The first time I saw the Shadow was in 1964, when I was 10 and the aging crime-fighter was at a low point in his fabled career.
My parents and grandparents knew the Shadow well, but had never seen him, having listened to his adventures as an invisible superhero on radio in the late 1930s through the early 1950s.
Archie Comics began publishing a Shadow comic book, and its August 1964 cover depicted the Shadow in traditional pulp magazine form, lurking hawk-nosed in a cape and slouch hat. But inside, artist John Rosenberger had sleekly “modernized” the character.
Now a prettified blond with three identities but no hat (like the late JFK), he used his role as millionaire playboy Lamont Cranston as a cover for his activities as an American secret agent (James Bond had just become immensely popular).
And his spy missions were a cover for his superhero activities, an identity he assumed simply by slipping on a black cloak and “blending into the shadows.” No one knew he was the Shadow, not even his girlfriend Margo Lane.
His vaguely defined powers included stealth, ventriloquism and a kind of super-hypnotism, and his opponent was his recurring arch-foe from the pulps, Shiwan Khan, restyled as a Bondesque freelance spy villain. The Shadow also displayed a hint of 007’s ruthlessness, hurling one of Khan’s henchmen down a shaft to his death.
The story wasn’t as good as the pulp or radio Shadows — disjointed, but not terrible.
In later issues, however, penned by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, the character would hit bottom — tricked up in a superhero’s mask and tights, and armed with gadgets that might have embarrassed even Batman (a “power beam,” “weakness gas,” boot-heel jumping springs, and so forth).
Batman was based on the Shadow in any number of ways, and then in the early 1960s the Shadow was “Batman-ized.”
So spins the cycle of popular culture.
Bob Doncaster wrote: I had read or heard of the Shadow and bought the short lived Bantam series. Guess it didn't take of like Doc Savage. I then got all the novels put out by Pyramid. There was also a series of new novels published by Belmont in the early 60s. Shadows Revenge and Destination Moon are two of the titles I remember. I think I have the whole set. I believe these too tried to make him more of a spy since that was big then. These were also by Maxwell Grant, not sure if it was Walter Gibson.
ReplyDeleteMark Alessio wrote: Even as a kid, I was disappointed when they turned The Shadow into a costumed superhero.
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman wrote: John Rosenberger was a pretty decent artist. He had been the main superhero artist at Archie in the early 60s, having taken over the Fly from Simon & Kirby and I believe he did the Jaguar as well. He always drew pretty women! :) But, after that first issue, he was replaced by Paul Reinman, who also became the mainstay of the Mighty Crusaders line. I did not care for Reinman's art.
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman said: I have long been trying to piece together my own interest in the Shadow and how I found out about him since the radio show was not on when I was a kid and I did not see a Shadow pulp magazine.
ReplyDeleteIn 1963, I picked up issue 4 of Screen Thrills Illustrated because there was an article on the Batman serials. STI was published by Jim Warren, which didn't mean much to me then, and was a sister publication of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which meant more to me because of my interest in the Universal monsters and the Aurora models. In any event, one article was an interview with Kane Richmond, who had played the Shadow in a serial, but there was only one picture of a poster from the serial; no real discussion about the character.
So, it seems that Shadow 1 was really the first time that I saw the Shadow. I kind of liked the first issue (don't recall him killing anyone though--that would have distressed me, I think!) and hated the super hero version. About a year later, I bought two paperbacks, I think at our school book fair, featuring the classic Shadow, both written by Maxwell Grant--that is, Walter Gibson. One was a new novel; I think the other one may have been a pulp reprint. I tried to read the book but honestly did not find that it gripped me. I still have them both; maybe I will try again!
Yet it piqued my interest enough that I created a character for my personal comic books who I called the...wait for it...Shadowman! Yes, very creative. He had (has) the power to make shadows so no one can see. That's hardly the same as the Shadow's and Shadow Lass wasn't created yet, so I was there first! :) My character did bear some resemblance to what I thought the Shadow looked like--but I gave him a cape along with his hat and a black, not red half-face mask.
In 1970, Steranko devoted a huge part of his chapter on the pulps in his History of Comics Vol 1--and there were tons of Shadow pulp covers! For my Halloween party that year, I dressed up as a cross between the Shadow and my character but everyone thought it was the former, for some reason! I've pulled that costume out of mothballs several times since!
In the early 70s though there was a resurgence of the Shadow, what with the 1973 DC comic but also my local jazz station started to play old-time radio shows, starting with the Shadow at midnight. I used to listen to them and record them on my open reel tape recorder. Later they went to a more reasonable early evening time, expanding to other radio shows as well, but always keeping the Shadow. I still have those tapes!
Anthony Tollin wrote: Archie Comics did not acquire the comic book rights to The Shadow. Its sister company Belmont Books had the paperback license for new Shadow novels, and Archie reportedly mistakenly thought they had the comic book rights as well.
ReplyDeleteEllis Rose wrote: I remember Archie Comics' The Shadow from when I was five or six years old. My older brothers had one or two very beat-up issues that attracted my eye because of his blue and green costume. I wasn't clear on his powers. Nor was I clear as to why he was called The Shadow since that bright blue and bright green costume did not connote shadows to me. But he was colorful! And that was my first introduction to "Lamont Cranston", "Margo Lane" (instead of Margot Lane), and his clever catchphrases (which had already taken on public lives of their own without always being attributed). Jim Steranko's "History of Comics" chapter on the pulp magazines opened me up to the original pulp and radio character, which I was surprised to learn had eclipsed Doc Savage back in the day even though Doc Savage paperbacks were very popular in the Sixties. And then I fell in love with DC's The Shadow and Michael Wm Kaluta's artwork which evoked a period feel of the Depression Era for me. I found what was left of those Charlton issues and realized there was no comparison. Still, the blue and green costume was great. But, it should have been given to some other superhero concept. Kaluta's Shadow is still the quintessential comic book version for me.
ReplyDeleteChad Talbot said: I have never heard of or seen these comics. I know of DC's 70's series with Dennis O'Neil and Michael Kaluta. I'm not sure I can get the image out of my head of him wearing a dark cloak, hat, red scarf, big nose, and toting two 1911 pistols.
ReplyDeleteBob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteLike the Archie comics the Belmont novels left something to be desired, but I loved the later pulp reprints. As for comics, Mike Kaluta's run on the DC series was much too short.
Mike Woolson:
ReplyDeleteGood essay.
My intro was DC's 70s series, which I loved (I did later get one of the Archie's, I didn't realize it was Siegel). Later I got into the paperbacks...picked up the first at this little local bookshop called Borders. I wonder what became of them?
I was taken with the DC Comics cuz the Shadow was the first hero I read who killed his enemies... aside from the Spectre, but he had God's permission and was really creative about it.
Robert S. Childers:
ReplyDeleteAs a child I had heard of the Shadow from my father, but my first experience with him was on a record album I got from the public library that had 4 episodes of his radio show. Having listened to a great many episodes of the Shadow radio show since, it's interesting to note that during Orson Welles' tenure on the character, he displayed a variety of psychic abilities, while later versions could only turn himself invisible (or psychically convince people not to see him). Also in those later iterations Lamont Cranston did so much investigating as Lamont Cranston (famous in-series as an amateur criminologist) that there didn't seem much point to his Shadow identity.
Bob Bailey:
ReplyDeleteAnother solid post, Dan. I read the Archie Shadow at my cousins house. I was not very impressed.
I replied:
They deteriorated as they went on, but still, they are interesting curiosities.
Foster H. Coker III:
ReplyDeleteMy first exposure to the character was issue number two of the DC version. I remember reading it in the backseat of the car and my mom started quoting lines from the book..."the Shadow knows," and so forth. I was dumbfounded that she could quote from a book she never seen before. Little did I know, she probably heard the Shadow radio show a couple hundred times back in the day.
I replied:
I had that same experience, but with Batman and Robin. When I was 5 years old, my aunt Shirley, who owned a hairdressing business, saw me reading a Batman comic while lying on the floor and remarked, “Hmmm. They’ve changed Robin’s hairstyle.”
I was dumbfounded. She already knew these characters, but MY Batman and Robin couldn’t possibly have been around when Shirley was a little girl, i.e. when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
She was, of course, all of 24 at the time.
Rick G. Harrison:
ReplyDeleteMy experience was pretty much the same! I had the first Archie Shadow where he looks pretty much like his pulp predecessor. My mom told me about the radio program that she used to listen to in the 30s and 40s. All of that led to a life-long love of the character!
Paul Zuckerman:
ReplyDeleteSo many astute comic historians here! 🙂
I am never quite sure of the chronology that led me first to the Shadow so I have to go back to the sources. I keep thinking that there may have been a picture of the Shadow in one of the issues of Screen Thrills Illustrated, but it seems to me that it was the Archie comic that was my introduction. In May of 1965, I picked up two Shadow novels - one was a reprint of an original pulp novel, though I didn't really know it at the time, and the other was a new novel by Walter Gibson. I didn't really get into the books, if I recall. But the look of the character led me to create a character called Shadowman. My hero had the ability to create shadows. I think it predates the Legion's Shadow Girl, who had essentially the same power, if I recall.
In 1970, Steranko's extensive discussion on the pulps in general and the Shadow in particular in the first volume of his history of comics was probably my first real appreciation of the character's background. Enough so that I put together my own version of the Shadow costume for Halloween that year -- though, if truth be told, the costume was more like my Shadowman character, since I had few good pictures of the Shadow. And then, in 1972 or 1973, several threads began to converge: listening to the Shadow on NY jazz station WRVR -- first late on Saturday night, and then weekday early evening as part of a whole group of old-time radio shows, including the Clock, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, Sherlock Holmes, Gangbusters and Fibber McGee and Molly-- and around the same time, the release of DC's version of the Shadow, initially beautifully drawn by Michael Kaluta and written by Denny O'Neil. The difference between the radio show and the comic version was significant -- O'Neil went back to the pulp version but incorporating elements from the radio show as well. For me, it was the radio show that became "my" Shadow.
Michael Kucharski:
ReplyDeleteMy father had both collected the magazines and listened to the radio program; sadly, he threw out the magazines when he married in 1951. My mother was buying and reading the Belmont paperbacks which were my first exposure to the character. Archie Comics' the Shadow was my second exposure in 1964.
David Allen Jones:
ReplyDeleteI had heard of the character, but it wouldn't be till 1973 (I was 13) and the DC Shadow #2 that I finally took the plunge. Been a fan ever since. Luckily I missed the Archie version somehow, even though I was already a spinner rack junkie even then.