Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 28 - 1994

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?..

1994:

The trivia:

• During a quiet Wednesday evening meeting of the local neighbourhood crime‑watch group in Homestead, Florida, things took an unexpected turn. The residents were midway through discussing suspicious cars and porch lights when the sound of a very low‑flying plane rumbled overhead. Before anyone had time to look up, a package tumbled out of the sky and landed slap bang in the middle of the gathered crowd. It turned out to be a 75‑pound bag of cocaine. The plane kept going, leaving a group of stunned Floridians staring at a bale of narcotics that weighed roughly the same as a small child. Local police later suggested it was part of a drug‑smuggling drop gone badly off‑course, though “badly” feels like an understatement...

• When rain began to fall in Oakville Washington in the early hours on 7th August 1994, residents noticed that it was not water but a strange jelly-like substance. Within a few hours various people became violently ill with vertigo, blurred vision, nausea and trouble breathing. when a sample of the material was examined it was found to contain human white blood cells and was teeming with two species of bacteria, one of which lives in the human  digestive system, Over a period of three weeks this strange phenomenon would occur a total of six times and while theories abounded about the cause - ranging from human waste from an airplane, jellyfish thrown into the air by a naval bombing exercise and even the testing of a military biological weapon - nothing was ever confirmed. Apparently no samples of the jelly still exist. I wonder why?...

• After an earthquake knocked out power across most of Los Angeles, the city was plunged into an unfamiliar darkness. Streetlights, neon signs, porch lamps - everything was gone. Something unexpected appeared overhead - a vast, shimmering, silvery cloud stretching across the night sky. Within minutes, observatories (and allegedly even emergency services) began receiving calls from worried residents reporting the strange phenomenon. A glowing mass. A mysterious haze. A possible chemical spill. Something unnatural. It turned out that it was simply... the Milky Way. For many Angelenos, it was the first time they’d ever seen it. The galaxy had always been there, of course, but with the usual glow of light pollution suddenly wiped away,  the universe came rushing back in...

The memory:

The Shadow:

I have already established with previous entries that I have a real fondness for the 'pulp' characters from the early part of the 20th century - heroes such as 'Doc' Savage, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Biggles and Tarzan. I'd enjoyed many of their exploits in the pages of numerous paperback novels, on television and on film. And in fact, the main memory of this post is a cinematic one. However with "The Shadow", I came to know him first through another medium. But as always, let's start at the beginning. 

Originally "The Shadow" was simply part of the "Detective Story Hour" radio show. He wasn’t a character, just a narrator - a sinister presence who framed each episode with ominous commentary - actor Frank Readick delivering the introductions in a chilling, whispering tone. However listeners wrote dozens of letters asking for “more Shadow stories,” assuming he was the star of a magazine. Publishers Street & Smith, realising they had stumbled onto something, decided to create a publication to meet the demand. They hired Walter B. Gibson, a professional magician and prolific writer, to invent a character worthy of that eerie voice.

Gibson created the foundations of "The Shadow" - including his persona, multiple aliases, helpers, and super-villains - and detailed how he terrified criminals as he prowled the streets under the cover of night. His mocking, disembodied laugh, wide-brimmed hat and red lined cloak, coupled with the crimson scarf that just left his eyes and nose exposed and dual Colt .45 pistols, gave the character a look and feel distinct from previous masked adventurers.

Beginning in April 1931 and continuing for almost two decades, Gibson incredibly wrote a novel-length story twice a month. Under the pseudonym Maxwell Grant, he penned 282 out of the original 325 adventures of the dark vigilante, with other guest writers such as Theodore Tinsley, Bruce Elliott, and Lester Dent completing the remainder. Dent of course would go on to create his own pulp hero in the form of 'Doc' Savage in 1933.

The Shadow faced everything from gangland empires to occult conspiracies, from scientific madmen to international masterminds. Gibson had a gift for taking the familiar crime‑thriller template and twisting it into something stranger, darker, and more atmospheric. There were also memorable villains - such as Shiwan Khan, the self‑proclaimed descendant of Genghis Khan, and The Voodoo Master (Doctor Rodil Mocquino), whose blend of mesmerism and ritual magic pushed the series into full‑blown supernatural territory. And there were countless masked criminals, corrupt tycoons, and criminal geniuses whose schemes ranged from the plausible to the outrageous. Gibson also excelled at crafting elaborate set‑pieces - bank vaults breached by impossible methods, sinister laboratories hidden beneath respectable businesses, night time chases across the rooftops of Manhattan, and death traps involving gas chambers, collapsing buildings, or mechanical horrors. 

The success of "The Shadow Magazine" was nothing short of extraordinary. At its peak, it was selling hundreds of thousands of copies per issue, an astonishing figure for a bi‑weekly publication. Its combination of atmospheric crime fiction, exotic villains, and the eerie, almost supernatural presence of the Shadow himself struck a chord with Depression‑era readers. A big part of that success came from the magazine’s consistency and its iconic branding. It became one of the most recognisable images in publishing, with newsstands displaying the covers prominently.

As his popularity grew, "The Shadow" expanded into other mediums. He was given his own radio drama in 1937, starring a 22-year old Orson Welles as wealthy socialite Lamont Cranston, the vigilante's civilian identity (confusingly, his real name is Kent Allard - trust me, it only gets more complicated as the years go on...). It's here that he first exhibited the ability to 'cloud men's minds' so that he could effectively become invisible, and where Margo Lane - Cranston's love interest, crime-fighting partner and the only person to know his secret identity - was introduced. She was created specifically for the show to give Cranston someone to talk to, and her presence added warmth, wit, and a touch of romantic tension. She proved so popular that she was eventually imported into the pulp novels four years later. 

