The Shadow/Green Hornet: Dark Nights storytime

>A threat so titanic that it forces The Shadow to team-up with The Green Hornet! A plot so deadly that it involves real events in history and such famous and infamous people as Woodrow Wilson, Rasputin, J. Edgar Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Nikola Tesla! An unstoppable power will plunge the world into darkness... and no one but our two crime-fighting icons can stop it! Written by Michael Uslan, the originator and Executive Producer of the Batman movie franchise, including The Dark Knight trilogy.
youtube.com/watch?v=PBnO9dw3n6A

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As some of you might already know, one bit of information regarding The Shadow's backstory is the idea that he suffered a horrible mutilation during WW1

The Living Shadow
>"I seen The Shadow..." said Spotter eagerly. "I looked for his face. I saw nothing but a piece of white that looked like a bandage. Maybe The Shadow ain't got no face to speak of. Looked like the bandage hid somethin' in back. There was a young guy once who the crooks was afraid of -- he was a famous spy in the War, and they say he was wounded over in France -- wounded in the face. I think The Shadow is this guy come back."
The Black Master
>"The secret of The Shadow. At last it is understood! The man of many faces -- with no face of his own!"

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>her turn.

As you know, Shiwan Khan is The Shadow's arch-nemesis.
This page is surprisingly faithful to his usual modus operandi (unlike most comics) because Khan's plans often involve recruiting talented and strong followers and providing them with gifts in return for their servitude. Here's a brief description of his backstory

>Shiwan Khan had not always dreamed of power. As a youth, he had been meditative, studious, while he dwelt in the wilds of Sinkiang. He had considered which way his future lay: whether in Tibet to the south where the mind rules supreme, or Mongolia to the north where brute force rules all. He had chosen Tibet. Reaching the forbidden city of Lhasa, he had studied under the lamas, learned their mystic ways. He had gained an amazing mental power, similar to that learned by a young Shadow, which his teachers had informed him he should use to accomplish good. Thus gifted, Shiwan Khan had set out for Mongolia.
>In that land where brawn and cruelty reigned, he used his knowledge to help the people of Mongolia, but experienced his ancestral urge for power. His mental mastery over the Mongolians had caused him to foresee the rise of another Kha Khan, or Great Ruler - himself. He had gone back to his birthplace, Sinkiang, the dividing land that suited his complex nature. He operates from the lost underground city of Xanadu, beneath the Sinkiang, originally built by Kubla Khan. A kingdom where the sacred River Alph runs through measureless caverns, into a sea where the sun never shines, beneath the barren reaches of Sinkiang, between Mongolia and Tibet.

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One thing you'll notice about this comic is that there's a lot of real life people and events involved. It almost feels Michael Uslan wanted to tell a history lesson but with The Shadow and Green Hornet.

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I was going to storytime this tomorrow. Thanks, man.

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>One thing you'll notice about this comic is that there's a lot of real life people and events involved. It almost feels Michael Uslan wanted to tell a history lesson but with The Shadow and Green Hornet.
It's the same thing with his Lone Ranger/Green Hornet story I read awhile back. Speaking of the LR/GH, we get to see John Reid give FDR the silver bullet seen in

It's my pleasure

OP still here?

Once again, Khan's plan involves taking control of some kind of super weapon to wreak havoc and eventually defeat The Shadow.

It's worth commenting that, while Gibson had been slowly pressured to make the pulp Shadow more similar to the radio version, he still kept things under a certain restraint. Even the older novels made claims of The Shadow having been to Tibet and India and having some extent of hypnotic powers, but he still did not often use these powers.
However, Shiwan Khan allowed Gibson to introduce Tibetan hypnotism in a big way. Khan had all of the powers of the radio Shadow, and then some, which is part of why he was so challenging.

He had a myriad of abilities, including: very powerful telepathy, invisibility, clairvoyance, necromancy, and even the ability to create a tulpa.

Is this a #1?

Still here, I'm just taking some time to comment on it and explain the mythos a little bit more.

There's 5 issues and I'm storytiming all of them

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>The Silver Bullet Club
Nice.

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This is Burbank.
Burbank is the only character in the Shadow mythos who is more of a mystery than The Shadow himself.
All we know is that he's a solemn faced individual who spends almost all of his time in his own private area, surrounded by the glow of his telephone and radio apparatus and who might have a gardening hobby. And that he's a very old friend of The Shadow.

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>"And he's apparently so good, that neither the police nor the FBI have charged him with even one murder!"
Or it's because Eliot Ness is one of the few people who know Britt is the Green Hornet.

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Oops forgot to attach the image.

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Also with Uslan's Detective #27 and Justice Inc, to a certain extent

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based Ford

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I like how in several of Khan's appearences he treats whoever he's opposing (whether it's The Shadow or an agent) with courtesy, not because he's being a sarcastic dick, but out of respect for someone having the balls to oppose him.
He's kind of a Shadow fanboy and it's funny to see him being a Green Hornet fanboy also.

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Treachery worthy of a hanging.

