Shaft (aka Jeff Terrel) is a comic book superhero created by writer-artist Rob Liefeld. In the early Nineties, Liefeld created the character for his Extreme Studios as leader of superhero team “Youngblood”. Youngblood was a government sponsored superhero team not to unlike his previous mutant team he created for Marvel comics known as X Force.
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Character biography
Jeff Terrel was an undercover police officer when he was approached by the government-sponsored Team Youngblood. He joined the team being an already accomplished archer. He adopted the name of Shaft and began the first of many adventures with the group. When then leader Battlestone was accused of misleading the team and was held responsible for the deaths of many members, Shaft went on to lead the team while Battlestone founded and became leader of Brigade. Shaft also made an appearance in the Alan Moore written Judgement Day limited series printed by Liefeld's second comic book publishing company Awesome Comics. In it he played a part in the trial of fellow Youngblood teammate Knightsabre. Outside of Youngblood he was featured in a crossover with the Valiant Comics heroes, notably Bloodshot.
Present
His most recent appearance was once again leading Youngblood in the Arcade Comics-published Youngblood Imperial. He will once again lead Youngblood in the expected new ongoing series to be published by Image Comics and written by Joe Casey.
Origin
When Liefeld left Marvel Comics to found Image in preparation for his titles, he called upon past work; in particular an aborted Teen Titans project for DC Comics. As he and DC could not come to a mutual agreement for the series, the concept was cancelled, but not without Liefeld recycling the material for his new work to be published at Image Comics. The character of Shaft was modeled after Red Arrow, the DC hero then known as Speedy and later Arsenal. The new concept of Speedy would have involved a new costume and arrows propelled by magnets. This was not to be however and the character became Shaft.
