Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Aquaman and The Shadow

 

My favorite memories of The Shadow do not come from his print or theatrical appearances, but from the classic radio plays featuring the character.  When I was a kid, we had a collection of them that we would pop in and listen to at bedtime.  I'm sure that someone has a bunch of the episodes on Youtube, I'll have to give them a listen again after all these years.

19 comments:

  1. i saw the comics of the shadow, then the books and finally the tapes that were released of the radio show,
    i really enjoyed them,
    i wonder if Arthur will become one of his Agents,
    Fabulous Cover…

    ReplyDelete
  2. it was the sixties or seventies that played his adventures al
    ong side that of The Green Hornet. listening to the stories, i was always happy that they didn't put Blue Coal in the adventures themselves.
    After seeing the older Shadow with Batman, this cover works nicely also.

    Now, Spider-Man and the Shadow would be something very different. Would Cranston be able to nullify Peter's spider sense?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Spidey met The Shadow in STF #367, April 2013.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Det. Tobor: why not? The Shroud was able to; and he's just a Batman-cum-Shadow knock-off!

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Who cursed Thomas Curry?"

    Shiwan Khan in cahoots with Orm Marius?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Somehow I need to get hold of those radio dramas. I've listened to a couple, but most of my exposure to his adventures has been the (underrated) movie with Alec Baldwin. And with audio dramas coming back, well, who knows what could happen?

    Still, I'm enough of a fan of the character that he's one of my fallback cosplays.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love listening to the Radio Classics station on Sirius XM. But for some reason, they've been unable to get permission to broadcast episodes of The Shadow or The Lone Ranger. That's a pity. But there are a lot of them available to download from the Internet Archive at archive.org

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Other Bob: Does Sirius XM play Fibber McGee and Molly?

    ReplyDelete
  9. PS: My answer to "Who cursed Arthur Curry?" is Peter Safran.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I "Heard" it was the actress who played Mera. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Seriously, though; I think the answer to the question posed in the title is obvious. It's whoever recruited the Super-Skrull for the abduction of Namorita (in STF #3994)!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Isn't it unusual for you to cross a character over with a company that they had an actual crossover with? I started with Batman (a fellow DC character) #253 in 1973, where it was revealed that the Shadow, not Zorro, was Batman's inspiration.

    In the early 1980s, I bought a boxed set of four tapes of the radio program (episode 5, The Temple Bells of Neban, comes first to mind).

    In 1994, I saw the Shadow film (and my friend stole a small poster for me - without my knowledge). I was appalled that they gave Margo Lane psychic powers.

    Later that decade, I downloaded mp3s of 238 episodes of the radio show and listened to them all. (I need to search for additional episodes.)

    After that, I read that the Shadow's power to cloud men's minds was added for the radio show, and I decided I needed to read his pulp stories. I bought a few reprints online and found that the shadow had only his pistols (present on radio) and a cadre of helpers (severely truncated on radio to just Shreve, I believe).

    Now I need to download the 1940 serial from Youtube, as well as find a source for The Street and Smith Dectective Story Hour radio program, which predated the Shadow's show and had him serving as narrator. Any help?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Probably the most convenient way to listen to the Shadow radio shows -- or any vintage US radio shows -- is via podcasts. There is or was one devoted to the Shadow only, but that may be out of action. Try this page for suggestions:

    https://blog.feedspot.com/old_time_radio_podcasts/

    ReplyDelete
  14. One of my favorite shows, as you might imagine from my avatar. All of the surviving episodes (nearly 250) are available on mp3, and many are on streaming sites.

    ReplyDelete
  15. How about for a sequel (starting with STF #4001)... "Agents of the Abyss vs. the Death-dealer From The Depths!"

    ReplyDelete
  16. @Anon934: Uhm! Could you possibly mean The Death-dealer from the Dead Sea?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yeah! Frazetta's version; but riding a giant zombie seahorse.

    ReplyDelete
  18. @Anon@5:27: She is the curse.

    @Scott: In the real world, both Zorro and the Shadow were inspirations for Batman. I think it was partially in recognition of the former that the Zorro TV show with Duncan Regehr included an episode with Adam West as a guest star, full of Batman Easter eggs (which Adam, of course, delivered with great aplomb and enthusiasm).

    ReplyDelete
  19. How about a sequel to this featuring Aqualad and Moonstone Comics' version of the Depression-era pulp hero known as The Skull Killer?

    The latter was an inner-city doctor who moonlighted as a killer vigilante in order to battle a crime lord called the Octopus who was also the leader of a secret society called...The Purple Eyes.

    ReplyDelete