With the demise of so many pulp fanzines, I worried that we wouldn’t see any more. The Bronze Gazette continues on, which is surprising as we are no longer getting any new Doc Savage stories. Pulpdom continues, but is online only. Blood ‘n’ Thunder isn’t purely pulp, and is no longer published frequently, but finally came out with a new annual issue.
Now, after a very successful Kickstarter, which I contributed to, we get a new pulp fanzine focused on the most popular pulp hero, The Shadow: The Shadowed Circle. This is appropriate as it’s the 90th anniversary of The Shadow. I wrote this when I got the electronic version, but thankfully my first issue arrived before this went live. The issue is 7×10, color covers, and black & white interior on nice white paper (not slick).
Issue #1 (July 2021) is under a cover by John Jamilkowski that is an homage to Edd Cartier. We get several pieces in the issue that comes in at 50 pages.
From pulp researcher Will Murray, we get “The Final Sanctum Shadow Intermission Essay,” the final “lost” segment meant for the Sanctum Shadow collections. Due to Condé Nast wanting Sanctum to wrap up the reprint series at the end of 2019, this threw a wrench in their plans that prevented them from reprinting all The Shadow novels, as well as doing the three later works by Walter Gibson: the paperback novel, and two short stories. Unseen was the planned #150, which would have focused on the “Women of The Shadow,” and so here is the essay written for that issue.
John L. French gives a different take on the works by Bruce Elliott, who took over The Shadow for several years when Gibson was dropped. His Shadow novels had a Lamont Cranston being The Shadow, but not The Shadow we know. So maybe this is a diferent Lamont Cranston?
I think most pulp fans know about the new Shadow novel that has come out from James Patterson and Brian Sitts. I have it and will be doing a review. Here we get “8 Questions” with Patterson by Steve Donoso, which touches on The Shadow novel. Frankly some of what is said doesn’t give me much hope as to it staying true to The Shadow. And we get a review of the novel by Henry Lopez. I’ll leave it at that until I can write my own review.
Russ M. Moran in “Under 30: A Twenty Something’s Relationship With The Shadow,” he tells of his intro to The Shadow in the form of the toys created by Kenner as a tie-in to The Shadow movie starring Alex Baldwin. And how this has lead him to learning more about the character in pulps, radio, and more.
We look at the origin and identity of The Shadow in Stephen M. Newton‘s article.
In the 1930s, there were a series of six short Shadow films, and Joseph Gibson takes a look at them.
The last piece by Walter Gibson is the short story “The Batman Encounters Gray Face,” which appeared in DC Comics’ Detective Comics #500 back in 1980. Steve Donoso takes a look at this work.
Repeat villains in the pulps were rare. The Shadow had a few, and only two came back four times: Shiwan Khan and Benedict Stark. Gibson did Khan, while Theodore Tinsely wrote Benedict Stark. Craig McDonald provides an excellent introduction to both of these characters and their stories.
George Rozen‘s cover painting for “The Creeping Terror” and Dwight Fuhro‘s quest in obtaining it is what we learn from Fuhro. Rozen was the cover artist for The Shadow from the early years.
Zombies, more specifically their appearance in Shadow radio and pulp novels, is the focus of John Olsen‘s piece.
Overall this is a great first issue. The layout is great, the articles and artwork are great. I hope they can keep this up.
If you haven’t subscribed, please do so. We need more excellent works like this. I liked the stuff I got from the campaign. I received 3 postcards and coin, and all are nice. I look forward to the next issue.
