Subscribe: RSS Podcast iTunes
wikiofthedaymasto.ai
  Buy WotD Stuff!!
Episode 1801             Episode 1803
Episode 1802

The Shadow (magazine)
Mon, 2022-Apr-11 00:06 UTC
Length - 2:52

Direct Link

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Monday, 11 April 2022 is The Shadow (magazine).

The Shadow was an American pulp magazine that was published by Street & Smith from 1931 to 1949. Each issue contained a novel about The Shadow, a mysterious crime-fighting figure who had been invented to narrate the introductions to radio broadcasts of stories from Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. A line from the introduction, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows", prompted listeners to ask at newsstands for "The Shadow magazine", which convinced the publisher that a magazine based around a single character could be successful. Walter Gibson persuaded the magazine's editor, Frank Blackwell, to let him write the first novel, The Living Shadow, which appeared in the first issue, dated April 1931.

Sales were strong, and Street & Smith quickly moved it from quarterly to monthly publication, and then to twice-monthly. John Nanovic was hired as editor in 1932, and the lead stories were outlined in meetings between Nanovic, Gibson, and Henry W. Ralston, Street & Smith's business manager. Gibson wrote every Shadow story for several years; from the mid-1930s he was assisted by Theodore Tinsley, who wrote almost thirty of the novels. Paper shortages during World War II forced Street & Smith to reduce the magazine's format from pulp to digest-sized. Pulp historians consider the quality of the fiction to have dropped after the 1930s. Gibson stopped writing the novels in 1946 over a contract dispute with Street & Smith, and the novels were written in his stead by Bruce Elliott; these stories, in which The Shadow is mostly a background figure, are held in low esteem by fans. Gibson returned to Street & Smith in 1948, but in 1949 Street & Smith ceased publication of their remaining pulp titles, including The Shadow. The final issue was dated Fall 1949.

The success of The Shadow made it very influential, and many other single-character pulps soon appeared, featuring a lead novel in every issue about the magazine's main character. Street & Smith quickly followed up with Doc Savage, and other publishers launched The Spider, The Phantom Detective, and titles in other genres such as Westerns and science fiction.





This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:06 UTC on Monday, 11 April 2022.

For the full current version of the article, see The Shadow (magazine) on Wikipedia.

This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit wikioftheday.com for our archives, sister podcasts, and swag. Please subscribe to never miss an episode. You can also follow @WotDpod on Twitter.

Abulsme Productions produces the current events podcast Curmudgeon's Corner as well. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.

This has been Matthew Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.

Archive
2017:MayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2018:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2019:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2020:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2021:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2022:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2023:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
2024:JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec

Most Recent Episodes


Feedback welcome at feedback@wikioftheday.com.

These podcasts are produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content.

They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons License

Abulsme Productions also produces Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

If you like that sort of thing, check it out too!


Page cached at 2024-12-10 10:00:08 UTC
Original calculation time was 0.1612 seconds

Page displayed at 2024-12-10 12:22:38 UTC
Page generated in 0.0007 seconds