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- "You can't pull that trick on me, or anyone else. Not anymore. You need hope for that. And there's none of that here."
- ―Andre Deschaine to Tandy Bowen[src]
Andre Deschaine was a former jazz musician who acquired despair-feeding powers after being exposed to the Darkforce and the Lightforce during the explosion of the Roxxon Gulf Platform, gaining the ability to psychically access the Dark Dimension, as well as reading and manipulating the emotions and memories of others. He became the secret leader of a sex trafficking ring in New Orleans, which he used to feed on the despair of his victims to ease his severe migraines. This caused him to cross paths with Cloak and Dagger, notably abducting the latter and severely affecting her powers. Eventually, Deschaine learned that he would ascend to a god-like being, D'Spayre, and intended to put all of New Orleans' population into a desperate trance and turning them into his audience so he could then play his music forever in the Dark Dimension. He was defeated by Dagger, who was unwilling to allow him to immorally attempt to free himself from pain at the expense of hurting others.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
- "The headaches got so bad, I decided to kill myself. I went to the water, and I climbed as high as I could, it started raining. I climbed, I jumped that should have been the end of it. But then something happened that night."
"The rig explosion"
"Just like that, I was alive. And they fate as they would have it, gave me a way to make the headaches stop... For a little bit of time." - ―Andre Deschaine and Tandy Bowen[src]
Andre Deschaine had a passion for jazz from a young age, eventually becoming a jazz musician. Deschaine regularly played his trumpet at a location called Club Delight with the rest of his band. He was forced to stop playing after suffering from intense migraines on a regular basis, eventually even leaving his beloved trumpet out on the street. Jazz was one of the few things that were important to him and being unable to play contributed greatly to his state of depression. In addition the club burned down, causing Deschaine to lose his favorite place in the world.[2]
Attempted Suicide[]
After some time, Deschaine decided that he had nothing worth living for and planned to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. However, before he could jump, his attempt was interrupted by a nearby explosion, causing him to slip. The explosion imbued Lightforce and Darkforce into him. He woke up in Church of All Saints Hospital, being taken care of by a nurse, Lia Dewan. Dewan explained that witnesses had seen his suicide attempt but that she would take care of him and that she could make him feel better.[2]
Newfound Abilities[]
- "90% percent of the time, the people that come my way, I help, give them counseling. choices. shelter.....But the other 10% percent they can't be helped, so they help me."
- ―Andre Deschaine to Tandy Bowen[src]
Deschaine touched Lia Dewan and was able to see a metaphysical record store. The record store's shelves were empty except for the vinyl records connecting to Dewan. Playing the record immediately gave him a rush of positive feelings, comparable to that of a narcotic. He convinced Dewan to leave her job and come with him where he would be able to give her back her love for music.
With Dewan, Deschaine started a support group. He was able to get a feel of people's emotions, memories and lives through physical contact with them. For those that appeared to be to far gone to accept his counseling, advice and support Deschaine would drain their remaining hope, emotions and memories to temporarily prevent his recurring migraines at the victim's cost, usually leaving someone in a near-emotionless state of despair, but most of the time as a counselor he would help those that were just deeply troubled; using his power to bring back their good memories, thus regaining their self-esteem.
Using the support group as a cover, Deschaine and Dewan continued to take in those in need, helping those that were easily assisted and taking advantage of the more serious cases. The latter part of this organisation developed even further from being a source of comfort for Deschaine to becoming a full business strategy where girls in need were kidnapped, drained of hope and then used in a sex trafficking operation. The girls were transported via privately owned ambulances which drew no attention and allowed for easy escapes. Because of the negative effects of Deschaine's powers, the girls had little interest in fighting back and became easy to manipulate or abuse.[2]
Meeting Tandy Bowen[]
Eight years later, Tandy Bowen and her mother came in to join the support group, D'Spayre was friendly and helpful towards her, even talking to her and assisting her outside of the group. During the support group sessions, Bowen expressed interest and concern in Mikayla Bell, one of D'Spayre's intended victims. After some time, when they decided that nobody would notice her disappearance, Bell was kidnapped by D'Spayre and Lia Dewan.[4]
Deschaine then distracted Bowen by bringing her around town and talking about his past. Suddenly, she got scared and lights starting flickering. He turned around to find nothing. Confused, he asked Bowen what happened, but she ran away. He then realized she had powers. He found Bowen looking at missing flyers for human trafficking victims. He told her about the racial differences where a white girl would be looked for, but nobody cared about a brown girl.[5]
Abducting Bowen[]
Tandy Bowen met with Deschaine who just got off a call. Deschaine talked to her about what the found victims had to say. They claimed a woman who was an angel and a boy who moved like a shadow saved them. Bowen remarked at how that was cool, but asked about the girls, wanting to talk to them so they could stop the kidnappers. Deschaine cautioned her against the idea as he claimed the victims did not want to relive it. He then got a call and told Bowen to leave. He later tasked Lia Dewan with kidnapping Bowen, who was getting too close to the secret.[6]
Having discovered too much, Dagger was captured by Dewan and D'Spayre, drugged and drained of hope. D'Spayre displayed the ability to leave his victim completely unaware of whether they were experiencing reality or a hallucination that was induced by himself. He first put Bowen in a reality where she thought she had the perfect life. She soon started becoming suspicious, so he put her in one where she was an engineer. He kept playing with the realities to try to make her lose hope.