After Welles left the role in 1938, a succession of skilled voice actors followed - including Bill Johnstone, Bret Morrison, John Archer, and Steve Courtleigh - each bringing a slightly different tone to the Shadow’s eerie whisper and Cranston’s urbane charm. Under their stewardship, "The Shadow" became a Sunday‑night staple on the Mutual Radio Network across the USA, running from 1937 all the way to 1954. 

1937 also saw the first film adaptation from Grand National Pictures. Starring silent‑era leading man Rod La Rocque as Lamont Cranston, "The Shadow Strikes" is very much a product of its time - a brisk, low‑budget mystery with Cranston functioning more as a suave amateur detective than the eerie vigilante of the pulps. But it performed well enough for a follow‑up the next year. 

"International Crime" leaned even further into the gentleman‑sleuth angle, with Cranston hosting a fictional radio crime programme called 'The Crime Doctor' with "The Shadow" simply being a name he uses. He stumbles into a conspiracy because he’s present at the crime scene and his broadcasts make him a public figure. It’s a light detective thriller, but it uses the "Shadow" name more as branding than anything else. However it shows how quickly the character was being adapted to different formats.

The most faithful screen version of the era arrived in 1940 with Columbia Pictures’ 15‑chapter serial, simply titled "The Shadow", starring Victor Jory. He actually dons the familiar slouch hat and scarf, and the serial pits him against the villainous Black Tiger, a criminal mastermind who uses an invisibility device and a “death ray” to terrorise the city. The production values may be modest, but the tone - all secret lairs, coded messages and rooftop chases -  is surprisingly close to the pulps.

After the serial, the character moved to Monogram Pictures, specialists in fast, inexpensive B‑movies. In 1946 they produced a trio of features - "The Shadow Returns", "Behind the Mask", and "The Missing Lady" - all starring Kane Richmond. These films are lighter and more comedic, with Cranston juggling social obligations, baffled policemen, and a steady stream of jewel thieves and murder suspects. 

The last Shadow film for decades arrived in 1958 with "Invisible Avenger" — though calling it a “film” is generous. It was assembled from two unaired episodes of a proposed television series and released theatrically. The result is uneven but historically interesting - a noir‑tinged take set in New Orleans, with a jazz‑infused atmosphere and a more psychological approach to Cranston’s abilities. After that, the character vanished from cinema screens.

"The Shadow" has naturally been adapted for comics several times during his long history. The first major attempt came with the daily newspaper strip, written by Walter Gibson himself and illustrated by Vernon Greene. These drew heavily from the pulp novels, but the strip format forced Gibson to compress his labyrinthine plots into tight, punchy sequences.

Street & Smith soon realised they were sitting on a multimedia goldmine and launched "Shadow Comics" in 1940. This title lasted 101 issues until 1949 and remains the most substantial comic‑book incarnation of the character. Early issues stayed close to the pulps, with Cranston operating as a dark, gun‑wielding vigilante supported by his network of agents. But as the 1940s progressed - and as superhero comics surged in popularity - the tone shifted. The Shadow became slightly more colourful, the villains more outlandish, and the action more exaggerated. 

Then came the strangest reinvention of all. In the mid‑1960s, Archie Comics acquired the licence and produced eight issues that transformed the Shadow into… well, something else entirely. Gone was the large hat and cloak. Instead, he became a blonde, square‑jawed superhero in a bright green‑and‑blue costume, complete with a sidekick and a rogues’ gallery that felt more like early Marvel than Depression‑era pulp. It was an attempt to modernise the character for the Silver Age, but the tonal whiplash was too extreme, and the run has become nothing more than a kind of cult curiosity.

When DC Comics acquired the rights to "The Shadow" in the mid‑1970s, they made a deliberate choice to return him to his pulp roots. The result was one of the most well-regarded, atmospheric and faithful comic interpretations the character has ever received. The initial 12‑issue series was written by Dennis O’Neil, and illustrated by Michael Kaluta, whose lush, ornate linework felt like it had stepped straight out of a 1930s magazine cover. Kaluta’s Shadow - all swirling cloak, and razor‑sharp silhouette - remains one of the definitive visual interpretations of the character. His New York was a world of fog, fire escapes, speakeasies, and shadow‑soaked alleyways, and the stories leaned heavily into the tone of the original Gibson novels. After Kaluta left the book, artists Frank Robbins and E.R. Cruz continued the run, each bringing their own flavour, but the tone remained consistent - this was not a superhero book, but a pulp crime thriller in comic‑book form.

The 1970s also saw The Shadow step into the pages of "Batman" - a meeting that felt both inevitable and long overdue. In issue #253, Bruce Wayne calls The Shadow “his greatest inspiration.” This wasn’t just a character moment - it was a nod to real history. Batman co‑creator Bill Finger had openly acknowledged that The Shadow was a major influence on the Dark Knight’s creation. Batman’s first published story, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” was even loosely based on the Shadow novel “Partners of Peril”.

A second team‑up followed in Batman #259, which deepened the relationship between the two characters. In this story, it’s revealed that Kent Allard once saved Bruce Wayne’s life when he was a child. It’s a lovely bit of mythology - the idea that Gotham’s greatest hero was shaped, quite literally, by the man who inspired him.

At last we hit the mid-1980s, where I enter the picture. We have a crime fighter who had been around for more than fifty years across multimedia platforms. Yet somehow I had never read a single one of The Shadow's adventures in prose or comics, nor seen or heard any of the various adaptations. I think it had all been too far in the past, or I was too young - I was only six when the O'Neill / Kaluta series was published and the black and white serial was not shown on the BBC in the school holidays like the Buster Crabbe "Flash Gordon" epics. Beyond being aware of the name, and a vague idea of his literary origins, he was a blank canvas to me.

So all of the above history is, of course, knowledge acquired long after the fact - at the time, I couldn’t have told you the difference between Margo Lane and Lois Lane.

That soon changed however, via the controversial 1986 mini-series "Blood & Judgement" from "American Flagg" creator Howard Chaykin. Instead of a period piece, this was a sexy, violent re-imagining, which transplanted the nocturnal crime fighter to then-modern-day New York. Crucially however this was not a reboot. It postulated that Lamont Cranston had vanished in the 1950s, only to reappear thirty years later looking not a day older when his former associates were targeted by an assassin. Dealing bloody justice to a sea of criminals, The Shadow is engaged in a desperate race against time to track down his oldest enemy and counter a deadly plan to bring about nuclear armageddon.

I'd been a big fan of Chaykin's work on "American Flagg" and this was very much in the same vein, helped by long-time lettering collaborator Ken Bruzenak. This was a fast-paced, action-filled thriller full of square-jawed men, drop-dead gorgeous women, seedy dens of iniquity, and violent death - no wonder it was labelled for mature readers. Yet despite being set in the contemporary USA, it seemed to ooze a certain 1930s style, and I immediately took to the character - even though this new take was unpopular among pulp purists.

The mini-series was successful enough to warrant an ongoing comic book, but Chaykin was busy elsewhere. Enter writer Andy Helfer (who had been the editor on "Blood and Judgement") and eclectic artist Bill Sienkiewicz, hot off his runs on "New Mutants" and "Elektra: Assassin". Helfer added newcomers to The Shadow's list of agents, as they investigated ever more bizarre cases. The sex quotient was phased out in favour of black humour, which ramped up even more when Kyle Baker came on board as artist with issue eight (Marshall Rogers drew the bridging issue seven).

Baker was new to the comics scene at this point. Seminal works like "Why I Hate Saturn" were still in his future, so this was the first time people got to experience his style and see him grow as an artist. I loved his cartoonish renderings and while the series was quite different to that produced by Chaykin, it still became one of my top monthly reads. Under Helfer and Baker "The Shadow" became a virtual psychopath, little better than some of the villains he fought and their take on the hero and his attitude towards his calling became more and more irreverent - culminating in them killing him off only to resuscitate his head atop a giant robot body.

But rumours had begun to circulate that current copyright owners Condé Nast were not happy with the direction their property was being taken in. Whatever the truth, the popular series was abruptly cancelled with issue nineteen and the next "Nuts & Bolts" storyline was never published. It was a sad end to a brilliant comic. Helfer's skewed vision and Baker's cartoon-like stylings were a perfect match. 

When the character returned in "The Shadow Strikes!" in 1989, it was back in his original hunting ground of the 1930s in a more traditional take on the pulp stories. Gerard Jones and Eduardo Barreto did a competent enough job - with the artist being particularly suited to 1930s adventure fiction - but I had moved on to other things by that point, and despite it lasting 31 issues, I only picked up a couple when it crossed over with "Doc Savage", which DC also published at that time. That would be the end of my involvement with "The Shadow" for five years...

Finally, after all that history, we come to the core of this memory for 1994 - and the moment "The Shadow" stepped back onto the big screen in a lavish, big‑budget Hollywood production.  Directed by Russell Mulcahy (fresh off the cult success of "Highlander") and starring Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston, the film promised a glossy, modern take on a hero who had been haunting popular culture for more than sixty years. Penelope Ann Miller co‑starred as Margo Lane, with Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, and John Lone rounding out a surprisingly heavyweight cast. It was a film that tried to combine elements of all the various versions - the pulps, the radio show, the comics -  and then layer on a few new ideas of its own, such as Cranston’s uncanny ability to conjure a different face when operating as "The Shadow"

Unlike the much earlier tongue-in-cheek adaptation of "Doc Savage", this pulp film is more straight-laced, building a downbeat origin story for the masked crimefighter - with just a touch of "Doctor Strange" to it - and crafting a reason for him to stalk the mean streets with his cape, wide-brimmed hat, silver pistols and maniacal laugh. Cranston is also a ruthless individual who coerces those he saves into joining his team of operatives - everything is in service of his war on crime. Yet he's a tormented soul, who seems confused about who he really is. At one point during a conversation with Margo Lane he proclaims "I dreamed I tore all the skin off my face and was somebody else underneath"...

The villain for the film is the pulp novels' recurring mastermind, Shiwan Khan - who I actually had come across previously in the DC comics runs. A direct descendant of the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan, he has telepathic, hypnotic and mind-controlling powers and is very much the Moriarty to Lamont Cranston's Sherlock Holmes, having had similar training by Tibetan monks. Khan intends to dominate New York by both scientific and mystical means and only The Shadow and his associates can stop him.

