Hibou

I'm sure everyone has their theme song, right?!

I mean, it has to be common knowledge by now that this is Rob's ...

Anyways, this would be mine - as this life has certainly been a VERY Long Journey!

After that last post, of course I have to add this...

I know that last post was a bit random so I'll try to fill in some details here.

This weekend I attended a funeral in Schuylerville, NY at the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery.  After my son passed away last August, my family was hit with another loss as my uncle unexpectedly passed away in October of 2023.  It took those 6 months before my aunt could secure a time there for a service.  Apparently there was that long of a waiting list. 

It's a beautiful veterans cemetery... https://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/geraldbhsolomonsaratoga.asp surrounded by soft hills, farms and the nearby Hudson River.

My uncle served in the US Army and fought in Vietnam.  The service this weekend was quite emotional despite us all having felt the loss back in October.  Not only was he my uncle but he was my Godfather as well and had a very strong influence on me growing up.  I wrote about him a little bit in a post on here around a year and a half ago as it related to how he was the one that picked my NFL football team for me, the Los Angeles Rams...

My aunt and uncle were living in Florida for a number of years but were preparing to move up to Connecticut to be closer to their daughter, my cousin.  My uncle lived here since immigrating from France in the 1950's up until they decided to move down to Florida.  He always liked monsters, creatures and anything weird... he had a very unique way of looking at the world and followed his passion to become an accomplished poet later in his life.  He authored numerous books and created quite the poets society where he was living in Florida.  As my parents cultivated my interest and love for all things related to Marvel and DC, my uncle did the same in terms of weird creatures and monsters.  In the 1970's, he would regularly buy comics for me from the local newsstand and would encourage me to get material other than the superheroes.  Among the comics that he would get for me were the Godzilla comics.  Godzilla was a favorite of mine and my older cousin as well.  Even to this day, we'll talk about all of the classic Godzilla movies.

I've told this to my daughter so she knows my love for Godzilla which is why she purchased this amazing matchbox set from a flea market in Japan last year. 

The backs of the boxes are a puzzle and create a whole image...

Now my father also liked the monster stuff too but he was more in tune with the Universal Monsters so I guess I didn't stand a chance... this was destined to be a deep interest of mine!  Anyways, one night last year, as late fall shifted into early winter, I was mindlessly scrolling through items on Mercari and eBay.  Still grieving over David and now my Uncle Dan, I stopped on this book and it brought all of these memories that I just wrote about, right back up to the surface.  It didn't matter to me what the grade was and it was very inexpensive so I just decided to get it. 

It was a memory of my dear uncle just as that New Mutants #98 was a memory of my son, David.

This is just such a cool Herb Trimpe cover as were many of those early Godzilla comics. 

As for the grade, it looks great to me! A near perfect wrap with White pages - I'm not sure why it was only a VF-

So that's the story behind my impromptu posting of last night.  Thank you Uncle Dan for Godzilla and the LA Rams... we had a helluva draft this weekend.  A lot of new fresh talent just came on board.

Fifty years a Rams fan and still going...

As this entry enters its final words, my family was able to pay their final tributes to my dear uncle who was also my dear Godfather.

Rip, Dan... and thank you for the Rams and Godzilla.

I forgot to mention the other night that the LP set in the background of the picture of the Street & Smith book set is a fantastic 4 vinyl set called "The Story of The Shadow".  It was released in 1985 as it looks back on 50 plus years of The Shadow and contains wonderful interviews and recollections from the likes of Anthony Tollin, Walter B. Gibson, Brett Morrison and many, many more.  There's a lot of stories from the 'behind-the-scenes' production of the radio program which I find to be a joy to listen to. 

As a matter of fact, despite it being just over 2 hours long, this has become one of my favorite 'distractions' to listen to while driving late at night as I've done so 4 or 5 times now.

You can find the 4 LP set (or CD's) on various sites easily enough but it's also posted here on YouTube as well...

http://www.radiospirits.com/detailsv2.asp?mbprodid=55433

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/STORY-SHADOW-record-box-set-Radiola/31441572153/bd

As always...

To be continued.

And so, as I ended last nights post, although edited, I'll end this one as well.

I think of this everyday as I hold this device in my hand.

This black, oblong object that seems to control my thoughts and actions, yet they call it a smart phone.  In this song, I believe he's referencing a television but it's kind of the same I guess.

Sometimes nights like last night catch me off guard.  It begins innocently enough as I indulge in my ultimate distractions but then the inevitable creeps in and absolutely engulfs me... I know my wife experiences this as well on a daily basis.  This afternoon, we took off for the day to maybe do some 'antiquing', while hitting some thrift stores and antique shops around an hour north of here.  We didn't find much today but I found a few good modern comics.  Probably my best pull was a copy of Ultimate Fantastic Four #21 and the first appearance of the Marvel Zombies. 

That book was $2 at a thrift store.

Anyways, this next part kind of illustrates what I just mentioned above.

