Art For Art’s Sake #289: The Shadow Knows

by Richard Bruton

Welcome once more to another magnificent collection of the finest art the comics Internet has to offer you this week – time for Art For Art’s Sake:

This is one of those special weeks, focusing on just one character… The Shadow. And it all started when I came across this beauty of an image by an uncredited young Bernie Wrightson who tells us, “Who knows what evil Lurks in the hearts of men…? The Shadow Knows”.

Created by Walter B. Gibson and debuting in 1930 as a mysterious radio show narrator and then transformed into a pulp hero, he’s a character who’s transcended his roots as a pulp start and gone on to feature in practically every medium possible.

His debut on July 31 1930 was as the narrator of the radio program Detective Story Hour, developed by publisher Street & Street and Gibson as a promo device for the monthly pulp Detective Story Magazine. The story goes that listeners of the radio show began asking at the newsstands for ‘that Shadow detective magazine’, and Street & Smith quickly realised they were on to something. Gibson was hired to create ‘The Shadow’ to fit the name and the voice, resulting in the pulp series The Shadow Magazine launching on April 1 1931.

But in comics, Gibson’s character has been published since 1940, when Gibson and artist Vernon Greene created a Shadow syndicated daily newspaper comic strip. That lasted a couple of years but found a new lease of life in comics, initially reprinting the comic strip but going on to feature new material written by Gibson in 101 issues, ending its run in 1949.

Since then, we’ve had the classic series from DC, with Denny O’Neil and Michael Kaluta doing amazing work from 1973-1975. There’s also been the 1988 Marvel graphic novel by O’Neil and Kaluta, The Shadow: Hitler’s Astrologer, republished more recently by Dynamite. There’s also been, of late, many really good Dynamite Shadow comics.

But my personal favourite run has to be the one that started with Howard Chaykin at DC Comics in 1986 with Blood and Judgment, and continued with the Andy Helfer-written series, with art by first Bill Sienkiewicz, and then Kyle Baker from 1987-1989. That was just a superb run and one that’s highly recommended.

In fact, I’ve so loved grabbing images for this one that I’ll be doing another A4AS on the Shadow work of Kaluta, Chaykin, Sienkiewicz, and Baker in the coming weeks – just too much incredible work to pick from!

So, now a selection of art, some published in series, some just great images of an iconic character that never seems to go out of fashion…

Alex Toth