Draining Bowen's Hope[]
Eventually, D'Spayre put her in The Esplanade where he talked to her. She realized what was happening and tried to kill him. D'Spayre simply absorbed her Lightforce dagger. She eventually smashed the record player, thinking she released herself from the vision. However, D'Spayre just put her in one very similar to the real world. Bowen and who she thought was Tyrone Johnson showed up at the office. Cloak immediately tried to detain Deschaine, but he showed them that Lia Dewan was holding Mikayla Bell captive.
Bowen freed Bell, but Deschaine pulled a gun on Bowen, telling her that she had no one. Bowen said that she did have someone, Johnson. Deschaine then shot Johnson, killing him. He then pushed for Bowen to give up, which she did. She gave Deschaine her lightforce dagger as well as draining herself of her hope. In the real-world, Deschaine told Dewan that she was ready. They carted Bowen into the motel.[7]
While Tandy and the other girls were kept hidden, D'Spayre kept up appearances by still regularly helping those that came to the support group in need and even meeting Cloak who came looking for Dagger. D'Spayre used his abilities to convince Cloak that Dagger had likely given up on him and that Cloak should no longer bother trying to find her. While D'Spayre selected the appropriate records in his record store to manipulate Cloak, he was unaware that Mayhem, who had been trapped in the Dark Dimension had learned of his secret and had gained access to the record collection as well.[4]
Becoming a Loa[]
Seeing Chantelle Fusilier[]
While Deschaine was able to temporarily prevent his migraines and improve his own emotional state by absorbing hope and power from his victims, he longed for a more permanent solution. After seeing a Voodoo Veve symbol in the Dark Dimension, he sought to find the meaning of it and hoped that it was a sign for him. He found Chantelle Fusilier who practiced Voodoo and was much more familiar with such symbols. Fusilier told Deschaine that the symbol appeared to reference something he could unlock in order to increase his powers and ascend to a more god-like being, however, she could not give him more information as it was something that needed to be discovered by him. When Deschaine made physical contact with Fusilier, he found that she immediately understood his ability and entered his sacred record store along with him. Fusilier explained how the symbol worked. Deschaine concluded it was like a key, but Fusilier corrected him, saying it was more like a lock. Deschaine saw Fusilier as a potential threat now that she was aware of his true nature and allowed her to relive a pleasant early memory of her adopted niece while he played a record of her heartbeat and slowly stopped it, killing her.[4]
Finding the Lock[]
Deschaine and Lia Dewan escaped Viking Motel as Cloak and Dagger took it down. Dewan stole a man's car, but was worried that Deschaine's headaches were too bad to drive. He assured her that he could. He ended up pulling over on the side of the road due to the pain. He asked Dewan if he could steal just a little bit of her hope. She reluctnatly agreed. He touched her temple and transported to the record store. D'Spayre then played a memory from Dewan, feeling his headache grow better. However, he betrayed Dewan, taking all of it.
Back in the car, Deschaine examined his symbol and noticed how it looked like four notes. He connected the notes, making them sixteenth notes. He then grew happy as he hummed the notes. He put the car into drive, leaving an uncoscious Dewan on the side of the road as he hummed away.[1]
Hitting the Blue Note[]
D'Spayre was in the record store when he noticed a new album from Lia Dewan. D'Spayre realized that Dewan's mind was being searched by Cloak and Dagger. He was able to access Dewan's mind and met with the two. Bowen threw her dagger at D'Spayre, but it did no damage as they were inside a memory. Deschaine decided to explain his plan. He was going to steal everyone's despair for himself. Once he got enough, he could hit a blue note, which allowed himself to become a Loa.
