#theodore a. tinsley

[maxwell-grant]

In your opinion, what are The Shadow's flaws as a character?

As usual I’m gonna be mostly ignoring the ones more specific to radio/comics/etc, kinda self-explanatory at this point as to why, to focus more on the pulp version and the broader idea originated from that:

One of the more obvious ones, the one that’s part of why it's not really that unbelievable so many modern takes have twisted the character so throughly, is that he's scary. And, yeah, of course he is, we love him because he's scary and is a genius crimefighter who beats criminals at their own games and etc, it doesn't tend to come up as a intentionally-written flaw in the pulps, but sometimes it does affect the good stuff he's trying to do. 

One example that comes to mind is a sequence from The Living Joss, where he rescues a guy in the nick of time from being killed and is ready to flee with him, but the guy is so terrified of everything that's been happening to him that he flees The Shadow and ends up dying by driving off a cliff. It's not really The Shadow's fault, it's not like he doesn't try to comfort the people he rescues (something that’s really missing from non-pulp adaptations is scenes where he just, talks to people as The Shadow, without demanding stuff from them), but it's not the guy's fault either, because how was he supposed to tell The Shadow wasn't out to kill him as well?

The skid of his car had pointed Goodall back along the road. Despite the fact that the rescuer in the speedster was certainly a friend, Goodall took to frenzied flight. Before The Shadow could stop him, the frightened man shoved his car into low, and changed gears as he headed back toward the obscure crossroad on the other side of the bridge. Blaine Goodall had died through his own frightened efforts to escape while protected by The Shadow

The biggest example that comes to mind in regards to how this approach is a double-edged sword might be found in The Third Shadow, where the premise of the story is that a petty criminal sees The Shadow in action and relates it to his partner, who’d go on to impersonate him (along with a third criminal, far smarter and more dangerous than them, that would do it better). Said criminal is inspired specifically by seeing The Shadow cornering a butler, who was secretly a murderer and serial robber who fled a criminal past in England, and intimidating him into writing a full confession and killing himself with the revolver used in his latest murder. The Shadow leaves the butler to his decision long enough for Cardona to arrive and arrest him, intervening  only to knock the gun away from his hand when he tries to shoot Cardona instead, meaning he was waiting in the room unseen to see if he’d surrender or shoot himself.

Watching The Shadow in action scaring a hardened murderer into killing himself leaves said criminal “gasping like a man who had experienced an apoplectic stroke” and terrified that he’d been seen by The Shadow, is what kicks off the plot of this story, and it’s that kind of terror that unsurprisingly leads the villains of the story to figure out that said terror is an extremely effective tool to get their hands. Not the first nor the last time that Shadow villains would rip off The Shadow’s tactics, but particularly notable because of how specifically inspired they are by The Shadow’s power and terror antics.

The Third Shadow is actually one of the key stories that demonstrates how The Shadow functions morally, in that he winds up giving to this criminal and his partner (and other criminals in this story) extensive chances at redemption, and the story summarizes a cardinal rule of The Shadow with the following line:

To murderers, The Shadow dealt death: to such schemes (robbery, fraud, etc) as Corbal and Renwood, he dealt ridicule.

I wrote about this aspect earlier as well with The Radium Murders, and I’m particularly singling out The Third Shadow here because it makes for a pretty brutal contrast: this is ultimately one of the more fun Shadow stories by virtue of it’s concept, but it’s never really commented on that the central premise relies so strongly on this kinda inescapable issue with The Shadow’s approach to crimefighting and, yeah, the story starts with The Shadow coldly intimidating a man into killing himself. Even if he had it coming, it’s still pretty jarring (if you’re familiar with the pulps, that is).

He doesn’t resort to torture, not even of the “beating up criminals for information” kind. As far as I know, Gibson only wrote one instance of on-screen torture in Death Token, where he has to extract information from a guy who tried to stab him, and so he strangles the guy, allows just enough air to enter his lungs, and then reapplies pressure if he doesn’t talk, and he does this till the guy talks. This method is only used again in The Crystal Buddha. It’s grisly and horrible and part of the larger problem with urban vigilantes resorting to torture, and pretty much all of them do it to the point dangling people over rooftops is considered grandfathered in. I bring it up specifically because The Shadow doesn’t do that, and doesn’t usually have to do that, so naturally when he does it, it sticks out as uniquely horrible.

I've mentioned this in a post where I talked about a crossover idea with Superman, but sometimes The Shadow can be petty in ways that are pretty undignified, which is nearly always played for laughs. I shared in that post a sequence from Book of Death where the narration states that The Shadow's pursuing a man who knocked him out earlier in the story with the intent of paying him back and in a way that would "still allow him to retain his senses, thereby appreciating the fact that he had been outguessed". It's funny, yeah, but it's not exactly the most flattering description.

Likewise, there's a pretty funny sequence in The Shadow's Rival that describes The Shadow being stuck in a hiding spot after the police plucked a group of criminals before he could get to them, after a string of successes lately thanks to the help of a new character, and the narration outright describes The Shadow "would rather be circled by a squad of aiming killers than found like a skeleton in a closet", and that passage also describes him as being pretty frustrated over being rendered useless. Additionally there's also this part right after:

"Ganner Seard a man whose debut as a crime−solver had accomplished remarkable results. In a sense, he was The Shadow's rival. That thought was spurring The Shadow onward to new action. Before this night was ended, The Shadow intended to gain an important goal before it was uncovered by Gannet Seard."

And there’s no two ways about it: it is played up as more as a gentlemen’s rivalry, but that is The Shadow being jealous of someone. And it's not inconsistent with some other scenes where The Shadow acts in ways that are undignified and petty, moments that hardly ever register or are talked about because of how uncharacteristic they are. And they are to an extent, but they happened.

He also shot a guy in the back in The Crystal Buddha. Not one of his better days, that one.

Within the pulps, he’s easily at his worst when Theodore Tinsley writes him. Tinsley’s Shadow is notorious for running on hotter fumes: he gets emotional more easily, he acts more rashly, he gets wounded more easily and frequently and less-urgently than Gibson’s version, the stories have way more torture and more sex and murder and that kind of stuff. Some people are into it, others aren’t, I like parts of it but mostly I’m not. And one of said differences is that Tinsley’s Shadow is more willing to resort to torture, most notoriously in the Prince of Evil saga, where we learn The Shadow built a lab specifically for the purpose of extracting information from criminals through bloodless sensory torture, where he straps criminals into a room and submits them to varying degrees of sonic frequencies and strobe lighting until they talk. He ends up eating shit over it at the end of that saga because the villain hijacks the controls, so The Shadow winds up having to go into the torture room and endure it to stop the man he’s holding captive from dying or being permanently scarred.

Tinsley really, really liked to overdo it on the torture scenes for his villains and that bled over to him giving The Shadow a willingness to torture that didn’t exist under Gibson, and The Prince of Evil saga is notorious for pushing The Shadow to extremes, including the first and only cliffhanger in the series with the kidnapping and horrific torture of Rutledge Mann: Obviously nothing justifies the existence of this torture room, but there is a precedent in the series for desperate circumstances and harsh failures and misery befalling his agents forcing The Shadow to resort to more extreme measures, that eventually backfire and force him to step back a bit. 

I mentioned this in regards to the prospect of him dying, but he’s been described canonically as a thrill-seeker, a daredevil, someone who welcomes danger and laughs enthusiastically and genuinely in the face of it. His lack of self-preservation is often one of his most heroic traits, but in reality, it is an aspect that comes with downsides as well. There’s that part in his backstory where he relays, “aviation offered part of the life I needed; but it provided neither the action of battle, nor the keen work of the secret agent". “Part of the life I needed”.

The Shadow’s Rival touches on this a bit in that segment, where The Shadow thinks of law enforcement being able to pick up his slack as his cue to retire or find another place to go, a prospect that deep down, he finds disconcerting. It’s at once a rather telling display that his go-to thought when faced with the prospect of being made redundant isn’t bitterness towards whoever’s replacing him, but unease towards his own prospects of having to retire or leave.

That this briefest and most exclusive glimpse at a very basic human desire to be needed is included here as a flaw, is telling of the kind of character that The Shadow presents himself as, an unassailable force of nature. It is strangely easier to imagine character flaws for this figure taking the form of superpowered dark sides or vicious pasts enacting bloody rampages on horseback or airplane, than anything as petty or simple or human as not wanting to be embarassed or getting jealous at someone or even having “wants” in the first place.

Inavertedly I also think this brings up an interesting tension: That he knows he shouldn’t be needed, but he doesn’t want to be unnecessary. He knows his life is led by grim necessity, but it’s a life he “needs” on some level. He rejected the idea of being a mercenary because he finds warfare a disgusting and uncivilized blight on humanity only made useful under absolute necessity: but life after warfare left him restless and without purpose. He doesn’t laugh all the time purely or even mostly for the sake of psychological warfare. He enjoys combat and danger, and if he deals death to murderers during it, no skin off his back when he’s only returning their evil against them.

It’s in the pitch he gives to Harry Vincent in the first book: “life, with enjoyment, with danger, with excitement, and above all, with honor" (and with money, but that one clearly means nothing to him). He cannot stand danger upon innocents, but cackles with joy at the prospect of throwing himself into the meat grinder for the sake of something. He operates under his own rules and code of honor, but he’s still embroiled in warfare. And I’m stopping short of arguing that The Shadow is suicidal because I think that’s a stretch too far but, unshakeable confidence only goes so far in his line of work.

If I was going to try to name one central flaw, of sorts, a conceit in which these others can be born or can be understood through, I would say it’s detachment of personhood. In the sense that, it’s that same distance from personhood he has that defines him as The Shadow, that lets him operate the way he does and do all that he does, that also creates such room for all of these traits to be made sour. The Shadow keeps everyone and everything at arms length, the agents and the audience alike, he is perceived only through prisms and smokes and masks that he constructs and are constructed around him, and any perception can curdle up and take dark turns.

