By Daniel Dern: In a comment on the March 18, 2025 Scroll re Item 12: “The Shadow Knows”, Quartermain said: “I wouldn’t mind a 20/30’s pulp hero shared universe. The Shadow, The Spider, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, et al.”
Unsurprisingly, a fair amount of cross-overs, team-ups, versus’s and other sharedness does, in fact, already exist – a few comic books ones came to mind, and a little searching turned up others I hadn’t known about.
(Non-comically, a quick search turns up a Shadow-Crossovers category within Archive Of Our Own (not all for The Shadow, but many). And I’m sure there are published nothin’-but-words books of same.)
A fair number are e-borrowable from Hoopla, probably ditto from Libby, ComiXology and Kindle Unlim. Ditto trade and hardcover from libraries. (And purchasable from your local comic shop, etc.)
SHADOW CROSS-OVERS WITH BATMAN
These (and the Justice Inc. one) are what first came to mind.
The short scoop:
According to Batman & Shadow: What Happened When These Two Dark Heroes Met (CBR, September 5, 2019): “…the pair crossed over once when DC was publishing The Shadow in the 1970s, they’ve also had two more recent crossovers, co-published by DC and Dynamite Entertainment.”
(From the same CBR article cited above) “In 1973’s Batman #253 [“The Shadow And The Bat”], written by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano, Bruce Wayne is hot on the trail of a counterfeiting gang. The crooks peddle their wares in Gotham, but the investigation takes Batman out of his comfort zone and into the desert. However, there’s another dark hero on the case, who’s operating completely in the shadows.”
Batman/The Shadow, DC/Dynamite, 2017
Synopsis from DC.fandom wiki (spoiler omitted here): “When he was a child, Bruce Wayne, his father, and two others were saved from robber Willy Hank Stamper by the Shadow. Twenty-five years later, Stamper has been released from jail and is bent on revenge against the survivors of that incident. Once again the Shadow is on the case, and helps Batman nail Stamper. “
According to the DC/Fandom wiki, “Batman/The Shadow was a six-issue limited series published in 2017. It was an Intercompany Crossover, published jointly by DC and Dynamite Entertainment (who owned the license to the Shadow at the time) and it was followed by the 2017/2018 limited series, The Shadow/Batman.”
The Shadow/Batman, DC/Dynamite, 2017
Via ScreenRant’s “Batman & The Shadow Cross-Over in New Comic Book Event” (July 19, 2017):
“Batman & The Shadow will once again be paired together in a comic-book event, pitting them against an ancient evil. The Shadow/Batman comes from DC Comics and Dynamite Entertainment, using two classic characters in a new story. Given that The Shadow was a direct influence on the creation of Batman, it makes sense that the pair continue their adventures together….
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen them in comics together, as the two vigilantes meet again after the Batman/Shadow story earlier this year. They’ve previously appeared together in Batman #253 and Batman #259, taking on mysteries together. It even saw The Shadow ultimately working out the identity of the man beneath the mask. But Batman/The Shadow saw The Joker and The Stag go up against the two vigilantes.”
E-borrowable via HooplaDigital
OTHER SHADOW CROSS-OVERS
A quick search turns up shows InterLinked.Fandom wiki entry listing at least a dozen other Shadow cross-overs, team-ups, connections, and/or vs’s) — here’s that list (including the above-mentioned Batman ones) (note, at least a few are on Hoopla, like this Justice Inc Shadow/Doc Savage/The Avenger team-up):
- The Avenger: The Avenger features in Dynamite’s 2014 adaptation of Justice, Inc., which also features the Shadow. [Dern notes, this The Avenger was Richard Henry Benson.]
- Black Bat: The Shadow teams up with the Black Bat and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
- Black Terror: The Shadow teams up with the Black Terror and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks. [Dern notes, Black Terror is in lots of Dynamite Comics, and also in some of Alan Moore’s Tom Strong arcs – great stuff!]
- The Clock: The Shadow teams up with the Clock and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
- Comics Greatest World: The Shadow met the Ghost in Dark Horse’s Ghost and the Shadow.
