“The Living Shadow” (part one)

This review was commissioned by @krinsbez.


The Shadow! He knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, but that's literally the only thing I know about the Shadow. And even that much I only know because of a dad joke (told to me by my literal dad).

Well, apparently the Shadow was the protagonist of some very popular detective stories that ran in American pulp magazines from 1931 until 1949. Which is a pretty damned good run in and of itself, but it didn't end there, with the Shadow's adventures continuing in a long list of spin-offs, adaptations, and reboots in the prose, comic, TV, and radio-play media. The original pulp Shadow stories were written by a small team of authors who collectively used the penname Maxwell Grant. And, it's the very first of these stories, "The Living Shadow" published serially over the course of 1931, that I'll be starting tonight. You now know as much about this as I do!

"The Living Shadow" is a fairly long serial, so I expect this to take quite a few posts over the coming months. Looking at the table of contents, each chapter is really small and bite-sized even by magazine serial standards though, so it should be easy to find start and stopping points as needed. So, chapter one. "Out of the Mist."

1. Out of the Mist.
​

It starts with a summary/spoiler/teaser thing of questionable necessity, which I guess was kind of the fashion at the time:

“Out of the darkness came a being of the night to give Harry Vincent another chance; a chance to live his life with enjoyment, danger and excitement; a chance to risk it for an honorable cause in the service of the mysterious character known only as The Shadow!”

Moreso than even the title "The Living Shadow," that teaser makes it sound like this is more of an urban fantasy story than your standard hardboiled detective fair. Which...maybe it is? Like I said, the only thing I'd already heard about the Shadow is that he's a detective. He could also be some kind of supernatural being for all I know.

The story proper begins with a man - Harry Vincent, I presume - poised on the Brooklyn Bridge, looking down into a cloud of black late-night fog and trying to pluck up the nerve to jump. Oof. Drowning, really? That is a horrible way to go. You're in a city full of tall buildings and speeding train cars, you don't need to make this so hard for yourself! He waits for there to be no late-night taxis in sight before jumping, apparently being more considerate of passerby than he is of himself. Finally, he works up the nerve to do it and the traffic gives him a window to act on it. He climbs over the fence and starts to jump, but a hand grabs him by the shoulder and stops him!

Harry tries to shake the man off, but he's incredibly strong, easily hauling him back over the fence and setting him down on the pavement. Harry tries to throw a punch, but the man - if it really is just a man - easily catches his fist and pulls him into a hold. The rescuer/attacker is completely concealed by a long black hooded cloak and a wide-brimmed black hat pulled down over the hood. If that IS just a nonmagical human in there, I have to wonder how he can even see where he's going.

Harry doesn't wonder about that, though, because he is too terrified to wonder about anything when he looks upon the master of the night. Yes, it actually uses the words "master of the night" to describe the Shadow in his first ever appearance, before he does anything to merit that description or even opens his mouth. I...get the feeling that these writers liked their steel donut just a leeeeeettle too much.

The Shadow drags Harry into a limousine that had crept up nearby and closes the door behind them. It doesn't explicitly say that it's a black limousine, but come on, you all know damned well what color it is. An unseen driver gets the car moving, and soon they're on solid ground with the bridge behind them. As they ride, the Shadow asks Harry in a "weird, chilling voice − scarcely more than a whisper, yet clear and penetrating" that I cannot and will not imagine as anything besides the Nolan Batman growl, why he tried to kill himself. If the Shadow was hoping for a more dramatic story than "because it's the Great Depression," though, then he finds himself disappointed. Like so many other rural midwesterners, Harry Vincent came to New York hoping to make his fortune only to have his dreams crushed along with the economy. He's down to just the clothes on his back, whatever sparse items he has left in the apartment he can't pay for, and $1.13 in change.

Harry is understandably alarmed when the Shadow next asks him about "the girl." Did the shadow research him, or is this just cold reading? Could be either. Anyway, Harry nervously replies that his girlfriend got tired of waiting for him to come home, and married someone else. He just got the letter from her, which was the final catalyst for him deciding to jump.

Then, the Shadow says this:

““Your life,” said the stranger’s voice slowly, “is no longer your own. It belongs to me now. But you are still free to destroy it. Shall we return to the bridge?””

Um. Okay. Less Nolan Batman and more Snyder Batman, then? Actually, no, not even that. This is Lego Batman territory.

Harry asks the Shadow to please expand on this a little, and the Shadow explains that he's offering to employ Harry in a profitable, dangerous, and probably illegal line of work. It might well get him killed, but since he was going to kill himself anyway that's not much of a gamble, and if he survives he has much to potentially gain.

Also, the Shadow has the limousine's window shades down so that the coach compartment is completely pitch black, because of course he does.

When Harry decides that working for this grim reaper mafia dude can't be worse than suicide, the Shadow tells him that the one thing he expects and demands from his employees is obedience. Obey every order to the letter, no hesitation, no questions. He doesn't need Harry to be smart or strong or resourceful (though he'd LIKE him to be those things, if possible), but loyalty is the one absolute requirement. The Shadow then tells him to do this weird ritual where he closes his eyes for a full minute and meditates on the question before answering. Okay then. After he has Harry's pledge of loyalty, he tells him that he's going to drop him off at a hotel and pay for a room. Tomorrow, he'll receive a voice message from the Shadow, of which he is to ignore all words that are spoken like Nolan Batman and pay attention to only the ones spoken like Nolan Batman dying of thirst.