Visually the film is incredible, with a sumptuous Art Deco New York as its centrepiece, replete with towering city blocks, vintage cars, period costumes and swirling mist. It really does evoke the feel of the time the original stories were written. Clearly there is *some* influence from the superhero movies that came just a few years before - Burton's "Batman" immediately comes to mind - yet "The Shadow" manages to plough its own furrow in most areas and in some ways harks back to the more absurdist take on the Dark Knight from the classic Adam West series of 1966 - the nuclear bomb in the finale is a giant pinball that careers across a tilting floor and down a maze of hallways.

The modest SFX are also very good. Sure they might look a little dated to today's audiences, but to be honest, even though today's CGI wizardry might enable directors to put actors into any scenario or backdrop, there is something rather special about pre-digital matte paintings and optical effects. Maybe it's just my generation.

Are there some liberties taken with the source material in the transition to celluloid? Probably. But you have to remember that at the time I first watched the film I was totally unfamiliar with any of the pre-80s versions - and those certainly weren't afraid to tinker with the perceived lore built up over the past decades! Maybe that helped me embrace the fun and excitement when so many others had problems with it. Sure the story is hardly original and some of the dialogue might be a bit dramatically overstated, but what do you want from a pre-war mystery magazine adaptation? It was never going to be a Shakespearean classic. It helps that it's also well cast, with Baldwin in particular doing well in the dual roles - effortlessly charming as the playboy socialite by day, and all gravel voice and dark obsession by night, as he strikes fear into the heart of the criminal fraternity.

What really works for me is that the film feels like a live‑action extension of the 1980s comics I’d fallen in love with. Not the original pulps, or the 1940s serials, or even the more traditional "Shadow Strikes!" revival, but the bold, stylish, slightly unhinged reinventions of Chaykin, Helfer, Sienkiewicz, and Baker. The movie isn’t grim or grounded - it’s heightened, stylised, and knowingly over the top. It embraces the weirdness, the mysticism, and the operatic excess - and that was the core of those influential comics. Everything just works, and you can sit back and enjoy a rip-roaring, high-action, old-school adventure. It's unapologetic good fun and sometimes that’s exactly what a hero born in the shadows deserves.

Sadly the movie didn’t spark the franchise Universal perhaps had hoped for, but The Shadow didn’t vanish - he simply slipped back into the modern medium that had always seemed to treat him best - comics. The first major follow‑up was a number of Dark Horse mini‑series, which leaned into grit and psychological tension rather than the operatic sweep of the film. These were short, self‑contained projects - respectful, moody, and very much aimed at the existing fanbase rather than a new audience.

After that came a long quiet spell, broken in the 2010s when Dynamite Entertainment launched a full‑scale revival. Their flagship series brought in heavyweight writers like Garth Ennis, Matt Wagner, and Chris Roberson and these books were stylish, violent, and unapologetically pulpy - closer to the 1930s novels than anything since the O’Neil/Kaluta era, but with a modern sense of pacing and spectacle. They even enticed Howard Chaykin back to the character with 2014's "Midnight in Moscow".

The Shadow did also return to his literary roots eventually, in the authorised story "The Sinister Shadow", an entry in the 'Wild Adventures of Doc Savage' series from Altus Press. The novel, written by Will Murray, used unpublished material originally written in 1932 by Doc Savage creator Lester Dent. The story details the conflict between the two pulp magazine icons during a crime wave caused by a murderous kidnapping-extortion ring led by the mysterious criminal mastermind known as the Funeral Director. A sequel, "Empire of Doom", was published in 2016. 

Then in 2020, Condé Nast Entertainment announced a new series written by James Patterson and Brian Sitts. The first novel, "The Shadow", released in 2021, serves as a sequel-update with some science-fiction elements, bringing Lamont Cranston from 1937 into 2087 to battle Shiwan Khan in a futuristic New York. It sounds like the spiritual successor to the Helfer / Baker comics, so I wonder what the purists made of it. The second in the series, "Circle of Death", was published in 2023.

There have been other appearances - some anthology stories, fanzines and print essays, even the occasional rumour of a new film - but for me nothing has matched the ambition or visibility of the 1994 movie. Maybe one day I’ll brave all 325 pulp novels. Until then...

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows !

Honourable mentions:

• Starman - James Robinson’s new take on the son of one of DC's original Golden Age heroes was one of those rare reinventions that didn’t just update an old hero - it made the entire legacy feel richer, stranger, and more meaningful. Robinson not only told a mature, original story, he somehow wove the history of every character ever to bear the Starman name into a single narrative that made perfect sense. It’s a masterclass in how to use DC’s sprawling mythology to create to create a new hero for the modern day. Across its six‑year run, the series explored themes of nostalgia, age, collecting, family, and the long aftereffects of violence. It was a superhero comic that cared as much about memory as it did about cosmic rods and super‑villains. What’s most impressive is that "Starman" ended exactly when it needed to. Jack Knight’s story reached its natural conclusion, and Robinson stuck the landing so perfectly that no one has seriously tried to resurrect him since. In a medium where no-one stays dead for long, that alone feels like a small miracle. Definitely one of my top twenty comics - and one of the few that genuinely earns the title “modern classic.”

