It looks like him, but that’s not The Shadow I know.
I’ve read the first eight issues of Dynamite‘s The Shadow comic book recently. Funny, but I was expecting a great adaptation of the pulp character in graphic form.
Dynamite put together a great team of artists for the covers — particularly Alex Ross and Francesco Francavilla — but Dynamite should have spent more time learning who The Shadow is.
Instead of building on the tremendous history of the 325 Shadow pulps, writers Garth Ennis, Victor Gischler and Tom Sniegoski simply took the names of some of the pulp’s characters and the physical appearance of The Shadow, then must have decided that was enough.
What we ended up with is nothing more unique than any number of run-of-the-mill vigilante-themed series. There’s very little in the Dynamite series that makes The Shadow, The Shadow. In fact, he — and, as a result, the comic book — is wrongly named. Take out the whole supernatural element and this comic really should be titled The Spider.
What you find in the Dynamite series is a blood-thirsty vigilante — forget judge and jury; this Shadow is simply executioner. Oh, and one who can interrogate the dead(?!).
Also, consider this from Dynamite’s own teaser for The Shadow Special #1: “(Lamont) Cranston‘s justice serving alter ego must judge a man whose path to villainy began with their friendship!” Uh, hello? Anyone at Dynamite ever read a Shadow pulp? Cranston is a key character, but more often than not he is being impersonated by The Shadow. Cranston is not The Shadow.
In the comics, The Shadow’s agents even openly speak of Cranston being The Shadow. In issue number 8, for instance, Cranston and Miles Crofton are seated at a French cafe. As a waiter stands by, Crofton says, “It’s just that your alter-ego has a funny idea of what constitutes a vacation.” So much for secret identities, or mystery for that matter.
I won’t go into the romantic relationship between Cranston and Margot Lane (which did not exist in the pulps).
Making matters much worse, the series is narrated by none other than The Shadow himself. This undermines one of the key elements of mystery in the pulp series.
I wanted to bang my head against the desk every few panels while reading the series.
For the Dynamite gang, here are five key tips for depicting The Shadow as he should be:
1. Make the narrator one of The Shadow’s agents. For the most part, Harry Vincent is the reader’s surrogate in The Shadow pulps. While Harry follows The Shadow’s orders and moves the plot forward through his investigations, The Shadow works behind the scenes — sifting clues, puzzling out the villain’s plot and pulling the strings for a final confrontation.
2. Keep The Shadow mysterious. The Shadow wasn’t front and center. He was to the side of the stage, just out of focus. Who is The Shadow? That is an on-going mystery for both the pulp’s characters and its readers. By keeping The Shadow in the shadows, it heightens the enigma surrounding him. Sure, we are able to follow The Shadow during his outings, but we are never privy to his thoughts. The closest we get is when The Shadow holes up in his Sanctum, picks up his pen and lists the facts so far and possible actions to come.
3. Forget the mystical, supernatural business. The Shadow of the pulps is just a man — a talented and skilled individual, but just a man. Writer Walter Gibson drew from his background in stage magic to have The Shadow project the illusion of being supernatural in the eyes of those he battled. The Shadow uses the power of suggestion, hypnotism and sleight of hand — but he never reads people’s minds or “clouds” (despite the radio show) them so that he is invisible. He uses darkness, black clothing and subterfuge for concealment in much the same way that ninjas did.
4. The Shadow isn’t a blood-thirsty killer. Robert Sampson, in his excellent book The Night Master, writes: “The Shadow will become one of literature’s more deadly heroes. … Even during the most violent of his attacks, however, he does more hand-to-hand battle than shooting. Drives right into a batch of killers, slugging away with his automatics. This is not to save lives, but to conserve ammunition.” The Shadow metes out justice for the villain in the end, but it’s not the wholesale slaughter of every henchman of evil. Who will there be left to spread the word of The Shadow in the underworld?
5. Lamont Cranston isn’t The Shadow. In “The Shadow Laughs” (October 1931), Lamont Cranston meets The Shadow: “Some people call me The Shadow. That is but one identity. I have other personalities that I assume, as easily as I don my black cloak and hat. One of my personalities is that of Lamont Cranston.” Not even The Shadow’s agents really know who he is, even after his “true identity” is revealed as pilot/explorer Kent Allard in “The Shadow Unmasks” (Aug. 1, 1937). They all assume that each of them is an agent or, maybe, a disguise of The Shadow, rather than The Shadow himself.
Dynamite, you’re taking the lazy route, making The Shadow nothing more than a ubiquitous superhero comic book.
You’ve got the look of The Shadow down. Now take some effort and get the characterization right.
You hit the nail on the head. Throughout the many iterations of this character in the comic book format, very few have gotten it right. Some of the better takes on the Shadow I feel were done by Dark Horse in the late 90’s. I’ve been tempted to write a one-shot so I can show Dynamite how it’s done.
EXACTLY! I hope someone at DYNAMITE reads this and takes even part of it to heart! Good job!
I’ve given up on anyone ever doing The Shadow right. Especially the comic books. Why don’t they just create their own characters and call them something else. I’ve read all 325 pulp Shadows, and prefer to read them again to what writers would do to him today. Comic books have never got the “pulp hero” characters right. Ever. And never will.
I by no means consider the current series perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the comic book Shadow is clearly not the pulp Shadow and never was meant to be. Like so many other Shadow comics before it, the writers clearly are building off the concepts from the radio show far more than the pulps.
But that’s the nature of the beast when probably three times as many people (at least) have heard a Shadow radio play compared to reading an old issue of the Shadow.
I don’t see very much of the radio program in the Dynamite series. I discovered The Shadow in paperback reprints and rebroadcasts of the radio program in the ’70s. I still enjoy them both, even though they are in essence completely different characters. The Dynamite series offer yet another different character with the same name.
As a fan of The Shadow for 40 years, I shuddered when I read this comic and came to the panel wherein ‘The Shadow’ (?) uses his apparent ‘power of invisibility’ to pop up behind a group of thugs and summarily executes them by shooting them all in the back.
Of course, he laughed while doing so.
Everything you say is absolutely correct. But you know what, Dynamite’s readers don’t care, nor for the most part, do they want to know anything about any prior incarnations of the classic characters (Zorro, Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, The Spider, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, etc.) that Dynamite has dusted off. As someone who has lodged more than a few similar complaints on Dynamite’s forums, I can tell you that 80% or more of Dynamite’s readers are deaf and blind to such matters. To them, these are NEW characters. Even when a writer like Matt Wagner, who is usually more sensitive to such things, is brought in to write THE SHADOW YEAR ONE he is now constrained by the drivel about mystical powers and such that Garth Ennis attached to the character. By the way, a Shadow special revealed that he is indeed Kent Allard, but beyond that, you don’t want to know much about the story (in DE’s version, Allard committed heinous war crimes during WWI). Almost all of Dynamite’s classic characters are reboots in some sense of the word, some more so than others. That a few of them are closer to the source material that others, would seem to be either at the whim of the original writer or the license owner.