Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Hearts of Men?...

'The Shadow', the most popular of all 1930s pulp heroes, and the grandfather of the modern superhero, was as equally influential on the creation of 'The Scarlet Avenger' as 'Indiana Jones'

...The Shadow knows. MWA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA-aaaah! Well, at least The Shadow did know, for several decades, until this icon of 1930s pulp fiction faded into relative obscurity. However, The Shadow was a huge influence on my Scarlet Avenger short film and upcoming feature.

Pulp magazine covers often featured 'living skeleton' characters. Perhaps their imagery helped grab the attention of readers, the publishers catering to the public's morbid fascination with death. The Scarlet Avenger's nemesis, 'The Skull', is a tribute to this pulp staple.

On the surface, The Scarlet Avenger appears, to most modern viewers, to borrow most heavily from the Indiana Jones series. But, what makes my film stand out from other Indy-inspired works is its exploration of the entire spectrum of 30s and 40s pulp heroes, the most important of all being The Shadow, the mysterious dark avenger, who donned a black cloak, wide-brimmed fedora and scarlet scarf, and enforced his own violent brand of justice with his two blazing automatic hand guns (long before countless Hong Kong action stars made 'two-gun action' famous in the 'heroic bloodshed' genre, invented by director John Woo).

The Shadow had simply vanished from the pop culture radar by the time I was born in 1975. He'd been largely replaced by spandex-clad superheroes, like 'Superman', 'Batman' and 'Spider-Man'. But, The Shadow was the grandfather of the modern superhero, and a direct influence on the ever-popular Batman. In fact, Batman creator Bob Kane considered giving his hero a gun, but thought it would make him too similar to The Shadow.
I can't remember when I saw my very first glimpse of the character, but I distinctly remember being attracted by a discussion of him on the Canadian sci-fi/ fantasy interview TV series, 'Prisoners of Gravity' (1989-1994). 'Who was this guy’? I thought. He both looked and sounded so cool! It was so thrilling to discover a character from a long-forgotten era. I started to read up on him in any publication I could get my hands on, most often in the handful of Shadow comic books I found at the local comic store. Then, in 1994, a Shadow feature film was released, starring Alec Baldwin, one of my favorite actors at the time. While I wasn't overly impressed with the film's story, the visuals really captured my imagination. Around the same time, I was discovering 1930s and 40s action adventure serials on home video, and the Shadow fit in perfectly with that universe, which was so much more than just Indiana Jones.

The Shadow was as sexy a character as Dracula. He fought against evil, but possessed many characteristics of a classic villain. This flirtation with the dark side of humanity appealed immensley to depression-era audiences

Did The Shadow's ever present twin .45s influence the two-gun action of Hong Kong cinema of the 80s and 90s? I wonder...

Since creating this site, I've really wanted to celebrate The Shadow. The Internet has put me in contact with many other 30s and 40s pulp and serial enthusiasts, one of the biggest being David Bird, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, whom I discovered through his blog: 'The Dork Dungeon'. So, why not have him share his love of the character?, I thought. Here's David's excellent article. Hope you enjoy it!

Blogger and Shadow fan, David Bird, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who wrote the fantastic overview of the character for this site

About three weeks ago or so Scott asked me if I would be interested in drumming up a few new articles for you sheiks and shebas. It was an honor to be able to write up a new article for this site. Now 40 gigs of gaming resources and various written projects rescued to a back up drive, a broken master drive on my primary system (with no hope of recovery) and the transfer to another (lesser but adequate) machine and I'm on this article thing, on it! I'm a huge fan of The Scarlet Avenger and an equally huge fan of pulp fiction and movie serials and no amount of malfunctioning hardware was gonna keep me from getting some new material written to support the site.

I met Scott after I had posted a review over on my Myspace site. Like any good little unknown blogger I made him aware that I had written the piece and congratulated him on a most entertaining and fantastic short. Well since then we have kept tabs on each other when the time permits (which from the current state of both of our blogs has not been much) and when he asked me if I would like to come up with something for this blog I snatched up the opportunity immediately.

