In 1988, Marvel put out something unusual. While DC Comics was doing its modern take on The Shadow following Howard Chaykin‘s miniseries, Marvel put out an original Shadow graphic novel by the team that had done DC’s great Shadow comics from the 1970s: Denny O’Neil and Michael Kaluta, along with Bernie Wrightson.
Set in 1941, “Hitler’s Astrologer” was a very well done Shadow title.
It was strange that Marvel was able to do this while DC had the rights. Rumors that I heard at the time was that DC would be doing the modern take of The Shadow, while Marvel (or more precisely, O’Neill & Kaluta) would do further stories of the classic Shadow. But I would later learn what really happened was that DC had the rights to do comics and Marvel had rights to do graphic novels. But they let those rights expire when this came out and no additional ones were done.
The graphic novel appeared originally in hardcover, and was soon reprinted in paperback. Most recently, Dynamite has reprinted this in hardcover. Check it out.
