Friday-Night Fights--Lamont Cranston Style!!

Hey, this week, let's feature The Shadow on Friday Night Fights!!

No, not that one!!

This one!!

See, when Archie Comics had the Shadow licence for 10 minutes back in the 60s, they very quickly dumped the murderous pulp mentalist angle, and turned him into a straight long-underwear-wearing super-hero!!

So when Lamont Cranston walks in on Margo Lane being kidnapped by the bad guys...

He's not going to use Jedi mind tricks to freak out the bad guys. No menacing laugh, no invisibility of mind control, no guns, even.

Nope, Lamont just full-on powerless mystery man--lots of quips and punches!!

UHHHH!!!!!

Spacebooger thinks that this style of crime-fighting is much easier to clean up than a pile of bullet-ridden corpses!!

Laughless Lamont is from The Shadow #3 (1964). There's so confusion over the credits, as either Robert Bernstein or Jerry Siegel--or both--wrote it. Pencils and inks are by Paul Reinman

Now is the time for you to go and vote for my fight. Why?!? Because you should support cleaning up those grimy, naughty pulp stories into nice, clean, generic stories!! So go and vote!!

Tales From The Quarter Bin--The Shadow of Riverdale?!?

There have been a lot of portrayals of The Shadow over the years...

...but none quite like the Archie Comics version!!

Wha...?

When Archie picked up the licence in 1963, they played it more or less straight for oneissue:

But it didn't take long for them to decide they would rather make it a super-hero comic than a pulp crime series:

And when Jerry Siegel took over as writer, well, all connection to the past sort of vanished, as the book tried harder and harder to look like Marvel comics of the day:

Hey, who needs powers of hypnosis and mind control and a blood-curdling laugh...

...when you can have utility belt gadgets and quips!

Hell, the book even mocked the very idea of the "old" Shadow:

Still, you can't argue with Shiwan Khan's death traps:

Archie's The Shadow ended after 8 issues, leaving a cliffhanger unresolved, and mankind will never know if he ultimately triumphed over the insidious Elasto!

Quote Of The Week--Foul Reek!!

You're all required to use this quote at work today:

Who said that?

Duh:

From this week's The Shadow: Year One #5

Quote Of The Week--Criminal Hierarchy

Some heroes like to make lists for themselves, to rank things. So remember, when it comes to The Shadow...


Hireling < scum.

For your own good, make sure you stay on the correct side of that equation....

From Dynamite's The Shadow #1

Department Of WTF Comparisons

From an in-house ad from Dynamite, interviewing Garth Ennis about his forthcoming The Shadow series (sorry it's so small, just click on it to embiggen):

"Who's a bigger bastard, Lamont Cranston or Nick Fury"?!?!? Where the hell did that come from?

On the surface, at least, it's a lot of apples and oranges there...Nick Fury is a James Bond/U.N.C.L.E. superspy, where the Shadow is a pulp crime-fighter.

Plus, Nick Fury? Sure, he can be a sunnuvabeetch sometimes...but as Ennis notes, he's not particularly a bastard. So it's really not a terribly apt question.

For better comic book analogies, you might ask if the Shadow or John Constantine were a bigger bastard, or the Shadow vs. Rorschach, or Lamont Cranston vs. Wolverine.

Not to pick on you, anonymous Dynamite editor/PR person who wrote the "questions" for this "interview" (unless, of course, Ennis wrote the questions for himself...). But I'm thinking future Dynamite interviews might feature questions like this:

"Who's the Kirby character--Captain Victory or Thanos?"

"Who's the deadlier jungle fighter--Tarzan or Blue Beetle?"

"Who's the nastier female vampire--Vampirella or Wonder Woman?"

OK, I'll stop now...

The REAL Reason Batman Doesn't Like Guns

Some of you probably read the title of this post and thought to yourselves, "Duh, it's because he saw Joe Chill kill his parents with one!"

Well, you're wrong. At least, partially long. Because the longer you live, the more you find out about Batman.

Let's head back to the past in downtown Gotham City, when some mooks are robbing a jewelry store. And there to stop them? The Shadow!!

Wha...?

Well, that just leads to a hostage situation, just as a certain someone and his father are getting off the elevator:

Then Thomas Wayne displays the same propensity for bare-handedly attacking armed thieves that would soon get him killed:

Fortunately, this time there was a costumed hero to help out:

But poor Bruce? He was a little bit traumatized by the gun battle:

And even though the Shadow comforts the boy...

...Bruce's fear of guns is fully instilled:

So just a few weeks later, Thomas Wayne is less lucky, and the infamous murder merely reinforces that pre-existing fear!!

25 years later, Batman still doesn't like guns:

But Stamper has just been released from prison, and he's after the jewels, and revenge against those he blames for his capture. Batman tracks him down...

But being confronted by Stamper and a blasting gun re-triggers Bruce Wayne's trauma:

Which leaves him helpless:

Fortunately, someone is watching unseen...

...and that familiar, comforting (?) laugh restores Batman to his right mind!

Of course, this means that the Shadow must know Batman's identity, right??

And he vanishes, leaving Batman with a case of unrequited hero worship:

And now you know...the rest of the story!!

Denny O'Neill, Irv Novick & Dick Giordano bring us the real truth about the Caped Crusader in Batman #259 (1974).