Will Murray recently came out with his third book on The Shadow: Knight of Darkness: The Legend of The Shadow.
This follows his prior books on The Shadow: Master of Mystery: The Rise of The Shadow and Dark Avenger: The Strange Saga of The Shadow .All these come from Odyssey Publications.
While the first two books are a revamp and update of his earlier The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine, which came out in 1980, with a second edition in 1984. This work, which does incorporate previously done works, goes beyond that to look into the various media versions of The Shadow, including comicbooks, TV, and movies.
There is also a lot of artwork by Michael Wm. Kaluta, along with Frank Hamilton.
We even get some unused comicbook covers. To find out which ones, read the book.
We kick off with a nice chapter going over the creation of The Shadow. If you’ve read the first two books, it’s unnecessary, but as I’m sure there will be readers who haven’t, this is a needed starting point. We get a high-level history from The Shadow as just a radio announcer to pulp hero created by Walter Gibson, the later radio show most people know, and a hint of the other media that The Shadow appeared in.
The next chapter tells us about Harry Charlot. Who, you ask? Well, just the guy who created The Shadow as a radio announcer and wrote for the original show. And after he passed, he was mislabeled as being the person behind the Maxwell Grant pen name who wrote the pulp Shadow.
This is one of several chapters on various minor individuals involved with The Shadow that give us a deeper appreciation of the character and its creation. These includes chapters on Frank Blackwell, Street & Smith editor-in-chief for a time; art director Bill Lawler; and William Magner, who was George Rozen‘s model for The Shadow. Rozen developed the look for The Shadow. It’s Magner’s nose that became the basis for The Shadow’s.
We get a long interview with Gibson conducted by Murray in 1980. This covers his career on The Shadow, his creation of the character, as well as creating Norgil for Street & Smith. This interview was videotaped. I wonder if that’s still available somewhere?
There is a quartet of chapters on the comicbook Shadow. One looks at Gibson’s scripting Shadow comics. Another goes over most of The Shadow comics from Street & Smith, Archie, DC, et al. And the comicbook encounters between The Shadow and Batman in the 1970s. And one on the 1970s DC Comics version with Dennis O’Neil and Mike Kaluta on most issues.
The Shadow was considered as a possible TV series, and Murray found a script for such a show in the Conde Nast records. It apparently was filmed, and seems separate from Invisible Avenger/Bourbon Street Murders. I’ll have to see if I can find this. They tried to make a movie in the ’80s, and it went through development hell. And Walter Gibson was involved in that, and Murray learns of his experience during it. And we get an article and interview relating to The Shadow movie that finally happened in the ’90s.
This is a book that you can read from the beginning or jump around. I would have liked to have known where these had previously appeared, but that’s me. The chapters/articles are great, as is the accompanying artwork.
Murray says there may be a fourth book on The Shadow, collecting the various articles from the Sanctum Book reprints. I would love to see that.
I think his next work will be his Secret Agent X novel, hopefully later this year. Beyond that would be another Tarzan book and some other items.