His honesty and commitment to the truth can be an insensitive fanaticism with conforming reality to his own truth. His persuasive charisma and interpersonal intelligence becomes manipulative puppeteering. His unshakeable confidence becomes unassailable arrogance, and The Shadow Knows becomes less reassuring certainty and more audacious egotism. Devotion turns to obsession, truthful and stern characterization turns cruel and cold, and any personal insecurity or slight or stain adds up. There is no quality a person can have that cannot become something sour and toxic, and this should be first and foremost a warning, an inescapable facet of personhood.

The Shadow is not a person, The Shadow cannot be a person, but The Shadow is a person. There is no Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker to divide or ground or define him in easily relatable or understood traits of personhood, there is only The Shadow and whatever role he has to play, whatever you construct piecemeal about him or choose not to.

The Shadow is an unassailable all-knowing force of nature whose eyes burn with certainty as he commands thunderous and lethal judgement over mankind. He is also a deeply eccentric, overdramatic man with a deep love for theatrics, compassionate and ridiculous and thoughtful and prideful and disturbing in varying degrees. He is not pretending to be one or the other. He is what he is, even when he is wrong, even when he veers too close to being monstrous. 

He is too big, too grandiose, too fantastical, to not contradict himself in said multitudes. His humanity, his heart even, is kept at arms’s length, but it is there nonetheless, and with all that entails. Few things are more human than going through drastic lengths to be anything but.

[weeby-monster-the-bastard]

my mother names MORE anime characters bsd version

hunting dogs: fukuchi = sir fredrick natsworthy jouno = tinsley bumblebuzzle tecchou = horest bumblebuzzle teruka = clairella bozly

PM: chuuya = Freddy holmes akutagawa = leon reptotalas mori = earl hicks gin = lizzy reptotalas Q = Sophia 😒 oda = shea frazier kaji = Pierre lémboom

ADA: dazai = simly just known as mr BAZINGA atsushi= calvin purshing fukuzawa = Harvey ludesworth yasano= casey moresworth ranpo= bruce bangarang kyouka= betty bitmaker kenji = ivan cowper kunikida+ barphalamew bullish

non ones i just wanna do: fyodor= robbie rasputin nikolai = marizo mistic bram = sydney monochrome sigma = edwin killswitch poe = Theodore "teddy" Chicofski ivan= edward allen no aya = melanie mayfeild

my mother is doing it again

[obsidian-sphere]

Lesser known Pulp Heroes.

Flash Casey (sometimes Flash Gun Casey) by George Harmon Coxe, a tough-guy newspaper photographer, the first “hard-boiled” mystery character, along with appearing in Black Mask, the character was also in B-movies, radio, and a short-lived Timely Comic book.

The Domino Lady by Theodore Tinsley, she fought crime and/or evil while wearing a black mask and white gown.

The Crimson Clown by Johnston McCulley, the creator of Zorro, C.C., was a modern (the 1930s) crime fighter, who used skills learned in W.W. I,, a .45, and a syringe full of a knockout/truth serum (later a gas gun) To rob from the unjust rich and give to the poor.

The Moon Man by Frederick C. Davis, the one who went into battle against crime with a glass bowl over his head.

Captain Satan by William O'Sullivan was sort of a harsher version of The Shadow and Doc Savage; only all of his aids were criminals and not reformed ones, who feared Cap. S more than the law, and who regularly died during the stories as more were added.

Senorita Scorpion by Les Savage Jr. is a Western character who came from a gold-filled valley that had been sealed off from the world for more than 100 years, After an opening appeared she defended it from various Western baddies.

The Patent Leather Kid little known kinky crusader character of Erle Stanley Gardner.

Masked Rider by Paul Chadwick, the M.R. was a pulp published by the company that would become Marvel Comics, an early high-concept character. He was a blend of The Lone Ranger and the Shadow, later, he was sold to Popular Publications, who redesigned him toning down the “shadow” bits, but keeping the mask and his Indian side-kick Blue Eagle.

Thubway Tham, Johnston McCulley again. Tham was a grumpy older pick-pocket with an exaggerated lisp, who, while ill-tempered and a crook, had a well-hidden heart of gold and ended up helping the innocent against big-time crooks most of the time.

[cecexwrites]

If they had a kind, Tinsley & Tripp? (I need to meet Liam)

Name: William 'Liam' Theodore van der Bilt IV

Gender: Male

General Appearance: brown hair that he keeps not long, but longer than his grandparents like and brown eyes

Personality: He can definitely be an asshole to people he doesn't know or like. But when he's relaxed and with people he likes, he can party with the best of them. Drama is in his blood

Special Talents: He's a charmer, he can talk his way into any club, backstage at any concert, without having to use money.

