Six Men of Evil/The Devil Monsters

Nostalgia Ventures and Anthony Tollin have teamed up to do a comprehensive reprint of several Street & Smith pulp heroes. At present, they are doing double reprints of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Shortly, they will start new series reprinting The Avenger and The Whisperer. All have complete pulp texts (no edits or removals, like past reprints), tho reset so its easier to read, the original illustrations, reprinted covers (one is used as the cover of the book, but both original pulp covers are shown on the back), and several additional articles and extras. Hopefully, they can succeed to reprinting all these characters in these new editions, they are all excellent. With The Shadow having over 325 pulp novels, only a few reprinted, for the most part they are avoiding those that have been reprinted. They do try to pick two that more or less 'go together' in terms of a common theme. With this book, #13, we have "Six Men of Evil" (Feb 15, 1933) and "The Devil Monsters" (Feb 1, 1943). The common theme of these is they are 'off trail' stories, stories that are NOT your standard Shadow novel. "Six Men of Evil" is more of a 'Lost World' story, which became a common type of story for Doc Savage (soon to begin). This one has a lost Aztec valley in Central America, similiar to the "Valley of the Lost" that became Doc's source of gold (and a similiar source of funds for The Shadow) that ties into the story. Other then that, this is a good Shadow story of its time. "The Devil Monsters" deals with dinosaurs and other monsters unknown to scientists, and introduces a new Shadow villian, Monstrodamos, who would soon be plauging the Shadow in the Shadow Comics. I have to admit I didn't enjoy this novel as much. I think that this is partly because this is much later Shadow novel (from the 40s). Over time the character (and novels) did change. I am used to the 30s novels. This is one of the few 40s novels that NV has reprinted. As extras in this issue are: An Intro by pulp historian Will Murray, explaining the genesis of these two stories. A short article on The Shadow's autogyro by Will Murry. A longer article on The Shadows comic strip and comic book adventures by Anthony Tollin. (appropo considering the use of Monstrodamus in the Shadow Comics as a re-occuring villian).