From the spring of 1931 until the summer of 1949, a slim figure cloaked in black fought mobsters, evil scientists, crazed old men and foreign invaders with two blazing automatics and a laugh that chilled the hearts of evil. The mysterious figure was The Shadow.
The popularity of a radio announcer – known as The Shadow – for Street and Smith’s Detective Story Hour convinced the publishing house to create a magazine for the character.
Street and Smith turned to newspaperman and magician Walter B. Gibson to bring The Shadow to life in the firm’s first character pulp magazine. Gibson, using the pen name Maxwell Grant, wrote 282 of the 325 Shadow novels. The remainder were written by Theodore Tinsley and Bruce Elliot, with one novel partly written by Lester Dent, the chief writer of Doc Savage.
It was only after the magazine’s tremendous success that The Shadow returned to the airwaves for a half-hour adventure program that lasted until 1954. Six two-reel movies, a serial and seven feature films have been based on The Shadow’s exploits.
Links
- The pulp magazine newsgroup
- You can find discussions of The Shadow, and other pulp characters, in the alt.pulp newsgroup. (If your internet service provider doesn’t offer access to this newsgroup, access it through Google Groups.)
- The Shadow’s Sanctum
- The Shadow historian Anthony Tollin, who is also responsible for the Nostalgia Ventures reprints, has put together an impressive collection of material about The Shadow, as well as Doc Savage. You’ll find video interviews with Walter Gibson, audio clips and photos, as well as a look at how Doc Savage and crew influenced the creation of the Fantastic Four. Oh, and you can get the latest information on the Nostalgia Ventures reprints.
- The Shadow Reprint History (Archived)
- Bill Thom’s Pulp Reprint Index (Archived) offers a bibliography of The Shadow stories that have been reprinted and the publishers.
- The Shadow Wiki
- The Shadow Wiki includes over 700 pages with listings of pulp, reprint and comic book appearances of The Shadow. Pages include information on characters and locations which appear in the stories, as well as covers.
- The Holloway Pages: The Shadow
- Clark Holloway’s site includes the introduction to The Shadow and the Golden Master written by Walter B. Gibson. In it, Gibson recalls how The Shadow pulp came about, as well as the pen name Maxwell Grant.
- The Shadow’s WWW Sanctum
- John Sies’ Shadow site has been around a while and touches on The Shadow’s appearance on radio, in films, records, comics, fan fiction and more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear the site has been updated since 2007 and several of the internal links are broken.
- The Shadow 365
- Neil McNally is posting regular notes and facts about The Shadow, along with a pulp cover, at his Tumblr website.
- Electronic Magic
- George W. Geib offers a history of the pulps and The Shadow in a paper read to the Indianapolis Literary Club in 1994. There’s also a link to some pulp cover scans, though none of The Shadow magazine.
- Kimberly’s Fan Fiction Library
- Kimberly Murphy-Smith, publisher and editor of The Hot Corner online zine, has written quite a collection of stories featuring The Shadow, including her novelization of the 1994 movie.
- The Shadow: Master of Darkness
- In addition to information about The Shadow pulps, radio shows, comics, collectibles and movies, this site also includes a forum, polls, fan fiction and fan art.
- The Shadow’s Internet Sanctum
- Last updated in 2002, Chip Caroon’s site includes a list of The Shadow novels (with some links to e-text and PDF sites) and a gallery of The Shadow comics.
- Five Lamonts: A Shadow Chronology
- Win Scott Eckert traces a history of The Shadow from the 1893 birth of Kent Allard through the pulps, paperbacks and comics.
- The Shadow Radio History
- The website of author Martin Grams Jr. has a sample chapter from his book, The Shadow: The History and Mystery of the Radio Program, 1930–1954. He has linked to a PDF of a sample of the book that was printed in the October 2010 issue of Radiogram.
- The Shadow Knows!
- Collector Dwight Fuhro solicits The Shadow pulps and collectibles at his website. He has a few photos of his collection, and details about what he seeks.
- Casting light among the Shadows
- Arn McConnell looks at clues in The Shadow pulp and Detective Stories Magazine to the real identity of the Night Master in this essay on the Philip José Farmer site.
- Collectible Paperbacks
- This essay on collectible paperbacks by Gary Lovisi, taken from Baby Boomer Collectibles, includes a reference to the paperback The Shadow and the Voice of Murder and its role in paperback history.
- The Shadow for RPG
- David Ebers has adapted The Shadow character for the Feng Shui role playing game.
- The Shadow quiz
- Test your knowledge of The Shadow with this 15 question quiz (though not all of the questions are accurate).
- The Wold Newton Universe
- Win Scott Eckert expands on Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton theories (see the site for more details) and places The Shadow in the chronology.
- MysteryNet: The Shadow (Archived)
- The Web site for mystery fans has short profiles of various characters, including The Shadow.
- Danny’s Shadow and Pulp Links Page
- Dan Hill has compiled a list of links to The Shadow Web sites.
- The Shadow Comic Strips
- Jim Sutton traces the history of The Shadow in comics — from the newspaper strips, to the reprint comic books, to graphic novels.
- M.W. Kaluta: The Shadow
- For some of us, there’s only one comic book artist for The Shadow.That’s Michael Wm. Kaluta. He’s posted some of his Shadow work on his Web site, including drawings, images from the two Shadow sculptures he has been involved with, and an original short story, The Shadow: My City.
- Plaid Stallions: 1970s The Shadow Merchandise Gallery
- Taking a look back at the fabulously hip ’70s, this website features a gallery of merchandise for The Shadow, including Halloween costumes, toy cars and aircraft, and play kits. There’s also a separate page for Halloween costumes of The Shadow.
- Biff’s The Shadow Diorama
- Biff (or Bill Underwood), who collects vintage G.I. Joes, has created a custom Shadow figure with the help of some friends and placed him atop a meeting of underworld denizens in New York’s Chinatown in the 1930s.
- Radio History of The Shadow
- Here’s a brief history of The Shadow on radio. Download a couple of audio clips from the vintage series. Also, the site includes a brief listing of the programs Orson Welles starred in, taken from The Shadow Scrapbook. (A more complete listing appears in the scrapbook.)
- Cliffhangers: The Shadow
- Images, an online magazine, took a look at The Shadow movie serials in its fourth issue. Grant Tracey’s article includes images from the serials.
- Roger Ebert on The Shadow
- Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times offers his favorable take on the 1994 movie.
- Professor Neon on The Shadow
- Professor Neon’s TV & Movie Mania review of the 1994 movie.
- Cosmo’s Pulp Hero Cafe
- Cinemarquee offers a variety of pulp-related links as part of the Web site that focuses on film and moviemaking.
- Popwatch Blog
- Gary Susman’s blog at Entertainment Weekly‘s Web site laments on “Film franchises that never were,” including The Shadow.
- The Internet Movie Database
- Find out more about The Shadow’s film adventures at the Internet Movie Database:
- The Shadow Strikes (1937).
- International Crime (1938).
- The Shadow (1940).
- The Shadow Returns (1946).
- Behind the Mask (1946).
- The Missing Lady (1946).
- The Invisible Avenger (1958).
- The Shadow (1994).
