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The year was 1930. To boost sales of their Detective Story Magazine, pulp publishers Street and Smith decided to sponsor a radio program where an announcer read stories from the magazine.
Rather than referring to him as "the guy who reads the stories," a man at Street and Smith's ad agency suggested naming him The Shadow.
Soon customers began asking for a pulp magazine of that name.
No such magazine existed at the time -- but Street and Smith knew an opportunity when they saw one, and quickly decided to created just such a title.
In time The Master of Darkness recruited numerous agents, among them the mysterious Burbank.
Little is known about Burbank, other than the fact that he is an "old friend" of the Master of Darkness, and that his mission is to facilitate communication among agents.
The Shadow copyright Advance magazine Publishers, Inc./ The Condé Nast Pubs.
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 REPORT 10:
DOC SAVAGE COVER ARTIST
JAMES BAMA
Born in Manhattan in 1926, young James Bama was fascinated by comic strips such as Tarzan and Flash Gordon. He attended art school in New York, and worked for 15 years with the Charles E. Cooper Studio, the top illustration house in the country at the time, painting dozens of magazine ads, movie posters and paperback covers.
Among his magnificent body of work are numerous paintings of pulp hero DOC SAVAGE, done for a series of paperback reprints. Pictured above are two of Bama's luscious Doc covers, with two more below:
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After a vacation to Wyoming in 1966, James Bama and his wife Lynne decided to move to the West, where he turned his attention to painting its people and places. "I never came out here [to the West] with the idea to be a Western artist," Bama says. "It just happened. And that’s the way it should be." (Below: "A Sioux Indian" by James Bama.)
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 Quite a "super" painting, is it not? Although James Bama considers himself an "American Realist," he has painted a large number of decidedly unrealistic subjects -- including the Frankenstein monster (seen below left), Dracula (right) and the rest of the Universal Monsters (for the Aurora model kit box covers).
Bama's work and life are covered in James Bama: American Realist by Brian M. Kane, published in 2006 by Flesk Publications. The book, now out of print and extremely difficult to locate, contains tons of Bama's work, as well as commentary by noted author Harlan Ellison, and former Shadow pulp interior artist (for one issue only!) Everett Raymond Kinstler.
The list goes on to include sf legend Ray Bradbury, painter Boris Vallejo, Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens, and design wunderkind Jim Steranko -- all huge fans and admirers of Bama. But of course, to simply look at the man's magnificent work is to become a fan.
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Bama painted the fantastic, globe-spanning adventures of Doc Savage -- in paperback and comic book form (Gold Key's Doc #1 seen above right). But despite the outlandish settings many of his paintings demand, he makes every last detail look utterly real. And that is the true genius of James Bama, American Realist. (Below: "Buck Norris" by Bama).
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THREE SHADOWY FRANKS - #1 OF 3
THE MOST MELODRAMATIC RADIO SHADOW
FRANK READICK
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