The Shadow

Is it The Shadow worth reading? Any recommended runs?

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Anything that isn't by Dynamite.

- The OG DC run by Denny O'Neil and Kaluta is pulpy as fuck and a great starting point
- The Shadow Strikes! is a great modern Shadow series, keeping him in the 30s but updating the storytelling a lot.
- Chaykin and later Helfer's Shadow is... weird and offbeat, but it has its moments. Wouldn't recommend it to start with but once you get in it's worth at least a check.
- The various Dark Horse minis are also worth hunting down.
- Haven't read much of the Dynamite run beyond the Ennis volume (which was just OK) but the Grendel crossover was great, and Matt Wagner also did a bunch of minis and he rarely disappoints.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

...

Chaykin's mini is abysmal.

Didn't know there was one of those, thanks.

>recommending Chaykin's run
ISHYGDDT

Helfer and Kyle Baker's run is the shit.

What these guys said.

I thought the Green Hornet crossover wasn't too bad.

How would you describe the morality of The Shadow. It seems like both pacifist do-gooder, and relentless executioner suit the character pretty well. I prefer a darker and more violent take on the character just cause his backstory alludes to a Spec.Op agent turned warlord turned crimefighter. Seems like with a history like that, he would end up as a pretty violent person.

Although The Shadow isn't really the main focus of the book, I thought the first Masks series was pretty good (Masks 2 though...)

Wrong.

Wagner's stuff is good and charitably the Twilight Zone mini is decent even if the art could be better. Same with the Green Hornet crossover and the Justice Inc crossover. And I think there was also a one-shot of some sort where they thought the Shadow was dead that was okay. The rest you could just skip if you want.

I liked it. Though the references and nods to the The Shadow's history was really charming at first, after a while it got to be a bit much. Like the whole doomsday device being powered by Blue Coal. Who the fuck Ok'd that?

The Shadow sucks ass.

Your writing sucks ass Howard Chaykin. Clearly a degenerate that fantasizes about getting slammed by buff dangerous men. Blood & Judgement fucking blows!

Man, fuck Masks 2. I went in there thinking it was gonna be a solid mystery like the original Masks, but it turned into a pile of runny egg yolks right in front of my eyes.

It did have Green Hornet as a Masked Rider for one panel but that's all the good will I'd pay it.

Guy here breaks down a bunch of recommendations.
Shadow is 1 of his top favorite comic characters.
youtube.com/watch?v=LgU_TwMZgYA
I have read his #3, it's worth it for the art alone.

God bless that edgy faggot

Razorfist is a retard but he does know his Shadow.

How is he retarded?

There has been more than one shadow over the years. If it works for the wandering ghost, it can work in americas

I made an updated version of that guide with more directions.

>his backstory alludes to a Spec.Op agent turned warlord turned crimefighter
That's what they did to him in the movie.
In the pulps he was a WW1 spy who became part of a lost generation after the war was over and decided to make good use of his skills and help people as a shadowy figure (just like he did in the war).

wow nice, thanks

Why so much hate for Chaykin's Shadow? I get that he doesn't like the character but I saw that more in his depiction of Lamont Cranston than the Shadow himself.

>he's a colossal cunt who feels exactly like every other Howard Chaykin protagonist
>he's a coward who fucked off to a magic city to remain immortal and abandoned literally everyone of his agents without batting an eye
>he's a sociopath who doesn't give two shits about the fact nearly all of his agents were horrifically murdered because of him
>he's a massive sexist based purely on Chaykin's assumption when the original character wasn't
>Chaykin literally admitted to not having picked up any of the pulps and that he set out to piss off the fans for controversy

And despite all of this, the biggest problem with Blood and Judgement is that it's fucking boring.
It's not funny. It's not witty. It's not well-written. It's the farthest thing from "mature" (which is what it was advertised as). It's not "deconstructing" the character or putting a new spin on him like The Dark Knight Returns did. There's no heart or emotion or logic, and it isn't funny and shocking enough to succeed as anything other than an exercise in 80s excess.
It feels like a little kid trying to get a reaction by swearing and shitting its pants. It might bring some laughs to bystanders but the intent is so obvious no one really cares, and the only outcome is that someone is going to have to clean that up.

