83 years ago, the voice of the Shadow was first heard across America on the Detective Story Hour radio program. One year later, he made his first appearance in the pages of his own pulp novel, written by Walter Gibson under the house name of Maxwell Grant. From 1931 until 1949, Gibson penned 282 of the 325 Shadow pulp adventures, crafting the world of this masked man’s war on crime, his enemies, his allies, his adventures. At the same time, the Shadow became famous on the radio once again (the great Orson Welles voiced the character from 1937 until 1938), and in the movie serials. Over the years, the character has continued to delight fans young and old, with his fantastic life of crime fighting in the pages of comic books (currently being published in comics by Dynamite Entertainment), reprints of his pulp novel adventures and his own feature film in 1994, starring Alec Baldwin in the titular role. And all these years later, criminals upon the fictional page, still stop and quake in their shoes when a sinister laugh is heard, foretelling their doom. After all, who knows, what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.
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