The Shadow – the Film Adaptation


By Michael Wm Kaluta, Joel Goss & James Sinclair (Boxtree)
ISBN-13: 978-0-75220-856-5

Here’s an interesting but not uncommon paradox: a wonderful graphic adaptation of a rather so-so movie. The Shadow has been a world-class fantasy super-star since the 1930s, periodically revived and revised by successive generations of creators since his debut as an eerie voice on the radio.

Originally the American radio series Detective Story Hour was based on unconnected yarns from the Street & Smith publication Detective Story Magazine, with a spooky voiced narrator (most famously Orson Welles, although he was preceded by James LaCurto and Frank Readick Jr.) to introduce the tales. Code-named “the Shadow”, and beginning on July 31st 1930, the narrator became more popular than the stories he introduced.

The Shadow inevitably became a proactive hero solving mysteries himself and on April 1st 1931 debuted in his own pulp periodical series, written by the incredibly prolific Walter Gibson under the house pseudonym Maxwell Grant. On September 26th 1937 the radio show officially became The Shadow with the eerie line “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Men? The Shadow knows!”

There had been earlier movies but the 1994 release with Alec Baldwin had the biggest budget. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

The comics adaptation however, co-written and illustrated by Michael Kaluta, who has been associated with the character for most of his glittering career (see The Private Files of the Shadow, ISBN: 0-930289-37-7), is an edgy gem of period malice with all the manic power of the original Gotham Gangbuster restored.

New York in the 1930s: Lamont Cranston plays the part of an idle wastrel socialite but he is driven by inner fires to hunt down and punish the lawless. A reformed criminal, he pursues justice as only a fevered convert can but he may have met his match in the monstrous Shiwan Khan, a fellow disciple of the Tibetan mystic who turned Cranston’s life around and the last blood-heir of Genghis Khan.

Now Khan has come to America in pursuit of a super-bomb that will facilitate his plans for world domination, and the Shadow will have to pit his telepathic abilities against a mind as cold and unrelenting as his own…

With the superb pacing, character design and sheer illustrative finesse of Kaluta, ably supplemented by colourist James Sinclair, this primal tale of suspense comes fully alive with a spark woefully absent from its celluloid counterpart. If you can find this slim tome it’s a work you’ll adore and won’t soon forget.
© 1994 The Condé Nast Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Text & illustrations © 1994 Condé Nast Publications, Inc. All other material © 1994 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.