And the worst part is that, thanks to Howard Chaykin's cult status, Blood and Judgement was so popular with people that couldn't give a shit about The Shadow beforehand, it actually managed to influence nearly all subsequent depictions of the character, including the movie, to the point "sadistic asshole who went to a magic city and became a productive sadistic asshole" is how most writers choose to depict The Shadow and act as if that's what he's always been.

Thank you! I thought I was alone in this. I haven't been a Shadow fan for very long but someone HIGHLY recommended this book to me and it almost spoiled my interest in the character. When I got to the magic city, I cringed.
I'd sooner recommend a Pinky & Brain episode

>I haven't been a Shadow fan for very long but someone HIGHLY recommended this book to me and it almost spoiled my interest in the character
I'm glad it didn't for you but I wonder how many potential fans The Shadow lost because their introduction to the series was Blood and Judgement.
I wonder how many people dismissed the character as just another violent edgelord based on this series or people like Razorfist who sell the character as such.
I wonder if we would have had better adaptations of the character in recent years if it wasn't for the fact that so many comic writers only have this mini-series and the movie as their point of reference to the character (The recent Shadow-Batman series fell apart once they started going way too heavily into the Shambala/warlord stuff)

It really fills me with misery and anger just how bad Blood and Judgement is and how much damage it did to the character.

Someone recommended that to me too as my first Shadow comic. Why anyone would think that's a good idea is beyond me.

Yeah I don't get why the fuck do writers keep pushing Shamballa into the stories and try to make it this huge and defining part of the mythos.

I don't need anything complex when it comes to Shadow, just make a simple badass story with him and the agents.

>The Shadow systematically dismantles all of Chicago's organized crime as revenge for the death of an agent
That sounds fucking badass, holy shit

Where is this from ?

I Made a similar thread weeks ago, only got people posting fedora jokes and suggesting Blood & Judgment, which I read, and it sucked, so, thank god this here happened.

Blood and Judgment was my first Shadow and Chaykin story. I liked it as both and went on to read more Shadow and more Chaykin. YMMV or maybe I just have shit taste.

And for some baffling reason most writers don't even bother to incorporate the agents into the stories. And when they do it's usually just some glorified cameo.
The agents are the heart of the series and a cornerstone of it's appeal.

The Shadow/Batman #4.
It's not good. At all. I was planning to storytime it but when I read it I thought better not to be responsible for exposing Sup Forums to how bad the series has gotten.

Blood & Judgment is to the Shadow what Cosmic Odyssey is to the New Gods. Fuck Chaykin and fuck Starlin. And most of all fuck people recommending them.

That's not a bad recommendation list at all, and I love seeing the pulps added. They don't get near enough love in my opinion, though in all I remain a larger fan of the radio program.

I'm surprised this list omits the chain of events that begins with The Prince of Evil, which continues in Murder Genius, The Man Who Died Twice, and ends in The Devil's Paymaster. This series introduces a villain who not only breaks even but manages to come out ahead of the Shadow multiple times, he kidnaps Rutledge Mann, leaving The Shadow without one of his valuable agents over the course of several stories. It's also one of the stories I like to point to when people call The Shadow a "psychopath" or "teh edgy" for all his gunplay and lack of qualms against killing villains. Despite knowing the identify of an extremely dangerous criminal mastermind to his own satisfaction, he is forced to let the man go as he cannot prove it to anyone else, especially the police. Even when his own life and his agents threatened, not to mention future victims in the balance, the Shadow is left checked until he can find proof.

I really like The Prince of Evil saga and the only reason why I didn't include it was because there wasn't enough space left.
But I'll try to change that.

The Shadow and Moon Knight seem to have a lot in common.
I wonder what a crossover would be like.

Oh hell I'm not complaining. You've got excellent taste.

Oldfag here & a member of Chaykin's cult and you are absolutely right.

This series is on par with Cap becoming a nazi & EVERYBODY hated except as you said people who didn't know anything about the Shadow or contrarians who just liked reading the angry letters in the CBG or Amazing Heros.

Even Chaykin now kind of distances himself from it...doesn't apologize per se but I think in hindsight he realizes he fucked up. He also admits that was during his heavy drug years too, which explains weird scenes like the club scene where everybody is dressed like the Shadow.

While we're on the topic of recs, what're some recommended reads for the Phantom?

CARRIED AWAY BY A MOONIGHT SHADOW

The current ongoing has been pretty great so far. It manages to do the impossible and properly adapts the ancient character for a modern, more aware audience.

What did you guys think of The Shadow film?
Wasted potential for sure, but I didn't think it was SO terrible. Whenever John Lone and Alex Baldwin were on screen, they had awesome banter/chemistry. The movie is hokey from start to finish but it played out well.
The dagger on the other hand was a shitty idea. Don't know who the fuck thought it was a good idea, but they need to stop

It was not bad like I'd been led to believe from people. There were things I wished they didn't do but on the whole this is less offensive as a film than some stuff in the last few years.

The bridge scene was the best scene out of that entire movie.
youtube.com/watch?v=AJX60CSED1s

You mean the one written by Si Spurrier that's been so panned it's getting canceled after the 6th issue ?

More like a bunch of crusty old fucks who have a heart attack if anyone dares try to update an ancient character for a modern audience collectively whined so loud that it cancelled one of 2017's more underrated gems. They literally just started shitting their depends at the thought of the Shadow confronting privilege or having a person who wasn't white as one of his agents.

>The current ongoing has been pretty great so far
No, it's not. The recent Batman crossovers are better than that trash.
>The Shadow complains about white male privilege
>A new sassy latino Shadow-wannabe shows up
>All of the agents of The Shadow can never age
>Trump-expy is one of the main bad guys.

>immediately complains about confronting white male privilege
>complains about a latina woman existing in the same space as the Shadow
>comics can't be political
Thanks for proving my point

It was doomed for failure the moment they decided to try to jam together all of the 4 Shiwan Khan novels as well as an almost completely made up origin story into the script. The pacing, the tone, the story, the characters, everything ended up half-baked, because there was no way they could possibly do justice to The Shadow with such a short runtime and with this much stuff to juggle (half of which they didn't even need).

It would be the equivalent of a Batman movie trying to adapt the entirety of Tales of the Demon as well as The Killing Joke and then spent most of it's runtime going back to Bruce Wayne's revamped origin story, all the while having to introduce the characters and setting to new audiences. It's just not going to work. And in the end, the movie failed to give audiences a reason as to why they should care about this guy who, as far as they know, is just another Batman clone

And to make it clear, I like the movie. The production design, the sets and most of the casting were great and the score was absolutely phenomenal. I'll probably rewatch it again at some point in the future.
I think everyone at least agrees it's really not that bad of a movie and it didn't deserve to flop as badly as it did.
But it's not a great movie and it fell short on a lot of things.

...

Dude, I don't care about comics "confronting white male privilege" and shit like that, they can make those books till the cows come home, but that isn't the story that should involve The Shadow.

>at the thought of the Shadow having a person who wasn't white as one of his agents
Take this pathetic attempt at bait elsewhere.
It was a failure before it even took off the ground.

>but that isn't the type of story that should involve The Shadow
Is what I meant.

He's got bigger fish to fry.

Nah
I know this is bait and God help you if it's not but it's an awful, lazy, and truly uninspired re-introduction to a character that has loads of potential. But that potential isn't universal. You can't just slap his costume and name on some random fuck-head and call it a day. I mean you could, but it'll be terrible. The Shadow has a history in more than the pulps, in the inception of this character he was to be the embodiment of the dangers and value of our collective unconscious. There's a reason why his backstory is interchangeable and why hypnotism and false personas are such a big part of his mythos. There's an honest to god direct correlation to Carl Yung's psychology and the mythos of The Shadow.
But no
>le white privilege
Fuck yourself

>at the thought of the Shadow confronting privilege
Yeah because it's not like the pulps or even older comics ever had The Shadow face off against rich, privileged scumbags who regularly used their power to commit crime, while turning their own servants against them and employing a diverse cast of agents all of whom were written respectfully.
It's not like The Shadow was created partially to confront the evils of the Great Depression or anything.
It's not like a substantial part of the series's audience was actually comprised of women and people from racial minorities who appreciated the agents.
No sir.

>having a person who wasn't white as one of his agents
It sickens me that I've seen this logic used before to defend this comic when anyone with even a passing knowledge of the character knows better.

Masks was a great idea, but the fact that they had to introduce new characters every other page killed the pacing for me.
To be fair, Shiwan Khan is one of, if not THE most memorable Shadow villain, and it's not like Hollywood was really into the whole "split one story into more than one movie"

Jericho wasn't written too badly considering when the stories were written even if his basic function in the Shadow's employ was being big and hitting people hard. It's interesting how subversive they could be with him considering how often people merely mistook him for "big dumb, black guy" making him an excellent spy within enemy ranks, sometimes better than Cliff Marsland's cover as an underworld gangster.

I don't recall him being used very often, though, and of course over time most of the Shadow's agents began appearing less and less.

>It sickens me that I've seen this logic used before to defend this comic when anyone with even a passing knowledge of the character knows better.

It's the kind of defense style I've seen from clickbait writers. Blame the fans for being racist while ignoring how the writer is kind of racist for pretending New Thing In Franchise is the only thing that's progressive.

>but the fact that they had to introduce new characters every other page killed the pacing for me.
I agree. It felt too cluttered. It should have just been The Shadow, Green Hornet & Kato, and The Spider as the main focus, then have the other heroes show up at the end to help take down the armored police/army guys (I don't remember what they were called).

Jericho wasn't as prominent of an agent as the likes of Cliff Marsland or Clyde Burke but he had a handful of substantial appearences (notably The Golden Masks and Crime Rides the High Seas), and was even featured in the Lone Tiger cover as well as most general descriptions of The Shadow's agents.
He was like Myra Reldon in the sense that his role was more specific, not just due to the restrictions his profile imposed on him, but because he had an actual job and couldn't be a Shadow agent all the time.

If anything, now would be a perfect time for a Shadow adaptation to actually feature Jericho Druke more extensively and expand on his character in ways the pulps couldn't.
But writers don't seem to care much for the agents these days.

I agree Khan is the most remembered villain, and I actually really like John Lone's Shiwan Khan.
But part of why Khan had such an impact and why the stories were so memorable was because they took their time establishing his character, his insidious methods for conquest and the lengths The Shadow had to go through to fight him.
He was the ultimate villain for the magazine, more powerful than all those that came before or after him. And that's not something you can really get across when you have to condense 4 novels into 100 minutes, no matter how many special effects you throw in (not to mention all the other stuff they had to stuff into the movie).
I don't think most of the audiences even had any idea as to who Khan was before going into the movie.

They could have started by simply adapting the "Gangdom's Doom" saga and the stories that build up to it (The Living Shadow, Eyes of The Shadow and The Shadow Laughs) and made it less like a campy superhero movie and more like a crime film, starring Harry Vincent and Margo Lane and without spending all that runtime on a made up origin story and instead letting The Shadow's visual impact and character speak for itself. If they needed a super villain, just throw in The Black Master or The Cobra.

This right here would have solved at least half of the movie's problems.

Anybody else read this?

Honestly it feels like a good 80% of The Shadows villains were old rich white dudes. Mostly incidental, of course, given that his enemies were men of ill-gotten wealth hidden from the prying eyes of the law, which meant most often rich white dudes. It's actually ridiculously formulaic after awhile when the hidden master of evil is typically always going to be the least likely person written with the most sympathetic backstory. If there is an old man whose greedy relatives seem poised to knock him off the asshole son will turn out to be trying to have been trying to protect his girl the entire time. The nice old man will turn out to really be a legal guardian controlling the young man's estate or the business partner of the boy's dead father who took the kid in, but he really wants the money for himself. If an old man's family and friends are being picked off one by one and his life is threatened too it will turn out the gang is actually on his payroll. If a kindly inventor is trying to protect a device he swears will be to the benefit of all he'll actually be trying to kill his greedy investors so he can have all the money for himself. Old, feeble men suddenly turn out to be iron muscled tigers in waiting once the Shadow reveals their crimes before the law.

