The third issue of the new pulp fanzine The Shadowed Circle hit my mailbox. It focuses on The Shadow, and this finishes out my issues from the Kickstarter campaign. They have subscriptions for the next three issues. As before, the issue is 7- by 10-inches with color covers and black-&-white interiors on nice white paper (not slick).
Issue #3 (Spring 2022) gives us a colorized cover taken from a Steve Rude piece. This is the only Shadow piece I am aware of from this great artist. Back cover are eight covers from The Shadow pulp covers in color, but they tie to the article on the Canadian Shadow pulp. So one cover shows the original American pulp, the next the Canadian pulp it appeared in, and then the source for the cover. As before we have a nice selection of articles again. Each issue has been great, and I hope this continues.
Albert Emery provides an article on an interesting question: Could The Shadow have stopped WWII? This is based on a quote in E.L. Doctorow‘s novel World’s Fair (1985) where a young boy wants The Shadow to go to Germany and kill Hitler. Would or could this be possible? Do you agree with his conclusions?
We get the second part of the article by Todd Severin and Keith Holt on the pulp years of The Shadow, picking up from the last issue. Here we get info on who The Shadow is, and isn’t. The Shadow isn’t Lamont Cranston, who was another person whom he disguised himself as, and he had other false identities, and later is revealed to be Kent Allard. Then we look as some of his aides, his foes, and the ups and downs of the magazine, such as going to biweekly then back to monthly. All the way up to the end of the pulp. If you’re not familiar with the overall history of the pulp Shadow, this is a good introduction.
Pulp historian Will Murray gives his experiences on the set of The Shadow movie. I wasn’t aware he was involved, so this has some good insights.
Where did the name “Burbank,” for The Shadow’s communications man, come from? This is answered by Tim King, and I never considered it might have been based on a real person.
We get the first of a two-part interview with Michael Uslan by Darby Kern. Uslan has been an executive producer of several Batman movies, but also wrote several of The Shadow comics. Though I have to be honest that I’ve not always like them, as he has The Shadow act in ways I think are out of character for him.
There is another article looking at The Shadow’s New York, this time from Steve Novak. Many American pulps were published in other countries, sometimes with changes, including new artwork. We also get an article looking at the Canadian edition of The Shadow.
There is a review of book The Shadow in Review by John Olsen, which I’ve also reviewed here.
So as noted, this concludes my three issues from the Kickstarter campaign. Subscriptions are available for the next three issues, and I have subscribed. I encourage others to do as well, and if you haven’t, get these issues. They are all available on Amazon, but for more than it costs to subscribe (and you won’t get any extras). Because of this, I am going to shift to what I do with The Bronze Gazette by doing a single posting on all the issues from a subscription set. So I will instead do a posting for issues #4-6.
