When I was a child, I was really into "The Shadow." One summer my family had gone to visit my grandparents in Illinois, and in a store near them I had found two episodes of the classic crime-fighting radio play on cassette tape, through a company called Radio Spirits. I listened to these two episodes so many times that the tapes gave out. (I learned the extent of my obsession with them when one of the two episodes--"Death From the Deep"--showed up on an OTR podcast I listen to and I caught myself reciting every line as it was being said.)
At that time, these two episodes comprised my total understanding of The Shadow as a character. Well, I also had the flashy illustrations o the cassette cases to inform me that, when Lamont Cranston was in his vigilante alter ego, he wore a slouch hat, red scarf, and a cape. But from these two stories I was able to imagine a limitless "gee-whiz" world of adventures where the hero fought crime by turning himself invisible and basically just screwing with bad guys' brains. Also, I was still young enough to be entertained by common Shadow scenarios, like:
(Bad Guy fires his gun several times)
Bad Guy: Ha! Take that, Shadow!
(The Shadow laughs)
Shadow: Nice try, but now I'm over here!
It seemed so clever when I had only a couple stories in which it happened, before I understood that this plot device would occur with scant variation approximately one hundred ba-jillion times over the course of The Shadow's adventures.
As an adult, I had access to new and exciting technologies (the Internet!) and services (a good public library!) that allowed me to listen to almost all of the episodes of "The Shadow." Also, I finally got a chance to read some of the classic Shadow novels and pulp stories, as written by Walter B. Gibson. Initially this seemed like the fulfillment of some long-dormant childhood dream. What I soon realized, however, was that I was not actually that interested in the further adventures of The Shadow. They were basically the same adventure, over and over. A few episodes of the radio play stood out--if you are interested in The Shadow, I recommend listening to the pilot episode "Death House Rescue"--but for the most part, each story had the same plot arc, and I could be sure that The Shadow would never encounter a problem he could not solve himself, using his innate expertise at every single skill he would ever need. The stories have no tension for me and accordingly, no real interest. By contrast, one of the happiest surprises of my pulp nerdiness was when I finally started reading Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. Unlike Lamont Cranston, who has a ridiculous James-Bond-level mastery of every talent and every scrap of information he could ever need, Conan has all kinds of limitations. He does not know anything about magic, he has no real skill at diplomacy, his temper makes him careless... even in the one domain where he does have the upper hand--the liberal application of swords to bad guys' faces--Howard constantly comes up with clever ways to temporarily disable him, forcing Conan to beg for help, work with people he does not entirely trust, and generally try to think up novel solutions to his problems.
I never would have thought it earlier in life, but I can now say that I prefer Conan the Barbarian to The Shadow as a hero because he is way more plausible, and therefore more interesting.
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