Paneled Goods: The Shadow Strikes

Picked up a stack of The Shadow Strikes at some Con in the last year or so and finally cracked open the plastic comic bag and started reading.  Boy did I feel dumb, sure we all gloss over words we don't know, many times the way it's used can help you deduce it's meaning.  This time, I reached for the ol' dictionary to quickly learn and just as quickly forget the meaning of multiple words.

 

To start, The Shadow Strikes is a DC series from 1989 from Gerard Jones and Eduardo Barreto.  For the uninitiated, The Shadow is a character created in the 1930's where his adventures were read in pulp novels and heard on radio programs.  While origins vary with each medium, some basic characteristics include fighting in World War I, traveling through Asia and learning how to cloud men's minds.  Alec Baldwin played him in the 1994 big screen adaptation from Universal but we'll get to my obsession with period comic book action movies later.

The first issue begins at a posh social club, where a federal agent loses his head, literally.  It's up to Lamont Cranston and his alter ego, The Shadow to find out whats happened.  Throw in a cult where the leader hypnotizes and seduces women and a Russian femme fatale and you've got yourself a mystery that only a figure who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men while brandishing dual pistols and a wide brimmed hat can solve!

While reading I looked up:

Nadir - the lowest point in the fortunes of a person or organization
Aquiline - like an eagle
Chartreuse - a color halfway between yellow and green
Creosote - a brown, oily liquid used to keep wood from rotting

And who says comics are only about the pictures?  Check out Unicron aka Orson Welles: