Number 1251: Valda looks cute in her little cat suit

“The Shadow and the Black Ray” is from The Shadow, Vol. 3, Number 2 (1943).  It adds a character I am not familiar with, Valda, who is apparently not popular with Margo Lane, Lamont “The Shadow” Cranston’s girlfriend. Who could blame Margo? Valda looks pretty good in a cat suit.

Vernon Greene did the outstanding artwork. You can read more about Greene by clicking on the link below for another Shadow story. You can also read an interview with writer/artist Trina Robbins which features various comic book women in cat suits (and other sexy gear). She missed Valda, though.

Click on the thumbnail for “The Mystery of the Goona Goona Fan”:

Number 2011: We'll give you a fair trial...then behead you.

I owned a copy of this issue of The Shadow when I was a young teenager. Someone traded it to me with the promise that it had “the greatest art job Bob Powell ever did!” I knew Bob Powell’s art, and when I received Shadow Comics #78 (1947) in the mail I agreed it was an outstanding job. It didn’t stop me from trading it for something else soon after I read it. After all the years between then and now I got a sense of nostalgia when I found scans online.

The story, “The Sacred Sword of Sanjorojo” is about a thorium trade with a foreign power. In order to sign the treaty, a small country’s leader is replaced by a double. (Only in fiction would this work.) The Shadow intercedes and solves the problem. It has a reference to the Shadow’s “dark cloak” as his method of invisibility...and here I thought he had the power to cloud men’s minds. Or is it just my mind that is clouded?

Number 1812: “The weed of crime...”

“The Goona Goona Fan” refers to an actual electric fan to cool a nightclub, not fanatic, which is what all of us comic fans are, eh?

And comic fanatics of 1942 were probably also tuning in for The Shadow on radio. The comic book Shadow, while using some plots, much condensed, from the Shadow’s pulp magazine adventures , was actually closer to the radio version. Able to cloud men’s minds, the Shadow could become invisible, which is shown in panels with his cloaked and hatted figure shown in a blue surprint.

At this point of the comic book adventures of the Shadow, the stories were scripted by his most prolific writer, Walter B. Gibson, who had written the novels for years under the name Maxwell Grant. Gibson reportedly got double the rate for his pages in the comics, and compared to knocking out a novel every two weeks, as he had done in the 1930s, that must have seemed a snap. Vernon Greene, the artist who initiated the Shadow’s daily newspaper strip in 1940, was also doing comic book stories. The daily strip ended in 1942 with paper rationing and the need for more column inches for war news, but Greene drew the character for the comic books at least for a couple of years past the end of the daily strip.

No need to feel sorry for Greene. He also ghosted the Polly and Her Pals daily strip, and in 1954 took over the popular Bringing Up Father when  George McManus died

“The Mystery of the Goona Goona Fan” is from The Shadow Vol. 2, No. 9 (1942):

In 1947 both Gibson and Greene had moved on. Bob Powell and his crew took over the art chores for the comic book Shadow, with scripts were provided by Bruce Elliott. For a Powell story from the Pappy archives, just click on the thumbnail.

Number 228


Shuddering


To the strains of Danny Elfman's theme from Tales From The Crypt, I descend my basement steps. Anticipation is high; every trip to the basement is a trip into Pappy's past, every box opened, every shelf examined, is an archaeological dig into a half-remembered world. I open a file box sitting on top of a high shelf. "What's this?" I say to no one but the dusty skeletons shackled to the wall. I pull out some old magazines, untouched for years. Fanzines!

Every so often I'll go through and show you some of the fanzines I've hung onto. There wouldn't be enough room in my house for all the fanzines I ever got in the mail if I stored them with my comics, so oftentimes when purging the collection the fanzines went first. I've always regretted it, but while the number of objects to collect is infinite, the space to store them is not.

I got this particular gem, The Shudder Fanzine, in the summer of 1964. It showed up unannounced. I was on the comp list of several fanzine publishers, but didn't know it extended to Birmingham, England, where The Shudder originated, published by cartoonist Mike Higgs. I read the fanzine, but cloddishly did not respond to Higgs, not even to let him know his magazine had arrived and been read.

As you can imagine from the title, Mike's area of interest was in The Shadow and pulp magazines. The fanzine, which is well produced, appears to be a mixture of photo offset and mimeography. The typewriter used had worn keys, which bothered me as letters faded off on their corners, but now I see that as charming in a world of perfect typography thanks to computers. There is an article by Philip Harbottle on the series of Golden Amazon stories from the pulps.





There's a comic section with an article on Captain Marvel. There is even an article on the Salem witchcraft trials, a fiction piece, and then there are a couple of Higgs' cartoons. For a fan artist he seemed a cut above the average. Higgs explains his interest in the Shadow in a one-page introductory editorial: "I first encountered 'The Shadow' about two years ago in a large store pile of old magazines at half price. Among the pile I came across several British reprint editions of 'The Shadow' mystery magazine. I decided to buy one just for something to read. That night having read the story of a weird person in a black cloak and slouch hat, I became a Shadow Fan. I went back to the store the next day and bought the rest of the 'Shadow' mags." Sound familiar? A trufan in the making.

He goes on to explain that only about a dozen British editions of The Shadow appeared, so he had to resort to buying the American magazines for (choke!) $3.00 apiece. He found a contact in the States and was soon getting them at a more "reasonable price." Ah, for those good ol' days of cheap pulps, because no one was collecting them…but I digress. Here's one of Higgs' cartoons, signed as MIK, this one showing his fannish influence.
Beyond the above mention of the Shadow pulps and the cartoons, there isn't anything about the Shadow.
I have read several of the novels over the years, but was never a big Shadow fan. Even so I appreciated Higgs' enthusiasm and the whole tone of the fanzine. Still, The Shudder Fanzine went into storage, and because I didn't send a letter of comment, if there were subsequent issues, I never saw them. Over 20 years later at my local comic book store I noticed this indy comic, Brickman by British cartoonist Lew Stringer. In the lower right corner is a teaser, "Big Thrills with The Redundant Hero by Mike Higgs."


Aha. Brain engaged, memory circuits aglow, I remembered Higgs and The Shudder. The "Redundant Hero" of the title is named The Cloak, but he's a descendant of The Shudder.


If he's still around, and if you know Mike Higgs, let him know about this blog. If you're Mike reading this blog, then I'd like to offer my apologies. Thanks for sending this entertaining and well-done fanzine, and I'm sorry it took me 43 years to tell you that.

*******

By coincidence, after writing the above several days ago, I found this book in the library. It's a graphic novel aimed at children, and the villain is patterned after the Shadow.