Jack Boniface (Original)

The Shadowman

Codename: Shadowman

Created by: Steve Englehart and David Lapham

1st appearance: Shadowman #1,  May 1st 1992

Team Affiliations: None

Legal Status: US citizen with no criminal record

Weight: 220 lbs    Height: 6’

Eyes: Brown        Hair: Black

Relatives: Sarah Boniface (Mother), Josiah Torrent (Biological Father),  Zach Boniface (Father)

Skills and abilities: Professional jazz saxaphonist

Powers: When the Darque power fills his being he is granted superhuman strength, regeneration, the ability to glide on air  currents, superhuman reflexes and sight. This power is also tied to nighttime (sunset to sunrise) during these hours he’s most powerful.

Limitations: A bite from a vampiric alien spread poison throughout his being thus limiting his manipulation and access to the Darque Power. During the day his powers are greatly diminished.

Biography

Jack Boniface was a bourbon street entertainer and Jazz saxophonist with big dreams. Unknown to him he came to the attention of “The Coven” a sect of powerful voodoo Sorcerers. They planned to turn him into a “Shadowman” by endowing him with the “Darque Power” to combat “Master Darque” a centuries old immensely powerful sorcerer. Darque however realized he was the next in the shadowman line and made moves to change his destiny. One night as Jack played he caught the eye of a beautiful woman. Spending the night with her she was revealed as an alien bloodsucker that bit him. A mysterious light caused Lydia to flee and jack passed out. The next morning he awoke in her empty apartment and wondered into the attic where he found a macabre spectacle of dead bodies. He fled to the streets and found the “Mask of Shadows”. As night descended he was filled with a longing to extinguish evil and fought one of the Cannibals who were terrorizing New Orleans.

After a doctor’s visit he realized more changes within himself. An affinity to darkness and repulsion by sunlight, his housekeeper Nettie let him know that the Loa had entered his soul and made him a shadowman. He continued his heroics and sought council with Anjenetta who gave him a costume after he accepted what he had become. She told him that, in Voodoo, Shadow meant Soul, and then she gave him a costume with the sigil of a shadow in a doorway that symbolized the Loa in him that had taken over his soul and came out at night to fight. Anjenetta also told him that the bite he received had poisoned his blood thereby limiting his control and access to the “Darque Power”. With this new resolve he faced the cannibals in the Bayou and was victorious.

Jack then cut a swath through the criminal world of New Orleans taking on child pornography, child slavery, gangs and drug cartels among others. In the unity conflict he fell in love with a woman from the future who revealed that he would die a violently in 1999. Returning to the present found him facing Master Darque. At a critical moment during one of Darque’s ceremonies he ruined his chances of ultimate power. Soon after however during Unity 2000 he died in 1999.