What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

It’s been 30 years since Alec Baldwin’s The Shadow came and went in theaters without much of a ripple in the summer of 1994 – but the character has a long history before and after the film, including many comic books worth seeking out. The Shadow was conceived in 1930 as a character to host a radio show – but writer Walter B. Gibson created the character as remembered today, with blazing pistols and an ability to cloud the minds of evildoers, appearing in the debut issue of The Shadow pulp magazine in 1931. He has a network of agents who assist him, including Margo Lane, the Shadow’s closest confidante who preceded Lois Lane in the comics.

Orson Welles starred as the Shadow on the radio in 1937; in addition, the Shadow also appeared in pulp magazines, films, comic books and comic strips.

Currently, author James Patterson is crafting an updated The Shadow in a series of prose novels co-written with Brian Sitts. Set 60 years in the future, these reimagined Shadow tales find Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane revived after being frozen for 150 years.

The Shadow has crept his way through comics in the decades since his radio debut. His first series, from Street and Smith during the Golden Age of Comics, ran for 101 issues, ending in 1949. The Shadow moved to Archie Comics in the 1960s, but the campy tales went fairly far afield from the character’s original conception and ended after eight issues. DC went back to basics, with the Shadow a grim avenger who knew what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Worth seeking out in particular is the 1973 The Shadow #1 from DC Comics, by writer Denny O’Neil and artist Michael William Kaluta. This was reprinted as a “Millennium Edition” from DC Comics in 2000 as the company reflected on key comic books of its past.

Howard Chaykin moved the Shadow into modern times in his four-issue run on the character for DC. Later DC issues returned the character to the 1930s. Marvel reunited the O’Neil-Kaluta team for the 1988 graphic novel “Hitler’s Astrologer,” reprinted in 2013 by Dynamite. Dark Horse held the license for a series of miniseries in the 1990s, including a crossover with Doc Savage featuring covers by Dave Stevens (The Rocketeer). Dynamite’s era has been marked by some exceptional crossovers (Batman/Shadow with DC and Grendel/Shadow with Dark Horse) among them, a return of Chaykin to the character, and other well-regarded tales, including “The Death of Margo Lane” and “Shadow: Year One,” penned by Matt Wagner.

While we don’t know where the Shadow might yet appear in the future, the grim avenger’s adventures currently can be unearthed in the back issues of your local comic shop! So if you want to know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, check out the bins!