• Inside The Actor's Studio - I’ll admit I didn’t get to see this show until Sky's satellite channels started broadcasting episodes in the UK - by which point it had already been running for several years - but I became addicted almost immediately. The format couldn’t be simpler - every week, James Lipton, Dean Emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, would sit down with one of the world’s biggest film or television stars and takes them (and us) through their entire career, from humble beginnings to the present day. These were not promotional chats. There was no new film to plug, no studio‑approved anecdotes. Instead, Lipton conducted long, meticulous, deeply researched conversations about craft, life, influences, failures, and the strange business of being an actor or director. His preparation was legendary - there are delicious moments where guests realise he’s dug up something they hadn't thought about in decades. Sure, the tone could occasionally drift into the cosy or even the faintly fawning, but more often than not the guests would genuinely open up. You got real insight into their personalities, their process, and what it took to be at the top of their field. And then, of course, there were the infamous ten quick-fire questions devised by French journalist Bernard Pivot - which would somehow coax out answers that were funny, revealing, or unexpectedly moving. It was a perfect little closer, equal parts theatre and therapy.  Lipton kept the show going well into his nineties - just a man armed with a stack of blue cards, a bottomless curiosity, and the ability to make Hollywood stars talk about their childhoods. Endlessly fascinating.

• True Lies - Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a lot of good movies, but this is one of my favourites because it blends action and humour with such ridiculous confidence. Arnold plays a mild‑mannered computer salesman whose real job as a government super‑spy is a secret from his wife and family. It’s essentially a “what if James Bond was married?” scenario, and the film has enormous fun with that premise. Cue explosions, fistfights, motorcycle chases, and enough cheesy one‑liners to fill a small warehouse, all layered with romance and a knowing wink at its own absurdity. It’s packed with moments people still talk about - Jamie Lee Curtis’s iconic hotel room dance, the horse‑versus‑motorcycle chase through a luxury hotel, and a gloriously over‑the‑top finale involving a Harrier jet and a terrorist dangling from a missile. The sort of film where every set‑piece tries to top the last, and somehow succeeds.  It helps enormously that Arnold is supported by Jamie Lee Curtis (who steals half the film), Tom Arnold (who steals the other half), and James Cameron behind the camera, orchestrating the chaos with his usual blockbuster precision. It’s big, loud, silly, and somehow still charming.

• Caliban's Hour - Another entry for Tad Williams, though this one is a far slimmer volume than his usual door‑stop fantasy epics. It's a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s "The Tempest" (always one of my favourite plays from the bard), but it takes a wonderfully unexpected angle. The monstrous‑looking Caliban forces a captive Miranda to listen to the dark tale of his origins, and the magical, terrible events that shaped him into the villain we think we know. Except, of course, things aren’t quite as black and white as they first seemed. Caliban presents his own version of events - which offer a new perspective on the original play, and Williams uses that gap to expand the world, deepen the relationships, and turn Caliban into something close to an anti‑hero. His story becomes about power, cruelty, loneliness, and the way history is shaped by whoever gets to speak. It’s a brilliant examination of one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, and although knowing the original text certainly helps, it’s not essential - Williams gives you everything you need. A small book, but a surprisingly powerful one.

We're All Stories In The End 22 - Demontage

The name's Who, Doctor Who...

Demontage by Justin Richards

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 20

Originally published: March 1999

Companions: Sam, Fitz

The Vega Station — a haven for gamblers, art lovers and duty-free shoppers, the one place where the Battrulians and their erstwhile enemies, the Canvine, meet and mix, in neutral space. A pressure point, an explosive mixture. And just as the new President of Battrul is about to arrive, the TARDIS crew turn up.

Fitz is in trouble. He's accidentally got himself hired as an assassin while trying to emulate James Bond. And he's upset Bigdog Caruso, the unofficial Canvine leader on Vega.

Sam is in trouble. She's become involved with the key witness to a murder, and the witness has vanished.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has been roped in to help with investigations into robbery, sabotage and the murder, as well as to sort out Fitz's problems, Sam's problems and the President's safety. He's in his element.

And if they should get bored, there's a hitman on the loose, monsters roaming the station corridors, an exhibition of art by a painter who depicted his own death, and the opera.

What if Doctor Who did James Bond ?

Justin Richards isn't the only person to have a go at answering that question ("Spyfall" anyone?) - but his Eighth Doctor novel also throws several other things into the mix.

All of which add up to a story that may begin poorly, but builds up to a fun adventure.

So yes, all the Bondian tropes are here. A casino location. A shadowy cold-blooded assassin with a gun made of glass and a decision-making tic. A case of mistaken identity. An attractive girl with a ludicrous name. Even a high-stakes poker game in the middle to slow down the action.

But the book also feels like a tip of the hat to classic series writer Robert Holmes. There's a comedy double act of con-men working on a scam. A harassed official. Alien political machinations. Satirical commentary. And, of course, a love of the macabre.

There is a lot crammed in - and at the start that's part of the problem - too many shifting scenes, too many characters, and too many plot points introduced in quick succession.

It's not bad - well apart from some *really* awful jokes, and a seeming obsession with Fitz running out of cigarettes - but it does all gets a little confusing. The whole opening could done with a little more breathing space. A few more scenes to allow the reader to get to know the characters and the fallout from the Battrul / Canvine war.

On the plus side, I did enjoy the fact that the wolf-like Canvines were not the real monsters of the piece. The odd friendship that developed between BigDog and Fitz was fun to see. Plus their strange love of opera did make me chuckle..

