Since 2012, Dynamite has had the rights to do The Shadow comics. In addition to an on-going series (now ended), several mini-series and one-shots with The Shadow, they also had a few team-up series with other characters. While I looked at the two Masks series in another post, here I look at the team-ups with Batman, Grendal, The Green Hornet, and others:
- Noir #1-5, 2013-2014 (Miss Fury and Black Sparrow; The Shadow guest stars in first issue only)
- The Shadow/Green Hornet: Dark Knights #1-5, 2013
- Grendel vs. The Shadow #1-3, 2014 (from Dark Horse)
- The Shadow/Batman #1-6, 2017
Now, all of these have been reprinted in trade paperback or hardback. So we’ll go in publication order.
Noir is mainly a team-up between the Black Sparrow and Miss Fury. Black Sparrow is an original foe created for The Shadow in the comic, and her creator is the writer here. She’s more of a mercenary, now on her own after working for the Spanish communists. She appeared to die in The Shadow comic, but there was no body. She’s after what appears to be Templar treasure in New England, and teams up with Miss Fury, a classic comic strip character. Dynamite did a series with her, claiming wrongly that she’s a pulp character. They are opposed by some crazy characters. As noted, The Shadow shows up only in the first issue, sort of helping The Black Sparrow.
The Shadow/Green Hornet: Dark Knights is a team-up between those two characters. The foe that has brought them together is Shiwan Khan, who is working with the Japanese in the time leading up to the United States entering World War II. More precisely, Khan is after the girasol that The Shadow has, as it’s an important component in Tesla‘s death ray. While I had issues here and there, overall the story is decent. I did find it interesting that while the cover shows the two heroes fighting, this doesn’t happen in the story. The two heroes team up pretty quickly.
I don’t yet have the Grendel/Shadow title, which I think was only reprinted in hard cover. This was written by Matt Wagner, Grendel’s creator, who later did some Shadow minis that I thought were good (Year One and Death of Margo Lane). So would hope this one is also good as it also uses the classic Hunter Rose Grendel.
The Shadow/Batman is another mixed bag. There were good and bad points in the story, but I felt the bad overwhelmed the good. We are given a new origin for The Shadow that adds a bit more mysticism than I’d like. The story is set in “modern times,” and The Shadow’s agents are either dead or geriatric. It’s unclear if The Shadow is still operating, but he hasn’t aged. He apparently wants to retire, but can’t unless he finds a replacement, and figures Batman to be that. Batman at first wants to stop him rather than work with him, thinking he’s the new foe he is going after. Instead, the foe they are working to stop is in many ways the opposite of The Shadow.
One thing I was disappointed was I was hoping they would reprint the two prior Batman/Shadow team ups from the 1970s, from Batman #253 and #259. These have never been reprinted. I thought they had announced these would be included in the hardback collection, but that didn’t happen.
At this point, I am not certain the status of future Shadow comics, either team-ups or stand alone stories.
