Non-fiction Review

‘The Shadow in Review’

'The Shadow in Review'A new guide to The Shadow pulp series is out: The Shadow in Review. It’s written by John Olsen, who writes the companion blog That’s Pulp!, and published by Pulplandia Press (through Lulu).

This massive work (over 500 pages) has a review of each Shadow story from the pulp series, plus a few more. It’s a labor of love that the author spent nearly 20 years reading every story twice and writing a review for each one.

Each review runs about a page or two. We are told the volume and issue number, publication date, and the submission date, and the submitted title if different from the final title. Who wrote each story is noted. And each stories rated from zero to five guns.

In addition to the pulp series, we also get reviews of Walter Gibson‘s later Shadow works. This includes The Return of the Shadow, published by Belmont Books, and the two short stories that appeared in The Shadow Scrapbook and The Duende History of the Shadow. The other Shadow books from Belmont are not included.

There are several appendices, which add to the work.

The first appendix covers a “lost” Shadow novel. Theodore Tinsley submitted a Shadow novel that was rejected. He reworked it as “Satan’s Signature” in Clues magazine. Apparently it was rejected because Tinsley broke a taboo. Read the review to find out what it is.

The next one covers an unofficial Shadow story. When DC Comics published Detective Comics #500 back in 1981, they commissioned Gibson to write a short story. This one tells of the Batman‘s encounter with “Gray Face.” Basically it’s a Shadow story (there are hints it was written as such originally), but with the Batman in the place of The Shadow. I have this issue and didn’t realize it, and I’m not sure if I read the story (I may have just focused on the comic stories).

We then get a review of the 1940 Shadow movie serial and the 1994 feature film. But nothing about the other Shadow movies, like the Universal shorts or the ones from Grand National or Monogram.

Indexes are next. One lists all the stories by their ratings, useful if you want to focus on specific ratings. We then get an index by story, listing people, places, and things that appear in the stories, with the first appearances marked, followed by a listing of the same people, places, and things and what stories they appear in. This is useful if you wanted to know what stories certain aides appeared or the like.

I would have liked to have also seen a basic index of the stories with date, submission date, original title, and author.

The downside is that there is no artwork in the book. No cover art for the issues, nor interior art. Even on the cover we get a shot of a stack of Shadow pulps showing the spines, which is nice, because we don’t often see the pulp spines. I think some may not understand how thick pulp magazines are, if their idea of magazines are the thin saddle-stitched mags on the newstands today. I would have liked to have had the covers included, because I don’t think many have seen them. But this is not a reason not to get this work.

This is a worthy addition to other Shadow reference works out there. And the price is super reasonable enough that if you are even somewhat interested in The Shadow you can afford to get it. This one will be going up on my shelf with other reference works.

About The Pulp Super-Fan: Learn more about this blog, and its author, Michael R. Brown.
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