- DC Universe” While under license to DC in the 1970s, the Shadow met Batman twice, in Batman #253 and Batman #259. He has a cameo in Kingdom Come #2. They met once more in the crossover comic Batman/The Shadow.
- Doc Savage: The two characters first crossed paths in Dark Horse’s 1995 The Shadow and Doc Savage miniseries.
- Girl Genius: DC Comics’ Stanley and His Monster #1 (1993) features alternate reality versions of the Heterodyne Boys, and reveals them to be contemporaries of and friends to Doc Savage and the Shadow.
- Green Hornet: The Shadow teams up with the Green Hornet, Kato, and other pulps heroes, in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
- Grendel: The Shadow and the Hunter Rose Grendel crossed paths in Grendel vs.the Shadow.
- Lady Satan: The Shadow teams up with Lady Satan and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks 2.
- Marvel Universe: This character first linked to Marvel in Dark Horse’s 1995 The Shadow and Doc Savage miniseries, which referenced Dr. Abraham Erskine (the man behind the US supersoldier project) [that gave us Captain America – Definitive Dern], in addition to featuring in Dynamite’s 2014 adaptation of Justice, Inc., which references Heinz Grueger, the German spy who killed Erskine.
- Miss Fury: The Shadow teams up with the Miss Fury and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
- The Rocketeer: The Shadow makes a cameo appearance in the original Rocketeer comic.
- The Spider: The Shadow teams up with the Spider and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
- Thunderbolt: The Shadow teams up with Thunderbolt and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks 2.
- The Twilight Zone: The Shadow visited the Twilight Zone in Dynamite’s Twilight Zone: The Shadow.
- Zorro: The Shadow teams up with Zorro and other pulps heroes in Dynamite Comic’s miniseries Masks.
THE SHADOW SANS CROSS-OVERS, ETC.
Lots of great The Shadow comics!
Some of my favorites are from Howard Chaykin — he did some wonderful The Shadow comics for DC (The Shadow: Blood and Judgment) and Dynamite (The Shadow: Midnight in Moscow). And some next-generation Shadows, too, for DC. (Given that they’re Chaykin and Shadow, it goes without saying they’re violent; given that they’re Chaykin, they’re also often funny.)
The words of crimefighting bear fun reading!
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I was thinking more of a MCU style cinematic universe, but this is just as good. I did read the Batman/Shadow crossovers. They were decent. Thanks for putting this together.
Keep in mind that the first Batman story (written by Bill Finger, in DETECTIVE COMICS #27), “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” was taken from a story in THE SHADOW #133 (“Partners of Peril” by Theodore Tinsley).
Although I love Howard Chaykin and his art and stories above almost anyone else, and I loved his Shadow, you have to mention two other versions in comic books:
1. Mike Kaluta, first for many of the covers and pencils for the 1970s DC version, before going on to do quite a few more with Dark Horse I think.
2. First Bill Sienkiewicz and then Kyle Baker in the 1980s for DC.
@Dvaid Hook – thanks, yes, lots of great Shadow comics, but speaking knowledgeably about them is outside my expertise, I was lagniapping my Chaykin cross-over mention. Speaking of Chaykin, this book was a great read/look-at: The Art of Howard Chaykin text by Robert Greenberger (2012). Here’s the (Hoopla listing) blurb:
(And there’s lots of great “The Art of…” collections by Dynamite and others… oddly, Hoopla’s search on “Dynamite” “Art of” doesn’t turn up all that Hoopla has; Dynamite’s own site is similarly unhelpful (at least scrolling the TITLES alpha list to “The Art Of” finds many). Searching via Amazon (as a search engine, not necessarily to then buy from), somewhat better.)
In the infamous Andy Helfer/Kyle Baker run on The Shadow in the 1980s, The Avenger from Justice Inc. does show up at one point to kill The Shadow.
Later when the Shadow series was shut down by Conde Nast due to the ah, liberties the creators took with the character, Baker & Helfer did do a separate Justice Inc. series with no crossovers, but the cast of the original pulp novels get sucked into and corrupted by the black ops of Cold War-era CIA.