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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. Inc.
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REPORT 16:
SHADOW SPINES
The Shadow had hundreds of excellent covers over the years, and they've gotten lots of attention -- but little notice has been taken of the SPINES of the Shadow pulps. In fact, this is probably the first article EVER written about them. Burbank makes Shadow history, and this will not be the last time that happens!
As you can see from the randomly-chosen Shadow pulp spines pictured above (and also below; it's the same picture sideways), the spine's design changed many times during the title's incredible 18-year run. The spines in the pic are chronological, with the oldest at the bottom, and latest at the top.
In the beginning -- the early 1930s -- the boldly-lettered title "The Shadow" dominated the spine. Later spines were decorated with a flattened-out version of the book's then-current logo. Eventually, the pulp  reverted back to its previous boldly-lettered title, rendered in primary colors. Sometimes, the title of that issue's Shadow adventure ("The Lone Tiger," "The Spy Ring," "The Book of Death," etc.) was shown on the spine. This basic style, or some variation of it, was utilized on more of the pulp's issues than any other.
Later issues of the title featured streamlined spines that incorporated lines of decreasing thickness with white letters on a mono-chromatic background. By the mid-1940s, almost all trace of design vanished, and the colorful, attention-getting spines of old were replaced with characterless black type, all upper case, set on a white background.
Pictured right is the spine that gets my vote as the BEST Shadow spine of the magazine's entire run. It's got the Shadow's name in bright yellow letters on a blood-red background, but more importantly, it has that unforgettable title, "The Book Of Death" in such huge letters you can still read it, even at this much-reduced size.
The cover's a classic, but even seeing the spine alone, how can anyone possibly not pick this up and look at it? The perfect example of a little-discussed piece of pulp history -- Shadow spines.
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SHADOW PULP INTERIOR ARTIST
TOM LOVELL
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