Francesco Francavilla does, as this cover for #6 of Dynamite's new Shadow comic book shows!
Check out his blog entry about it, the Spider, and his appearance this weekend at Charlotte's HeroesConHERE!
BTW, if you want more The Shadow stuff, have a look at...
The Shadow: the never-reprinted 1994 Alec Baldwin movie adaptation HERE!
The Shadow's never-reprinted Bronze Age adventures with The Batman and The Avenger as well as never-reprinted Frank Robbins-illustrated stories HERE!
The Shadow's never-reprinted, campy costumed Silver Age adventures HERE!
Yep, that's The Shadow, as rendered by Alex Ross.
Dynamite Entertainment, who've already done successful revivals of The Green Hornet (despite the awful movie), Lone Ranger, Zorro, and the various Golden Age heroes of Project SuperPowers, now has the rights to the Man with the Power to Cloud Men's Minds!
If they do half as good a job as they've done with the characters listed above, I'll be a dedicated buying customer!
In 1972, both DC and Marvel acquired comics rights to classic Street & Smith pulp characters whose paperback reprints were selling well. (and The Shadow's reissued radio shows were among the best-selling spoken-word record albums and cassettes.)
Marvel nabbed Doc Savage and DC picked up both The Shadow and The Avenger. (although Marvel initially claimed to have The Shadow as well...)
Immediately, many big-name artists, as well as up-and-comers, vied for the coveted assignments.
Alex Toth, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan, Berni Wrightson, and Mike Kaluta were among those who submitted test pieces.
Here's two of them.
Wrightson's piece was used as a house ad by DC, and Berni inked an entire issue over Kaluta's pencils, as well as assisting on a couple of other Kaluta stories.
Steranko's pencil piece was reused as the envelope art for his Shadow Secret Society licensed fan club.
This version was inked by the late, great, Dave (Rocketeer) Stevens.
Currently, the complete, two-issue comic adaptation of The Shadow (1995) by Michael Kaluta is appearing on our brother RetroBlogSecret Sanctum of Captain Video™ over the next four days.
Even though the script is fairly close to the movie (with a new framing sequence), visually, it's a totally-different experience!
Judge for yourself...
Conde Nast, the corporation that owns the rights to the Street & Smith pulps including The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Avenger, was swindled out of $8,000,000 by someone pretending to be their printing vendor!
The Green Hornet faces off against The Shadow!
Well, sorta...
The villain of this episode, gangster Glen Connors, is played by Victor Jory, who portrayed The Shadow in the 1940 movie serial based on both the pulp and radio show! Connors is impersonating millionaire recluse Charles Delaclare, and slowly draining his assets. (BTW, Delaclare is dead, not held hostage, as is usually the case in this sort of plot.) Britt Reid wants to expose Connors/Delaclare, not only because Connors evaded the law by faking his own death and replacing Delaclare, but Connors was part of a conspiracy that framed Reid's father years ago!
Side notes:
The frame-up of Reid's father is never pursued beyond this episode. Was dear old Dad the 1940s Green Hornet? We'll never know...
The concept of the villain replacing a reclusive millionaire is later used in the film version of Diamonds are Forever. (The millionaire is kept alive in that film.)
The idea of fighting a flock of frogmen (say that five times fast) was probably inspired by the box-office success of the then-current James Bond flick Thunderball! Lenore Case, played by the lovely Wende Wagner finally gets screen time in this episode as she does some investigating for Reid, but gets caught by Connors' henchmen. As clever as she is beautiful, she keeps herself alive by bluffing the criminals until The Hornet can rescue her!
For the first time we see The Hornet change from his costume to civilian garb in the back seat of the Black Beauty. He does this a couple of times during the show's run to appear as both Reid and The Hornet to criminals within a short time-frame.
While the 60s tv series is not yet available on official dvd, it is available on YouTube.
Here's the FIFTH broadcast episode "The Frog is a Deadly Weapon" in three segments.
Enjoy.
There have been numerous examples of actors who previously played heroes appearing on superhero or sci-fi shows as other unrelated characters.
(This does not count actors meeting their later counterparts like Buster Crabbe on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater on Smallville, or Adam West on Batman the Animated Series!)
The Lone Ranger meets Commando Cody! Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger on The Lone Ranger tv series) played the lead villainous henchman in Radar Men from the Moon!
Batman meets Superman Robert Lowry (Batman in the Batman & Robin serial) appearing as a government agent on Adventures of Superman!
The Shadow meets The Green Hornet Victor Jory (The Shadow in The Shadow serial) playing a villain on The Green Hornet [1966]!
Captain Midnight meets Captain Kirk Richard Webb (Captain Midnight on the Captain Midnight tv series) as a psycho Starfleet officer on Star Trek!
Doc Savage / Tarzan meets Superboy Ron Ely (Doc Savage in Doc Savage: the Man of Bronze & Tarzan on Tarzan [1966-69]) portraying the retired Golden Age Superman on Adventures of Superboy!
James Bond meets Superboy George Lazenby (James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) as Jor-El in Adventures of Superboy.
But, tonite, for the first time, we witnessed the meeting of two actors who played heroes, and neither was a heroic character!
Adam West (Batman on Batman [1966]) met Alec Baldwin (The Shadow in The Shadow [1995]) on 30 Rock!
faces off against 
!
based on both the 
and 
!
. (The millionaire is kept alive in that film.)
! 