Category:Shadowman

Jack Boniface is playing saxophone for a packed jazz bar deep in the heart of New Orleans one night. A successful musician and hopeless romantic, Jack dreams of a record deal, but until then is happy to realize that a beautiful woman named Lydia has been coming to the bar every night to watch him play. That night they leave the bar together. They go to her residence, where Jack consumes a drugged drink and falls unconscious, believing this is his last moment on Earth. In the morning he wakes to find Lydia gone, and a strange mark on his neck. Later that night, Jack stalks the streets, compelled by an urge to hunt Lydia down and take revenge. He finds a discarded carnival mask on the street and, inexplicably drawn to it, picks it up. Jack hears the cries of a woman being assaulted in a back alley. He confronts the attacker, and finds that he has superhuman strength and speed, with which he is able to frighten the attacker into fleeing. Jack’s housekeeper Nettie, a voodoo practitioner, senses the change in Jack. She explains that something evil in the night ripped open the doorway to his soul. Now, whenever shadows fall, his soul comes out, takes over, and goes hunting. She tells him, "In voodoo talk, ‘shadow’ means soul. You the Shadowman." Nettie feels the presence of a loa, or spirit, named Bosou Koblamin in Jack. Bosou has become Jack’s maît-tête, the loa who stands for him. Nettie tells him that although ignorant people think Bosou is evil, in truth Bousou embodies a rage against evil, and is not possessing Jack, but helping him. Nettie, feeling that Jack's newborn nighttime identity of Shadowman is part of his destiny, makes Jack an outfit for this new identity, which bears the image of his soul stepping out and three spikes of light piercing the darkness—just like Bosou’s three horns. Putting on the mask, Jack roams the streets and confronts violent criminals. (1)