Review: Knight of Darkness: The Legend of The Shadow - Will Murray

Will Murray has written more non-fiction about The Shadow than anyone else, and whatever he wants to write about the character and his adventures, I’ll gladly read because it’s always entertaining and informative. Such is the case with KNIGHT OF DARKNESS: THE LEGEND OF THE SHADOW, the latest volume of Shadow scholarship from Murray.

This book collects a wide assortment of articles about The Shadow written by Murray at various times in his career. There are several behind-the-scenes looks at the creation of the pulp character, including an examination of exactly how the series was plotted by author Walter B. Gibson, editor John Nanovic, and Street & Smith executive Henry Ralston. I’ve read a bunch about The Shadow over the years, much of it by Murray, but I learned some things I didn’t know from these articles.

Murray also writes about Gibson’s very prolific career in comic book scripting and his work with various famous magicians. Other articles take a look at the different movie incarnations of The Shadow, from the Victor Jory serial all the way up to the Alec Baldwin movie in the Nineties. The radio show comes in for extensive discussions, as well, and I’m always interested in reading about that version since it was actually my introduction to the character. Murray covers all the comic book versions, most of which I remember reading. Well, not the ones in the Forties, although I have read some reprints of them. But I sure remember those from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties.

As always, all these articles are well-written and great fun to read. In addition to that, there are dozens of superb illustrations by Michael Wm Kaluta, the artist most associated with the Shadow comic books, and the great Frank Hamilton, whose fine work graced the pages of pulp fanzines for many years. This is an excellent volume all around and I had a great time reading it. It’s available on Amazon in a handsome trade paperback edition. I think there’s at least one more volume of Shadow non-fiction to come from Murray, and I’m looking forward to it.

Review: Gangland's Doom: The Shadow of the Pulps (50th Anniversary Edition) - Frank Eisgruber Jr.

I’ve been hearing about GANGLAND’S DOOM, the ground-breaking study of The Shadow by Frank Eisgruber Jr., for many years. By the time I got into pulp fandom in the early Eighties, the book’s original edition, published by Robert Weinberg, had been out for several years. It was reprinted later by Starmont House and Altus Press, but I never got around to picking up a copy and reading it.

When the fine folks at The Shadowed Circle decided to do a special 50^th Anniversary Edition, I got on board right away, knowing the quality of the work they do. And they certainly didn’t disappoint. I’ve just read the new edition of GANGLAND’S DOOM, and it’s fantastic.

This was one of the very first books of pulp scholarship. Eisgruber takes a good look at The Shadow’s true identity, the various false identities he employed in his war against crime, the many agents and helpers who also enlisted in that war, the great villains against whom The Shadow and his organization battled, and the multitude of settings used in the almost 400 novels in the pulp series. He covers as well the three main authors of the saga, Walter B. Gibson, Theodore Tinsley, and Bruce Elliott, and this new edition provides several appendixes, correspondence between Eisgruber and fellow Shadow expert Will Murray, and an interview with him.

Will long-time Shadow fans learn much that’s new in this volume? Well, probably not much. Numerous other books have been published that delve deeply into the history of the character, not to mention the many articles from the journal THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and earlier pulp fanzines. But is GANGLAND’S DOOM well-written, informative, and highly entertaining? It absolutely is. I don’t know of any Shadow fan who wouldn’t greatly enjoy this affectionate look at a favorite character.

And I did come across one idea I’d never encountered before, at least as far as I recall. Eisgruber discusses—and rightfully dismisses—Philip José Farmer’s speculation that the flying spy G-8, The Spider, and The Shadow were all the same man. I don’t buy that for a second, but Eisgruber mentions an alternate possibility, that following World War I, G-8 became the detective and master of disguise Secret Agent X, and I can believe that. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it seems feasible to me. (Using the word “true” loosely, of course, since we are talking about pulp characters . . .)

