The titular Night Raven is an American vigilante, initially operating in the 1930s. He has no special powers, relying on guns and more-or-less mundane equipment, but brands the foreheads of the criminals he defeats.
Like many other Marvel UK stories, Night Raven was printed in a range of Anthology Comic titles rather than in a comic of its own. Unlike most of the other stories, it wasn't purely a comic strip - text stories were seen as a very cheap way to add content to the comics, so Night Raven was later published that way as well, usually with just a couple of illustrations accompanying each chapter.
The move to text also led to a shift in tone, from action-filled short adventures to longer character pieces and mystery tales. Later text stories also confirmed that Night Raven took place in the shared Marvel Universe and added a few more fantastic elements. In stories written by Alan Moore, Night Raven found himself facing a superhuman opponent, the immortal Yi Yang
, who poisoned him and then, for her own amusement, granted him immortality of his own.
Disfigured and wracked with pain, he became a darker figure, and the stories moved forward into The '70s, following his ongoing feud with Yi Yang.
Night Raven eventually returned from text to comics when Marvel UK published a graphic novel, Night Raven: House of Cards by Jamie Delano and David Lloyd, which revisited the earlier setting while foreshadowing later events. He eventually made his way into American comics as well, with a one-off special, Death Duty, co-starring Nick Fury and the Black Widow.
An Alternate Universe version of Night Raven was also a key part of the Marvel miniseries Nocturne.
The Night Raven stories contain the following tropes:
- Arc Words: “Night-time in the city" is a repeated phrase in many stories.
- Arch-Enemy: Yi Yang is Nightraven's most personal foe, and one of the few recurring characters.
- Badass Longcoat: Night Raven wears a trench coat in most of his appearances. By modern times it has gotten rather ragged.
- Badass Native: House of Cards has Night Raven reveal to others that he's a Mohawk from Canada.
- Badass Normal: Prior to his clash with Yi Yang, he's a seemingly normal human, but an extremely dangerous man.
- Big Bad: Yi Yang takes this role in later stories. There's no real recurring villain in the earlier tales.
- Canon Welding: One of the Alan Moore stories confirmed that the Fantastic Four existed in the same universe. Prior to that, there had been no confirmation that Night Raven was part of the shared Marvel Universe.
- Combat Hand Fan: Yi Yang uses these in her first arc.
- Cool Mask:
- Night Raven's distinctive mask. It becomes creepier in later years, with a crack from a gunshot running through it.
- Yi Yang takes to wearing a half-face mask after her injuries.
- Dragon Lady: Yi Yang plays this straight in her first appearance, complete with pet tiger and Combat Hand Fan. It's a little more complicated in later stories.
- Emerging from the Shadows: Night Raven does this a lot. Including cases where it's midway through a card game, or where mobsters are reporting to their boss, only to be shocked to find the figure in the darkness was Night Raven instead.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "The Assassin" and protection racketeer "The Taxman" seem to be in this category. It's likely that gang leader Mr. Big is as well (although that one might have been his real name).
- The Faceless: Night Raven's face is never seen in the Marvel UK stories. It’s suggested that he's horribly scarred in later years, after Yi Yang's poison has taken its toll. Eventually averted in Death Duty, where his face is shown. When anonymously going about unmasked in House of Cards, bystanders remark on him clearly being Native American.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Night Raven intervenes to save card shark Ace Diamond when Diamond gets attacked by some crooks he's just beaten at cards. Ace thanks him by trapping him with the thugs and fleeing. He doesn't get the benefit of the doubt next time Night Raven catches up with him.
- Foe Romance Subtext: All over the place in his page for Marvel Comics #1000. He dose a monologue on how lobsters are immortal, he mentions how when he heard chatter that Yi Yang was back he was overjoyed because she knows how much it sucks to be immortal and ended by noting that lobsters mate for life.
- Funetik Aksent: After his transformation, Night Raven's dialogue is written to reflect his hissing voice.
- Guns Akimbo: Night Raven is armed with a pair of Colt Police revolvers worn in shoulder holsters.
- Intrepid Reporter: "Scoop" Daly, who became one of the few recurring characters in the original series.
- Latex Perfection:
- In one of the 1930s stories Night Raven disguises himself as clockmaker Albert Feldstein, and does so convincingly enough that the protection racketeers who regularly collect from Feldstein don't notice.
- In Death Duty Night Raven wears a fully convincing disguise over his usual carved mask.
- Immortality Hurts: Night Raven and Yi Yang have some level of invulnerability and Healing Factor, but truly major wounds can lead to permanent disfigurement and chronic pain.
- Mark of Shame: In the 1930s stories Night Raven routinely brands surviving criminals with his raven emblem on their forehead. It's less common in some of the later ones, but still happens.
- Meaningful Name: The dead or fallen supporting cast of House of Cards end like a poker royal flush: a criminal congressman nicknamed "the Ace", a gang boss named Koenig (German for "king"), a woman nicknamed "Queenie", and a gangster named Jack. A slimeball who's been playing rat for a rival gang ends up shot ten times, with the bullet holes in the pattern of the ten card on his dead torso.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Night Raven sometimes leaves criminals branded and captured for the police, but he's just as likely to kill them. Characters in Death Duty directly compare him to The Punisher.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Protection racketeer "The Taxman" leaves a briefcase bomb in a restaurant, killing the restaurateur and his staff. The next night Feldstein the clockmaker persuades him to take a valuable clock as part payment - except that it's not really Feldstein, and the clock is a bomb that destroys the Taxman's car. He realises what's happened just too late to throw the clock out and save himself.
- Two-Faced: Yi Yang may be essentially immortal, but she’s close enough to a nuclear explosion that one side of her face is horribly burnt. And this brand of immortality does not include healing powers that can cope with that.
- You Have Failed Me: In Yi Yang's first appearance, back in the 1930s, her enforcer Dragonfire gets mauled by her pet tiger after he fails to kill Night Raven. Yi Yang opts to shoot him rather than the tiger, stating that the price of failure, as always, is death.