Who they like better: Tinsley

Who they take after more: Tripp

Personal Head canon: Liam wanted to change his name for a long time because 4 is just too many Williams

Face Claim: Herman Tømmeraas

[pulpsandcomics2]

The Shadow Magazine    March 1, 1936

The Voodoo Master by Maxwell Grant 

Pebble of Death by Harold A. Davis

Three Ways to Burn by Theodore Tinsley

[meowmageddon]

October 2023 Reading Update!

It's been a busy few days, so the update's a little late. Also... I confess I've been super engrossed in playing Starfield for the last few weeks, so reading has been less of a priority as I hyperfixate. 😅

So it's gonna be a little less exciting an update, but still a Long Post, so enter the Read More for September's mini-review, the roster of current reads, recent acquisition list, and a few upcoming releases of interest.

September's Lonely Mini-Review

Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection (Vol. 3) ed. by Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D. & Michael Sheyahshe - 5 stars

Another great collection of comics and stories! Personal favorites of mine: "Waterward by Sean & Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley & Sadekaronhes Esquivel, "Sky People" by Richard Van Camp & Kyle Charles, and "Future World" by Jennifer Storm & Kyle Charles.

Current October Reads

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

My library read, Kelly Link's newest short story collection. I'd already read the final couple stories in other anthologies, and very much enjoyed them. So far I've read the first two as well, and also enjoyed them. Gotta prioritize this heavily now, since it was due back yesterday and I couldn't renew the hold, oops! 💀

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

About 2/3rds through now, and it's continued to be a wild ride. A mix of horror elements and malevolent forces haunt this poor woman.

Speaking Bones by Ken Liu

Almost 1/4 through this thick tome, and kinda surprised that a certain anticipated string of events is already underway. There's still a lot of book to go!

Fresh Dirt from the Grave by Giovanna Rivero

This started as a casual read on Libby when I was having a rough time early in September, though it turned out to be more intense than I realized. It's a story collection from a Bolivian writer, and very much the dark magical realism I enjoy from the region.

October Acquisition and Plans

I wasn't feeling any of the choices from Book of the Month last month or this month, so I've only bought one new book:

Never Whistle at Night ed. by Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

This is an anthology of horror/dark fiction by Indigenous writers, which I preordered immediately on learning about. It has entries from writers I've enjoyed before, like Morgan Talty and Darcie Little Badger. Hoping to start it this month for the spooky season!

Upcoming Releases

Out There Screaming ed. by Jordan Peele (October 3rd)

Technically already released as of this posting because I'M LATE OKAY. It's an anthology of horror by Black writers edited by renowned horror director Jordan Peele. Honestly, not sure why I didn't preorder this one, too, since I can't stop thinking about it. Includes entries from authors I've loved like Nnedi Okorafor, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin... maybe I'll go ahead and order it after finishing this post lmao.

The Encyclopedia of the Weird and Wonderful by Milo Rossi (October 3rd)

Part of the prior lapse in preordering was just being busy and a little broke, because I meant to preorder this, too. Milo Rossi is an archaeologist also known as Miniminuteman online, posting about archaeology, anthropology, history, and geology, including taking time to debunk conspiracy theories and pseudoscience claims about any of the above. This book focuses on reveling in interesting and entertaining facts and should be a fun time with his sense of humor.

Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros (October 10th)

YA historical dark fantasy where a Lithuanian man creates a golem in his daughter's image to unleash it on the Nazis who killed her. She carries out this vengeance but also reckons with this existence bestowed upon her. I'm normally extremely wary of historical fiction from the World Wars, especially regarding the Holocaust, but... this sounds metal as heck. I'd give it a chance.

A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard (October 12th)

Another sapphic space opera from an author I generally enjoy, based in her Xuya universe, where sentient ships and elaborate visual overlays abound. The daughter of a prominent official and a poor engineer fall in love against a backdrop of political turmoil.

And while not technically a release yet, I do want to highlight that Iron Circus Comics is poised to launch their next crowdfunding campaign for an anthology: Indiginerds: Tales from Modern Indigenous Life ed. by Alina Pete! The Mary Sue has a piece on it, and the campaign will start on BackerKit on the 16th!

As ever, if you made it all the way to the end, I love you! 😹

[lehmakasvi]

Nimilista:

tytöt:

adley

acacia

amber

annalise

aria

ada

bailey

blair

willow

maeve

harlow

harper

eleanor

maisie

eloise

rosie

polly

celeste

claire

cecilia

iona

mikah

daisy

dove

olivia

ophelia

sian

maeve

marissa

naomi

poppy

piper

jade

juniper

kamila

kendal

lori

charlotte

isla

ivanna

tinsley

thalia

freya

evelyn

ellie

everly

evie

roxanne

heidi

harper

holly

margo

carlie

zoey

lena

stella

savannah

scarlett

willow

pojat:

milo

noe

brice

asher

fox

monty

soren

jasper

jesse

jason

jacob

jordan

levi

oliver

cosmo

wyatt

uriah

alexander

uriel

collin

colin

caleb

chase

cole

dylan

dane

luca(s)

julian

finn

finnian

felix

leo

ryder

newt

isaac

august

alec

ethan

evan

harry

hunter

hayden

jeremi

luke

reed

gus

garrett

mateo

basil

toni

theodore

oscar

[trashmenace]

NRV: Tag Team Elimination Tournament Round Four

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine (May 1940,v06n01)

Death Lights a Candle by Theodore Tinsley

The Cash & Carrie detective agency is run by Carrie Cashin, but her assistant Aleck poses as the owner Remington Steele style. They are called in to solve a case involving a man repeatedly lighting a candle on a street corner and robbers who hold up a bank to make a deposit. The resolution made no sense and required extensive knowledge on Cashin's part not revealed until the end.

