Walter B Gibson And The Shadow

Walter B. Gibson and The Shadow

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? . . . The Shadow knows!" And who knew The Shadow better than his creator, Walter B. Gibson. Relatively few people have heard of Gibson, but many more are familiar with The Shadow having heard the program on the Blue Coal Radio Program in the 1930s and read the Street & Smith Shadow novels. Walter B. Gibson's life and career come out from behind The Shadow in this biography. It covers his youth in Philadelphia, his development as a writer and magician, his wives, including the third, (Litzka, who was a harpist and magician in her own right), his time living in Maine and upstate New York, and his later years and death. In addition to being credited with creating The Shadow (he used the pseudonym Maxwell Grant), Gibson wrote 187 books, contributed 668 articles to periodicals, created 283 stories for The Shadow Magazine, wrote 48 separate syndicated feature columns, reported the adventures of The Shadow and Blackstone the magician in 394 comic books and newspaper strips, and helped develop 147 radio scripts and many other works under numerous pseudonyms. Gibson has invented many widely used magic tricks and traveled with and befriended Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Harry Blackstone, Sr., and Joseph Dunninger.

The Shadow Scrapbook

The Shadow #25

The Knight of Darkness continues his war on crime in two more pulp thrillers by Walter B. Gibson (writing as "Maxwell Grant"). First, not even The Shadow's bullets can stop his most formidable foe, "The Gray Ghost," a seemingly supernatural adversary. Then, Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane hunt Nazi treasure and a blonde temptress as they attempt to unmask "The White Skulls," skeletal-garbed terrorists who leave behind a deadly wake of destruction. BONUS: The Shadow battles killer ants in "The Red Room," a terrifying script from the Golden Age of Radio. This classic reprint also features both color pulp covers by George Rozen and Modest Stein, classic interior illustrations by Tom Lovell and Everett Raymond Kinstler (who also provides a foreword recalling his early days as a comic book artist and pulp illustrator) and historical commentary by Will Murray and Anthony Tollin.