As for the book itself, it’s beautifully produced. You’d expect no less from editor/publisher Steve Donoso and his associates. I was a Kickstarter backer and got my copy that way, but it’s available on Amazon in a hardcover edition with a cover and illustrations by Joseph Booth (the edition I read) and a paperback with a cover by Marcin Nowacki. There’s also a Kindle edition. You can also buy the print editions and plenty of other great Shadow material directly from the publisher, which is always an excellent option. If you’re a fan of The Shadow, I can’t recommend this one highly enough. It’s a great book and one of the best I’ve read so far this year.

The Shadowed Circle Compendium Kickstarter is Live

The Kickstarter campaign for THE SHADOWED CIRCLE COMPENDIUM is now live. As the campaign page describes it:

Our passion project Kickstarter Campaign is for The Shadowed Circle Compendium: a Large-Format, B&W, 8.5" x 11" volume, of at least 120 pages (more if we hit our 1st Stretch Goal), available in both hardcover, paperback, and high-res digital format. The book will feature some of the finest pulp, comic book, and radio episode articles, as well as art, from the first two years of The Shadowed Circle journal: the preeminent non-fiction publication about Walter B. Gibson's master sleuth, The Shadow. 

The Compendium will also include 25 to 30 pages of Newly Written Articles Appearing Exclusively in this volume. The Introduction to the book will be written by Batman Film Producer, and Shadow Comic Author, Michael Uslan and the Foreword will be written by Shadow Historian and Pulp Author, Will Murray.

I've really enjoyed reading THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and look forward to this collection of some of the best material from it, plus all-new articles that I'm sure will be excellent, as well. I've already backed it, and if you're a fan of The Shadow, I don't hesitate to give it a high recommendation.

Dark Avenger: The Strange Saga of The Shadow - Will Murray

One of the first books I ever bought about pulps was THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE by Will Murray, an author/editor/pulp fan who I probably met through our mutual friend Tom Johnson. This was more than 40 years ago, so some of the details have slipped my memory. But I was a big fan of The Shadow, having listened to the radio shows, read all the original novels published by Belmont (having no idea at the time that they were written by Dennis Lynds, another guy who would become a friend years later) and all the reprinted pulp novels from Bantam, Pyramid, Jove, Tempo, Dover, etc. So I dived into THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE with great enthusiasm and was well-rewarded. I loved it. It’s one of the all-time best books about pulps, in my opinion. Plus it’s a beautiful oversized paperback with a great cover by Frank Hamilton.

Of course, my copy was lost in the Fire of ’08 and I never got around to replacing it.

But now we come to today, and Will Murray’s latest book DARK AVENGER: THE STRANGE SAGA OF THE SHADOW. This is a greatly revised and expanded version of THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE and includes all the information Murray gleaned from the past forty-some-odd years of research. I opened it with the same enthusiasm I felt four decades ago and wasn’t the least bit disappointed. This is the best, most exhaustive volume about a single pulp magazine ever written.

Anything you want to know about THE SHADOW MAGAZINE is in here. The authors are covered extensively (mostly Walter B. Gibson, of course, but there’s plenty about Theodore Tinsley, Bruce Elliott, and Lester Dent, as well), as well as the editors and illustrators and the Street & Smith executives who were involved in the magazine’s production. The entire run of 325 novels is broken down into distinct categories, and Murray explores how they were written, how the series evolved, and the various influences that caused that evolution. He touches on the various versions of The Shadow after the pulp ended, but this is mostly about the 18-year run between 1931 and 1949. Rightly so, as far as I’m concerned since the pulp Shadow is my favorite.

The cover of this new edition is by Joe DeVito, who has done great covers for many of Murray’s books in recent years. I really like this one because it captures The Shadow’s personality quite well and also includes Myra Reldon, one of The Shadow’s agents from the novels who usually isn’t featured in artwork about the character and the pulp. An excellent job all around by DeVito. The book also includes a lot of the interior illustrations by Frank Hamilton from the earlier edition. I always loved Hamilton’s work and am very pleased to see these illustrations again. They really bring back a bygone era of pulp fandom filled with printed fanzines and books like THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE.

