The Shadow & Me: "The Romanoff Jewels" by Maxwell (Walter Gibson) Grant

 

I was the perfect age for The Shadow in 1994. I had been poised (brainwashed) by Hollywood to lap up the glamorous adventure of arguable the most famous of the old-school Pulp Heroes. I was four-years old in the theater mesmerized by Tim Burton's "Batman," then I got caught up in Dick Tracy fever the following year. Then more Batman and The Rocketeer plus the discovery of Indiana Jones. See? I already had molded myself into pretty much the same guy I am today, just smaller. A couple years later I found out about The Phantom too. "The Shadow" was to be the next Batman. Though, really Batman was still the next Batman. I got the action figures, trading cards and I remember really wanting the lunchbox. The picture starred Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Ian McKellen, Peter Boyle AND Tim Curry, which is a seriously stacked cast and was stylishly directed by Russell Mulcahy. I loved (and still do) every minute of it. Sadly, it didn't really click with audiences and didn't produce a couple of sequels. The movie is a amalgamation of the different versions of The Shadow. The radio version of The Shadow was different then the magazine version and so on. The fluid nature of the character is only fitting as The Shadow is full of surprises. The Shadow wasn't new to movie theaters though, a handful of almost uniformly bad B-pictures that pretty much ignore all the cool-stuff about The Shadow and focusing on bad-mysteries. Though the 1940 serial is a lot of daring-doo fun.

Later in my book buying travels I discovered some of the reprints, this was about the same time I was finding out about Doc Savage, Man from UNCLE paperbacks, and stuff like The Saint and The Avengers, Steed and Peel that is. Again, the perfect age around middle school to dive into the dark and wild world of The Shadow. I never had (until the last couple of years) finding Doc Savage books in the wild, hell I actually just bought 70 issues of the actual pulp printed magazine in a garage fifteen minutes from my house. But that's a different story. The Shadow was harder to find and it sucked cause I liked him a bit more then Doc. Later I found The Spider and I like him a bit more then everyone. So, though I love The Shadow, I've really only read only a few of them. I've collected quiet a few now and am going to make an effort to get them read. 

Sometimes when I got too many options I make it too hard on myself in deciding. I got a stack of Walter Gibson's books and they all look good enough to eat, so which one do I start? I found myself at an impasse one morning looking at all the pulp on my shelf. I googled some titles got mixed answers and finally just picked out the one that had a cool cover and the word "Kremlin" on the back. "The Shadow #9: The Romanoff Jewels."

The Shadow exists in a wonderfully mysterious world that no longer exists, well, it probably never actually existed at all. That's the way The Shadow would want it. It's a world of looming danger, quick action and mysticism that perminated the "real" world. It's also a place of hard-bitten gangsters, spies, and all the other stock pulp characters. The world of the Shadow feels like there's peril in every drop of darkness. A golden dagger will fly at you, your drink will be poisoned or a burst of Tommy-Gun will perforate you. "The Romanoff Jewels" is probably no-one favorite Shadow story. Not that it's bad, it's wonderful. But with every long running character there's ups, downs and middles. This feels like a middle to me. There's the trappings of The Shadow. Booby-traps, dark allies, enemy agents, bombs, legendary lost treasure and double-running-to-triple crosses. It's a whole lot of exciting amusement. Gibson is a master of the cliff-hanging chapter, making just flip through the pages. "The Romanoff Jewels" is a fine (short) book, but if you haven't read a Shadow before you might want to try another one. I remember liking "Murder Trail" a lot, it's full of Zeppelins. Can't go wrong there. 

Now, okay there's an Elephant in the room, or maybe it's just a shadow of one sulking in the corner. This last year James Patterson along with (in smaller print) Brian Sitts brought The Shadow back. I had been following the development of this book since it was announced. I can't say I was super hopeful about it. I really don't like to rag on anyone but James Patterson doesn't really do anything for me. I've tried to understand what the mass-appeal is but his work doesn't click with my sensibility. Which is odd cause it's clearly a form of pulp. I did enjoy one of his earlier books "The Midnight Club," but now that he opened his Patterson factory and just mass-produces novels written by others the cocktail is so deluded it won't even get you tipsy. "The Shadow" is so watered down and thin it reads like a YA novel and it's "near future" setting feels like an easy-out for something when you have no idea what to do. It feels like The Shadow was dropped into an already written manuscript about something else. The whole book feels like a non-commit and it's a shame. I tried it from the library when it was first released. I didn't finish it. Then my addled-brain convinced myself to buy it to try again. I didn't finish it then either. It'll be on the shelf with the rest of The Shadows though.

"The Shadow" is cooler then Batman. There I said it. 

