The Shadow has wreaked havoc on his comic book history and that’s a good thing

In 1937, the Shadow became the main character of his own radio show, in which the young Orson Welles initially played the role. The radio show ran until 1957, much longer than the Shadow Comic strip that lasted only from 1940 to 1942. After appearing in a series of short films in 1931 and 1932, the Shadow starred in several series released between 1937 and 1946, as well as a 1958 television pilot titled Invisible Avenger.

In 1964, Shadow moved to his new home, the world of comics. Since then, Shadow comics have been produced fairly regularly by publishers such as Archie Comics, DC and Marvel, and most recently Dynamite Comics.

Who is the shadow?

Like any other character who has bounced between media and reboots, the Shadow has a few different backstories. The most common origin is that the Shadow is actually Lamont Cranston, a wealthy playboy who fights crime as a dark avenger of the night (yes, Bill Finger took a page from the Shadow when creating Batman). Before that, however, the Shadow was World War I pilot Kent Allard, who fights villains after learning magical techniques from a hidden tribe.

So Cranston must just be a new secret identity the writers invented for a Shadow reboot, right? No, at least not at first. Instead, Lamont Cranston was a rich guy who looked a lot like Allard. After the Shadow saves Cranston’s life, Allard borrows Cranston’s identity to further his own goals. In other words, Kent Allard pretends to be Lamont Cranston pretending to be the Shadow.

Confused? Well, it gets even weirder. Sometimes Allard assumes the identity of businessman Henry Arnaud, another person the Shadow saved who happens to look like him. Sometimes he’s a janitor named Fritz. Sometimes he’s a criminologist named George Clarendon. To no one’s surprise, most of these additional identities and backstories are ignored, opting for the simpler explanation where the Shadow is Cranston and that’s it. But it’s also to no one’s surprise that the writers occasionally try to incorporate all the elements of the previous story in one way or another, including Garth Ennis’ recent run for Dynamite.

Clarifying men’s thoughts

Although Allard used the pseudonym Ying Ko in some previous Shadow stories, none featured the origin that Koepp invented for the 1994 film. Koepp’s backstory for the film not only rationalizes the overly convoluted nature of the character. As he told MovieMaker Magazine As early as 1994, Koepp wanted to differentiate his film from Batman by placing the emphasis on guilt rather than revenge.