Complete Man (February, 1967, v7n01)

4-Day Pacific Nightmare: Downed Navy Ace Who Survived Typhoon Louise by Ed Hyde

What it says on the tin.

Savage Realms Monthly Volume 1 (January 2021)

Serpent Lord of Bryson Metals by Kell Myers

Fun short set in post-apocalyptic Florida, as a sword wielding Army soldier fights a burnout magician to keep an artifact out of the hands of the reptilian Krunts.

Teen-Age Gangsters (1957)

Prostitution

A couple of case studies of child prostitution rings bookend social hygiene statistics.

Startling Detective Adventures (December 1937, v19n113)

Sex Slaves of the Pacific by Jack Dewitt

Women are promised jobs in Hawaii only to be forced into prostitution. Most true crime, from the 20s to today, let's the crime speak for itself, but there's always the occasional author who does some editorializing.

I was never too fond of the respectable side of men's adventure magazines, preferring the trashy stuff over realistic stories of war and survival. Complete Man is fed to the sharks and eliminated.

[diabolikdiabolik]

All Detective Magazine - October 1933

Art by Norman Saunders

[seattlemysterybooks]

philsp

October 17, 1936

Various: The March of Crime 

Max Brand, “Seven Faces" (Part 1 of 6)   

Hugh B. Cave, “Nuts about Mutts"    

Franklin H. Martin, “Ex-Cop"    

Convict 12627: Easy Money in the Big House    

Stookie Allen - Illustrated Crimes: The Case of Lawyer Gibson     

Theodore Tinsley, “Pretty Parker"    

Robert W. Sneddon: Model of a Thousand Murders     

Frederick C. Painton, “Me—Killer!"    

Glenn Garrison: A Midsummer Night’s Murder Dream

Seattle Mystery Bookshop  

[maxwell-grant]

How frequently do death traps crop up in The Shadow's world? Batman was dealing with those *day one* and it made up much of his bread and butter thereafter, and I was wondering to what extent that was one of the many elements lifted from Mr. Allard in the early days.

Quite often, actually, death traps were consistently really popular with readers of The Shadow Magazine, and they carried over to the radio show and comics as well. Theodore Tinsley, who wrote the story that was ripped off for Detective 27, in particular liked to have death traps and underground passages in pretty much every story he wrote for The Shadow, where as Gibson used them more sparingly.

But considering he was personally acquainted with people like Houdini and Blackstone (who openly admitted to borrowing tricks from The Shadow), and made his career writing about the exploits of people who escaped death traps for a living, it would be weirder if Walter Gibson didn't take the time to put The Shadow against death traps galore.

They weren't common to the point of appearing in every story, but rather, they were usually reserved for particular stories, and usually they didn't stop at a single death trap but instead put The Shadow through gauntlets of dropping floors, crushing walls, deadly gas, weapons bursting from nowhere and etc.

The 2nd Shadow story featured, respectively: "Rooms filled with poisonous gas. Trap doors that drop a victim into a bottomless pit. Slowly moving walls, coming together to crush their victims. The curtain of steel that falls from the ceiling, killing all beneath it. And let's not forget being buried alive, six feed underground".

The third story had death traps, and then the sixth, the seventh, the eleventh, the sixteenth, the pulps liked to mix things up so that one story The Shadow would be up against gangsters trapping him in a penthouse surrounded by guns, and then the next story he'd be trapped in a abandoned mansion of rotating floors with giant axes dangling from the ceiling, and then he'd go up against something called "bubbles of death" which, yes is actually in a Shadow story, The Death Giver, and it's a great one. I actually did a post last month on a death-trap centric story called The Radium Murders.

And the great thing about The Shadow's death traps in the pulps is that he had no superpowers to get him out of them, and Gibson knew the extremes to which he could put the character in danger as well as ways to have him escape that sounded believable (at least, as believable as a pulp hero escaping death traps could get). You get to painstakingly follow The Shadow as he makes split second decisions of life and death, as he gets tired and strained and suffocates and struggles, and finds creative solutions to stave off death for a second longer, and then those solutions backfire or he miscalculates or gets really unlucky (luck is, at points, both The Shadow's worst enemy and greatest ally), so he has to make new ones.

And then he has to also rescue an innocent in danger so now it's twice the effort, and it does a hell of a job in selling you the idea that he may actually fail this time, until of course he pulls through. It's the old trick of overstating your hero's invincibility, until you put him on a spot that proves he's very much not invincible, and have him beat it through anyway.

