Friday Night Fights: When Dark Shadows Fall

(from Captain Atom #14, April 1988; by Bates, Weisman, Broderick, and Smith)
Every good instructor knows the importance of concluding a lesson with a swift elbow to the nose, as Nightshade, super-spy extraordinaire illustrates (with the help of a generic terrorist) above.

Another neat character who has drifted considerable from her perfectly fine conconception over the years, Eve Eden, a.k.a. Nightshade, was the daughter of a U.S. Senator and a princess of mystical realm full of giant mushrooms. She inherited her mother's darkness-projection powers, which she put to use whomping various threats to the nation's security and planning her return to her mom's realm to rescue her abducted brother. (Because if it was simple, it wouldn't be a 60's superhero comic, would it?)

Orginally one of the characters in Charlton's short-lived "Action Heroes" pantheon of the mid-1960's, Nightshade is currently kicking around the DC Universe as a member of the Shadowpact, a team of mystical heroes, but she has long gotten away from the whole superspy thing that caught my attention in the first place. Well, that and the ultra-moddish ponytail/pleated skirt/go-go boots thing she had going on:

(click to enlarge)Guh-roo-vee! She also used to ride a custom skateboard into battle, and her handful of solo stories in the back pages of Charlton's Captain Atom series were illustrated by the late, great Jim Aparo. That's reaching superfluous levels of coolness in my book.

(Wait a second. Black Orchid. Shrinking Violet. Nightshade. I think a certain blogger who shall not be named has a thing for florally-named superheroines....)

Patterson's People - Deadly Nightshade (from a 1966 single) - One underappreciated treasure from the 1960's deserves another.

(Long live the keeper of the Funk Cosmic)