Suddenly, their ride is interrupted when another car heads them off the road (wait, how can Harry even see it with the shades down?) and a gunman gets out, opens the limo's passenger door, and demands they exit with their hands up. The Shadow wasn't lying about his line of work being dangerous, it seems! Harry raises his hands and starts to get out, but doesn't make it outside before the Shadow melts into the darkness inside the vehicle, erupts out another side door, and slams into the attacker like a cannonball of charcoal-black edge. There's a pistol shot, a muffled scream, and the next thing Harry knows the attacker is laying dead on the pavement and the Shadow has stolen his car and is speeding away in it. The limo starts moving again, and Harry has little choice but to just let the Shadow's chauffeur take him onward to the hotel.

There's a little blood splattered on the inside of the limo door, Harry notices, but he can't tell if it's the Shadow's or the attacker's. The enemy did get one bullet off at the Shadow, so it may have grazed him. And, that's chapter one.


So far this is...meh? The prose is functional, but not really more than that. It does get a little poetic here and there, but only when it's describing the Shadow's dark, brooding, amazing amazingness, which just makes the contrast between those bits and the otherwise subdued writing style funnier.

I know that I'm looking at this story through the lens of 90 years' worth of other media that was directly or indirectly inspired by it. Maybe without that desensitization I might find this less laughable. I might compare him to the derpier Batman incarnations, but the Shadow was probably the prototype for Batman. It doesn't make him less derpy, I suppose, but at least his flavor of self-unaware silliness wasn't yet cliched when this was written. There's a reason I prefer the Dirk Gently approach to this kind of plot.

Still, what this is showing me so far is that rather than being a case of the archetype losing nuance with reiteration, the Shadow was cringey long before any of his imitators were. Seriously, this reads like a reddit RPG story with a title like "edgelord PC ruins my first session."

Well, chapter two now.

2. The First Message.​

The limo brings Harry to the hotel, as the latter tries to avoid thinking about what happened on the way here. Before disembarking, he tries to ask the chauffeur what the fuck. Said chauffeur proves to be an unremarkable looking man who seems to be in a kind of dazed stupor, as he barely remembers the incident with the gunman and asks Harry in turn what happened to the other passenger, seemingly in earnest. When pressed for information, the chauffeur admits that this limousine belongs to a Mr. Van Dyke, and that the Shadow approached him in secret while he was parking it earlier tonight and tossed him one hundred dollars cash for some covert services. That's about one and a half thousand in modern USD, which for a black man in the Great Depression isn't something to easily turn up.

Also, said black man begs Harry not to tell anyone what he did with his boss' limo tonight. While also telling him his boss' name, which Harry wouldn't have otherwise known. And playing up an over-the-top "oh lawdy, massah" accent to make himself seem even stupider to his implicitly white interrogator. Yeah, okay, this limo driver is totally lying.

If Harry suspects anything though, he doesn't think it worth it to keep pushing. Instead, he just leaves the limo behind and enters the hotel, where he finds that a room has indeed been reserved in his name. Either the Shadow called it in after absconding with the attacker's car, or he really did know Harry's name before asking for it. Ah, no, it's the former; the receptionist confirms that he called in to make sure his room was ready ten minutes ago, shortly after the Shadow drove away. It seems that he reserved the room yesterday morning, but somehow weaseled his way out of providing a name until just now. Gotcha. Dunno if he was just hoping to find a suicide attempter between then and now, or if he had a plan B of just staying in the room himself.

There's also a valise waiting for him, containing some not-especially-cheap PJ's and underclothes and a wallet containing two hundred dollars. Harry didn't know he'd be getting cash right now when he tip the bellhop from his puny supply of pocket change though, so, that's nice of him. He falls asleep with his head spinning over this bizarre reprieve he's received, and wakes up late the next morning to find that the Shadow has sent him another suitcase full of general clothing, all in his size. He somehow must have been able to appraise and remember Harry's proportions perfectly even in the darkness, or else researched him in the hours since they parted.

He has breakfast brought up to his room (he slept through the cafeteria breakfast hours), and shortly afterward receives a phone call. Unfamiliar male voice. Possibly the Shadow with a different affectation, possibly another accomplice or patsy of his. Anyway, after confirming that he's talking to Mr. Harry Vincent, the caller babbles about how his new watch was sent to the wrong address by mistake, while coughing on a few very specific words. It's not at all like the fucked up croak that the Shadow told him to listen for, but still noticeable enough that Harry makes the connection. The secret message is "watch man next door."

So, without thinking any further on the subject, Harry opens his room door and pretends to read the news while watching the hallway outside his next door neighbor's door. End chapter.


Pretty boring chapter. All clipped, utilitarian prose, besides the chauffeur's ridiculous funnetik aksent. Not much of an internal world for Harry Vincent, beyond a paragraph of vapid wonderment here and there. More detail devoted to his new clothes than anything else in the chapter.

That's a post, I guess. We'll see what happens with the man next door next time!