The Shadow #7 - The Night of the Beast.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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I admit it. I've always wanted to live on the 51st floor of a skyscraper that, officially, has only 50 floors.

That's because I want to be like the Shadow, and that's the sort of thing the Shadow would do.

Sadly, there are no 50 storey buildings in my native city. So, I shall have to settle for living on the first and second floors of a building that only officially has two floors. Surely such a ruse cannot fail to fool the dregs of the criminal underworld.

But that brings me back to the Shadow's short-lived 1970s DC series.

As we all know, it started off being drawn, with great style, by Mike Kaluta. However, after less than half-dozen issues, Michael Wm left the strip and it was handed over, for three issues, to the ever-popular Frank Robbins before ER Cruz was set loose on it.

There's one thing we know about Frank Robbins and that's that his style always made everything look like it was set in the 1930s, even when a story was set in the 1970s. So, just how did that style cope with drawing the 1930s themselves?

Lamont Cranston and his lady friend Margo Lane are watching a play starring Broadway goddess Morag Mayne who bears no resemblance at all to Katharine Hepburn, when who should appear but a malformed simpleton called Pile?

Before anyone can react, Pile swings in on a rope and makes off with the lovely Morag.

But it's mere moments before Cranston's transformed himself into the Shadow and gives chase.

Sadly, Shads isn't the only one giving chase, because so are a couple of hoods who see-off Pile, in the street outside, before the Shadow shows up and sees them off.

That excitement over, the man of mystery sets about his investigations, discovering Morag was, until recently, the girlfriend of local mobster Joey Lyce. Now, it's clear Lyce wants her rubbed out before she can tell the feds all the dirt she has on him, while Pile was out to save her from the wrath of Joey.

Thus it is that, while the Shadow and Morag are snogging in her apartment, the still-living Pile reappears, sends the Shadow flying and, again, abducts Morag, this time heading for his former home in an abandoned brewery.

But the Shadow's not the only one in hot pursuit, as Joey and his men also descend upon the site.

Obviously, this results in plenty of shooting, punching and needless laughing and, at the end of it all, Joey's been decked by the Shadow, while Pile, already mortally wounded by Joey's men, is accidentally killed by Morag, using the gun Pile himself gave her. Oh, the bitter irony of it all.

Denny O'Neil's tale's not a complex one. In fact, it's basically a hodgepodge of 1930s cliches, with a large chunk of The Hunchback of Notre Dame flung in but it has an irresistible sense of style, keeps moving and is a painless read which allows Robbins to do what he does best, which is avoiding drawing things that look new.

The reality is that, when I first encountered the pair's take on the strip, in the summer of 1975, I was very taken with it, to the degree that I felt compelled to buy their other issues of it. From this, I can only conclude the duo must have got something right and I will still contend that that's a great cover by Frank.

So, yes, it's true. Under the right circumstances, even Frank Robbins' work can appeal to me.

But a thought's just re-entered my head. One which struck me, way back then. The Shadow wears a scarf and a hat and has a sidekick called Harry.

When he first appeared, Tom Baker's Doctor also wore a scarf and a hat and had a sidekick called Harry.

Was this pure coincidence or was there a long-unacknowledged influence going on?

I don't know.

But the Shadow probably does.

This week, I have mostly been reading...

"Steve!" I hear you cry. "What have you been reading lately and when are you going to review it?"

Well, I've been reading quite a lot lately - and I'm going to be reviewing almost none of it.

This isn't because a strange new wave of apathy has swept across my living room. It's because most of the comics I've read lately, I don't have anything to say about that I've not said about other issues in their respective series.

For instance, much as I love Charlton's Midnight Tales, I can't think of anything to say about issues #5 and #12 that I didn't say in my reviews of issues #8 and #9.

Therefore, in the absence of fresh new opinions, I'm going to give you a quick round-up of what I've been looking at.

It's the second part of the Red Rajah saga, as the girl Defenders take on the boy Defenders and make a better job of it than the boys ever did.

Don McGregor's Panther's Rage kicks off with T'Challa returning to Wakanda, only to find everyone's a bit fed-up of him.

Jack Kirby's short-lived take on the Avenger gives us men turning into monsters, as the Avenger gains a new sidekick and strikes a blow for racial equality in the pulp era.

It's like a cross between The Man Who Fell To Earth and Whistle Down The Wind, as Warlock arrives on Counter-Earth and promptly gains a bunch of disciples.

Gil Kane's art's fabby but Roy Thomas lays on the religious allegory so hard it's like being run over by a copy of the Bible.

It's more winningly quirky pleasantness from easily my favourite Charlton series, as Professor Coffin and Arachne have a Hellbound diversion.

And they're back again.

Reading The Shadow was the first time I ever liked Frank Robbins' artwork.

Here, the scarf-tastic super-doer finds himself mixed up in showbiz shenanigans.

With Frank Robbins still in charge, the Shadow's up against a smuggling operation at Niagara.

It's the Shadow vs the Avenger in the battle to see whose comic's going to be cancelled first. While the strip's still here, there's plenty of lovely E R Cruz artwork to savour.

More E R Cruz on the inside and a classic cover by Mike Kaluta on the outside, as the Shadow finds himself up against a town full of Satanists.

Or does he?

One of my Kung Fu faves, as Shang-Chi finds himself up against his best friend Midnight, from the era when Jim Starlin was still on the art and proving there was more to his repertoire than being Cosmic.

Sheffield's Most Wanted. Part 17: Batman #259.

Yes! Yes, Mr Cover Designer! I CAN spot Bruce Wayne in that picture! He's clearly the man in the scarf, holding the gun and looking a bit miffed at everyone. I am me and I demand my prize!

If there was one 1970s Batman story I wanted to read more than his team-up with Manhunter, it was his collaboration with the Shadow. I wanted to be Batman. I wanted to be the Shadow. I also wanted to be the Spectre but I'd have to die to be that, so I was happy to settle for being either of the other two. Therefore how could I not love them being in one story together?

Actually, were they in one story together? Nick Cardy's cover for Batman #259 leaves it in some doubt as to whether DC's nocturnal knights would ever meet.

Sadly, I never got to find out because I never got to read the comic. But what a magnificent treat I have no doubt it was.

But let's be honest, who cares about  the Shadow and Batman? One look at that cover tells us what we really want to see - the feature where DC unveils new costumes designed for Robin by me the readers.

Bearing in mind the less-than-stellar costumes I the reader inflicted on poor old Supergirl when given the chance to design new costumes for her, one can only shudder at what nightmares I the reader inflicted on Robin, bearing in mind he wasn't necessarily the most dignifiedly attired man in the first place.

The Shadow #10. E.R. Cruz; man of mystery.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Not me.

Who knows anything at all about E.R. Cruz, DC mystery-artist extraordinaire?

Not me.

Not Wikipedia either. He doesn't even have his own page. He has a page on the DC Database site. This is it. Not exactly revealing is it? This has to be one of the great scandals of our age. I mean, even I have a Wikipedia page. Admittedly, I had to put it there myself but still...

But perhaps it takes a man of mystery to draw a man of mystery and, whatever and whoever E.R. Cruz is or was, if ever there was anyone born to draw the Shadow it was the Filipino artist.

His work on the strip doesn't have the energy and quirkiness of Frank Robbins but it avoids the sterility of Mike Kaluta and gives it a somewhat filmic look as well as tying it into the world of DC's horror and mystery mags where it belonged.

So, what's the deal? In Night of the Killers, some small time crooks hold up a bank and take the local judge as a hostage.

As it turns out the judge is in on it and, with the aid of his trusty autogyro, the Shadow soon sorts everyone out. In writing terms, the tale suffers from the same problems as Michael Fleisher's Spectre stories of the same vintage which is the inevitability of the protagonist's victory against heavily outclassed foes. Basically, this is Brazil vs your local pub team and, surprise surprise, the pub team gets a beating.

There's also a strange lapse in which, early in the tale, the Shadow's henchman Shrevvy spots a vital clue to the mystery. At the time a big deal's made of this. Trouble is, at the tale's resolution, we still haven't been told what that clue is. I'm assuming it's something to do with the judge's behaviour as he's being kidnapped but, having scoured the pages in question, I can't see any sign of it.

Still, in the end, as is his nature, the Shadow's always going to be more about style than substance and, in the hands of the only man on Earth more mysterious than the Shadow, it more than delivers on that score.

Daredevil #115. The Shadow of the Death-Stalker.

One of the things I loved in the good old days before Marvel and DC got on well enough to do collaborations was when a Marvel hero found himself up against a DC hero. Of course, thanks to that inconvenient thing known as copyright, names had to be changed to cunningly disguise what was going on.

Probably my favourite example was Avengers #70 when our heroes assembled found themselves against the Justice League of America, renamed the Squadron Sinister. And, of course, there was X-Men #107 when, under the pencil of Dave Cockrum, Marvel's mightiest mutants found themselves fighting Cockrum's previous charges the Legion of Super-Heroes in everything but name.

With Daredevil #115, it was the man without fear's turn as he found himself up against the Shadow. Obviously, they didn't call him the Shadow, they called him Death-Stalker but the silly hat, the tendency to vanish into thin air and the love of inappropriate laughter left you in no doubt who he really was.