Even if you’re a fan of The Shadow and read the original version, you’re going to want to read the new edition, too. I raced through it, unable to put it down, having the time of my life reliving memories of the Shadow novels I’ve read and being reminded of all the great ones still waiting for me to read. Between the great journal THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and the books devoted to the character by Will Murray, this is the new Golden Age of Shadow Fandom. DARK AVENGER gets my highest recommendation. It’s available in both e-book and trade paperback editions.

The Shadowed Circle #4 - Steve Donoso, ed.

THE SHADOWED CIRCLE #4 is out and is available from the publisher and Amazon. This publication continues to be a very welcome return to the classic days of pulp fanzines. The issue starts out strongly with a great Rozen-like cover with art by Kevin Duncan and color and design by Steve Novak. This is my favorite cover so far and perfectly captures the feel of The Shadow.

Editor Steve Donoso has put together an exceptional array of articles, leading off with the first installment of a three-part article by long-time pulp fan Dick Myers, who passed away in 2005. This never-before-published article, written probably in the early Seventies, was found among his papers and deals with just how The Shadow went about financing his vast organization of agents and assistants. It’s clear that Myers put a lot of thought into this and the article makes for fascinating reading.

Will Murray muses about mysteries concerning The Shadow to which Walter B. Gibson never revealed the answers. Tim King tackles one of those mysteries with some very interesting speculation and makes a strong case for his conclusion, as far as I’m concerned. Todd D. Severin begins a series covering The Shadow’s appearances in comic books and concentrates on the Forties in this part. Since that’s an area of The Shadow's history which I’ve seldom read about in detail, I learned a lot and really enjoyed this article, as I did the following article by Daryl Morrisey that covers the comic book meetings between The Shadow and Doc Savage. John Olsen, the only person I can think of who’s read every single Shadow pulp novel, writes about the radio show this time around, in particular the final broadcast, and his article is both informative and poignant.

This issue also features the second part of a lengthy interview with writer and producer Michael Uslan, who has written several comic book stories and graphic novels featuring The Shadow. Uslan discusses several mini-series I’d never even heard of, so of course I had to go to Amazon and pick up copies of them. I’m looking forward to reading them.

The back cover features the two novels written by Will Murray that feature meetings between Doc Savage and The Shadow, THE SINISTER SHADOW and EMPIRE OF DOOM, with beautiful artwork by Joe DeVito. It’s a fitting wrap-up for what is, in my opinion, the finest issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE so far. If you’re a fan of the character, I give it my highest recommendation . . . and I suspect the next issue will continue that trajectory.

The Shadow 1941: Hitler's Astrologer - Denny O'Neil and Michael Kaluta

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of The Shadow (mostly the pulp version) and have been for more than fifty years now. So it’s not surprising that I picked up a hardcover of this graphic novel when it first came out in 1988. THE SHADOW 1941: HITLER’S ASTROLOGER is by the writer/artist team of Denny O’Neil and Michael Kaluta, who produced quite a few excellent issues of The Shadow comic book series in the Seventies.

It's also not too surprising that I never got around to reading that copy I bought back then. I have the attention span of a six-week-old puppy, after all. However, I discovered a while back that Dynamite Comics has reissued HITLER’S ASTROLOGER in hardback, and there’s even an ebook edition that’s available on Kindle Unlimited. (Back in 1988 when the book first came out, none of that would have made any sense at all.) Anyway, I figured it was finally time for me to read it.

I’m glad I did. The script by O’Neil and Kaluta, which has The Shadow and his agents manipulating real-world events involving the Nazi Bund, Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Operation Barbarossa, and Adolph Hitler himself, of course, is action-packed, intriguing, and moves along very nicely. It doesn’t quite capture the same feeling as Walter B. Gibson’s magnificent pulp creation, but as pastiche goes, it’s pretty darned good. Kaluta’s art, though, with inks by Russ Heath (a comic book legend in his own right) is just outstanding, a superb job of creating a blend between precarious events in the real world and the breakneck machinations of The Shadow and his crew of helpers. I had a great time reading this graphic novel, which, ultimately, is the most important thing to me. In the unlikely event that you’re a fan of The Shadow but haven’t read it, like me until recently, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crime Busters, June 1938

