Or – “Paging Mr. Gibson, Mr. Walter Gibson… We’ve Found Your Intellectual Property!”
Years ago, there were very few licensed titles around that weren’t cartoon properties (the respective Adventures of Bob Hope & Jerry Lewis were exceptions) and Dynamite, Boom! & IDW didn’t yet exist to vie for the licenses for everything that ever existed in the known universe. The days where Optimus Prime might meet up with Spider-Man or Pete Venkman and Jim Kirk might take down the same undead freak were still decades in the future. Still, in the late 70′s, the vagaries of fate and publishing contracts brought The Shadow to the National Periodical fold, the same shared universe where a character whom Mr. Cranston strongly influenced was already ruling the roost…
As a kid I had a collection of old time radio programs that included an episode of The Shadow. I loved that episode and listened to the tape again and again until I knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and until the tape wore out from too much use. When I started reading comics heavily in the 80s, the 3rd and 4th series of The Shadow was at the top of my list of issues to buy.