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Description
One of the greatest of the classic pulp heroes, the Shadow debuted in 1930 as the mysterious host of the Detective Story Hour radio program. Soon audiences became more interested in him than in the mystery stories he introduced. The next year writer Walter Gibson (writing under the house name Maxwell Grant) was hired to flesh out the character and begin writing stories about him for a pulp magazine.

There are plenty of good articles about the Shadow online so I won't go into too much detail, but the igst of the character was that he had all the trappings of a classic villain (the black costume, sinister laugh, habit of disappearing, etc.) but was on the side of good. He foreshadowed many popular heroes who would come later, most notable Batman.

On the radio show the Shadow gained a new power. He could ue his hypnotic powers to "cloud men's minds" making himself functionally invisible. The pulp magazines follow suit later but he almost never used his power in them. In the magazines he was a deadly fighter and skilled marksman who had the skills of an escape artist and a number of magician's tricks. He also had skills of stealth anat a professional ninja would have envied and formidable powers of hypnosis, something that his strange fire open ring enhanced. He was bloodier than some of his contemporaries, like Doc Savage and the Avenger, and would shoot to kill. He was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as the Spider, though, and would only kill in self defense or the defense of others.

When pulps and radio dramas died, the Shadow continued in comics and films. Though much less known today, he is still fondly remembered by a cult following.

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows."

Description
One of the greatest of the classic pulp heroes, the Shadow debuted in 1930 as the mysterious host of the Detective Story Hour radio program. Soon audiences became more interested in him than in the mystery stories he introduced. The next year writer Walter Gibson (writing under the house name Maxwell Grant) was hired to flesh out the character and begin writing stories about him for a pulp magazine.

There are plenty of good articles about the Shadow online so I won't go into too much detail, but the igst of the character was that he had all the trappings of a classic villain (the black costume, sinister laugh, habit of disappearing, etc.) but was on the side of good. He foreshadowed many popular heroes who would come later, most notable Batman.

On the radio show the Shadow gained a new power. He could ue his hypnotic powers to "cloud men's minds" making himself functionally invisible. The pulp magazines follow suit later but he almost never used his power in them. In the magazines he was a deadly fighter and skilled marksman who had the skills of an escape artist and a number of magician's tricks. He also had skills of stealth anat a professional ninja would have envied and formidable powers of hypnosis, something that his strange fire open ring enhanced. He was bloodier than some of his contemporaries, like Doc Savage and the Avenger, and would shoot to kill. He was nowhere near as bloodthirsty as the Spider, though, and would only kill in self defense or the defense of others.

When pulps and radio dramas died, the Shadow continued in comics and films. Though much less known today, he is still fondly remembered by a cult following.

"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows."