One of the many things I wanted to do with "Shades" was (as I know I've said at least once already!) to address some of the conventions of the super hero genre.

And one of those conventions was the idea of the super hero as a loner. I know many of them have sidekicks but that's slightly different. It seemed to me they needed more in the way of a support network - people to gather intelligence, people to help maintain their gadgets, people to cover their tracks ... people like Oracle. But lots of them!

In "Shades" they have that. The Shaman has his Disciples, Doug has his government contacts and Boo has ... well, Boo has these delightful ladies at the Women-in-Crisis centre. And, of course, they all have Stan!