I'm sure most of you know Shrevy but for those of you who don't know Clyde
>Clyde Burke: A newspaper reporter who lost his job, Clyde was hired by The Shadow in one of his many aliases (this time as George Clarendon) to run a newspaper clipping service for him, saving and sending articles of well documented and researched cases. Eventually, his high intelligence showed through, and The Shadow brought him aboard his organization formally. Burke was a respected reporter, so when he was hired by the tabloid The New York Classic, many people wondered why.
>It gave Burke freedoms that he couldn't have as a full newspaper reporter, as the tabloid was managed poorly. His duties for The Shadow were to investigate, but was involved in several battles. He was friendly with police inspector Joe Cardona, who often trusted Clyde with inside information that went a great distance in furnishing The Shadow with facts and knowledge about a case. For his inquisitive nature and the depth of his investigations, Clyde Burke was one of The Shadow's most valued agents.
He often banters with Shrevy because he hates Shrevy's driving but he's quite friendly on most occasions.

And of course I don't need to explain the other joke in this page.

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He's technically not lying here because Lamont Cranston (the real one) is kind of an agent (whose job is to basically fuck off while The Shadow uses his identity and runs his fortune, which he does gladly)

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Wait, I thought The Shadow and The Green Hornet knew who each others secret identity already (In "Masks #1", which took place in 1938 if I remember correctly). Is this just a big continuity error on Dynamite's part?

The real Lamont also shows up in Uslan's Justice Inc.

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No; most Dynamite Comics do their own thing. Uslan is doing his own thing in his comics (Shadow/Green Hornet, Justice Inc, Lone Ranger/Green Hornet), Wagner does his own thing, Chaykin does his own thing, etc etc. It's why I couldn't get behind the complaining about stuff like the Si Spurrier Shadow or that recent change to Red Sonja and Vampirella. Eventually they'll get switched around again.

Same thing with the public domain superheroes Dynamite uses, there was the Warren Ellis mini which was a separate thing from the Ross/Krueger series and the recent Hero Killers series which was a separate thing from those two.

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Most Dynamite comics (and Shadow comics in general) are doing their own thing without continuity. It's more author dependant, like how Matt Wagner created Dr.Zorn as the villain who killed The Shadow's masters and was mentioned in Grendel vs Shadow, but in the other Dynamite series it was a different character.
In this continuity, Britt didn't even think The Shadow was real until he met him.

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I love that joke.

honestly, these days it's easy to forget that Batman is cast from the exact same mold as other pulpy detective characters like the Shadow or the Phantom.

honestly, i'd love to see a batman run that sort of goes back to batman's roots and makes him an actual detective again and goes back to more smalltime criminals and conspiracies. batman's been too consumed by supervillains and gizmos.

it'd be a breath of fresh air.

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Amen.

user, you don't have to tell me Dynamite fucks up their continuity. I help edit the Dynamite Wiki and me and another guy try to figure out which books are part of the much larger main continuity and which ones are separate. Since this is a Shadow thread i'll give you an example where he was a key player: I figured out that Darkman Vs. Army of Darkness isn't canon to the other "Army" books since Ash calls Darkman a mix between Lamont Cranston and The Mummy. I interpreted this as The Shadow being a fictional character in that world since The Shadow would never let his real identity get discovered and both The Shadow and Ash are "real" people in Dynamite's main continuity.

This is Cliff Marsland.
>A tough-guy, with the reputation among the underworld as a cold-blooded killer, Marsland is one of The Shadow's men in the world of criminals, who believe him to be one of them and are unaware of his true nature. Cliff Marsland has a mysterious connection to The Shadow: the first time Cliff appears, The Shadow engages him in conversation. He mentions that Cliff Marsland isn't his real name, and mentions several instances during the war. He also makes an allusion to himself being there as well as a Frenchman named Blanton. He brings closure to this conversation by saying that they will speak no more of the past. The Shadow also lets him know that he's aware of Cliff's false reputation and that he didn't commit the crime that landed him in prison several years before. How The Shadow knew this is a mystery (then again, remember: The Shadow knows...). Cliff is married, and is one of the few agents to be so.

I really love Cliff, he's one of my favorite characters. He plays the hardass, square-jawed criminal, but he’s also a caring friend and good husband to Arline, despite starting as an extremely bitter jackass. He becomes quite close to Hawkeye (helping him reform and deal with his fear of The Shadow and become a part of the agents), Clyde and Harry and helps Harry lead due to his miltary experience
Cliff is great and I'm glad this comic shows at least a bit of his importance.

>since The Shadow would never let his real identity get discovered

His real identity is Kent Allard though. Lamont Cranston is a "real" person that he uses the identity of.

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Be honest: before you knew Kent Allard was his birthname, you thought he was really Lamont Cranston. It's the name that casual fans would know. You don't hear causal fans say "Francis Castiglione is The Punisher", you hear "Frank Castle is The Punisher".

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But that's not the same comparison. Punisher's "real" name is a variation of the name people know him for. There was a whole story about how The Shadow came to use Lamont's identity in the pulps. Even Chaykin used the idea that The Shadow was using the Lamont alias and never Lamont to begin with.

But yes, casuals know that only because the radio show decided to simplify things and just have him always be Lamont.

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