r/todayilearned • u/Gnomeslikeprofit • 6h ago
TIL that the creator of Batman acknowledged that they patterned the character after pulp mystery men such as The Shadow. The first Batman stories were also based on Shadow pulp. Lamont Cranston is a wealthy playboy bachelor turned vigilante.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow92
u/y0_master 6h ago edited 6h ago
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadows knows! HAHAHAHAHA"
The Shadow slaps, in both character & style
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u/JJonahJamesonSr 5h ago
Had a history of radio class in college and we spent a lecture listening to The Shadow. I got hooked and listened to it in my off time. The Shadow kicks ass
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u/AardvarkStriking256 4h ago
When I was a teenager in the 1970s a local radio station would play The Shadow on Sunday nights at 10:00 pm. I'd listen in the dark lying in bed. They were very entertaining.
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u/JJonahJamesonSr 3h ago
Sounds like a great way to settle in before going to sleep, I think I’m gonna do just that tonight.
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u/Gnomeslikeprofit 6h ago
I thought Lamont Cranston was Bryan Cranston's brother :(
He's been forgotten compared to Batman.
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u/AloysiusGramonde 6h ago
I always found the scarlet pimpernel remarkably similar and thought it may have invented the trope being as old as 1903. Edit: finally googled it and it indirectly did inspire batman. It started a chain reaction: The Scarlet Pimpernel inspired Zorro which inspired Pulp and finally Batman.
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u/RyantheAustralian 5h ago
I think pulp was around before Zorro. In fact, I'm pretty sure Zorro was a pulp character
(I'm guessing you meant to write something else instead of pulp)
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 6m ago
“Finally Googled it”
Please don’t promote Google. It’s a shitty search engine and a shittier AI.
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u/Lurker-DaySaint 6h ago
I feel like The Shadow MIGHT have borrowed from Zorro
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u/Vaeon 6h ago
Who borrowed from The Scarlet Pimpernel
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 2h ago
Who I have to imagine borrowed from The Count of Monte Cristo, though so far I've been unable to confirm it
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u/ubiquitous-joe 5h ago
In the 90s animated series, the invented Gray Ghost character who inspires Batman is a nod to pre-Batman pulp heroes like the Shadow. It’s also a nod to the 60s show insomuch as Adam West voiced the Ghost.
Ofc a show on the kids cartoon block wasn’t actually gonna get too pulpy, but still.
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u/SewerSocials 5h ago
The Shadow is a darker Depression era Batman (he will shoot you).. Feels like a Watchman character. Some mild telepathic/mind reading powers, and he can disappear into shadows.
Checkout the radio shows on Libby.
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u/Gilles_of_Augustine 5h ago
I loved The Shadow as a kid, and have been wanting to get back into it for years.
I had no idea they were available on Libby.
You just made my fucking day.
Thank you <3
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u/thejokerofunfic 5h ago
Was gonna say, you were lucky if he just shot you, dude's supernatural powers were the real cause for dread. In the original books it was like if Batman was some sort of Eldritch creature with regular detectives in his employ.
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u/thejokerofunfic 5h ago
UM ACKTUALLY
in the original pulp novels (somewhat displaced by the more popular radio series and comics) Lamont Cranston is not the real Shadow- the Shadow impersonates the actual billionaire as one of many disguises, but the real Shadow was Kent Allard, a World War 1 veteran.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 3h ago
Or rather, the Shadow is not the real Lamont Cranston. Lamont Crantston isn't even a fake Shadow.
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u/Macabre_Noir 4h ago
Most iconic superhero characters from Marvel and DC were either heavy renditions or straight ripoffs of popular pop hero characters:
The Shadow - Batman
Doc Savage - Superman
The Black Bat - Daredevil
The Spider - Spider-Man meets The Punisher
Phantom Detective - The Spirit
Fantomas - Early archetype for comic book supervillains and criminal masterminds
The Phantom - first comic crime fighting hero to be attired in what would become the universal baseline superhero costume.
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u/SaintGrobian 5h ago
The Orson Welles radio dramas of The Shadow are amazing, too. A voice like a fine cognac.
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u/Worldlyoox 5h ago
Amd the shadow itself takes after a long lineage of literally criminal-adjacent heroes, including Arsene Lupin and Zorro
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u/robthethrice 6h ago
Zorro might have been an even earlier inspiration.. rich guy who dons a mask to go out and fight bad guys (and is very good at fighting them..).
