River City History is just that: peaks into the past of the setting of Walking Shadows. Bits and pieces from this feature may very well come to play in future installments of the tale, as the long dark history of River City slowly comes into light.
But Nita Dell wasn’t finished with her attempts to remove Captain Flash as a potential adversary. But she wasn’t yet willing to expose herself or Hannigan to the public yet. She knew River City wasn’t ready to accept a female crime boss, nor that Hannigan could serve as a strong enough figurehead to secure the city.
She turned to dark magic to unleash a threat strong enough to stop Captain Flash. She connected with an interdimensional monster with a name unpronounceable by any human tongue. The monster was dubbed Mirror Man and started a rampage across both River City and Atom City.
Captain Flash had no choice but to confront the weird being, which only vaguely resembled a human in appearance. The monster’s shifting frame and ability to travel from one mirror to the next made him a formidable challenge.
Ultimately the Mirror Man’s own powers backfired against him though. Captain Flash lured the creature into a house of mirrors. The thousand frames overwhelmed Mirror Man’s shifting abilities, fragmenting him into a million pieces.
Captain Flash had saved the city and in the process foiled Nita Dell’s plans again. The city’s secret crime boss now knew she would have to deal with Flash in a more direct manner.
Nita Dell instantly recognized the dangers of a super-powered crimefighter again making River City home. The history of Yankee Doodle Jones still weighed heavily on the minds of the citizenry as well. Nita knew that with the right amount of push she could make them fear Captain Flash in the same way.
She turned to the same thing that created her: magic. Konrad Krueger was a former Atom City scientist that turned to the dark arts in order to get revenge on the men that fired him. With the resources of Dell and Hannigan’s criminal empire behind him, he set out to destroy Atom City’s greatest hero Captain Flash.
Along with a group of thugs, he became the Black Knight. On a rocket-steed and wielding energy blasting lances, they managed to damage Atom City’s fourth reactor before Captain Flash challenged them. But the melding of science and magic was more than a match for the young hero.
Unfortunately for the Black Knight he was less of a match for the wit of Ricky Davis, Captain Flash’s teenage ally. Ricky lead the Atom City scientists in creating a massive electromagnet. The magnet drew in the Black Knight and his men’s armor, capturing them. Still the seeds of doubt were now planted in Captain Flash’s ability to defend Atom City.
As summer brought a heatwave to 1954 River City, the gangs under the Red Hawk were still at war. A traveling carnival mystic named Madame Lizette saw a place to make her move. Lizette (no full name nor birth records exist for her) appeared to possess actual magical powers.
Her machinations were slow and deliberate until the arrival of a pair of criminals: Bonita “Nita” Dell and Brett Hannigan. The criminals tried to rob the carnival box office, only to be cornered by the police. They hid in two hollow animal totems owned by Lizette, totems that were destroyed when the police located the pair of would-be thieves and opened fire.
Dell and Hannigan both survived, but Lizette burned with anger at the loss of powerful sources of magic. She used the remains of the totems to cast one last piece of magic on Dell and Hannigan. Inside the prison hospital, the criminals were transformers. Hannigan became a werewolf while Nita kept her human features but gained the fur and tail—as well as the strength and power—of a tiger.
The two monsters go on a rampage that destroys much of city hall, but Lizette’s own greed gets the better of her when she learns of a large reward for the pair: $25,000. When she tries to trap them, she used her dark arts to turn them on one another. When Dell and Hannigan apparently kill each other, the police target Lizette. She runs into her own burning pyre than be killed by the police.
Dell and Hannigan’s bodies were taken into police custody, apparently human again.
Nita Dell and Brett Hannigan were not dead however, nor were they fully human. The pair escaped from the city morgue after they realized they could now transform from human to animal forms at will. Nita seemed to find some kind of enlightenment in her near death experience. She realized that with their powers, they could rise to take the Red Hawk’s place. The pair set out to secure the criminal trade of the city, using their powers to strongarm the gangs of River City.
With a shortage of metahumans in the city, legends of the Werewolf and the Tigerwoman struck fear into the citizenry and the criminals of the city. While the two figures consolidated power through several compatriots, they secured their hold over the city using their animal forms.
Even as they strengthened their hold in the underworld, each use of their powers deepened their transformations. While once Tigerwoman only had a few superficial cat-like features, her body grew more hair with each turn and her claws and legs lengthened and hardened. Within months, Hannigan started to sprout a longer wolf-like nose and sharper, deadly teeth. But with their powers necessary for them to secure their powers, the two figures continued to use them as they continued to bring the individual cartels and mobs under their purview.