Deschaine returned to the empty area where his favorite place, Club Delight, used to be and collected all those people he had drained to place them together as an audience for his trumpet solo. With the brainwashed and manipulated crowd humming along, Deschaine continued playing, lighting up his Veve brighter and brighter. Amongst this crowd were Mikayla Bell and Melissa Bowen. Suddenly, Cloak and Dagger arrived. Bowen threw a dagger at Johnson, who teleported it into D'Spayre. Deschaine fell to the ground, but his goal was already reached. He arrived in The Esplanade where he saw that the gate was open. He walked through and heard a crowd chanting his name.[2]
Rise and Fall[]
No longer content with feeding on one person at a time, Deschaine began abducting people all over the city, adding them to his "audience" in the Dark Dimension. Cloak and Dagger confronted him in his lair, but Deschaine brushed off her attacks and mocked their attempts to stop him. He proceeded to separate the two, forcing each of them to confront the source of their fears, with Tandy facing down her father and Tyrone battling a perfect version of himself. The duo managed to regroup and switched opponents, but Deschaine simply separated them once again. Unfortunately, Tandy and Tyrone finally overcame their deep-seated fears and escaped from Deschaine's control. Using her powers to exploit his sensitivity to bright light, Tandy managed to free Melissa Bowen, Mikayla Bell and Mina Hess while Tyrone stole his trumpet, greatly reducing his power. As the three women held him in place, Tyrone teleported Tandy in front of Deschaine, stabbing him in the heart with a sword of light. Together, they confronted him in his own mind. Hearing the source of his own pain, Dagger used her dagger to put Deschaine's record on a loop, turning his power against him and ending his threat once and for all.[3]
Personality[]
- "No, I'm just willing to do whatever it takes to live without pain. If that means becoming a god, so be it. Don't I deserve relief? I've been living with these headaches for years. I don't deserve this pain more than anyone else."
"Oh, but you do. You're sick and abusive."
"You trying to tell me that you never took advantage? Not once you used the gifts you've been given for your own end? Because I know you have.You've only been dealing with them for eight months. Let's see what you both are like after eight years. Let's see how much you've been warped. I'm doing being warped. Done being in pain. Finally time to cash in. For others to share my burden!" - ―Andre Deschaine to Tandy Bowen[src]
Prior to gaining his powers and becoming D'Spayre, Deschaine was a musician at heart, who thought of music as the love of his life and described it as the most powerful concept. He was also old-fashioned in his career, feeling that it was always better to record with an old vinyl record player. However, after he gained his migraines and was therefore unable to play music ever again without getting headaches, Deschaine hit a constant state of depression and lost his will to live. Once he had gained his powers, Andre abandoned what morals he had in an attempt to rid himself of his own pain, even if it was at others' expense.
While leading a support group for women who had been victims of abuse from men, Deschaine displayed himself as a compassionate and caring man who was willing to go to incredible lengths to help people get past their past burdens and abuses. Despite this facade he did have a small trace of mercy in him as he often used his power to bring back their hopes.
However, in truth, while operating as a secret sex trafficker while using his support group as a front, Deschaine was immoral, apathetic and manipulative, using almost every support group member as his despair battery in order to relieve himself of his migraines. He displayed no remorse for each of his victims and was extremely self-centered and cruel, as he would frequently use his migraines as an excuse to hurt his victims. He thought that because of his pain, he had a right to feed off of people's despair to preserve his own life. He was also deeply arrogant as while he held Dagger hostage, he believed that she would be unable to gain the hope she needed to use her powers again, which then proved to be wrong.