But it wasn't that simple.

Just as the early Christian Church demonised the gods of rival religions, so Marvel demonised DC comics' heroes and, far from being a determined battler of evil, the Shadow became a bad guy out to sell secret formulae to enemy powers and had a death touch that supposedly slew all it encountered. In fact, in the issues I read, I'm not sure it ever managed to slay anyone. I seem to remember him using it on the Man-Thing, the Gladiator and DD and all lived to fight again. Oh well, what's a villain without a little hyperbole?

The Shadow might know but Daredevil doesn't.

Apart from him being a bad guy, the main thing that separated Death-Stalker from the real Shadow was his love of kinky boots. I'm not totally sure what that was about. Perhaps it was supposed to be some clue that our villain, by day, worked in a sex fetishists' shop, or was in reality a very short man, so that eagle-eyed readers would no doubt benefit from looking out for the arrival of a diminutive supporting character who could later be exposed as the villain himself. Whether this happened or not, I'm not sure. It certainly would have in the days of Stan Lee.

The story is that Foggy Nelson's sister Candace has stumbled on some documents relating to the formula that turned Ted Sallis into the Man-Thing, and now the Death Stalker's stolen them so he can sell them to whatever nation would like to create a race of pollution-breathing monsters. I suspect most nations would like to do that. Needless to say, after a bit of difficulty here and there, our hero finally succeeds in stopping him with the aid of an acid vat. To do this, he requires an incredible amount of luck. DD thinks to himself, "Where would Death-Stalker be?" On fairly flimsy grounds, he decides he might be at a chemical plant. And wouldn't you know it, the first chemical plant our hero comes across, Death-Stalker's there. Sherlock Holmes eat your heart out.

As a kid, I always had a soft spot for Daredevil, possibly because his lack of powerage made him more human and more the sort of hero that theoretically, any of us could be. As an adult, I'm not so bothered.

Reading through his adventures in the first three Essential Daredevil volumes was an oddly empty experience for me compared to the likes of Essential Avengers, Spider-Man and Thor. I found it hard to get into Gene Colan's art, and the human side of Daredevil's life, his trials and tribulations with Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, seemed dull compared to Peter Parker's. However, by the time issue #115 had come along Colan was gone and the strip was being drawn by Bob Brown. There was nothing spectacular about Brown's work but, like Sal Buscema, he was a solid story teller whose people looked like people and I do like the way he portrays Death-Stalker here, as a somewhat melodramatic, pantomime villain, never shirking the chance to adopt an arch pose.

The relationships also seem more interesting. We've had Candace Nelson added to the strip, and the Black Widow and Ivan are still lurking in the background, mostly hanging around on park benches. As a result, I do find this tale more interesting than those earlier ones, an odd example of a strip improving after what, at face value, is its classic era. It's still nothing special compared to Marvel's greatest triumphs but it carries you along painlessly and I'm not sure I have the right to ask more of Matt Murdock than that.

Frank Robbins' The Shadow.

If there was any DC Comics' series I wanted when I was a kid it was The Shadow.

Mostly this was because of their habit of using the mag's first couple of Mike Kaluta covers as full page ads in their other comics. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" asked the ads as the titular hero loomed over haunting cityscapes. Who indeed?

As it turned out, I never got my hands on any of the Mike Kaluta tales. The only ones I ever had were the Frank Robbins and the E R Cruz ones.

The E R Cruz issues I was always going to like. I'd been a fan of his work in DC's horror mags and his fluid and enigmatic style was always going to be perfect for a strip like that.

Frank Robbins on the other hand was a revelation.

Like an awful lot of people I'd always seen him as Don Heck's more demented doppelganger. His figures always looked like they were falling apart halfway through some mad, nerve-toxin induced dance of death. A natural cartoonist, I think even his biggest fan wouldn't deny his style really wasn't suited in any way shape or form to the conventional super-hero genre.

With The Shadow however, Robbins found the perfect vehicle for his talents.

As I've already said, I didn't have any of the Kaluta tales back then - but I have seen them since and I have to say I far prefer the Robbins version. The Kaluta tales are things of beauty all right but, like all things that strive for perfection, they're oddly uninvolving. Robbins' more frenetic and disjointed style somehow brought a life and a vigour to a character who wasn't inherently interesting.

After all, the Shadow isn't exactly the world's greatest conversationalist and the inevitability of his victories against mostly ordinary foes could drain the tension from any story. Kaluta's art, fine as it was, never overcame that problem but Robbins' greater vigour, energy and sheer strangeness went a long way to injecting animation into what at heart were inevitably lifeless tales.