The Shadow Fan

In the 1940’s The Shadow was featured in newspaper strips and comic books. Although The Shadow did not sell as good as its predecessor The Spirit, The Shadow comics sold hundreds of its adventure comic books. The second volume of The Shadow comic books were created by DC comics. That same volume was started in October-November 1973 for 20 cents each.

Below I have gotten some information on some of the comic book series from “The Standard Catalog of Comic Books” by Miller Thompson and Bickford Frankenhoff:

The Shadow 1st series was by Archie with 8 comic books lasting from August 1964 to September 1965. The first The Shadow comics title was by far the most lighthearted. Published by Archie’s Radio Comics, this rendition of the classic pulp hero stuck mainly to flashy costumes and derring-do. In this rendition, The Shadow was a member of C.H.I.E.F., the Command Headquarters, International Espionage Forces, a secret agent outfit in mold of U.N.C.L.E. or S.H.I.E.L.D. His primary enemy was Shiwan Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan who was determined to conquer the world. Having been defeated so many times in the past by The Shadow, Khan became almost entirely obsessed with crushing him instead-along with the Shadow’s “friend,” Lamont Cranston. In one episode, Khan even went so far as to arrange for a nuclear warhead to be dropped on Cranston’s townhouse. Despite his efforts, he never succeeded in figuring out that his two enemies were one and the same.

The Shadow 2nd series was made by DC starting from November 1973 to September 1975 with 12 issues.

The Shadow 3rd series was made by DC with 4 issues going from May 1986 to August 1986. Years had gone by since The Shadow had last appeared to strike terror into the hearts of evildoers. His network of operatives had gone on with their lives, and most were simply growing old. The Shadow was gone, but he was hardly forgotten. An old enemy named Preston Mayrock had decided it was time to settle old scores. Although wheelchair bound himself, he sent his men on a gruesome murder spree of The Shadow’s old agents. But just when all seemed lost, The Shadow returned - and none will escape his vengeance. Taking a break from his run on American Flagg, Howard Chaykin took on the task of remaking both The Shadow and venerable war hero Blackhawk. In doing so, he managed to add new depth to characters with almost a century of history between them while still maintaining the classic elements which had made them so popular.

The Shadow 4th series was made by DC and went from August 1987 to January 1989 with 19 comic books and 2 annuals.

The Shadow and Doc Savage went from July 1995 to August 1995 with two comic books by Dark Horse.

Ghost and The Shadow was made in December 1995 with only 1 comic book by Dark Horse.

Shadow Comics lasted from March 1940 to August 1950 by Street & Smith. The Shadow created by writer Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant) for Street & Smith’s pulp The Shadow Magazine in 1933, is one of the most memorable fiction characters of the 20th century. As the first costumed crime-fighter, the mysterious Shadow and his agents did battle against underworld menaces throughout 1930s and 1940s in the pulps, radio, movies, and comic books. Though The Shadow as a towering influence on Golden Age super-heroes including Batman, his own comic-book adventures paled in comparison to his super-peers, not to mention Gibson’s bi-weekly novels or the radio show which starred a young Orson Welles. The shoddy artwork and dumbed-down pulp stories failed to capture the most important element of The Shadow’s mystique - the overbearing atmosphere of dread and mystery. It would be another 30 years before Michael Kaluta and Dennis O’ Neily Finally got the character right in DC’s The Shadow comic.

View The Shadow comic covers below:

Novels

33-year-old Frank Blackwell was the first author to be approved and publish for the first Shadow novel. Most of these novels are based on (or a straight copy of) The Shadow pulps from the 1930s.

View book covers of The Shadow below:

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Comic Strip References
Newspaper Strips
9 Chickweed Lane — Sep 18, 1998
B.C. — 1.) 1996, 2.) Nov 14, 1999
Crankshaft — Sep 21, 1997
James — May 15, 2001
Rick London / Joel Coughlin - 12/04/01

Mad Magazine®
The Shadow (renamed “Shadowskeedee Boom-Boom”) made a few appearances in Mad. One strip was featured in a paperback book entitled “Mad Strikes Back” (1976).

Kingdom Come
Did The Shadow really make an appearance in DC’s “Kingdom Come”? Well, yes, but you have to look carefully….Pic 1 and if you need help Pic 2.

What the…?!
Marvel Comics produced a series called “What the…?!” in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a way of poking fun at their superheroes such as Spider-Man and X-Men. The Shadow makes an odd cameo in one issue (#5, July 1989, Page #6) in a story called “Wake up and Shoot the Coffee”, a parody about the meeting of Wolverine and The Punisher:

‘The first panel is completely black, except for an evil pair of eyes looking out. We learn that It is the villain Ten-Pin (a spoof of the Kingpin) gloating over the heroes’ predicament while hiding in the shadows.

The second panel is the same as the first, but the bottom of the panel there is a note from the artist, who says he has to get more black ink. The “hiding in the shadows” speech from Ten-Pin continues (can’t see this one coming, can you?)

In the third panel, the Ten-Pin is revealed to us, surrounded (of course) by Shadows: comical little men in black cloaks and hats with large cartoony noses. The Ten-Pin is kicking one of them out of the way, screaming, “Out of the way, Shadows! You’re blocking the Ten-Pin’s view!” ‘

Book References
Angel Square
Also The Shadow (from the radio) makes an appearance in “Angel Square” a children’s novel by Brian Doyle (published by Groundwood Books, 1986). Set during the post World War II era in Ottawa, Canada, the story follows a young boy named Tommy who enjoys listening to his hero, The Shadow, on the radio. Even his nickname among friends is “Lamont Cranston”. When his best friend’s father is assaulted by a masked man, Tommy plays amateur sleuth (much like Lamont) to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, he tries to earn some money for Christmas presents, and attempts to win the affections of his new classmate named Margo Lane. The radio show “The Devil Takes a Wife” is featured in an early chapter.

The movie version of the book was released in Canada in 1990, and was directed by Anne Wheeler. In this case, The Shadow was replaced by a fictional radio crime-fighter with psychic powers, called “The Mystic”, and the Margo Lane character was renamed “Loretta Wood”.

The Shadow also appeared in a geometry book
Who would’ve thought. In the textbook, Discover Geometry: An Inductive Approach, by Michael Serra (published by Key Curriculum Press, 1997 ), there is a chapter entitled “The Shadow Knows” (page 606, continued onto 607). It deals with shadows and how they would relate to the objects that form them.

Mallory’s Oracle
Also in the book Mallory’s Oracle by Carol O’Connell The Shadow is talked about in it. The book is about a series of murders that take place in New York (lovely topic!) and it centers around this maverick cop called Kathy Mallory. Her foster father Louis Markovitz(also a cop) is one of the murder victims and it’s about how she tries to find the killer. The book explores how
Kathy and Louis used to listen to the Shadow together on rainy days, and one of her main suspects- called Jonathon Gaynor- is in a play about the Shadow. She follows him and watches his dress rehearsal and it brings back all the memories…! The Shadow isn’t a huge feature in the book but it’s important and adds to the atmosphere etc… (Thanks to Jenni Bird for the above info)

Disney Adventures
On the June 30, 1997 issue of Disney Adventures. The Shadow was spotted in a comparison of superheroes. This issue covered the new Batman movie (the 4th in the series) and included a history on the character and a look back on other super heroes on the TV and big screen.

Codes, ciphers & other cryptic & clandestine communication:
making and breaking secret messages from hieroglyphs to the Internet
Codes, ciphers & other cryptic & clandestine communication:
making and breaking secret messages from hieroglyphs to the Internet by Fred B Wrixon has two sections dealing with the codes from The Shadow’s Novels.

On page 179 - 180 has two ciphers from the story Chain of Death and on page 187 - 189 has a cipher from The Man from Scotland Yard. This is pretty good for a scholarly work that was very well reviewed in 1993’s Booklist. 704 pages of data and three codes from The Shadow! The book covers the entire history of Codes and Ciphers.

An example is the two part cipher from one of the novels in which each character is made up of two line graphics. The graphics combine with 1/2 of the previous character’s to form a unique, and rather difficult to solve, cipher. The other one is a cipher in which there are several symbols that tell which way to turn the paper so the code shifts perspective as the encipherment continues.