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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 19:
 The Shadow by Jim Steranko
The pulps -- lurid tales of fantastic excitement printed on cheap wood-pulp paper -- were once wildly popular. Yet sadly, today, like the dinosaur, the pulps are extinct. What killed them? Paperback novels.
But like a nocturnal Will Rogers, The Shadow never met a medium he didn't like. If paperbacks were all the rage, then The Shadow would appear in paperbacks! Pyramid hired Jim Steranko (pictured below in younger days) to paint brand new covers for a  series of Shadow reprints.
As all Shadowfans know, Steranko produced a dazzling array of unforgettable masterpieces starring the Master of Darkness, and, in a later series for Jove/HBJ, co-starring a bevy of scantily-clad vixens who seem to have wandered in from a nearby Victoria's Secret photo shoot.
Pictured above is Steranko's lucious painting for #23, "The Death Giver" (Jove/HBJ edition 1978). On the right is Steranko's pencil layout for the painting, revealed in the artist's self-published collection Unseen Shadows (1978). Pictured below are the pencil rough and finished painting for #8, "Mox" (Pyramid edition 1975). |
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Here's one of Steranko's original concept sketches for "The Shadow's Shadow." This clever image combines two key elements of classic Shadow covers: the Shadow's ominous silhouette cast on a wall, and a close-up of the Shadow's hands with a prominantly-featured Giarasol ring. But in this case, it's the Shadow himself making shadow puppets on the wall. For an ethereal justice figure, he can have a wry sense of humor. |
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| Finally, here's the cover that was used for the paperback, a completely different concept from the one seen above, but a concept that better reflected the "woman in distress" aspect of this paperback series. |
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MORE? OH YES, THERE'S MORE......
STERANKO -- PART 2!
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