The cover's not bad on this issue of CRIME BUSTERS (I don't know the artist), but man, look at the authors and series inside: Lester Dent with a Click Rush story, Walter B. Gibson (as Maxwell Grant) with a Norgil the Magician story, Norvell Page with a story featuring Angus Saint Cloud, the Death Angel (don't know this series, but what a great name!), Theodore Tinsley with a Carrie Cashin story, plus yarns by Frank Gruber, Wyatt Blassingame, and Arthur J. Burks. This looks like an absolutely great issue.

Master of Mystery: The Rise of the Shadow - Will Murray

This is the book that prompted me to read a Shadow novel, as I mentioned a few days ago. Will Murray has written a great deal about the character over the years, and MASTER OF MYSTERY: THE RISE OF THE SHADOW collects some of the best of it, including some updated material. Two lengthy interviews with Walter B. Gibson, a history of The Shadow radio show, interviews with Theodore Tinsley, who ghosted more than two dozen of the novels, John Nanovic, who edited the series for ten years, and Graves Gladney, one of the best known cover artists for the pulp. That’s a wealth of great Shadow-related material right there. Murray rounds out the volume with articles about illustrator Edd Cartier, Gibson’s involvement with the world of magic, and The Shadow’s influence on the creation of The Batman. I’d read some of this before but had a great time reading it again. MASTER OF MYSTERY: THE RISE OF THE SHADOW is not only informative but very entertaining, and I give it a very high recommendation.

Forgotten Books: The Black Falcon - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

I was in the mood to read a Shadow novel, so I went for one of the early ones, “The Black Falcon”, from the February 1, 1934 issue of the iconic pulp. As the story opens, the mastermind who calls himself The Black Falcon has opened his campaign of crime already. He has kidnapped a wealthy banker, and plans are underway to kidnap another of New York City’s wealthy socialites. The Black Falcon is so arrogant that he informs Police Commissioner Ralph Weston of his plans and includes a dyed-black falcon feather with his missive.

But unknown to The Black Falcon, The Shadow is already on his trail, and even though the crime boss may pull off another kidnapping and murder or two, we know that eventually justice, in the form of The Shadow, will catch up to him.

Like many of the early Shadow novels, “The Black Falcon” has a fairly mundane crime plot at its heart. The true identity of the masked mastermind calling himself The Black Falcon is so obvious that author Walter B. Gibson doesn’t even try to maintain that mystery past the middle of the book, revealing that secret and explaining everything else about the plot in a rather awkward conversation between The Black Falcon and his chief henchman that serves as an info-dump for the reader.

However, I don’t think many readers then or now enjoy the Shadow novels solely because of the mystery angles. It seems to me that the two primary elements in the series’ appeal are action and atmosphere, and Gibson delivers on those quite well in “The Black Falcon”. There are several scenes where The Shadow appears unexpectedly, and Gibson always does a great job on those. The same is true of the shootouts between The Shadow and various hordes of gangsters. The bullets really fly in those, and I always enjoy them.

“The Black Falcon” is notable for a couple of other reasons: the actual Lamont Cranston makes one of his infrequent appearances and plays a role in the plot; and The Shadow reveals his true face to The Black Falcon, who is so horrified and stunned that for a vital few moments he falls apart like the narrator of an H.P. Lovecraft story. This story takes place well before The Shadow’s true identity was revealed to be that of aviator Kent Allard. The consensus among Shadow scholars is that Allard’s face was hideously scarred during World War I and still displayed those scars during the early days of his crusade against crime, but later plastic surgery repaired the damage. That seems plenty feasible to me.

