Captain's Library: THE SHADOW "Shadow in Danger" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Hero...

A number of people, including police Sgt Cardona, Lamont Cranston, and Margo Lane, are targeted by a mugger who hypnotizes his victims so they don't remember being robbed!

Police Commissioner Weston suspects The Shadow (who can cloud mens' minds), but Cranston knows The Shadow is innocent, since he's The Shadow (but can't tell Weston)!

When the mugger's moll demands a bigger cut of the loot, or she'll go blab to the police, the criminal silences her...permanently!

This never-reprinted cover story from Shadow Comics V8N7 (1948) was adapted from the 09/09/45 Shadow radioplay of the same title by Stedman Coles.
Regrettably, there are no surviving recordings of this episode. 

While Bob Powell (with aid from his comic studio assistants) did the artwork, the script adaptor is unknown, but believed to be either Bruce Elliot (who had taken over the "Maxwell Grant" byline from Walter Gibson on the Shadow pulp stories) or Powell himself.

You'll note the "color hold" technique, taking artwork that normally would be black-line and making it one of the color plates (in this case, blue) to show The Shadow while he's invisible.

It was a very tricky thing to do back in those days since the interior pages were almost never proofed due to time and cost restraints.

But, Powell does some amazing things with the holds, making them line up exactly almost all the time!

He also uses "color holds" to great effect on the cover at top, but that, at least, was proofed (and, if needed, corrected) before printing.

This entry is part of our Retroblogs™ Masks Marathon, celebrating the new Dynamite comic series Masks which combines, for the first time, the major masked mystery men of pulps and comics including The Green Hornet, The Shadow, The Spider, Zorro, The Black Terror, The Green Lama, and Miss Fury (ok, a masked mystery woman), among others.

We'll be presenting more never-reprinted stories featuring these characters throughout the month of December.

Captain's Library: MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER "Five Miles Down" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Protagonists...

When millionaire Matthew Mallison is offered the opportunity to finance a 100-mile shaft into the earth in exchange for the majority of profits from the extracted minerals and metals, he agrees.
After a year, the shaft is five miles deep.
The millionaire insists on seeing where his money is going, and is told, besides riches aplenty, a huge cavern where underground life may exist has been discovered.
Mallison takes an expedition down the shaft to the cave and...

Despite the blurb above, there was no "next issue"!

In fact, this was the only issue of the only comic ever published by Trans-World Publications!
Art by comics legend Bob Powell, who illustrated a similar series with a supernatural host for Harvey Comics called The Man in Black Called Fate.
The Mysterious Traveler did return in a different series from another publisher (Charlton Comics) almost a decade later, called Tales of the Mysterious Traveler, which featured some of the earliest work by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko.
We'll be presenting some of those tales later this year.
As to the radio show itself...
From 1943 to 1952, The Mysterious Traveler was one of many anthology series (including The Whistler, Inner Sanctum, and Lights Out) with an ongoing spooky "host".
The concept was that you had just boarded a train, the Mysterious Traveler was sitting across from you, and to pass the time until you reached your destination, he would tell you a tale...
(remember, there were no iPods or WalkMen in those days.)
Of the 370 or so episodes produced, only about 70 survive.
Ironically, neither airing of the episode "Five Miles Down" has ever been recovered, though the script exists.
An absolutely superb page about the series can be found HERE.
The show produced two spin-off series, Sealed Book and Strange Dr. Weird, both of which just recycled Traveller's scripts with new spooky hosts!

Captain's Library: MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER "Five Miles Down" Part 1

Based on the classic radio show...

...this story, illustrated by Bob Powell, is adapted from one of the episode scripts.

What else lurks in the darkness?

Find out...Tomorrow!
(along with some background info about The Mysterious Traveler)!