Darkwing

No one ever sees him out of costume, but the suit hints at a tall, strongly built Black man underneath. The mask leaves the skin around his eyes a blank white and drapes everything else in dark shades, pale grey stretching over the chest and thighs while black claims the rest.

A lone pointed cowl juts up behind his head, a keen-edged cape falls from his shoulders, and tucked into the outfit is the alert wristband each Guardian carries, set to summon him the moment danger strikes.

Darkwing is giving and self-denying, a hero who would rather perish than watch an innocent die. Trapped with a woman under a buckling tank, he steadied her nerves and passed her his own grappling gun so she might get out while he stayed behind.

He proved a fine mentor too, leaving a protege every bit his equal, and his affection for his teammates showed in his horror at what Omni-Man did to Red Rush. Toward Omni-Man himself he stayed cold and wary, so distrustful of the outsider's refusal to fully join the group that he would not even offer thanks for being rescued.

Nothing survives of his true name; the record starts when he chose to wage a one-man war on crime through Midnight City with a sidekick he trained himself. A brilliant scientist, strategist, and unarmed combatant with no powers to lean on, he made up the difference with invention: thrown bombs, a hoverboard for keeping his distance, magnetic cuffs, a grappling gun, and bracing arms folded into his suit. Those talents eventually earned him a spot in the Guardians of the Globe, and a link to Omni-Man brought him an invitation to a young Mark Grayson's twelfth birthday.

When the Mauler Twins hit the White House, he used his suit's braces to hold a toppling tank off a civilian until Omni-Man heaved the rubble aside, a save he flatly refused to acknowledge, then helped the team put the Maulers away. His death came at a Guardians meeting none of them had actually called: Omni-Man sprang on the group, and once Darkwing's hurled bombs did no more than stun him, an overhead strike ended with the hero snatched by the ankle and smashed twice into the floor, dead in an instant. His body was then flung at Green Ghost as bait so Omni-Man could kill her as well.

Agents later gathered the dead, his name cropped up in Omni-Man's hollow eulogy, and Damien Darkblood caught the killing in his visions without pinning down who was responsible. Broken by grief, his sidekick sank into madness and took up the Darkwing name for himself.