Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Just 83 years ago today, The Shadow first appeared!

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” . . . why Orson Welles, of course.

Today, July 31st marks the 83 anniversary of the first appearance of The Shadow as a mysterious narrator on the Street & Smith radio program, Detective Story Hour. He was so popular that they gave him his very own pulp magazine starting on April 1st, 1931.


The nature of the publishing game at the time was to invest as little as possible in new ventures – the awful world economy of the early 1930s was not conducive to “rolling out” new magazines with any kind of “bang.” Thus, this first Shadow cover used recycled art that had originally appeared as the cover of The Thrill Book on Oct. 1, 1919.



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