working alongside the RAF and SAS in battling Nazi Germany, establishing a pattern where he always refused to work for or with avowed fascists. It was in WWII when his existence would be revealed to the world when, in 1942, he kidnapped Keystone City's entire police force under a veil of artificial darkness. It was there that he first encountered Jay Garrick, the two becoming prolific enemies although OF Garrick's enemies, The Shade was always the most...jovial? Affable? Rarely seeking to cause outright harm and seeming to commit crimes purely to antagonize the Flash into another bout. He would pop up here and there after the war, never for very long and always vanishing back into the ether from whence he had come. He would be...reevaluated when Jack Knight took on the mantle of Starman and his father's old nemesis The Mist unleashed a night of anarchic violence upon the once untouched city. The Shade, acting in his self appointed role of "maintaining" Opal's peaceful nature assisted Knight in defeating the Mist. Like his relationship with Opal City's original protector, The Shade became a half trusted source for the younger Starman. Offering him insights into the city's criminal underworld and seemingly retiring from criminal activity altogether. This is where the divide in his posterity comes from. He's a criminal. A killer even. And yet, especially to the people of Opal City he's seen as something of a...dark guardsman. The one who stands at the door and keeps any truly nasty sort from gaining a foothold in their community. In the spectrum of supervillains he's seen as a low level threat and not worth chasing despite having served only limited jail time for the crimes he HAS committed. We are not a supervillain museum (they do exist and I find most of them ungodly macabre), we frame The Shade as he was during the period we cover. He was a thief, his crimes were stopped by the heroes of the era. Further examination of his character and ethical interrogation of his being is better left to Opal City historians, Supervillain experts, or both.