As for Fitz ? Well, I already knew that I liked him from the other books in the series I've read. And while he often tries too hard  - and makes some *very* bad choices when impersonating a hitman - he's still a lovable character. But, I know he's from a different time - and I know his language is meant to reflect that -  but I really could have done without some of the opinions on overweight people and "poofters".

Sam is still the waste of space she's always been. She spends most of the book wandering around being bored and miserable at the bar. When she got sucked into the painting. I half hoped that was the end of her, but no such luck. How fortunate then that she ends up in the one painting with an escape route

As the book raced towards its conclusion, there were several reveals - and some work better than others. That obsequious Harris Stabilo was really a tough security agent ? Yep I like that one. That hitman Hazard Solarin was really there to protect the President ? A bit clumsily handled , but sure, why not.

But that artist extraordinaire Tolour Martinque had "faked" his own death ? It was so obviously signposted that anyone could see from a mile off.

What *was* clever was that it turned out he was actually a copy of the original, who had hid inside one of his own paintings  - and was able to paint the truth of his own murder. Complicated for sure, but also weirdly satisfying - even if the way that all the various people and creatures got in and out of the artwork was so much SF mumbo jumbo that you might as well have said "it's magic".

As for those creatures ? Well the descriptions are suitably lurid and grotesque. The Devourer was a lovely monster akin to Azal or the Great Beast. But again the science behind them is a bit hazy. It felt that Richards was suggesting they were created by a futuristic version of Photoshop!

In the end, the bad guys get suitably nasty fates (though I'm not entirely sure why Gath and Blanc burst into flames). The Doctor now owns a casino, and  Fitz has a drink with his new hairy best chum.

And for a story that I struggled with at the start, I found myself enjoying it more and more as time went on. With Richards’ recent passing, it’s hard not to feel a touch of sadness revisiting this novel. It's not a classic in any sense, and it does wear its influences loud and proud, but it has fun while doing so. It's chaotic and occasionally ridiculous - but still has style, and hits the target before straightening its bow tie and walking off into the sunset. 

Shaken, maybe, but definitely not stirred...

Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 27 - 1993

 This time, a work of non-fiction intersects with my favourite way of reading stories...

1993:

The trivia:

• Corporate lawyer Gary Hoy had a party trick. Whenever new recruits arrived at the Toronto law firm Holden Day Wilson, he’d throw himself at the windows on the twenty-fourth floor of the Toronto‑Dominion Centre  - to demonstrate how unbreakable the glass was. It was tempered, reinforced and engineered to withstand hurricanes. Hoy was completely safe. Then on 9th July 1993, he performed the trick during a student reception. Again, the glass didn’t break. But the frame wasn’t designed for a full‑force human impact. The glass popped clean out, taking Hoy with it, sadly plunging him twenty‑four stories to his death. The firm never really recovered from the shock and closed a few years later, becoming one of the largest law‑firm collapses in Canadian history.

• In the summer of 1993, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers rose to unprecedented levels. Levees strained, towns sandbagged desperately, and whole communities waited to see which side of the river would give first. On the Missouri side, one of the levees finally failed, flooding more than 14,000 acres and washing away every bridge in sight. At first it looked like a natural disaster. Then the rumours started. Enter James Scott, a petty criminal with a long history of arson and break‑ins. According to prosecutors, Scott had a very specific motive for sabotaging the levee - he wanted to strand his wife on the other side of the river so he could keep drinking and partying without interruption. It sounds like the plot of a Coen Brothers film, but the state took it very seriously. After witnesses claimed they’d seen him tampering with the sandbags, Scott was charged with “intentionally causing a catastrophe.”

• In dinosaur movie "Jurassic Park", director Steven Spielberg needed a convincing effect for the barking, chattering noise made by the savage velociraptors. Sound designer Gary Rydstrom tried all sorts of animal combinations to find something suitably alien and unsettling, but nothing really worked. Until he found the noise of two tortoises enthusiastically mating - and a classic movie moment was born. A whole generation grew up thinking velociraptors communicated like tactical geniuses. In reality, they sound like tortoises having a surprisingly energetic afternoon...

The memory:

Understanding Comics 

I was already a big fan of Scott McCloud before he released the book that would become his most famous and celebrated work. Years before, in the 1980s, I’d stumbled across his wonderfully odd comic "Zot!" from Eclipse. At first glance it looked like a light‑hearted SF-tinged superhero romp - a cheerful boy from a utopian parallel Earth swooping in to save the day - all bright colours and clean lines, with an obvious nod to the classic titles of decades past. But even in those early issues, there was something different about it. McCloud wasn’t interested in grim‑and‑gritty posturing or cosmic angst. He wanted to tell a positive story about idealism, friendship, and the awkwardness of being a teenager. 

As the series went on "Zot!" quietly grew up. Yes for budgetary reasons it had to switch to black and white, but that was a change that actually suited its more intimate tone. It shifted from breezy adventure to something far more thoughtful. Stories about identity, sexuality, bigotry, loneliness, and the feeling of not quite fitting in. Characters who had started as archetypes developed a new depth and emotional honesty. In an era when many comics were trying to imitate Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns”, McCloud ploughed his own path with sensitivity and a thoughtful touch - something that that felt genuinely ground-breaking at the time. 