And sometimes he doesn't, like in The Murder Master, and while he doesn't die, he is severely debilitated and it completely throws a wrench in the usual structure of a Shadow story.

The Shadow enters the studio and finds radio personnel locked inside an unused broadcasting booth. The Murder Master is nowhere to be found. In one room, The Shadow discovers, too late, a death trap. It's a trap he desperately tries to avoid, but can't.

He falls victim to thousands of volts of electricity, coursing through a steel plate invisibly situated on the darkened floor of the control room. He receives a shock as powerful as the current used in an electric chair!

Our hero is barely alive as evil minions of The Murder Master pick up his limp body and carry it out of the radio station. He's taken to a secret location where his nearly-dead body is dumped in a stone pit lined with steel. In the ceiling is the huge lens of a gigantic microscope.

The Shadow is a laboratory specimen under the microscope of some mad scientist. And then, if all that weren't bad enough, the steel walls begin to grind closer and closer together. The walls will clamp together in just minutes, snuffing out the remaining life from our barely conscious hero.

Keep in mind that all this happens in just the first eight chapters. - John Olsen's review

And sometimes he intentionally lets himself be caught in a death trap one way or another, like in The Radium Murders above. Sometimes the death trap was the central mystery of the story and the one featured in the title, such as The Death Tower, or The Circle of Death.

An electric sign board sitting squarely in the middle of Times Square flashed its lights innocently. But hidden in its borders were secret instructions to the men who controlled the circle of death. The message in the center of the sign was what most people noticed, and the public at large, it was completely normal and innocent.

But the corners and borders of the sign could flash different designs in different colors. And those strange lights carried hidden meaning to the agents of the superfiend who controlled the circle of death. It was the most perfect death trap in all the world - a zone which looked innocent because it teemed with the throngs of passing thousands - the last spot where any one could suspect or discover lurking death.

Dustin Cruett walked into the area around Times Square which was controlled by some unknown criminal chieftain. A doctored packet of matches was slipped surreptitiously into his pocket. And when he went to light a cigarette, the peculiar fumes entered his nostrils and did their fatal duty. Dustin Cruett dropped dead before he could exit the circle of death.

So, yeah, death traps were definitely a sizeable part of his world. His Sanctum, in itself, was a death trap, as it was described as being extensively boobytrapped to the point only The Shadow could operate it's files and equipment safely. Death traps were almost a necessity for some of his villains, because they couldn't beat him in gunfights or fistfights or psychological warfare to begin with, The Shadow was usually better at their own tactics than they were, so they had to go the extra mile.

"Unless you see him dead, an absolute corpse, you can not be sure that he is gone. Even then, he should be cremated; his ashes scattered to the winds". - The Salamanders

Now, I don't particularly like to talk about Batman ripping off The Shadow, but the death trap in particular is the reason why Detective #27's plagiarism of Partners In Peril is kind of a shut case, not the first or last time Bob Kane would get away with larceny.

Really, the only difference is that The Shadow escaped this one by cutting a hole in the glass with his girasol, and Batman did it by smashing it with a wrench, which is kind of one example of what I consider to be the main differences between the two, that Batman is more about fistcuffs and Urban Toyland Warfare, while The Shadow is more about misdirection and bullet chess games with the Grim Reaper.

Although, now that you've brought that story up, there is one weird aspect to the Partners in Peril/Chemical Syndicate connection that's bugged me for a while now, and it's the respective endings to their stories. Because it's not just Batman who acts weird in this story.

The Shadow's small coupe was still at the dark curb where he had left it parked. The hood that covered the motor was unusually long for so small a car. But Harry Vincent knew that under that hood was a racing engine that could outdistance any ordinary pursuer.

The hand of The Shadow reached inside the car and withdrew a bulky briefcase from a side pocket of the automobile. He handed it to Cardona.

"Complete proof for conviction," his clipped voice said.

He sprang behind the wheel of the car. A nod brought Harry Vincent to the seat beside him. Down the dark street came the white boring brilliance of police headlights.

But The Shadow and Vincent were gone. Like a dark blot, the car without lights had jerked away from the curb and had sped off into concealing darkness.

The Shadow had accomplished his purpose. He had handed over to the law a master criminal and the proof to convict him. Now, his work finished, he roared off through the night to protect his anonymous identity - Partners of Peril

Be honest: If I told you that one of these characters ended the story by handing the police proof of conviction for the villain while speeding off into the night on a slick black car with his main sidekick in the front seat, and the other ended as a grim lone figure sending the villain towards a gruesome karmic demise while sternly stating "A fitting end for his kind",

I'm dead sure you would not make the right guess as to which of these is a Shadow story and which is a Batman story.