Mu wife and I had just walked into this mall and there was actually a real arcade there.  I was initially going to walk past but I was curious as to what an arcade actually was these days.  Not much in terms of 'video games' but a lot of 'ticket prize' games.  So as we left, my wife said to me... "Didn't you used to take David to the arcade at (our local mall)?"  I answered yes and she replied that he always had so much fun there.  Then she added that he always had so much fun everywhere I took him.  She quickly added that I was 'his person'.  Couples sometimes have their own vocabulary and I knew exactly what she meant by this and like I mentioned above, right there in the middle of this mall, I nearly lost it. 

I had to distract myself while passing by a pet store selling puppies...

And with that...

Back to the program.

As we were out and going through this one antique mall, I thought to myself that through all of our travels over the course of the  past 2 years, I have only found two Shadow and/or Blue Coal related items in all of our travels throughout New York State and down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  The first item was the Shadow / Blue Coal blotter from Canada that I included in the above post and the second item was the Living Shadow book... both items purchased at different locations in Rochester, New York.

So this is about a good enough spot to segue back to that book I just bought some weeks ago.

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As I was so thrilled to have a copy of that first book, "The Living Shadow", I went online to see if I could find the other two volumes, "Eyes of The Shadow" and "The Shadow Laughs".  As luck would have it, mycomicshop.com (Lonestar Comics) had both volumes and one had just been drastically reduced in price.  I couldn't believe the luck here and immediately placed both in my cart and couldn't check out fast enough.  They really have impeccable service and are always a rock solid resource for me in terms of acquiring material.  I love having this whole set and now that I know that they were published in 1933 by Street & Smith, just adds more delicious history to this journey!

To be continued...

I never got the chance to show you this page - I think you would've loved to see this.

I knew I was destined to reach this point if I typed on here long enough...

If I spent an hour on here trying to accurately describe how much I've missed you - I would've failed miserably.

Goodnight David.

I do have to mention my new favorite site as it ties into a blog and that would be...

The Shadowcast.

(Just look at this site's layout. How can you not be drawn in?!)

The producer of this series seems to be a living expert on the subject if anyone is interested...

Anyways, I've spent numerous nights listening to these podcasts and it has personally, helped me a lot. 

This one is a good one to start with as it's a subject that has not been extensively covered...

I can't emphasize this enough...

When facing catastrophic personal tragedy, it's vital to have a solid foundation around you consisting of a loving family and stellar friends. 

In addition, it helps if you have a life long passion that seems to swirl around you and intervenes when it's deemed most necessary.

And that's where I'll start this entry tonight.

I know that I kind of paused the discussion of X-Men and Fantastic Four books on here and replaced that with more Shadow material but for good reason... at this point in this personal maelstrom that I find myself in, it's this that has seemed to ground me as it speaks of a different time... a better time.  Perhaps a more innocent time, although I write that with the caveat being that perhaps a more innocent time simply means when things were more black and white.

I'll cut that thought off here... otherwise, I'll get myself into a rambling of thought that will surely get me kicked off of the boards.

I will return to the discussion of FF books and X-Men books soon enough though.

But for now, I'm deep into this "Spinning Wheel" and it's so therapeutic.

If only I could recruit The Shadow to help me solve this personal mystery and tragedy!

If only...

Anyways, tonight I went through and scanned all of my BlueCoal blotters featuring The Shadow and I'm glad I did as I did not realize that I have doubles and even triples in some of these.  Of course I'm speaking of the graphics as the business name will always change despite these being pretty rare finds as they are.  This one here is my favorite and is the one that was purchased as a plaque from adventurehouse.com. The back of these blotters would mostly feature the BlueCoal logo but sometimes they would just feature a plain blue background made to absorb excess ink.

So here is my collection of BlueCoal / Shadow blotters as it stands right now.

I've also included the adhesive sticker that I have as well... I'm not sure what this was originally meant for outside of a paper sticker of sorts.

And these are the blotters that I've assembled...

On 4/17/2024 at 12:15 AM, OtherEric said:

The Shadow book was copyright 1931, since that was the copyright on the original story.  It was actually published later, ISFDB says 1933.

And that explains it.

I just posted this in another thread here on the boards but now I am very, very confused about something that I never thought of before. 

I think I'll have to start a thread elsewhere to try and find the answer...

Sorry about this not being a comic but it was Street & Smith's cross marketing for their Shadow Detective Monthly Magazine that was found in their February 13th, 1932 issue of Love Story Magazine. 

The image is that of James LaCurto who was the first to voice the narration of The Shadow on the Detective Story Hour radio show in 1930.

(Sadly, not my copy...)

Before I forget, I have to put this awesome video on here that I just stumbled onto a couple of weeks ago featuring some 30 year old interviews with Anthony Tollin.

Just seeing some of his collection is wonderful to look at!

On 4/13/2024 at 1:14 PM, sfcityduck said:

What would the notation say?  D27 is not a swipe.

CGC has put notations on many books claiming "prototypes" and such.

This one here on Challengers of the Unknown #3, though not claiming to be a "prototype issue", is a good example...