But... just to prove he could do anything, he also produced the gloriously oversized one‑shot "Destroy!!" -  a ridiculous, full‑throttle homage to the senseless superhero slug‑fests of his youth. It was the perfect counterpoint to "Zot!" - and an indicator that McCloud understood the medium’s history as much as what it was capable of. 

So by the time 1993 rolled around, I already trusted him - not just as a talented creator, but as someone who genuinely wanted to do different things in the the medium. What I didn’t realise was just how far he was about to push that vision

McCloud released “Understanding Comics”, a non‑fiction volume that attempted something way more ambitious  - he set out to explain exactly how comics *work*. At the time, the 'artistic merit' of graphic storytelling was still treated with some scepticism. Despite the strides towards more nuanced and "adult" material, comics were still mostly dismissed as children’s entertainment. "Understanding Comics" arrived like a bolt from the blue. With clarity and enthusiasm, it laid out the mechanics of a medium most of us thought we already understood. McCloud wasn’t apologising for comics. He wasn’t defending them. He was treating them as an art form worthy of serious thought - and doing so in a way that made the whole thing feel like a conversation rather than a lecture. 

The book has a huge range, but it never feels academic or dry - mainly because McCloud has the rare ability to take a complex idea and explain it in an interesting and fun way. His deceptively simple definition of comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence" ("sequential art" for short) is used as a jumping off point, to show that comics really have been around a lot longer than we might think. They aren’t just newspaper strips and superhero monthlies - they’re ancient tapestries, medieval manuscripts and Egyptian murals. They’re part of a lineage of visual storytelling that stretches back thousands of years. 

What really blew my mind the first time I read the book was realising that the comics experience is as much about our subconscious reactions as anything on the page. Scott explains how the reader is complicit in the telling of a comic book story, because so much happens in the "gutters" - the spaces between the panels. The reader has to fill in the gaps and create what is going on to connect one image to another. We invent the movement, the emotion, the cause and effect. We animate the still images. We create the illusion of time passing. Comics work because our brains do half the work without us even noticing. It’s one of those ideas that seems obvious once someone points it out.

Scott goes on to develop a whole pictorial vocabulary - a triangle with vertices of 'Reality' (where pictures represent the real world), 'Language' (where pictures communicate an idea), and the 'Picture Plane' (where pictures are just shapes). All visual storytelling - all comics - can be fitted into this triangle. It sounds like a complicated theory, but with McCloud's skill as writer and artist, he builds up the concepts step by step in a clear and concise way, so that even non-comics aficionados can follow it. He shows you how artists choose where to sit on that spectrum, how those choices shape tone and meaning, and how readers instinctively respond to them.

He then moves on to the evolution of Western and Eastern comics, the different relationships between text and image, the ways comics could expand beyond their current boundaries, and a dozen other topics that would feel overwhelming in prose but feel effortless here. He even dives into the psychology of reading - how our eyes move across a page, how we interpret symbols, how time is manipulated through panel size and arrangement. It’s the kind of thing where you don’t realise you’re learning because the teaching is so elegantly delivered.

And that’s the key - "Understanding Comics" isn’t just a book about comics. It’s a comic about how comics work. It’s the medium explaining itself from the inside. Before buying this book, I thought I knew all about comics - after all, I had been enjoying them almost from the time I learned to read. I thought I knew the conventions, the tricks - how to *read* comics. What I didn’t realise was what I was missing - the “invisible art” that is the sub-title to McCloud's opus.. I’m not exaggerating when I say it made me look at comics in a whole new light. Suddenly all the instincts I’d carried since childhood had names, shapes, and meanings.

He didn’t stop there. In 2000, McCloud published "Reinventing Comics", a book that was far more provocative than its predecessor. Whereas "Understanding Comics" was explanatory, its sequel was visionary. McCloud was trying to drag the medium into the future. He laid out twelve “revolutions” he believed comics needed to undergo, from creator rights to diversity to new distribution models. Some of his predictions were wildly ahead of their time, especially his idea that the internet would become a major platform for comics long before broadband made that remotely practical. 

And McCloud didn’t just theorise about the future - he actually tried to build it. Long before web comics became mainstream, he was experimenting with storytelling, arguing that digital space freed comics from the constraints of the printed page. He championed micropayments as a way for creators to earn a living online, years before Patreon or Ko‑fi made that idea commonplace. He toured giving lectures about the potential of online comics, envisioning a future where creators could publish directly to readers without corporate gatekeepers.

Ten years after the last print issue appeared, McCloud returned to his original characters in the form of "Zot! Online", a web comic continuation that embraced the possibilities of digital storytelling. The 440-panel story arc "Hearts And Minds" experimented with layout, pacing, and the freedom of the infinite canvas. It was like a homecoming and a reinvention at the same time -  the same characters, the same optimism, but now filtered through a creator who had spent a decade thinking deeply about what comics could become. Even now, when the internet has changed beyond recognition, his ideas from that experiment still feel fresh.

Then in 2006 he released his third book, "Making Comics". It’s the practical "how-to" book. It’s McCloud rolling up his sleeves and saying, “Right, here’s how you actually do this.” He breaks down character design, facial expressions, panel transitions, body language, world‑building, pacing - all the practical work that goes into making a comic feel alive.  It's not just the craft either. He talks about the ethics of it. About honesty in storytelling. About respecting the reader. About the responsibility that comes with shaping someone’s emotional experience through images and words. And he does it with the same clarity and generosity that made the first book so brilliant. 