While “The Black Falcon” isn’t in the top rank of Shadow novels as far as I’m concerned, I had a great time reading it. I enjoy Gibson’s style, I like The Shadow’s agents (Harry Vincent appears in this one), and the action scenes are very effective. If you’re a Shadow fan, it’s well worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crime Busters, February 1938

I'm not too fond of the photo covers on CRIME BUSTERS, but man, look at that line-up of authors! The Lester Dent story is part of his Click Rush, the Gadget Man, series, while Walter B. Gibson, writing as Maxwell Grant, contributes a Norgil the Magician yarn. Ted Tinsley's story features his female private eye, Carrie Cashin. The others are all series stories, too, although, while I certainly know the authors, I'm not familiar with the characters: Steve Fisher (Big Red Brennan), Norvell Page (Dick Barrett), Frank Gruber (Jim Strong), and Norman A. Daniels (Boxcar Reilly). Photo cover or not, I'd sure read this one if I had a copy of it.

Forgotten Books: The Salamanders - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

I only read two or three Shadow novels a year, so at that rate I’ll never get through the entire series, but that’s all right. There are a lot of book series I’ll never finish. I try to read what I enjoy and enjoy what I read, and that’s all that matters.

My latest venture into the world of The Shadow is THE SALAMANDERS, which was published in the April 1, 1936 issue of THE SHADOW. This yarn is even more action-packed than usual, and that’s not an accident. Walter B. Gibson, who wrote 282 of the Shadow novels under the name Maxwell Grant, was under orders from the editor and publisher at Street & Smith to put even more action in the novels in order to compete with the success that THE SPIDER was having over at Popular Publications.

So THE SALAMANDERS begins with a huge fire that destroys a hotel in the town of Riverport, which is somewhere in “the South”. Gibson never gets more specific about the location than that. Not only is the hotel burned to the ground, but it looks very much like Harry Vincent, one of The Shadow’s chief agents, is killed in the blaze. For a good half of the book, it appears that Harry is a goner.

Of course, long-time fans know that he has to survive, and sure enough, later on The Shadow rescues him from the clutches of the bad guys. By this time, there have been more fires, some deadly explosions, an avalanche from which The Shadow barely escapes, shoot-outs with minions who have names like Sloopy and Jink, and creepy encounters with bizarre figures who are able to walk unscathed through infernos—the Salamanders of the title.

As often happens in Shadow novels, the big master plan behind all this actually turns out to be pretty mundane. But that doesn’t really matter, because the numerous fast-paced action scenes are the true appeal of this yarn. Gibson approaches apocalyptic levels in some of the scenes, and the final showdown in a burning mansion is great stuff.

Harry Vincent is the only agent who plays much of a part in this one, and oddly enough, The Shadow never makes use of the Lamont Cranston identity. He employs a couple of disguises, but nothing special. It’s almost like Gibson shoved all that aside to make room for the shooting and the running and the burning up and blowing up. That’s okay with me, although I kind of missed some of the usual touches. Still, THE SALAMANDERS is the best Shadow novel I’ve read in a while. If you’re a fan and haven’t read it yet, you definitely need to check it out.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crime Busters, July 1938

Another great cover by Norman Saunders on this issue of CRIME BUSTERS, and look at the line-up of authors: Walter B. Gibson (writing as Maxwell Grant) with a Norgil the Magician story; Lester Dent (a Click Rush, Gadget Man story); Theodore Tinsley (a Carrie Cashin story); Steve Fisher (a Big Red Brennan story); Frank Gruber (a Jim Strong story); Alan Hathway (a Colby Lyman story); and George Allan Moffatt (a Duncan Dean story). Now, I'm not familiar with all those series characters, but I know the authors and know they could be counted on to produce entertaining yarns. And any pulp with Dent, Gibson, Gruber, Tinsley, and Fisher has got to be good reading!

Forgotten Books: Bells of Doom - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

I was in the mood to read a Shadow novel, so I picked up a reprint I have of “Bells of Doom”, the 74^th entry in the long-running series, which was originally published in the March 15, 1935 issue of THE SHADOW. That’s a great pulpish title and promises lots of sinister goings-on.