I know he is working hard to put together all of the things that need to be done to get a shot at making the Scarlet Avenger into a feature length flick and I know that it must be time consuming as well. So, I'm going to do my best to crank out some fairly regular pieces for fans of pulp fiction and movie house serials, and maybe in the process learn even more about a genre that I hold dear to my heart.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men...

The Shadow is one of pulp fiction's most famous and popular heroes and a personal favorite of mine as well. A dark clad vigilante with blazing .45s, the ability to cloud men's minds (though not till later) and a black and red flowing cloak that reminds one of Dracula’s ominous presence, The Shadow took justice to the criminals and prowled the night eight full years before Batman ever hit the streets of Gotham.

That's right, The Shadow was created by Street & Smith, a publisher of pulp magazines in 1931, at least that's when The Shadow saw creation in print. Initially Street & Smith had used The Shadow as the name of the narrator that read for their Detective Story radio show, but the character's popularity proved so noteworthy that they decided to give him his own magazine. So they commissioned Walter B. Gibson to write stories for this new pulp.

A collection of covers from Street & Smith's Shadow pulp magazine

Like many other pulp authors of the time, Gibson used a pen name, calling himself Maxwell Grant. It is possible that he was forced to use this pen name, as many other authors that were writing for the pulps during the late 20s through to the late 40s, were made to do. Publishers of the time believed that it was in their best interest to keep one name on every story that involved a given character, so that even when "ghost writers" were used, fans of the series would not be turned off by an unknown name. Of course there were exceptions to this rule and occasionally there was a guest writer who was credited, but the norm kept most of these "other" writers hidden from the public and some of them are even unknown today.

The Shadow saw immediate success and flew off of the shelves as quickly as they could be stocked, a feat that would not be emulated by another serial character until Superman's first appearance in Action Comics#1, during June of 1938. From his first appearance in 1931 until 1949 The Shadow was loved by tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of loyal readers, from kids to adults all throughout the nation. Gibson was credited with writing 282 of the 325 Shadow novels and very likely it was his attention to keeping every detail the same from month to month that helped in maintaining an audience that loved and revered the original dark avenger of the night.

In an attempt to capitalize on the character's ever growing success, Street and Smith pushed The Shadow into every medium possible, with yet again an astonishing rate of success. In 1932 The Shadow returned to radio, but this time as the title character of his own half hour show, sponsored by Blue Coal. The radio series would move about over the next few years, changing stations and sponsors, and at the end of its run The Shadow radio series had aired for 22 years as one of the most popular and endearing action adventure radio shows of all time. If not for the advent of television, perhaps the show would still be running today. However, television's stranglehold on America did not hinder The Shadow's adventures, at least not at first.

Orson Welles as the voice of the Shadow on the radio

The Shadow had already made appearances in the film entitled "The Shadow Strikes" in 1937 and an excellent serial from Columbia called "The Shadow", composed of 15 chapters, of which the titles included "Chapter One: The Doomed City, Chapter Nine: Devil in White and Chapter Thirteen: Wheels of Death." The serial starred Victor Jory as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, Veda Ann Borg as Margo Lane and was directed by James W. Horne, who directed other serials as well, including "The Spider's Web" 1938, "The Green Archer" 1940 and "The Iron Claw" 1941. In addition The Shadow had been featured in a comic strip by Vernon Greene and Street and Smith had placed their gun toting pulp noir hero in a comic book of his very own, which incidentally ran from 1940-1948 for a total of 101 issues.

Victor Jory as 'The Shadow' in Columbia Pictures' 15-part movie serial

As the Shadow's popularity eventually began to fade and the crime buster and western genres began to take a hold on the minds of America's young viewing audience, fans slowly distressed as one publication form of media after another left "the bad ass in black" in the pages of yesteryear, to fight off the ravages of time and fade into the collective memory of pulp fan boys everywhere. With the demise of Street and Smith publishing and their eventual selling to Conde Nast of all of their pulp properties, the future did indeed look bleak for The Shadow. And with a final film "The Shadow Returns", released in 1946, The Shadow slipped back into the shadows for a number of decades.

