The Shadow #4

[Manga4life]

I'm sorry to say this but man.....this issue was a drag. Aside from the very beginning The Shadow basically didn't truly appear in this one and the story was basically a tale of stuff that happened a long time ago, not that it was a bad story but it was kind of boring to read and there was so many word bubbles on each page that this issue took quite a while to read. The ending was pretty cool, but other than that I was fairly bored with this issue and I'm hoping that the 5th issue is a lot more enjoyable than the 4th.

What did you guys think?

[vickvega]

Boring? you're crazy! This is Ennis at his best and the art is amazing. I like my comics to take some time to read. I loved every issue but i love history and Ennis does great on these kinds of things.

[jsf]

Boring? you're crazy! This is Ennis at his best and the art is amazing. I like my comics to take some time to read. I loved every issue but i love history and Ennis does great on these kinds of things.

I agree. This has been a great series, and Ennis has been wonderful with the storytelling.

[emb021]

I didn't care for the bad guy recognizing Lamont Cranston for Kent Allard.

Thing is, these are 2 separate individuals. The Shadow (Allard) makes use of Cranston's identity. But Cranston is someone else. They may look similar, but that's it. The Shadow actually has other identities he uses. Cranston is the one most people know (and thanks to the radio show, people think Cranston IS The Shadow). Businessman Henry Arnaud is another one he uses, as well as elderly man Isaac Twambley.

Again, if Ennis had done his homework, he'd know this.

[MichaelPaytonMZ]

The radio show and the novels are so utterly different in scope and tone that almost no writer has ever been able to blend them together. To be fair, blending the radio show & novels together is a bit like trying to blend Batman: Brave & the Bold with Nolan's Batman into a single canon. Both do star the same lead character and are largely set in the same city, but otherwise might are two totally different characters. Most modern Shadow writers base 90% of their story on the mystery solving formula of the radio show because it's what the audience knows and toss in a few bits from the novels if they can get it to fit in here or there.

Ellis has been able to disguise this dilemma mostly by focusing on the Japanese characters instead of the Shadow. This actually plays closer to the novels, where the Shadow was more of a force of nature than an actual character. The stories in the books mostly revolved around the Shadow's agents or his foes with the Shadow quite literally stuck to the story's shadows until required and then disappeared again. He was as much a mystery to readers after 270+ novels as he was to criminals.

This storytelling technique worked in print, but a radio show show required a regular cast, and so gentleman detective Lamont Cranston and gal pal Margo Lane went around solving pleasant little mysteries ever week. Mind you, unlike the high adventure and sexual tension we are seeing here, the radio show was considerably tamer than the books in every way possible. Cranston & Lane were a strictly sexless paring, fit for grandma to hear (not like that drunkard Nick Charles and his hussy wife Nora from the Thin Man novel and movies), while the dangers of the mysteries were safe for Junior to listen to.

[jsf]

I've always thought of the comics iteration of the Shadow as self-contained and unrelated to either the pulps or the radio. Keeps things easier to enjoy.

[Manga4life]

I've always thought of the comics iteration of the Shadow as self-contained and unrelated to either the pulps or the radio. Keeps things easier to enjoy.

Well, yes. THIS particular Dynamite version is completely different and shouldn't be connected to anything before it whatsoever, which is why I like it so much and was never a fan of 'classic' Shadow stories.

[muppet1962]

This issue was a bit more on with the talkiness rather than the action, but I'm a sucker for the setting and themes (1930s China, Imperial Japan, Warlords, international intrigue, etc.) so I loved every page of it. The other thing is I've recently taken to reading my books in pairs (#1-2, then #3-4), which make satisfying little episodes, more than single issues tend to be, but without having to wait too long. In any case, I'm really looking forward to the rest of Ennis's first Shadow story.

[alexd]

I agree that this issue was really good.

I only know of the Shadow from the radio show. I am going to have to look for some of the books. I feel cheated.

[Ed Love]

Shouldn't be hard to find. They are being regularly reprinted, usually with a "theme" linking the two novels and sometimes a smaller third story from Street & Smith's backlog. Also, some nice essays giving historical context of the stories and often how they influence the Batman comics written by Bill Finger. Kane wasn't the only one doing swiping.

I don't think "most" writers follow the format of the radio show. Many follow the assumption that the Shadow is Lamont Cranston and include Margo Lane, but she was eventually included in the pulps as well. The 1940s comics were a merging of the pulp and radio, giving him the invisibility power, but his look was clearly based on the pulps and the stories were often adaptions of the pulp adventures. Even the wildly off Chaykin version and the Helfer ongoing that followed took more from the pulps than the radio show. The 70s series and Gerard Jones' Shadow Strikes follow more the pulp route than the radio. The radio show was followed a little more closely with the serial and the Alec Baldwin movie and even then they are more of a mixture of the two, borrowing fairly equally from both sources. The Archie Shadow just went in a completely different direction.

