Robert Sampson (1927-92) was one of the major pulp researchers. His main work is his six-volume Yesterday’s Faces, which I need to finish my review of. But he has done other works, like the only major work on The Spider (which I also need to do a review on) and a major work on The Shadow: The Night Master.
I have wanted to get a copy of The Night Master for years, but never could find a reasonable price. Black Dog Books had for several years promised to reprint both his The Spider and The Night Master, but nothing came of this. At the most recent PulpFest, I found a copy for a reasonable price. Fittingly, I purchased it from one of the publishers of it, Ray Walsh. He, along with Robert Weinberg, were Pulp Press that put out a handful of books in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
This volume is a hardback, a little over 200 pages, with cover and other artwork by Frank Hamilton. It came out 1982, making it Sampson’s first book, preceding his Yesterday’s Faces series. And, he notes in the forward that this is the first in a “series of volumes about influential characters of the 1930’s pulp magazines.” Certainly, the preface, which sets down the development of dime novels into pulps, and the serialized characters who appeared in both almost act as a prelude to his Yesterday’s Faces series. So maybe this can be thought of as a “volume 0” of that?
We start off with the development of the Detective Story Hour radio show, intended to promote Street & Smith‘s Detective Story Magazine, and the creation of the mysterious narrator for this, called “The Shadow.” Then it moves into introducing us to Walter Gibson (1896-19), who would be the creator and main writer for The Shadow pulps.
We get into the setup of the early novels, and what is established in them. The characters and locations. The first of several tables lists the repeating characters that appeared in those early stories. We will get further such tables in this chapter. We go through the whole pulp series, giving highlights, and noting various changes to the series and stories. This is an enjoyable overview.
The next chapter covers all the various changes in The Shadow pulp. This includes cover artists and illustrators, departments of the magazine, The Shadow Club, and more. I don’t think I’ve seen such coverage in other books on The Shadow. Then we take a different look into The Shadow, in this case, the tradition of similar characters in literature beyond just dime novels and pulp magazines.
The final chapter looks at the impact of the character of The Shadow.
Rounding out the volume are four appendixes. The first goes over the format changes in The Shadow magazine in terms of size, page count, and cost. The second covers all the book reprints of The Shadow at the time. The third lists all The Shadow novels by publication date. The last one is interesting as it gives a pictorial history. One page provides a quartet of title pages from several magazines. We get five pages of interior artwork, then six pages of 24 covers reproduced in black and white.
It’s an excellent work on The Shadow. While Will Murray‘s new works on The Shadow are readily available and cover a lot of ground with the character, I do wish this book was as easy to obtain for fans. It provides a different take on the pulp character, his origins, influences, and impact. I especially like the effort in showing the dime novel and pulp roots of The Shadow from prior characters. If you are able to obtain a copy, do so.
I cherish my copy