This one starts on an ocean liner bound for New York from England. One of the passengers is Lamont Cranston. Who, as we all know, is really The Shadow . . . only The Shadow isn’t actually Cranston . . . No, that’s too complicated a story. Those of you who already know it, fine. Those who don’t, it’s not really important in the context of this novel. Let’s just say that Cranston sits in on a poker game with three other travelers, one of whom is a rich guy who’s gotten hold of a rajah’s valuable jewels and is afraid that crooks are after them. Well, of course they are, and when everybody is back in New York, the other two players in the poker game, young wastrel Milton Claverly and smooth crook Hatch Rosling, conspire to steal the jewels.

Wait a minute, you say. This is a jewel theft book? What about the bells? We’re getting to them, because after The Shadow foils the robbery, Milton Claverly (who has covered up his part in it) travels to the small town of Torburg, where he inherits his father’s estate, which includes a mansion, a creepy crypt, an equally creepy bell tower (there are the bells!), and four enemies who swindled Milton’s dad out of a fortune. Before you know it, those four swindlers are being knocked off one by one, and every time one of them is killed, bells peal out from the tower, which is locked up tight and no one can get in to ring them. So this novel is sort of a locked bell tower mystery.

The Shadow is around, and so is his agent Harry Vincent, and everybody seems to have a hidden agenda, and the murders continue, and honestly, the whole thing is a little on the bland side until a dizzying bunch of double-crosses and hidden identities and plotlines that appeared to be long since abandoned, and while I figured out some of it and had a hunch who the hidden mastermind was, author Walter B. Gibson had me fooled on some things. It all wraps up with a nice shoot-out in that crypt.

Gibson’s Shadow novels are notorious for their padding, and that seems a bit more obvious than usual in this one. But hey, the guy was writing two mystery novels a month, so I’m willing to cut him some slack on that. “Bells of Doom” also could have used a little more action (some of The Shadow’s epic gun battles with hordes of mobsters in other stories are great). This isn’t in the top rank of Shadow novels . . . but you know what, I got a lot of enjoyment out of it anyway. I’ve been reading The Shadow for more than 40 years, ever since Bantam started reprinting them in the Sixties, and then when I was in college I was a big fan of the Jove reprints with covers by Jim Steranko. So the series has quite a bit of nostalgic appeal for me, and there are some nice creepy scenes in this yarn. Probably not the one to start with if you’ve never read a Shadow novel, but I liked it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crime Busters, July 1939

That racy cover by Graves Gladney looks more like it ought to be on a Spicy pulp rather than one from Street & Smith. But hey, I like it. And inside are stories by Lester Dent, Walter B. Gibson, Paul Ernst, and Theodore Tinsley, four titans of the pulp business, along with Robert C. Blackmon and George Allen Moffatt. I don't think I've ever read an issue of CRIME BUSTERS. I'm pretty sure I don't own any. I would have bought this one if I'd been around in 1939, though.

Forgotten Books: The Man From Scotland Yard - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

I hadn't read a Shadow novel in quite a while and was in the mood for one, so I picked a story that I'd heard was pretty good, THE MAN FROM SCOTLAND YARD, which appeared in the August 1, 1935 issue of THE SHADOW. It turned out to be a decent choice, but before I talk about that, I'm going to wallow a bit in nostalgia. Consider yourself warned.

I have a long history with The Shadow. I first encountered the character in syndicated reruns of the radio show back in the early 1960s. I thoroughly enjoyed them, although I had no idea at the time of the character's pulp origins. A few years later, on the paperback spinner rack in Tompkins' Drugstore, I came across the Belmont edition of THE SHADOW STRIKES, the first original Shadow novel by Dennis Lynds, writing under the house-name Maxwell Grant. Of course, I didn't know then that Lynds wrote it, and I certainly never would have guessed that years later he and I would become friends through correspondence. All I knew was that I loved the book and thought this version of the character was even better than the one in the radio show. Lynds wrote more Shadow novels for Belmont over the next few years, and I snatched them all up as I found them and read them with eagerness and great enjoyment.

