The pulp magazines of the 30's and 40's were the precursors of
comic books. Many of the earliest comic
characters were inspired by such pulp characters as Doc Savage, The Shadow,
The Avenger, The Spider, etc. The
Green Hornet,
while a very pulp-like
character, was created for radio and never appeared in actual pulp
magazines. The Shadow first appeared on radio in 1930, as host of the
Detective Story Hour. (Lou Genco offers us a
brief history of the
Shadow on the air). The character was given his own magazine in April
1931. Walter B. Gibson and other authors wrote a total of 325 Shadow
novels between 1931 and 1949. Approximately 50 of these were reprinted
in paperback, trade paperback or hardcover form by various publishers over
the years. The cover on the right is kind of a "holy grail" for Shadow
collectors: the 1941 L.A. Bantam reprint of the February 15th, 1940
story Voice of Death. I know of one copy of this book going for
$1100 at an auction five or six years ago. I got my copy a few months
before that at a little hole-in-the-wall used book store, for $3.00. The
store owner had just bought the book an hour earlier, at a library sale,
in a stack he got for 25 cents an inch. Having only paid about 12 cents
for it, he thought $3.00 represented a decent profit after an hour.
Hey, sometimes you get lucky!
You can take a look at a list of the original 325 Shadow stories, and see which of them I have in my collection, as well as a few items I have for sale/trade; see which stories the professionals think are the best ( Will Murray, Robert Sampson, Frank Eisgruber, Jr., Robert Weinberg, and Frank Hamilton give their expert opinions); or have a look at the Shadow's years in radio (I have over 200 of these on tape, and I finally put my list of radio shows online).
Newsgroups that concern themselves with these sorts of characters and stories include:
There are also several WWW sites devoted to pulp information and/or pulp-related images:
"Spider" offers
The Shadow's Sanctum
Marc Sky works his magic and turns Shadow covers into
posters.
These are the photocopies I own...
The Shadow by fellow collector Tim Hewitt
More of the Shadow from
fellow collector Greg Swan
Ron Kinion's page on
the Shadow
movie
dotPulp's page
, with links to other pulp-related sites
The Doc Savage Webpage (a list of lists)
Scans of Doc Savage
book covers
Eclipse Links:
PULPS
Old Time Radio - you may be able to find some Shadow radio programs
here
Radio Showcase - over 9000 old time radio showsm but not one Shadow!
Adventures in Cassettes - a number
of OTR tapes, but the only Shadow they carry are the current commercial
tapes you can buy in any large bookstore
Original Old Time Radio (OTR) WWW Page
Radio Archive at the University of Memphis - no Shadow at all
Radio Archive Homepage
Damon & Peni's Wonderfulness on the Web