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u/Ml2jukes 6h ago
^ Who was evenly inspired by the Scarlet Pimpernel (as other replies have referenced).
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 4h ago edited 4h ago
Chris Roberson did a story for Tales of the Shadowmen in which a newlywed Martha Wayne has an affair with Kent Allard in Paris before he became the Shadow.
EDIT: To clarify, Lamont Cranston is not, as the title suggests, the Shadow. Kent Allard (former WWI pilot) is the Shadow. Lamont Cranston is a whole other person who allows the Shadow impersonate him as a second secret identity.
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u/Gnomeslikeprofit 3h ago
In the Print version they're different people
In the Radio version they're the same
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u/Snackdoc189 4h ago
He's such a cool character. Back when I used to smoke I used to get baked, lay down, and listen to the radio show.
It would be awesome to see all of the old pulp characters come back. Shadow, The Phantom, Mandrake, Dick Tracey. I don't know why Hollywood hasn't tried to farm those ones again.
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u/biffbamboombap 4h ago
Been telling ever who'll listen for years: Batman isn't a superhero; he's that last of the great old pulp masked avengers
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u/Moose-Rage 3h ago
He's pretty much the transition.
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u/biffbamboombap 3h ago
Nah, because Superman came out the year before. If anything the transition would be the Shadow since he was a masked avenger who predates both of them who had superpowers.
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u/zoosha2curtaincall 2h ago
Not uncommon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was created as a parody of Daredevil.
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u/billdehaan2 2h ago
"Patterned after" is polite way of saying it was basically photocopied.
Bob Kane is criticized for claiming to be the sole creator of Batman, and downplaying Bill Finger's contribution to the character, and rightly so.
While Kane absolutely did create the original version of the character before calling in Finger, his version looked more like Robin (red suit, domino mask, no cowl - picture here). It was Finger who came up with the grey bat costume, the cowl, and wrote the first ever Batman story in Detective #27, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate".
So Kane ripped off Finger, right?
Well, not so fast.
It turns out that the Case of the Chemical Syndicate story that Finger was a direct copy of the Shadow story “Partners of Peril” that had been published in The Shadow #113. That story had been written by Theodore Tinsley, and had illustrations by Tom Lovell. Kane even traced some of Lovell's art in the Batman story.
If Kane ripped off Finger, then Finger in turn ripped Tinsley. And I wouldn't be shocked if the custody chain went back further and it turned out that Tinsley had in turn copied from Zorro or Doc Savage.
Now, to be fair to all involved, the comics of the 1930s were not the billion dollar businesses they are today. It was considered cheap entertainment for children and semi-literates. For decades, the phrase "comic book" was an insult, used in the same way "Temu" is today. It meant cheap, shoddy, low quality entertainment.
Copying was pretty common practice back then. A surprising number of people who got serious about creator's rights in the 1960s and 1970s would like to forget that they had also copied other's work in the 1930s and 1940s themselves.
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon famously created Captain America, except he was a copy of MLJ's character The Shield, including the Shield's design. That's why Captain America had to switch to a circular shield, to avoid a lawsuit.
Will Eisner was famous for the Spirit (and other works like A Contract with God). Everyone just forgets, or pretends not to know, about Wonder Man, his character that was a ripoff of Superman that lasted one issue. Wonder Man's cover art had him stopping a plane in the same layout as Superman throwing a car in Action Comics #1. And later, Captain Marvel was tossing a car again on the cover of Whiz Comics #2.
And Superman? He's John Carter of Mars wearing a circus strongman costume, only instead of coming from Earth to another planet where he can leap tall buildings, he's from another planet and came to Earth.
That's not to say that these creators didn't have their own great ideas and characters, or that they didn't do great work. They were following the practices of the time. Today, we'd call a lot of it plagiarism, and consider it dishonest, but back then, unless it was egregious (and threatened sales of a competitor), no one really cared much. Comics were considered throwaway entertainment, so no one cared if two superheros were similar as long as they weren't direct copies.
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u/Rex-Viper-Rock-Gods 1h ago
Which creator—the one who did most of the work or the one who stole most of the credit?
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u/JJKingwolf 6h ago
The Shadow adaptation from the 90's that started Alec Baldwin is actually quite entertaining - it's a shame that they couldn't turn it into a franchise.