English | CBZ | 4 Issues

Cloak and Dagger v1 #1-4 (1983-1984)
Publisher:  Marvel
Published Date:  October 1983 - January 1984

Created by Bill Mantlo & Ed Hannigan
Story:  Bill Mantlo
Pencils:  Rick Leonardi
Inks:  Terry Austin
Letters:  Joe Rosen
Colors:  Glynis Wein

Cloak and Dagger (Tyrone "Ty" Johnson and Tandy Bowen, respectively) are a fictional comic book superhero duo in the Marvel Comics Universe. They were created by writer William "Bill" Mantlo and designed by artist Edward Hannigan.

Cloak and Dagger first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64 (March 1982). In 1988, they starred in Marvel Graphic Novel #34: Cloak and Dagger: Predator and Prey. There have been a number of attempts to launch various ongoing Cloak and Dagger series, but none survived past 19 issues due to low sales. The pair did make numerous appearances as guest stars, appearing in a wide variety of titles, such as Runaways. The heroes were a prominent part of the Spider-Man Maximum Carnage story arc (Dagger was killed early in the battle, but reconstituted herself through Cloak). Cloak made a solo appearance in issues of the miniseries House of M, as a member of an underground human resistance movement. It was uncertain if Dagger also existed in the altered reality of House of M as there were no mentions of her during that storyline.

They have appeared in various other Marvel Universes, in one of which Cloak was killed. Dagger also served as a member of Marvel Knights in a short running mini-series.

It was announced at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con that the team would be reappearing once again in their own 5-part mini-series by writer Valerie D'Orazio, with pencils by Irene Flores and colors by Emily Warren.

Recently, they have appeared in the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover, "Utopia". "They're here presented with a chance to have their reputations exonerated and their records sealed [if they join the Dark X-Men]," explains Fraction in an interview with Marvel.com. "Osborn presents it to them as the ultimate public service, [where] they can work off their past indiscretions — [such as] Cloak's dealings with the Avengers during the [Skrull] invasion." Fraction reveals the more appealing part of Dark X-Men was to see how Cloak and Dagger react in a real superhero team scenario.

Origin
Tyrone "Ty" Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger) met in New York City as runaways. Tyrone was a 17-year-old boy from Boston, Massachusetts, with a debilitating stutter. He ran away to New York City when his speech impediment prevented him from stopping his friend from stepping in front of a moving vehicle. Tandy was a 16-year-old girl from a privileged upbringing (born in Shaker Heights, Ohio) who ran away because her multi-millionaire supermodel mother was too busy with her career and social life to spend time with her daughter. When they met, Tyrone considered stealing Tandy's purse, only to be shamed when she kindly offered him money. A thief stole the purse and Tyrone retrieved it for her. Afterwards, they had dinner and became fast friends. When the naïve Tandy accepted an offer of shelter from some strange men, a wary Tyrone went along to protect her. The two teens were soon forcibly delivered to a criminal chemist named Simon Marshall, who was developing a new synthetic heroin for Silvermane and the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results. Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled. During their escape, the drug turned them into superpowered beings (it was later retconned that they were both actually mutants, and that the drug had simply awakened their latent abilities). Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger which eased in the presence of Tandy, who was glowing with a brilliant light. Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall's thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light. The two teens dubbed themselves Cloak & Dagger and declared war on drug crime in combating drug-dealers and helping runaway children. For all the work that Cloak and Dagger have done to help reform addicts and topple dealers, they realize that drug abuse is an evil greater than they can ever hope to conquer.

Later it was revealed that during this time, D'Spayre had been the direct cause of all of these events. He had been manipulating things from behind the scenes the entire time.

Here is Cloak and Dagger's first mini-series. The one that started it all for the duo. After popular demand, the duo got their own ongoing series about a year later.