Cloak and Dagger: Agony and Ecstasy

Cloak and Dagger (Collected Editions) #5

by Steve Gerber, Terry Kavanagh, Terry Austin

Collects Mutant Misadventures Of Cloak And Dagger #5-13, Cloak And Dagger (1990) #14-19 And Doctor Strange (1974) #78.

From despair to D’Spayre! With Tyrone Johnson dead and buried, a blind and grief-stricken Dagger deals with the agony of loss — while the villainous Ecstasy wears Cloak’s cloak! But rumors of Ty’s death have been greatly exaggerated — does he have what it takes to reclaim his mantle? He’d better hope so, because when the Acts of Vengeance hit, our reunited duo will encounter the Avengers! Meanwhile, the evil Mr. Jip has been scheming for months — and his multifaceted plans will soon come to fruition! But what does Doctor Doom have to do with it? Plus: Spider-Man and Ghost Rider help Cloak and Dagger take on…Mephisto? And can our heroes cope with the demonic D’Spayre, who bears shocking revelations about their origins?

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Comic Book, Graphic Novels

424 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2019

About the author

Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone , and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.

He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.

In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.

In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'

Reviews

[Matt Sautman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I paid $2 for this on clearance. The book is definitely worth that price. A problem here compared to similar runs from the same era is that Cloak and Dagger’s motivations don’t ever feel that tangible here outside of the beginning where the book begins with Cloak nowhere to be seen and Dagger having become blind. The ideas present here are fine, but it is a shame that characters are excellent in concept as Cloak and Dagger are often let down by writing that seems more oriented towards meeting deadlines than to explore the deep complex friendship formed between these two’s symbiotic powers.

[Jefferson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very inconsistent in quality. It was nice to see regular Cloak & Dagger artist Rick Leonardi draw a few of the middle chapters, but the last few were virtually unreadable.