Nightblade

Nightblade cuts onto the scene in 1995, born from the creative team of Beau Smith, Phil Jimenez, and Brad Gorby in the pages of Guy Gardner: Warrior — a title that was one of DC's more entertainingly rough-edged corners of the mid-'90s. With only a handful of catalog appearances split between Guy Gardner: Warrior and Deathstroke, this is a rare, blink-and-you'll-miss-it figure from the Copper/Modern Age, the kind of deep-cut discovery that makes long-box diving worthwhile. The company Nightblade keeps is genuinely impressive — sharing pages with Kyle Rayner, Donna Troy, and Geo-Force speaks to a character brushing up against DC's bigger players right out of the gate. For collectors who love unearthing the overlooked faces that populated DC's wilder mid-decade output, Nightblade is exactly the sort of intriguing footnote worth tracking down.