I really love the cover to The Shadow magazine's July 15, 1935 edition. It features The Shadow front and center, but it also shows him in two of his disguises! The man on the left is Lamont Cranston, that is the primary disguise The Shadow uses in his pulp stories. The man on the right is Henry Arnaud, which is another great disguise used by The Shadow.
According to an article by Will Murray in the reprint of this Shadow magazine, "George Rozen's triple portrait cover was intended as a gift to the loyal readers who hungered for a Shadow pinup, for it depicted The Shadow and his two main identities."*
While Lamont Cranston is probably the more better known disguise of The Shadow, I was surprised that in a few stories, it is the Henry Arnaud disguise that The Shadow uses. For example, in Green Eyes and The Romanoff Jewels, Cranston is not mentioned at all while The Shadow opts for the Arnaud disguise.
This is a great cover and I'm sure fans appreciated it when it was first published!
*“INTERLUDE by Will Murray.” Atoms of Death and Buried Evidence: Two Classic Adventures of The Shadow, by Maxwell Grant et al., vol. 44, Sanctum Books, 2010.
Chronology of Shadows: A Timeline of The Shadow's Exploits by Rick Lai is a great resource for fans and agents of The Shadow. Author Rick Lai provides us with a dated chronology of The Shadow's adventures in the pulp magazines.
The book is 119 pages long and has some great information on The Shadow's exploits as well as The Shadow's activities before he became The Shadow. The book's introduction clearly explains the book's purpose, "This article is an attempt to create a coherent chronology of the published exploits of The Shadow." While there are references to The Shadow radio show, there is no significant information on them nor does Mr. Lai try to reconcile the activities and adventures of The Shadow on radio and in print.
One of my favorite sections of the book is a highly detailed look at the early years of The Shadow. Mr. Lai definitely did his research and I found this section very helpful in understanding the activities of The Shadow as well as his world travels and abilities he learned overseas.
The biggest section of the book looks at each Shadow pulp story and gives it a date when the events occurred. For example, The Living Shadow, the first Shadow story, is noted as having occurred in November of 1929. The events in Gangdom's Doom, the fifth Shadow story, are dated to have happened in March of 1931. There are some interesting notes in this section as well, but there are not extensive notes on the story plot. Some stories just have a date listed as when they occurred with no additional notes.
I don't have a hard copy of the book, but I did purchase an eBook copy for my Kindle. I've enjoyed reading it and I recommend it as a good resource for fans and agents of The Shadow!
