The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading-order on collecting Cloak & Dagger comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2024 with titles scheduled for release through June 2025.
Cloak and Dagger are a very 80s odd couple: a pair of teenage runaways from opposite sides of the tracks and get mixed up in drugs with a superhero twist.
As you’d expect for the, it’s blonde-haired, naive Tandy Bowen who comes from the moneyed upbringing and book-smart and street-smart Tyrone Johnson grew up poor. They bond while on the streets, but after being kidnapped and injected with synthetic heroine, they come away with newfound superpowers! Bowen gainst he power of psionic light, while Johnson gains access to the Darkforce Dimension
The pair were conceived and written by Bill Mantlo in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man in 1983, and he wrote them almost exclusively for their first four years across three series. Mantlo kept their focus mostly on battling drug dealers and other reality-based street-level menaces, rather than super villains.
When Mantlo left them in 1987, their focus shifted – the book was even relaunched as “The Mutant Misadventures of” to try to tie the duo into the white-hot X-Men. It didn’t work, and in 1991 they were cancelled just as Claremont and Lee’s run on X-Men reached its peak of sales. Despite the fleeting “mutant” label, Cloak and Dagger were never a part of the X-books and would be later re-retconned as non-mutants.
Since 1991, Cloak and Dagger have been relegated to permanent guest-star status. Cloak tends to feature more-prominently, since he’s one of relatively few teleporters in Marvel’s arsenal and a suitably stoic foil to other lead characters, like Wolverine. The pair saw a brief revival as part of the Marvel Knights team in 200o, and later from 2009 to 2011 with participation in Dark Reign and Spider-Island stories. Afterwards, it was back to occasional guest star status – although that might not last for long, given they were greenlit for a television pilot in 2015.
Do you need a longer introduction? Head to my blog post announcing this guide. [Read more…] about Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order
When most comics fans think of the most fearsome, non-powered Avenger, they’ll typically name Hawkeye – or, perhaps Black Widow (though whether she has any enhancements is debatable).
