And now Freeform is getting into the comic book TV show game.
Variety has revealed that Freeform (formerly known as ABC Family) has greenlit a TV adaptation of Marvel Comics' superhero duo Cloak and Dagger. Marvel Studios and ABC Signature Studios will co-produce the series, which is targeted toward young adults.
Receiving a straight-to-series order, Cloak and Dagger is described in the article as a "live-action interracial romance" that follows "two teenagers from very different backgrounds, who find themselves burdened and awakened to newly acquired superpowers while falling in love — Tandy can emit light daggers and Tyrone has the ability to engulf others in darkness. They quickly learn they are better together than apart, but their feelings for each other make their already complicated world even more challenging."
Created in 1982 by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan, Cloak and Dagger first appeared in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64 as Tyrone "Ty" Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger), two runaways who met in New York City. Tyrone was a 17-year-old boy from Boston, Massachusetts with a debilitating stutter, and ran away to New York City when his speech impediment prevented him from stopping his friend from being shot by police, who mistakenly believed he had just robbed a store. Tandy was a 16-year-old girl from a privileged upbringing in Shaker Heights, Ohio, who ran away because her multi-millionaire supermodel mother was too busy with her career and social life to spend time with her daughter.
When they met, Tyrone considered stealing Tandy's purse, but before he could, a thief stole the purse and Tyrone retrieved it for her. Afterwards, they had dinner and became fast friends. When naïve Tandy accepted an offer of shelter from some strange men, Tyrone went along to protect her. The two teens were soon forcibly delivered to criminal chemist Simon Marshall, who was developing a new synthetic heroin for Silvermane and the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results. Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled. During their escape, the drug turned them into superpowered beings, which was later retconned to reveal they are actually mutants and the drug had simply awakened their latent abilities.
Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger, which eased in the presence of Tandy glowing with a brilliant light. Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall's thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light. The two teens dubbed themselves "Cloak & Dagger" and declared war on drug crime in combating drug-dealers and helping runaway children. Cloak and Dagger became vigilantes, who hunted and killed Simon Marshall and his drug-dealing henchmen responsible for activating their powers. They first encountered Spider-Man during these events, then murdered Silvermane in revenge, and battled his reanimated cyborg form. Soon after, they teamed with Spider-Man to thwart the Punisher's murder attempt on the Kingpin.
After later tests by Dr. Nemesis confirmed they are not mutants, Cloak and Dagger recently returned with the other's powers, under the corruptive influence of Mister Negative using Shade patches, which dosed them with a drug that stimulates the effects of Negative's touch to remain loyal to him. They broke Mister Negative out of the prison ship where he was being kept and restored him to lead an assault on Parker Industries in Japan. Although Peter Parker was able to escape being corrupted by Negative thanks to Negative's prior corruption of Spider-Man, Cloak and Dagger managed to help Negative escape when Peter tracked them to his Hong Kong headquarters by secretly placing a Spider-Tracer on Cloak. Using this Spider-Tracer, Peter was able to inject Cloak with a cure for Shade that he later used to cure Dagger, apparently restoring their original powers. Although Mister Negative escaped, Cloak and Dagger decided to remain in Hong Kong to guard it from any future attacks.