[theshadowstrikes]

The Shadow: ‘Partners of Peril’ (Nov., 1936)

The story that “inspired” Batman. Not only was 'Partners of Peril’ copied beat-by-beat by Bill Finger in Detective Comics #27, you may recognize some of Tom Lovell’s interior artwork as well. Some of it was actually traced by Bob Kane for the first appearance of the Caped Crusader. (Apparently Lovell was a big hit with artists, as fellow Shadow artist Ray Kinstler later copied the first-page illustration for the story “The White Skulls”) 

'Partners of Peril’ marked the first appearance of Walter Gibson’s alternate, Theodore Tinsley, who did an excellent job in the overworked pulp master’s absence. Tinsley would go on to write 24 more Shadow stories over the next six years. Gibson would say Tinsley was “...a well-established writer who did a fine job on The Shadow from start to finish.”

Written by: Theodore Tinsley (as Maxwell Grant) Cover Art: George Rozen Pulp Art: Tom Lovell

[mclibunghts]

ZEUS

Brody Elijah Sullivan - Richard Madden (Sara) | ship name: scardy | TBD

Emmett Nathaniel Sullivan - Jack Falahee (Sara) | ship name: celett | TBD

Jacques Marcel Vivier  - Matthew Daddario (Jordanne) | ship name: zaddox | TBD

Eric Nicholas Villan  - Dominic Sherwood (Sara) | ship name: stellan | TBD

Douglas Alexander Vivier  - Arthur Gosse (Jordanne) | ship name: colter | TBD

Selene Isabelle Villan - Zoey Deutch (Jordanne) | ship name: rhysley | TBD

Nova Marie Sullivan - Zhenya Katava (Sara) | ship name: linnova | TBD

NYX

Jude Christopher Haywood - Joseph Cannata (Jordanne) | ship name: judelise | TBD

Rhys Theodore Haywood - Tyler Cameron (Sara) | ship name: rhysley | TBD

Braxton Scott Haywood - Chase Mattson (Jordanne) | ship name: braye | TBD

Dawn Marie Monet - Adelaide Kane (Sara) | ship name: zaddox | TBD

Lincoln Marshall Haywood - Arthur Benedetti (Jordanne) | ship name: linnova | TBD

