The Mist
73 years ago - Kyle Nimbus is born.
55 years ago - 18-year-old Nimbus becomes a cadet in the Canadian Army.
51 years ago - 22-year-old Nimbus is promoted to lieutenant.
48 years ago - 25-year-old Nimbus leaves the military and begins working heists.
36 years ago - 37-year-old Nimbus tries to rob Star Labs. He is subjected to a photon cascade while Ted Knight tries to contain a system malfunction. He loses his matter cohesion and becomes obsessed with exacting his revenge.
33 years ago - 40-year-old Nimbus is brought into the Injustice Society by Vandal Savage in an effort to defeat the All-Star Squadron.
28 years ago - 45-year-old Nimbus's daughter Sadie Nash is born. He does not know about her.
25 years ago - 48-year-old Nimbus kills Doris Lee, causing Ted Knight's nervous breakdown. He suffers a cancerous shut down of his organs, only being kept alive by his powers.
21 years ago - 52-year-old Nimbus first discovers the existance of his daughter Sadie Nash.
14 years ago - 59-year-old Nimbus takes in his daughter Sadie Nash after the death of her mother, and begins training her to take his place and continue his vendetta against Ted Knight.
6 years ago - 67-year-old Nimbus, seeing Jack Knight first become the new Starman of Opal City, insists that his daughter Sadie Nash confront him as the new Mist.
4 years ago - 69-year-old Kyle Nimbus's daughter Sadie Nash reveals that she is pregnant with Jack Knight's child, and chooses to reject his vendetta to be with Jack.
3 years ago - 70-year-old Kyle Nimbus discovers that his powers are fading, which means he will die soon. Furious at what he percieves is the loss of his legacy, he attempts to destroy all of Opal City. Ted Knight sacrifices himself to stop him, letting Jack Knight & Sadie Nash focus on keeping their son safe. He dies knowing that Ted has forgiven him.
The Mist is a long-standing DC villain, with quite a long number of appearances across the decades... and if that was all he is, we MIGHT have included him somewhere for one reason or another. Thankfully, he's actually the major antagonist of a really fantastic series that was all about giving the rich history of the titular character the love it deserved. While the hero of James Robinson's Starman was a very modern reimagining of the character, his world was more of a celebration of the things that made the classic stories great, and so the Mist didn't have to get reimagined at all. Instead, he was a great meditation on the themes of classic villain.
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The Mist's Comic HistoryBefore we get to the obvious story that is really responsible for the Mist as we know him, his original Golden Age appearances began in Adventure Comics in 1941 as a foe for the original Starman, Ted Knight. This era of Adventure Comics was a really fantastic looking book, and the story of The Mist was a classic combination of pulpy noirish crimefighting with a just-right blend of era-specific horror and sci-fi.
We never learned the Mist's name; he was a criminal who used his invention to turn himself and his criminal followers invisible. He was featured again later in the series, but like a lot of Golden Age villains he really didn't have many recurring appearances until the Silver Age started to tell stories crossing over into Earth 2 and bringing back those classic baddies as part of the Society of Super-Villains. |
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It's during his occasional appearnaces in crossovers between Earth's 1 and 2, which saw a lot of the more esoteric old Golden Age villians updated to the more over-the-top world of the new Silver Age heroes that the Mist explains that he's now also able to achive actual intangibility. He was more or less just one more baddie in a long list of Earth 2 foes, and essentially remained in the back catalog again until after the Crisis.
The Mist actually made one Post-Crisis appearance before the James Robinson series redefined him, in the late 80s early 90s Staman series featuring Will Payton. This is essentially the last time we see an attempt to make the Mist a modern theat, and within the context of this series, he's actually a pretty good one, but of course, his most important role was yet to come. Perhaps the most important framing device of Robinson's Starman was the relationship between series lead Jack Knight and his father, the original Starman, Ted Knight. This relationship is mirrored throughout the series by the one between Ted's old nemesis, the Mist, and his children Kyle and Nash. Practically every poignant moment of growth is the series came from Jack interacting with this dark reflection of himself and his dad. For his part, the Mist actually had a fairly small number of appearances in the series, really only featuring in the open and closing arcs of the book with Nash playing a much larger role, but his presense is felt through every issue, and his death is part of one of the most excellently crafted series culminations you'll ever read. |
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Our Mist StoryObviously, the most important role for the Mist in our story is the one he plays in Jack Knight's Starman story. We do have to make a few small housekeeping changes in the timeline just to get him there; giving him a name, and moving his original encounters with Ted Knight up into the era of the All-Star Squadron rather than the Golden Age Justice Society so their children can be modern characters. There are snippets of his backstory we used, like his time in the Canadian army, but once he becomes a career criminal we decided to give him a more specific origin.
The biggest change we made, however, is in the relationship with his daughter Nash. In the comic he starts out doteing on his son Kyle and seemingly dismissing Nash as useless. When Jack kills Kyle, it drives Nash to desperately strive to become the new Mist, making her the true antagonist of the bulk of the series... but crucially, her father never accepts her, and in fact ultimately kills her. In our story, he DOES push her to take his place as his only child, so that she can ultimately choose to reject him. |