Nightshade

Like the poisonous plant she’s named for, Nightshade is beautiful and easy to underestimate, but extremely deadly. Although a relatively minor villain, Nightshade’s scientific and criminal genius have made her a thorn in the side of many Marvel heroes – including Captain America, whom she once turned into a werewolf!      

Nightshade premiered in 1973, during the “Blaxploitation” phase that sparked a surge of black heroes, villains, and storylines. This trend was a great leap forward in terms of representation and diversity (giving us Falcon and Luke Cage, for example), but it also often relied on negative stereotypes of black culture as lower-class, urban, and criminal (both Falcon and Cage emerge from this kind of environment). 

The story of Nightshade parallels these trends as well. Created by writer Steve Engelhart and artist Alan Weiss, she was Marvel’s first major black female villain, and from her very first appearance in Captain America #174, Nightshade was a force to be reckoned with. In the story she teams with the Yellow Claw to spring a very effective trap on Captain America, transforming his partner Falcon into a werewolf with a serum of her own invention, and forcing Cap to fight him. When this plan failed, she sought revenge by taking over an entire SHIELD facility!

Later appearances reveal that Nightshade, despite being a mere teenager, is an extraordinary genius with intuitive, high-level expertise in chemistry, medicine, robotics, and physics. (Her early displays of mind control were revealed to be chemically induced.) For young Tilda Johnson, applying these skills to a life of crime was the quickest ticket out of poverty-stricken Harlem. Donning a black leather bikini and adopting childish mannerisms to keep her male opponents off guard, she took the name Deadly Nightshade and set out to make her mark on the world. Later plots and schemes have brought her in conflict with Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Misty Knight, Black Panther, and even the Hulk.

Here, then, is again the double edged sword of Blaxploitation: from the beginning Nightshade was an extremely intelligent, powerful, supremely self-confident black woman who never allowed men to control her destiny. Yet at the same time, she was bound to stereotypes of black poverty and crime, while her tiny black bikini and overt flirtation aligned her with stereotypes of hyper-sexualized, manipulative black seductresses.

Of course, artists and writers in recent decades have shed most of this accrued baggage. No longer depicted as a teenager, Nightshade still operates on the wrong side of the law (mostly) and still craves power, but it’s her diabolical genius that gets emphasized, rather than her poor urban upbringing or her sexuality. Over the years she has worked with Superia’s Femizons, achieved her goal of turning Captain America into a werewolf, joined MODOK’s hand-picked criminal coalition, and even become a major underworld gang leader herself. 

Most recently, however, Tilda Johnson underwent a crisis of conscience, rejecting her life of crime and taking the name Nighthawk to carry on that righteous vigilante’s legacy. But I can’t help thinking that Nightshade’s comfort zone will always be the criminal underworld, and that her natural genius and ambition will always tempt her back to it.

Deadly Nightshade was fairly uncomplicated to make. I needed a base figurine that was not too tall, and had an assertive, confident posture, maybe even a feminine swagger to it. The Silver Sable figurine was perfect. In order to avoid replicating the pose too closely, though, I changed the position of her head and arms slightly. 

I also thought it would be fun to replace Silver’s chai with an oversize syringe (containing Nightshade’s famous werewolf serum of course!). The most difficult part was grinding away Silver's shoulder holster and hair, but overall it was an easy transformation.

For her costume I went with the look she wore in her first appearances, and still occasionally wears in some modern stories: the black bikini and thigh boots, with numerous gold accents and a holster at her side. As mentioned above, there is a problematic dimension to this, but to me it still remains her most iconic look. In the early Nightshade stories, the kinkiness factor was quite deliberate: as a cheeky foil to her scientific brilliance, as a ruse to catch men off guard, and not least, as an expression of her own interest in bondage and domination (this is a woman, after all, who likes to tie men up and penetrate them with needles to transform them into bestial slaves).      

My Eaglemoss-style cover mockup for my Nightshade figurine incorporates artwork by Mahmud Asrar from Shadowland: Power Man #2 (Nov 2010). The Nightshade logotype is from the interior of Captain America #190 from October 1975. This is one of my favorites of the covers I've done so far.

* ESSENTIAL READING *

1. Captain America #164 (Aug 1973). Working with Yellow Claw, Nightshade turns all the inmates of an isolated prison into werewolves, and Cap's partner Falcon too!  

2. Captain America #405 (Aug 1992). Partnering now with Desmund Druid, Nightshade fulfills a long-cherished dream-- goodbye Captain America, hello Capwolf!

3. Super-Villain Team-Up: MODOK's 11 #4 (Dec 2007). Nightshade helps MODOK steal a powerful artifact from an alien spaceship, and also lifts the Mandarin's rings along the way!

Yes, I'm sad it's over too, but I'll see you next time!

Next up.... cold as ice, hard as marble: it's Tombstone!