APHRODITE

Stephen Wyatt Abernathy - Christopher Mason (Sara) | ship name: stephinn | TBD

Dexter Tate Abernathy - Jeff Kasser (Sara) | ship name: colter | TBD

Camilla Rose Sutton - Nicola Peltz (Jordanne) | ship name: stellan | TBD

Jasper Blake Powell  - Michael Yerger (Jordanne) | ship name: samlotte | TBD

HERMES

Donovan Blake Calloway - Philippe Leblond (Sara) | ship name: dolene | TBD

Georgia Adelaide Calloway - Olivia Karina (Jordanne) | ship name: lougia | TBD

Summer Eileen Calloway - Niamh Adkins (Jordanne) | ship name: goodway | TBD

Elise Renee Calloway - Daisy Keech (Sara) | ship name: judelise | TBD

DIONYSUS

Matthias Emmett Baker - Janis Danner (Sara) | ship name: matthey | TBD

Michael James Baker - Jay Gould (Sara) | ship name: mauden | TBD

Piper Joelle Baker - Abby Rao (Jordanne) | ship name: paaron | TBD

ARES

Hunter Waylon Armstrong - Ben Barnes (Jordanne) | ship name: dawstrong | TBD

Travis Clement Armstrong - Casey Deidrick (Jordanne) | ship name: lanis | TBD

Darrel Josiah Armstrong - Andrew Biernat (Sara) | ship name: daleanor  | TBD

Leia Magdalene Armstrong - Jessy Hartel (Sara) | ship name: juleia | TBD

APOLLO

Ian Jericho Henderson - Elia Cometti (Sara) | ship name: everliam | TBD

Scarlet Victoria Henderson - Hannah Brown (Jordanne) | ship name: scardy | TBD

Saffron Aurelie Henderson - Romaneinnc (Sara) | ship name: satticus | TBD

tyche

Anthony Cooper Dawson - Chris Curtis (Sara) | ship name: opheny | TBD

Julietta May Dawson - Dakota Johnson (Sara) | ship name: dawstrong | TBD

Davis Alfred Dawson - Ken Bek (Jordanne) | ship name: tavis | TBD

Jolene Loretta Dawson - Barbara Palvin (Jordanne) | ship name: dolene | TBD

NIKE

John Logan Goodwin - Franky Cammarata (Sara) | ship name: goodway | TBD

Aaron Gareth Goodwin - Pietro Boselli (Sara) | ship name: paaron | TBD

Faye Cordelia Goodwin - Cindy Kimberly (Sara) | ship name: braye | TBD

Tally Beatrice Goodwin - Melanie Martinez (Sara) | ship name: lachlly | TBD

NEMESIS

Atticus Beckett Doherty- Christian Hogue (Jordanne) | ship name: satticus | TBD

Everleigh Rose Doherty - Madi Teeuws (Jordanne) | ship name: everliam | TBD

Lana Rosalie Doherty - Marina Laswick (Sara) | ship name: lanis | TBD

ATHENA

Louis Nathaniel Buchanam - Lucas Bloms (Sara) | ship name: lougia | TBD

Celia Rae Buchanam - Shelley Hennig (Jordanne) | ship name: celett | TBD

Eleanor Lorraine Buchanam - Hannah Sluss (Jordanne) | ship name: daleanor  | TBD

Tatum Eileen Buchanam - Triz Pariz (Sara) | ship name: tavis | TBD

POSEIDON

Duke Ellis Norwood Chad Hurst (Jordanne) | ship name: duvere | TBD

Julian Marcus Norwood - Stephen James (Jordanne) | ship name: juleia | TBD

Katherine Adele Norwood - Ana de Armas (Sara) | ship name: mine | TBD

Charlotte Louise Norwood - Madelyn Cline (Sara) | ship name: samlotte | TBD

APHRODITE

Aysel Karacan - Ayça Aysin Turan (Sara) | ship name: kaysel | TBD

HERA

Kerem Budak - Alp Navruz (Jordanne) | ship name: kaysel | TBD

ARES

Zhang Wei Zhao - Sinqua Walls (Jordanne) | ship name: zhaura | TBD

DEMETER

Milo MIDDLE NAME Fuller - Sebastian Stan (Jordanne) | ship name: mine | TBD

Quinn MIDDLE NAME Fuller - Bryana Holly (Jordanne) | ship name: stephinn | TBD

Ophelia MIDDLE NAME Fuller - Florence Pugh (Jordanne) | ship name: opheny | TBD

HECATE

Lachlan MIDDLE NAME Campbell - Jorge del Rio Romero (Jordanne) | ship name: lachlly | TBD

Tinsley MIDDLE NAME Campbell - Kelianne Stankus (Jordanne) | ship name: matthey | TBD

Guinevere June Campbell - Anna Klinski (Sara) | ship name: duvere | TBD

HERA

Auden MIDDLE NAME Jennings - Alexis Ren (Jordanne) | ship name: mauden | TBD

Laura Grace Jennings - Ester Exposito (Sara) | ship name: zhaura | TBD

[pulpsandcomics2]

“Black Mask”  February 1936        cover by John Drew

No Hard Feelings by Frederick Nebel

Body Snatcher by Theodore Tinsley

Portrait of Murder by George Harmon Coxe

Rat Bait by Dwight V. Babcock

Shylock Is Murdered by Nels Jorgensen

[oldschoolcrimefighters]

Okay 229: Gems of Jeopardy is also only 15 chapters. Tinsley being consistent with his numbers wouldn’t be notable, except that as I mentioned before, Gibson around this time was consistently hitting 20. And both their wordcounts are around 40k so it’s not that Tinsley writes less. I guess he just holds scenes longer?

I dunno why this is so weird to me.

[obsidian-sphere]

Pulp Heroes: The Women

Most of the heroes found in the pulps were dudes, with only the occasional, plucky girlfriend or aid to the hero.

There were however a few, such as Domino Lady and others, that featured in their own series.

Toffee was a character that ran fairly regular in Imagination, later Imaginary Tales, she was sort of a Samantha Stevens 15 years before Bewitched. Popping full-grown out of the head of an ad executive who was trying to imagine the perfect woman, because she was imaginary ordinary rules did not apply to her and she in return could alter reality around her, comedy then ensued.

Carrie Cashin by Theodore Tinsley appeared in a couple of pulps and as shown in her cover shot here seemed to be more comfortable coming and going out of place via a window than the door, two thirds acrobat and one third detective she and the “Cash n’ Carrie Detective agency” was one of the first female pulp heroines.

I have no idea just what the tiles of T’Sai Lu are, but it seems ms T’Sai knows what she’s doing, anyway… Detective Fiction Weekly was the first pulp to feature two of the first American female detectives, socialite Carole Trevor who runs the Old Towne Detective Agency and Trixie Meehan and partner, Mike Harris, ops for the Blaine Private Detective Agency, but I couldn’t find any covers with them on them.

The first appearance of Jirel of Joiry by C. L. Moore, the first female Sword & Sorcery heroine, good stories, but I personally always had a hard time getting that name of hers right in my head.

Detective Fiction Weekly was the first pulp to feature two of the first American female detectives, socialite Carole Trevor who runs the Old Towne Detective Agency and Trixie Meehan and partner, Mike Harris, ops for the Blaine Private Detective Agency.

I don’t think much of anything memorable came out of Scarlet Adventuress, and it didn’t last very long, but it sure fits here.

Secretary turned private eye Grace “Redsie” Culver, ran regularly in the back pages of the Shadow’s monthly and later twice a month pulp.

Okay, this is not the cover of a pulp, but the pulp’s first cousin the Paperback original, this one featuring an adventure of Bertha Cool by Earl Stanly (A. A. Fair) Gardner, weighing in at around 300 that’s not Bertha on the cover.

That is, however, a depiction of Violet McDade, the ex-circus fat lady and the first hardboiled lady eye who appeared for a number of years in the pages of Dime Detective.