(A little background: When Belmont began this new series of Shadow paperbacks, the first one, RETURN OF THE SHADOW, was written by Walter B. Gibson, who created the character and wrote the vast majority of the pulp novels. I didn't find that one and read it until several years later. When the arrangement with Gibson didn't work out, Belmont turned to Lynds to continue the series. This was a very busy time for Lynds. Not only was he writing the Shadow paperbacks, he was also writing all the Mike Shayne novelettes and novellas in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, many of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. novellas in the digest of the same name, and starting his long-running series of award-winning, critically acclaimed novels about one-armed private eye Dan Fortune under the name Michael Collins. He certainly didn't stint on his Shadow novels, though, at least not to my mind at the time. I've never reread any of them, but I'd like to if I could find the time.)

Moving on, a few more years went by, and I found the Bantam paperback reprint of THE LIVING SHADOW, the first novel in the pulp series from 1931. I still remember reading it while sitting on the front porch of my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas, seemingly unable to turn the pages fast enough to keep up with the excitement of the tale. This was the best Shadow so far.

By then I had encountered Doc Savage and learned some about the pulps. While The Shadow never replaced Doc as my favorite from that era, I read all the paperbacks published by Bantam and then later by Pyramid and Jove, many of the latter with great covers by the legendary Jim Steranko. By that time I was in college, attending what was then North Texas State University in Denton. One summer when I was commuting from my home in Azle, about 50 miles away, the vagaries of the schedule meant that I had one class early in the morning and another late in the afternoon, with a big block of time in the middle of the day to kill. It was too far to go home and come back. Most days I spent that time in the basement of the library, sitting in one of the study carrels 'way in the back, behind the stacks. Did I study? Heck, no. I smuggled in food and drink and sat there in near-isolation reading paperbacks, and the ones I remember most vividly are those Shadow novels with Steranko covers. (I now realize that I actually was studying for what turned out to be my career, I just didn't know it at the time. What better preparation could there be, though, for writing hundreds of over-the-top action novels than reading the novels of Walter B. Gibson and all the other pulpsters whose work I was devouring back then?)

In the 40 years since, I've read many, many Shadow novels, some in reprint and quite a few in the original pulps. I remember sitting in the hospital reading a Shadow pulp right after our first daughter was born, while Livia and Shayna were both sleeping. THE SHADOW ran from 1931 to 1949, and the quality of the series breaks pretty neatly in the middle. The stories from the 1930s are consistently good to excellent, although there are some mediocre entries in the bunch. The 1940s stories are just the opposite: some gems here and there, but mostly bland, uninspiring little mysteries. No criminal super-masterminds, no hordes of vicious gangsters being mowed down by The Shadow's .45s, no apocalyptic action scenes.

So where does THE MAN FROM SCOTLAND YARD fit in? Sort of in the middle. The main plot concerns a gang of international spies who are out to steal some weapons plans and sell them to an unnamed power in Europe. (Cough*Germany*cough.) It's somewhat interesting but not that compelling. But there's a great scene where The Shadow lands his autogyro on the deck of the bad guys' ship in the middle of the Atlantic and goes to town with those .45 automatics. A few other action scenes are pretty good, but overall there aren't as many of them as in some of the novels, and The Shadow is off-screen a lot. Quite a bit of the story consists of guys standing in hotel rooms talking.

However, through a very neat bit of trickery, Gibson sets up a situation where the reader doesn't know if one of the characters is really a hero, a villain, a hero pretending to be a villain, or vice versa. It takes almost the entire novel for that conundrum to be resolved, and I enjoyed being puzzled. THE MAN FROM SCOTLAND YARD doesn't reach the operatic heights of some of the early novels, but it's considerably better than most of the ones I've read from the Forties. It was reprinted a while back in one of those double editions with ZEMBA, a novel that's considered by many fans to be one of the best in the whole series. That edition seems to be out of print, but I imagine copies can be found at various places on-line. I enjoyed THE MAN FROM SCOTLAND YARD enough that I plan to read another Shadow novel fairly soon.

The Shadow: Crime, Insured - Maxwell Grant (Walter B. Gibson)

Originally published in the July 1, 1937 issue of the long-running pulp magazine THE SHADOW, “Crime, Insured” was the choice to lead off the series of reprints being published by Nostalgia Ventures for the past few years. These are really handsome trade paperbacks approximately the same size as a pulp that reprint two Shadow novels in each volume.

My history with The Shadow goes back to the early Sixties, when episodes from the old-time radio show were syndicated to local stations across the country. One of the stations in my area began airing them, along with episodes of THE LONE RANGER, THE GREEN HORNET, and GANGBUSTERS, in a block from ten o’clock until midnight every night. I had a combination AM radio/reading light that attached to the headboard of my bed, so I would turn the volume real low and listen to those old radio shows while I was supposed to be sleeping. I enjoyed all of them, although, to be honest, THE LONE RANGER was my favorite.

Then in 1964, I bought a paperback called THE SHADOW STRIKES off the spinner rack at Tompkins’ Drugstore, realizing this was the same character. At the time, I didn’t know anything about the pulps, but I really liked this book, which was written by somebody named Maxwell Grant. Of course, it was actually written by Dennis Lynds, as were the original Shadow paperbacks that followed it for the next few years, all of which I bought and read faithfully. Eventually I found out about the Shadow pulp novels, and about how that series of paperbacks that melded the pulp character with the secret agent boom that was going on came to be written. And the pulp novels themselves began to be reprinted by Bantam, beginning with the very first one from 1931, “The Living Shadow”. I read all the Bantam reprints and the even longer reprint series that came out a few years later from Pyramid/Jove/HBJ (many of them with covers by Jim Steranko). I read the ones that were reprinted by Doubleday in Crime Club editions, as well as the occasional odd reprint from other publishers. And of course, I acquired some of the actual pulps along the way and read them, too. Although The Shadow was never my favorite pulp character, I enjoyed the novels a lot.

So I’m glad to see some of them being reprinted again, including quite a few that I haven’t read. One of which was “Crime, Insured”. (You thought I was going to wander around in Nostalgia Land forever, didn’t you?) In this yarn, an insurance magnate has come up with a new idea: he’ll insure the schemes of various big-shot crooks in New York, so that if they fail to collect the loot they’re after, the insurance company will pay off that amount. If the crooks succeed, the company gets a ten per cent premium. Naturally, The Shadow gets wind of this scheme and sets out to destroy it with the help of his various agents. And that leads to something that hadn’t happened up to that point in the series. The bad guys fight back and discover most of The Shadow’s secrets, including the identities of his agents, the fact that he poses as Lamont Cranston (he’s not really Lamont Cranston, no matter what the radio show and the later novels said; trust me on this if you don’t know the story already), and even the location of his secret sanctum where he plans out his war on crime.

Many Shadow fans regard “Crime, Insured” as the best novel in the entire series. I wouldn’t go that far myself. The underlying scheme is just too pedestrian, and I’ve read numerous Shadow novels that I enjoyed more. However, I understand why it’s a fan favorite: it has a huge, over-the-top action sequence in which the villains capture all The Shadow’s agents and invade his sanctum for an epic battle. This is Walter B. Gibson (the original “Maxwell Grant” and the author of nearly 300 Shadow pulp novels) at his best, and it’s a great scene. There’s also a tie-in with an earlier Shadow novel, “The Black Hush”, which is one of my favorites in the series.

If you’ve never read a Shadow novel before, I’m not sure I’d recommend “Crime, Insured” as the best place to start, even though most of the supporting cast appears and there are those great action scenes. But if you’re a fan of the series and haven’t read this one yet, you definitely need to.

The other novel reprinted in this volume is “The Golden Vulture”, which was written by Lester Dent as a try-out for the Doc Savage series and then not published until five years later, when it was extensively revised by Gibson. There’s also an interesting article about how all this came about by pulp authority Will Murray. I read “The Golden Vulture” just a few years ago in the original pulp, so I’m not going to reread it any time soon, but I recall that I enjoyed it quite a bit. All in all, this was a fine way to launch the Shadow reprint series, and I hope to read more of these volumes soon.