My Life In Fandom: The Shadowcast Returns!

Happy Boxing Day, folks! The Excellence of Elocution returns with Episode 10 of The Shadowcast.

The inaugural Shadow trilogy concludes with climactic chapter "The Shadow Laughs!" in December's edition of The Shadowcast! A dark, mysterious work in which The Shadow's signature twin .45 automatics make their debut, and Lamont Cranston... meets "Lamont Cranston"!

A true classic you'll need to hear to believe.

We conclude with a bit of disquieting news about Condé Nast's incoming Shadow relaunch, and wash the bitter taste out of our mouths with one of the greatest Mystery Horror masterpieces ever aired, 1940's "The Laughing Corpse", featuring a series of serial murders where people laugh themselves to death and die with a morbid grin.

(You're welcome, Joker!)

Besides being a reminder that you should get your own copies of the reprints while they're still available, and to track down the old radio show (because they are as good as Razorfist says), the big takeaways here are about the development process Gibson went through in creating his most famous character.

These first three novels are where we see the roughness carved away and the edges rounded off as the craftsman bring his vision to life. Several tropes don't appear until the second or third novel, such as Cranston being himself an agent of The Shadow (and not exactly by choice), or the preference for a pair of 1911 semi-automatic pistols chambered in .45 ACP. (Yes, there is a choice; .38 Super is an alternative until recently, when 9mm NATO became common.)

The other thing to take away is how Gibson wasn't going into this committing to a monthy workflow cycle. It's because of Street & Smith's reaction to the explosive response to the character that S&S decided to go monthly and thus commit Gibson to that schedule. Gibson would keep at it for 18 years, and, well, I'll let Razorfist finish this:

At age 80, Walter B. Gibson complained he could "only" write 5 books a year.
In the '30s/'40s, he wrote 24 Shadow novels a year AND most of The Shadow comics. Earning enough to afford a 2-story, 5-room apartment in Manhattan at the height of the Depression.
Step your game up. pic.twitter.com/JTU6J3KPOc

— RazörFist (@RAZ0RFIST) December 26, 2020

The man made bank during the Great Depression and throughout World War II, a time when many struggled to make ends meet and had to deal with the return of war coming to their door. The only problem he'd have today is that most people wouldn't consider his books to be novels, and balk accordingly at what they would sell for. (I write at about the size he did, so I know.) Blame that on the bitter Lit majors running the publishing houses, who decided to allow for literary obesity as a competition strategy for shelf space, and thus warp the perceptions of generations of readers.