As far as the Case of the Chemical Syndicate vs. Partners of Peril, I have read that even Bill Finger admitted that he took the story from a Shadow story.  Anthony Tollin and Will Murray have spoken about this and there are numerous sources for that.  This issue of Alter Ego Magazine #176 July 2022, lightly touches on it.

This video here illustrates the similarities...

And this one here is a little long, but kind of fun as they explore more of the same.

And I often mock Google and our AI in general, but this is what first appears when doing a 2 second "Google search" on the topic...

I believe it was in the winter of 2022 when I bought that first Shadow Magazine issue from October 1, 1936 and then some months later when I found the nicer copy.  The copy on the left was my very first pulp of The Shadow that I purchased.  And then of course I thoroughly documented that purchase of the November 1, 1936 issue that I bought at PulpFest last summer in Pittsburgh. 

Again, these are the raw images...

So when I sent these into CGC, based off of what I was seeing already in graded examples, I was hoping that the October 1, 1936 issue would get somewhere between a 4.0 - 5.0 and that the November 1, 1936 issue would grade out between a 2.0 and a 3.0 based off of the chunk out of the bottom and the staining on the back cover.

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I was very impressed with the turnaround time on these and even more pleased with the CGC grades and here they are. 

These are the actual CGC scanned images and not from my scanner...

Again, I really like the quality of the slabs and they are very thick... they did a great job of making the side nice and clear so you can easily see the spine. 

I'll try a little later  to get a picture or a scan of the spines to be able to better show that.

In general, they're about twice as thick as a normal comic slab.

One thing I didn't realize until I was putting these books together to submit them was that both of these issues have the punched hole in the upper left corner.  I'm not sure if that was done back then to designate copies as 'remainders',as was done with comics where they would have the top third of the covers ripped off to submit back to the distributors for credit, or rather some other designation.

Regardless, I'm very, very happy with these and as of right now, the October 1, 1936 (#111) issue is the lone copy on the census, while the November 1, 1936 (#113) issue is the second highest graded with another sitting at a nice 4.5!

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My only true disappointment though is that there was no notation on the issue #113 (Nov.1, 1936) of Detective Comics #27. 

That would have been the ultimate icing on the cake!

I only have a handful of Pulps that I would want to get graded so I went through around seven or eight and pulled out two.  Once I had heard that CGC was looking at grading these, I immediately knew what my first one would be, which is a copy I talked about here, but what should I send in with that one?  It took me a little while to decide but ultimately, I chose the one that kind of opened the door to a whole new reality for me.  So yes, the obvious first choice was that Shadow Magazine, November 1, 1936 issue featuring the (now hopefully) infamous story, 'Partners in Peril'.  The second book I chose to send in, was I guess the bookend to that November 1, 1936 issue... that being the October 1, 1936 issue which featured that amazing cover George Rozen cover that I felt must have had a huge impact on Bill Finger and Bob Kane.

As a side note, I just found out that Alex Ross did an homage to that cover.  The funny thing is, I think it was last spring or summer that I told Rob that I had this great idea for a move script about the life of Walter B. Gibson and the character development of The Shadow... in passing, I thought it would be cool to cast Alex Ross as both Jerome and George Rozen.

I think I just wanted to watch videos the other night...

Anyways, I mentioned that I would hopefully have an update on a couple of Pulps that I sent in to CGC and I was thrilled to get those back yesterday.  To say that I'm very impressed with this experience would be an understatement.  To start with, I mailed these out with USPS Priority Mail on Monday, March 18th under CGG's High Value tier.  I placed one at a value of $500 and the other at a value of $1000.  I was very surprised to see that just a few days later, on Friday, March 22nd, they were listed as Received in the system but not only that, they were already moved into the Scheduled for Grading category! Well seven days later, on the 29th of March, they were graded and then ultimately shipped out on Tuesday, April 2nd. 

The total turn around time from the point of me sending these out on Monday morning, March 18th to me receiving them back on Saturday, April 6th was only 19 total days!  The fee for the High Value tier (max value = $1000) is more than double the cost than the Vintage tier (max value = $400) but these were two very important copies to me.

The grades I received were right in line with what I was expecting to see based on what I saw from other graded examples on line, so I was happy about that. 

As far as the holder itself, I like it a lot.

They're very thick as you can imagine and seem pretty substantial.  I'll post some pictures here soon but first I have to talk about what I ultimately sent in.

... Of course Don Johnson inspired my look and dress of the middle to late 80's but Philip Michael Thomas was so integral to the series. 

I can't believe he's 74 now!

Mid week edit -

I'm not sure why, but I've been kind of stuck on Genesis and Phil Collins for a few weeks now.  I'm not sure what exactly sparked that except for maybe recently seeing and hearing about Phil Collins' medical condition. 

How did I end up here tonight?

Who do you choose as your partner...

Crockett or Tubbs?

''

And another favorite of mine...

I'm not sure what it is about these two songs, back to back, but I really like them.

I just saw a current picture of Phil Collins this evening... oh my.