It was a mess. maybe a well intentioned mess but it was chasing Tim Burton's Batman '89 aesthetics and it they thought they were making a comic book TV movie on a bigger budget. Baldwin LOOKED right as Cranston but as the Shadow he looked like a cosplayer.

It makes sense largely because The Shadow's agents are typically men who serve as proxies of The Shadow himself. People of unique qualities held by The Shadow, but always to lesser extent. Harry Vincent and Clyde Burke were capable investigators and often could bluff or otherwise disguise themselves to enter criminal conspiracies. Marsland's rep with the underworld similarly made him useful in infiltrating gangs. Only The Shadow had a better eye for trailing a criminal than Hawkeye. Miles Crofton at the controls of The Shadow's signature autogyro when needed. Dr. Roy Tam with his connections to Chinatown. While most of The Shadow's agents could handle themselves in a fight Jericho was the closest to The Shadow in terms of raw strength and durability, but more often than not it was The Shadow who swooped in at the last moment to kick crime's ass. It makes sense that he'd be among the least used of The Shadow's talent proxies.

You have NEVER read anything about the Shadow besides Spurrier's have you?

>it feels like a good 80% of The Shadows villains were old rich white dudes
I wouldn't go that far (I'd say maybe 65 or 70%) since foreign villains that don't fit the description as well as several other kinds of enemies also comprised a big part of The Shadow's appeal (although plenty of them did turn out to be white guys in disguise).
You could make a drinking game based on The Shadow and include things like "guy who doesn't like Harry Vincent turns out to be villain" and "someone gets shot in the shoulder"

>People of unique qualities held by The Shadow, but always to lesser extent
Not always. The Shadow was abnormally skilled and resourceful, but he wasn't perfect. He wasn't Doc Savage.
While he was physically powerful, particularly in the early pulps, Gibson preferred to emphasize his skills in subterfuge, stealth and sleight of hand. Jericho's strength was more emphasized since he was the muscle. I don't recall The Shadow ever throwing a stove at someone or joining a gun fight with frying pans.
He commonly employed people who had skills and positions he didn't, like Rupert Sayre, Slade Farrow or Yat Soon, to cover up things he couldn't do (like being a doctor or having insider knowledge in the police force or Chinatown)

>Not always. The Shadow was abnormally skilled and resourceful, but he wasn't perfect.
I never said he was perfect. This doesn't negate the fact that he was, repeatedly, directly stated to be more capable than whatever skillset a particular agent is greatest in. After all, The Shadow is the super hero (one of the early archetypes; there's a reason he served as an inspiration for the creation of Batman) while they, however cunning, plucky, or just damn lucky they were were still mere people.

>Rupert Sayre, Slade Farrow or Yat Soon
None of those people were his primary agents. You might as well include his two native servants if you're going to go that far out of the way.

There is a distinct difference between The Shadow's primary agents, who act as lesser Shadows on a case because he can't be everywhere (a description used for his agents more than once in the pulps), and people he treats as specialists who typically only serve specific needs and don't, typically, do the investigative and other heavy lifting during a case.

>They literally just started shitting their depends at the thought of the Shadow confronting privilege
Because the idea of a person who lived through the great depression and saw all kinds of infighting and oppression between various white races (Irish?) believing in the idea of white privilege is the most psychotic thing in the history of comics.

I could maybe MAYBE force myself to accept that he believes in such if it wasn't done in the patented pure fucking evil Liberal manner where he used it to condescendingly dismiss ALL concerns/criticisms white people have.
He says that line "you are not oppressed, you are not alienated, deep down you know this"
YOU DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO BE OPPRESSED BY A GOVERNMENT TO BE A FUCKING VICTIM OF CRIMES & TORMENT IN DAY TO DAY LIFE.