First appeared in Slingers #0 in 1998 and was created by Joseph Harris and Adam Pollina. Cassie St. Commons was a college student at ESU who enjoyed looking different, with jet black hair, facial tattoos, and nose and tongue piercings. She was invited to join the Slingers, and was presented with the Dusk costume by The Black Marvel. She accepted, but had to undertake an "initiation" into the group by making a heroic leap across the rooftop of one building and land on another. While her teammates, Prodigy, Ricochet, and Hornet all had powers (or equipment) that enabled them to easily make the jump, Cassie had no powers, and when she jumped, she fell to her death. But Cassie was reborn, no longer dead, but not truly alive. She was Dusk. She found that she could teleport anywhere in a swirl of shadows, and she had some kind of psychic awareness that enabled her to feel her teammates. When she returned, her fellow Slingers were shocked to see their friend back from the dead.