Going To Ramble A Bit Before My Latest Question.

Going to ramble a bit before my latest question.

My scrapbooks aren't a reliable primary source of information. Their contents seem to shift every time there's a furshlugginer Crisis event, and there's a missing volume but every time I try to think what's in it exactly, it slips my mind. Plus of course they only contain the newspaper and magazine articles I or someone who knows about my hobby happen across, and some of those newspapers, like the Metropolis Whisper, are known to give false information.

Still, it's a fun hobby. The first clipping I started with was one my slightly older cousin pointed out to me about the Justice League fighting Doctor Destiny in 1966 (yes, I know). The mask Wonder Woman had to wear during that case was shown and fascinated me. Mom suggested making a scrapbook for the news items I was interested in, and it quickly became all superheroes and mystery men.

Once it turned out I was serious about this, I also inherited loose clippings on the general topic that my parents and grandparents had randomly saved. And now we're getting closer to my question.

I've got six items from the 1930s about a New York City mystery man, or urban legend, named the Shadow. Two are straightforward news reports of gangsters going to prison, with a mention that "the Shadow" was somehow involved. One is an official announcement from the NYC police commissioner of the time that no such person as the Shadow existed. Then there's a snippet from a gossip columnist where Orson Welles, the radio celebrity, allegedly claimed to have actually met the Shadow and helped him on a case. Finally, two letters to the editor, one claiming that the Shadow was made up by reporters as a hoax to sell newspapers, and another positing that the reason the Shadow had never been photographed is that he had the power to turn invisible (which was also why no one could catch him.)

From what little I could find in a cursory search, the existence of the Shadow appears to be controversial.

So, what's the current scholarly consensus? Was the Shadow a for real person, an urban legend, and either way, what's actually known about him?

Establishing the existence of a superhero or mystery man can be tricky in some cases and utterly trivial in others, making the hard ones even harder by comparison. For instance, it's pretty easy to establish that Superman exists. He acts publically on a daily basis, the world over, his face, his costume and his abilities are globally known and he interacts with the public and the media enough that establishing a profile on him is background radiation. It's just KNOWN. Establishing that a mystery man existed back in the late 30s and 40s is also usually easy. Green Lantern is attested in dozens of newspaper articles, photographs, newsreels and of course the man is still alive and directly connected to many other well known superhero organizations. Then there's the tricky ones. Superheroes who show up once and then never again, strange costumes and images that don't quite fit with any other report, things that mix closer to legend than fact. This is one of those.

(A sketch of the most well attested version of what 'The Shadow' may have looked like) Reports of the Shadow's existence stretch back as far as 1931, the better part of a decade before The Crimson Avenger and the Sandman would bring the era of the mystery man into the full public consciousness. There have always been theories, some more fringe than others, that they were NOT in fact the first Mystery Men of their era but in fact simply the two that went public and maintain their identities long enough to be well attested in the historical record. That's never become a mainstream position simply because all versions of it either fail to meet the definition: The Crimson Avenger and the Sandman are the first BECAUSE they directly lead into their generation being birthed as a social force. Even if other came before them they only arguably count as part of the same wave because they obviously didn't reach the war years. OR like in this case, because their existence is impossible to prove. I don't believe the Shadow exists because the more you try to dig into him the more his existence becomes something worse than unprovable, it becomes unfalsifiable. He can turn invisible, he's a master of disguise, everyone who has ever seen his face is dead, he can mind control people through hypnosis so even standing in the center of a well lit room he won't be noticed, he has dirt on literally every possible person in or out of power that's so airtight no one would dare leak his existence, etc, etc, etc. The more questions are raised about lack of evidence, the wider the circle becomes to justify how nothing about him has ever been pinned down. None of the other heroes who were active in the very early 'gangland' days like the Sandman, The Crimson Avenger or The Atom ever confirmed working with or against him, he was never a member of any team or organization, no photograph was ever taken of the man beyond a shadow of a doubt. Eventually it comes down to the fact that a theory that can't be DISproven can't be trusted.