[emb021]

Shouldn't be hard to find. They are being regularly reprinted, usually with a "theme" linking the two novels and sometimes a smaller third story from Street & Smith's backlog. Also, some nice essays giving historical context of the stories and often how they influence the Batman comics written by Bill Finger. Kane wasn't the only one doing swiping.

I don't think "most" writers follow the format of the radio show. Many follow the assumption that the Shadow is Lamont Cranston and include Margo Lane, but she was eventually included in the pulps as well. The 1940s comics were a merging of the pulp and radio, giving him the invisibility power, but his look was clearly based on the pulps and the stories were often adaptions of the pulp adventures. Even the wildly off Chaykin version and the Helfer ongoing that followed took more from the pulps than the radio show. The 70s series and Gerard Jones' Shadow Strikes follow more the pulp route than the radio. The radio show was followed a little more closely with the serial and the Alec Baldwin movie and even then they are more of a mixture of the two, borrowing fairly equally from both sources. The Archie Shadow just went in a completely different direction.

First off, its easy to get the reprints. Just go to Sanctum Book's website: http://www.shadowsanctum.com/ Book are able at the Radio Archives site and I think Amazon.

Agree with Ed. To claim that modern Shadow writers based their work 90% on the radio show is just off. Sorry, I don't see it. I do see a mix, but not to that degree.

Some points. The 1940s comic, done by Street and Smith, was written by Walter Gibson, creator of the Shadow and main writer of the pulps, hence why several of the comic stories were based on HIS OWN pulp stories.

The DC Shadow comic of the 70s was more based on the pulps. And I think several of the stories were based on pulp stories.

Keep in mind that Kent Allard was a creation of the pulps, and did not appear in the radio show. In the pulps, The Shadow was a mysterious individual who took on the identity of Lamont Cranston, another individual. Much later, it was revealed he was really Kent Allard. In the radio show, The Shadow was really Lamont Cranston, because the radio show had to be simpler. Chaykin had it clear that Allard and Cranson were separate people.

[MichaelPaytonMZ]

I wouldn't be at all shocked to discover that neither Chaykin or Ennis had ever read any of the Shadow novels. Both runs seem more like "let's tell a really violent story, because violence is cool and that's what the Shadow was probably like". Obviously most Shadow fans haven't read the books either, so no one seems to mind. Well, not until Chaykin cut his head off and shoved it onto a robot. The idea of the Shadow has been always far more popular than the real thing to modern audiences. Every Shadow comic run has petered out quickly as people realize that they'd prefer to just go off and read Batman. The Batman/Shadow team-up was fun tho.

[SilverZeal]

Uhm...hw well does dis comic compare 2 d Spider?

[jsf]

Uhm...hw well does dis comic compare 2 d Spider?

Some people like this, some people like the Spider. They're both good: very noirish (the Spider probably moreso). The Spider has more of an action flavor to it than the Shadow, which has been laying out the story a little more leisurely. I've personally been enjoying both about the same.

[Ed Love]

I wouldn't be at all shocked to discover that neither Chaykin or Ennis had ever read any of the Shadow novels. Both runs seem more like "let's tell a really violent story, because violence is cool and that's what the Shadow was probably like". Obviously most Shadow fans haven't read the books either, so no one seems to mind. Well, not until Chaykin cut his head off and shoved it onto a robot. The idea of the Shadow has been always far more popular than the real thing to modern audiences. Every Shadow comic run has petered out quickly as people realize that they'd prefer to just go off and read Batman. The Batman/Shadow team-up was fun tho.

Chaykin's Shadow mini did at least briefly include many of his agents including relatively minor ones found in the pulps (only to kill them off) so someone involved had more than a passing knowledge.

However, The Shadow Strikes which was far more faithful to the feel of the pulps was successful to a degree. According to Gerard Jones, the writer of the series, it ended because the owners of the properties Conde Nast upped how much they wanted for the license (apparently Dark Horse was willing to pay more for the characters since they immediately ended up there). Otherwise, DC was willing to continue the series under the old agreement. The properties failed at Dark Horse because, frankly, they weren't that good. They were banking on the power of Kaluta's name as artist but didn't get a writer with real substance. Ended up with a comic that looked good but not much really to them. Especially compared to the strong plotting and character driven stories that Jones was doing.