Deschaine was also very hypocritical as he thought ending his own suffering is more justified than others, such as when Tandy Bowen attempted to tell him the heinousness in his actions, he brought up how she once used her powers to steal the hopes of others as a response, believing the similarities. However, this self-righteous justification in use of his powers not only crossed a line between what he and Dagger did but ultimately shows that he was psychopathic, cowardly, pathetic compared to her for two reasons. The first was that while Bowen did steal the hopes from others and enjoyed it, covertly she felt ashamed from her misuse of her powers, despite her continuous use of said method of easing her pain. Deschaine on the other hand not only fed off people's despair but took a step further by forming a prostitution ring to create an environment of despair for himself, without any second thoughts or guilt in his quest to end migraines through other people's. The second is while Bowen witnessed her father die right in front of her, her mother becoming negligent, her attempt to avenge her father and uncover who framed him, only to discover years later he physically abusive to her mother, all Deschaine ever went through was his recurring migraines that prevented him to pursue a career in music and though he did genuinely feel pain and hopeless at this conclusion, it did not even compare to what it was like to loosing a loved one, like Bowen experienced and still had the audacity to say that he had "suffered so much pain" and "didn't deserve it more than anyone else" showing how selfish and narcissistic he had become.
Once he learnt that there was a more permanent solution to his migraines, Deschaine became more power-hungry, egotistical and ruthless, as he became desperate in ascending to godhood, deluded by the belief that it was his birthright to become a Loa and use every person as his pawns. As Chantelle Fusilier refused to tell him how to become a Loa, he committed his very first murder in his quest for power. After his record collection was destroyed, he developed a disregard for those who worked for him, as he left Lia Dewan, the one person who had nursed him back to health for dead after she reluctantly let him feed off of her despair to stop his migraines.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- "No, you're just messing with me, just like you did with Mikayla right? Cause that's what you do, right? You get inside people's minds and you cause them pain?"
"I don't cause anyone's pain. I understand it, feel for it, commiserate it with mine. It's the only way to tamp down my migraines." - ―Tandy Bowen and Andre Deschaine[src]
- Despair Manipulation: D'spayre is capable of causing despair via visions. He can read his victims' emotions to bring out their deepest fears, allowing him to access the Dark Dimension. He is also able to tell if someone has lost hope or if it has been taken. One example is that he was already aware of the one time Tandy Bowen was stealing other people's hopes even though he did not know about her powers when they first met.
- Emotion Manipulation: D'spayre can manipulate the emotions and memories of his victims in order to feed off of their despair and bend them to his will. These abilities appear to manifest in the dimension as a metaphysical record store where some memories, emotions and even life functions are manifested in the form of vinyl records. These records are linked to the victim and can be played to force the victim in question to experience whatever the record represents. Deschaine has even gone so far as to manipulate a victim's heartbeat via a vinyl record, stopping the playback and killing the victim. However, if a good memory is playing on the record player, the victim will temporarily regain their hope as long as it is playing. An example of this was when Mayhem accessed Deschaine's record collection after Deschaine had tried to place Tyrone Johnson in a state of despair. Mayhem removed the depressing record and instead played a record from Tyrone's category which invoked a memory of how much Tandy meant to him, placing him back in a positive mental state. Unlike Cloak and Dagger who can instantly access and influence the emotions of others' fears and hopes respectively upon physical contact, D'Spayre needs to enter his record store first in order to do this in order for his records to take effect, once he induces the required emotion he needs to exploit his victims, he then can manipulate them into becoming open to his suggestions, making them believe it's for their own good. For example, When D'Spayre first indirectly fed off Lia Dewan's despair, D'Spayre convinced her to give up her life as a doctor and come with him on the condition he will give bring back her love of music, though this doesn't mean he can control people's minds to obey him without question.
- Illusion Manipulation: In addition to manipulating emotions through memories, D'Spayre is also capable of creating tangible illusion from people's hopes or fears. In order to encourage Cloak to search for Dagger Mayhem accessed D'Spayre's records when she played a record how much Cloak cared about Dagger, he began to see young girls who were wearing ballet uniforms, which is ironic since Dagger loves ballet, and when Mayhem played another record on Cloak's desire to protect Dagger, he began to see ambulances everywhere, which is the same one D'Spayre used to kidnap her.
Abilities[]
- Expert Musician: To be added
- Expert Tactician: To be added
Facilities[]
- Viking Motel: To be added
Equipment[]
- Trumpet: To be added
Vehicles[]
- Ambulance: To be added
Relationships[]
Family[]
Allies[]
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Enemies[]
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Appearances[]
| Appearances for D'Spayre |
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In chronological order: |
Trivia[]
- In the comics, D'Spayre was a demon created by the Dweller-in-Darkness, who would feed off of people's anguish to feed him sustenance.
Behind the Scenes[]
- Floyd Anthony Johns Jr. was a stunt double for Brooklyn McLinn in the role of D'Spayre.