Then, in 1973, writer Dennis O'Neil (of Marvel and DC fame) and critically acclaimed artist Michael Kaluta brought The Shadow back to life in comic form, published by DC Comics. Though true to the feel of the character, with O'Neil's brilliant writing style and Kaluta's amazing art (though Kaluta did not draw the entire series), the comic came to an end after only 12 issues. However, this resurgence of the character brought him to light in the eyes of many writers and artists that had once been readers and fans, and The Shadow once again began to make headway in the entertainment scene. Even if he was not enjoying the same popularity as he once had, The Shadow was back and, to fans everywhere, that was all that mattered.

DC Comics' 1973 revival of The Shadow

A Marvel Comics Shadow story, written by Dennis O'Neil and illustrated by Michael Kaluta

Despite a poorly received short running second series, produced by DC, in which The Shadow was placed in the modern era, the character's popularity as an iconic dark avenger continued to grow and DC eventually launched yet another series called, "The Shadow Strikes". This series, written by Gerard Jones, with art by Eduardo Barreto, returned The Shadow to his pulp 30's roots and included appearances by many famous and well know real life personalities of the time. But perhaps the most endearing facet of this particular incarnation of the character was that that The Shadow finally teamed up with another pulp great, Doc Savage, in issue number 5. This was perhaps one of the most asked for team ups in pulp history and DC made it happen, thank you DC. Coincidentally this was the series that first introduced me to pulp fiction in an easily accessible format and it is primarily because of the energy that was written into this series that I became so enamored with pulp fiction and life in the 30's and 40's.

DC Comics' third Shadow series, 'The Shadow Strikes'

Following the disappointing cancellation of "The Shadow Strikes," Dark Horse Comics would pick up the line and continue to tell the tales of mystery and suspense that so many had come to love. Of course the greatest event took place during that same time in 1994 when a new Shadow feature film was released by Universal Pictures on July 1 of that year. Directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, the film was filled with excellent pulp references and campy jokes, but it was not well received by theater audiences and is considered to have been a box office bomb. Though the film had its moments, the director often strayed away from the darker side of the character, opting instead for humor or comedic situations. Still, for those who love The Shadow, it was at the least a worthy attempt to capture the character and I for one am still a fan of the film today. Besides, Margo Lane was portrayed by a very sexy Penelope Ann Miller, and it's not every gal that can wear her hair like that and remain gorgeous.

Universal Studios had high hopes for their big budget Shadow feature film, starring Alec Baldwin, but the film was a financial and critical failure

Alec Baldwin as 'The Shadow'

But, once again The Shadow has slipped away, hidden in the darkness, waiting for the next wave of talent to bring him back into the vie of the general public. It has been 13 years since Alec Baldwin donned the red scarf and black hat of justice and 12 since Dark Horse has printed a comic with "The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons". Now though, it seems that there is once again hope, as director Sam Raimi of Spider-Man film fame has shown an interest in returning The Shadow to film. Given Raimi's portrayal of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he seems to be the best choice for the job. Though nothing is yet written in stone, Raimi has been a long time fan of the character and his Darkman movie was a homage to pulp heroes and a damned good film to boot. In addition to a film on the horizon, both The Shadow and Doc Savage have had their reprinting rights licensed from Conde Nast and are now being reprinted with two stories to a magazine. Many of the stories haven't been reprinted since they originally hit the stands over nearly 70 years ago, and now you can own them for a very reasonable price. Check out Nostalgia Ventures to pick up a few issues. Also, I have seen them listed in Previews, which is an order magazine you can pick up from your local comic shop. So it looks like the rise of The Shadow is coming once again, and I would say who knew, but I think we all know the answer to that one don't we?

Dark Horse Comics's final Shadow story, 'The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons', in which The Shadow teamed up with equally popular 1930s pulp hero, Doc Savage. The cover art is by Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens.

Thanks Dave for this incredibly well-thought-out article. If you're hungry to learn more about The Shadow, please do yourself a favor and watch the incredible online documentary 'The Shadow Knows', which can be downloaded from dialbforburbank.com.

Poster for the fantastic documentary 'The Shadow Knows', which can be downloaded for free from dialbforburbank.com