T is for THE SHADOW

  PULP FICTION late 1800s – mid 1950s

The Shadow is a vigilante crime fighter appearing in a wide variety of media. One of the most famous adventure heroes of the twentieth century,

Originally simply a mysterious radio narrator which hosted a program designed to promote magazine sales for Street & Smith Publications, The Shadow was developed into a distinctive literary character, later to become a pop culture icon, by writer Walter B. Gibson in 1931. The character has been cited as a major influence on the subsequent evolution of comic book superheroes, particularly Batman.

The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the Street & Smith radio program Detective Story Hour developed in an effort to boost sales of Detective Story Magazine. When listeners of the program began asking at newsstands for copies of "That Shadow detective magazine", Street & Smith decided to create a magazine based around The Shadow and hired Gibson to create a character concept to fit the name and voice and write a story featuring him. The first issue of The Shadow Magazine went on sale on April 1, 1931, a pulp series.

Walter Brown Gibson (1897 – 1985) was an American author and best known for his work on the pulp fiction character The Shadow.  

Gibson, under the pen-name Maxwell Grant Maxwell Grant, wrote "more than 300 novel-length" Shadow stories, writing up to "10,000 words a day" to satisfy public demand during the character's golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. 

 He also authored several novels in the Biff Brewster juvenile series of the 1960s     

                                              

Always, 

Em-Musing