"The Night of the Shadow" By Maxwell Grant (Dennis Lynds) & The Avenger: "The Back Cariots" by Kenneth Robeson (Ron Goulart)

For some reason when the wind starts blowing colder I get in the mood for pulp, now I mean actual pulp stories that appeared in the 10 cent wonders that where the pulp magazines. Maybe its the gloom of of the cool of the air and darkness that sets in, makes me think of The Great Depression when the pulps ruled. As a kid my taste for pulps was developed by countless re-watching of the Indiana Jones movies, tied in with movies like "Flash Gordon," "The Rocketeer," The Phantom," and "The Shadow." I actually knew of the Shadow before the 1994 movie, via a two-VHS collection of trailers and a documentary on the cliffhanger movie serials. Where I saw wonderful bits of serials, Batman, Captain Marvel, Commando Cody, etc. etc. I was a weird kid, okay? But they all seemed so fast, and action-packed and thrilling with evil looking baddies and damsels in distress. They looked exactly like what a 10 year old boy would want to see. Which I mean, is exactly what they were. I soon fell in love with the books. I read a mess of them, but until a couple of years ago I hadn't really read any of the pulp heroes what with my time being spent on hard-boiled crime and Men's Adventure, but you need the fantastic every now and then so I dipped my toe back in and been dipping it in every now and then.

"The Night of the Shadow" is the first Shadow novel I have read in maybe ten years. My older self's pulp-taste runs toward The Spider, the Avenger, Operator #5, Secret Agent X and G-8. Doc and The Shadow seem to get lost in the mix. Dennis Lynds got me to check this entry out. He's writer who always puts out a good book whether its under his name or not. 

The 60's incarnation of The Shadow is a representation of the pulp tastes of the time, just as the original one was to the taste of the 30's. Here The Shadow acts more like an active Waverly from "Man From U.N.C.L.E." with his companions acting like UNCLE agents. It's an overall odd mix of styles of pulp, the over-the-top near-super powers of The Shadow and the Bond-Mania flavored villain plot. It doesn't have the mystic quality that Walter B. Gibson brought to the character, Gibson's interest in magic somehow gets in between the lines of the books setting a prefect atmosphere. The magic quality of the speed and the twisty-turning narrative is something melds perfectly together. There will never be a moment in time again that is ripe for the kind of writing. Lynds take on the character is certainly what would have appealed to the readers of the 60's, but as Gibson's work is pretty timeless the 60's version is a bit more bland. The villains have a cool pulpy-evil plot involving weaponized organic warfare, but they themselves are forgettable stock characters. Lynds goes through the motions with other fun stuff like kidnappings, assassinations, the never-full secret pockets of The Shadow's suit that holds his whole costume plus a bucket-load of guns, etc. etc. it just never seems to kick into high gear. There's enough good stuff in here that I will read the other Dennis Lynds novels in the series, just with a few of Gibson's before. Dennis Lynds has a mountain of great work to read with his Dan Fortune novels, Kane Jackson and his work writing for Mike Shayne and Nick Carter.

Ron Goulart picked up the Kenneth Robeson mantle to continue The Avenger series in the 70's, but they wise chose to keep the setting in 30's. Goulart gets a bad rap sometimes, I dunno why. I've always enjoyed his work whether it's his own series like his John Easy P.I. series, his humorous Sci-Fi novels, editing of anthologies or licensed work with Vampirella, Flash Gordon and The Phantom. His short story collection, "The Ghost Breaker" is a absolute blast, a fun take on the whole occult detective bit. He's an acquired taste I suppose, leaning into the humor more then some might like. He's obviously a student of pulp fiction, cliff-hanger serials, newspaper strips and the like and he can write the hell out of them. Paul Ernst created "The Avenger," AKA Richard Benson and his team of crime-fighters originally, though he shared Kenneth Robeson with Lester Dent for Doc Savage. If your not familiar with The Avenger it is in conception a mish-mash of The Shadow and Doc Savage, originally with a neat gimmick that Benson's "stone face" could be molded into anyone for a endless variety of disguises. It was later dropped when the pulp hero racket was waning.

His Avenger stories (and most of his work) are "light entertainment," they breeze on by and the pace never lets up, he build character through dialog both internal and external witty banter. The action is frequent and very much of the movie serial variety. He leans a lot on the character of Cole Wilson who was a later addition to the crime-fighting team of Richard Benson. In a lot of ways Wilson is the classic Ron Goulart character quick mouth, capable but not infallible. It's easy to see why he chose to have Wilson and Nellie Grey, the Emma Peel of her day get stuck together a lot of the time and bicker and blunder into the fantastic plots. Only to have The Avenger working his own way and swooping in to save the day with the help of the rest of the team. "The Black Chariots" are basically rocket-powered spy planes and the inventor (there's always a wayward inventor in pulps) is missing. The Avenger's team gets roped into the case and solves with with machine gun fights, aerial battles, escapes, sieges and the like. It's not going to change your life, but it's a very solid entry. Though Goulart's Avenger tales "The Cartoon Crimes," and "The Purple Zombie" are hands down the most fun taking place within the newspaper comic strip industry and the movie industry, respectively. 

Books like these keep the pulp-hero concept alive in lean years, now there's a whole boom of New Pulp, with new characters, refreshed old characters and more continuations of beloved characters in books and comics. It's a good time to like the genre. I suppose its tied into the dire times we live in being a bit like the dire times of The Great Depression, escapism is a wonderful thing.