After completing his trilogy, McCloud spent years travelling across the United States and Europe on lecture tours, speaking at universities, comic shops and tech conferences. He became a kind of roving ambassador for the medium - part evangelist, part educator, part futurist. And then, after years of talking about comics, he returned to making them physically. In 2015 he published "The Sculptor", his first major work of fiction in two decades. A 496‑page hardback graphic novel, it’s the story of David Smith, a struggling artist who makes a Faustian bargain  - he gains the power to sculpt anything he can imagine, but only has 200 days left to live. It's a meditation on art, mortality, ambition, love, and the cost of creation - and feels like the culmination of everything Scott had learned, taught, and theorised.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of "Understanding Comics". You can see its fingerprints in courses on graphic storytelling,  museum exhibitions, the rise of graphic novels, the explosion of web comics and independent creators. It changed the conversation. Decades later, it’s still the book people recommend to comics newcomers. For me, its legacy is more personal - it reminded me why I fell in love with comics in the first place. 

Even now all these years later, McCloud and the people he inspired are still innovating.  After all, as he says at the end of the book...

Honourable mentions:

• Myst - This one is for my wife, because she was the real addict in our house when it came to this famous graphical adventure. For nearly a decade it was the best‑selling PC game in the world - and it’s not hard to see why. Its combination of non‑linear storytelling, fiendish logic puzzles (the sort that demanded serious lateral thinking and a saint’s patience), and beautiful pre‑rendered landscapes captivated an entire generation of players. It was one of the first games that genuinely felt like a living, breathing world - quiet, mysterious, and utterly absorbing. It was totally different from everything else at the time. No enemies, no timers, no hand‑holding. Just you, a deserted island, and the need to explore every lever, book, and strange humming machine. As you explored at your own pace, you had to pay attention, think laterally and uncover that everything was part of some larger, hidden story. My wife spent untold hours exploring every corner. The sequels pushed the technology further, adding richer worlds and more interaction, but it’s the original that remains the real turning point.

• Cracker - Created by the always excellent Jimmy McGovern, "Fitz" is an alcoholic, chain smoking foul-mouthed mess. But Robbie Coltrane's Edward Fitzgerald is also a brilliant criminal psychologist whose ability to get into the mind of his suspects enables him to solve the most complex cases - even if the means are sometimes dubious and the fallout to his personal life is disastrous. It's a mesmerising award-winning turn from Coltrane, and the series turned the normal police procedural on it's head. It presented a side to criminal investigations that audiences had not seen before - dominated by a dangerously arrogant lead. In one episode, Fitz is so blinded by his own perceived intellectual infallibility that he even helps the polices extract a false confession from the wrong man. The supporting cast of flawed characters was second to none, with career high points from Christopher Eccleston, Geraldine Somerville and Lorcan Cranitch. McGovern was also not afraid to kill off his characters to show the consequences of the investigations - the death of DCI Bilborough at the end of series two was one of the most shocking and unexpected twists I'd seen on television, and it's effects reverberated through the remaining episodes. An undisputed classic.

• Demolition Man - Forget "Rocky" or "The Expendables". This is Sylvester Stallone's best action film by far. Not only that, it's incredibly funny too. Sly is the brilliantly named John Spartan, a maverick cop who, while in the pursuit of  the insane Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), inadvertently causes the death of all the hostages. Both men are convicted for the deaths and sentenced to a CryoPrison where they are frozen for decades. Thawed out in 2032 for a parole hearing, Phoenix escapes and goes on a rampage in a society so free of crime that it's police force has forgotten how to deal with physical violence. Here in the future, guns, alcohol, coffee and swearing are banned. Physical contact is discouraged and even going to to bathroom involves a mystifying process called "the three shells". But Lieutenant Huxley (Sandra Bullock) has an idea - unfreeze John Spartan to deal with the problem. "Set a maniac to catch a maniac...". What follows is not only an action blockbuster in the true 90s mold, but also a fish-out-of-water story - as Spartan tries to come to terms with  this brave new 'political-correctness-gone- mad' society, while trying to catch Phoenix  and figure out who is behind it all. It's an affectionate send up of the macho man genre, and all three leads deliver great performances, with Stallone finally showing that with the right script he can do comedy. As someone who grew up on the futuristic satire of "Judge Dredd", this film was  right up my street and I loved it from the first viewing. 

• The Book of Ultimate Truths -  Robert Rankin had been around since the early 80s, and I recall being lent a battered copy of his debut novel "The Antipope" at some point. The early follow up's in the increasingly mis-named "Brentford Trilogy" were pretty good fun, although they didn't make a huge impression on me, plus I wasn't really enamoured of the "Armageddon" series. But it was this first book starring Cornelius Murphy and more importantly the Guru's Guru - Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune - that kind of heralded Rankin's second coming and cemented his place as the "father of far-fetched fiction". He went on to create a string of over twenty novels, full of catchphrases, re-occurring characters, running gags and plots so convoluted they practically tied themselves in knots. Conspiracies, secret histories, cosmic nonsense, and the sort of logic that only makes sense if you’ve had a pint or two - it was all part of the charm. And of course, half the joy of Rankin is that he writes as though the universe is held together by a tradition, or an old charter, or something… or possibly by the transperambulation of pseudocosmic antimatter. Hard to say, really.

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The best "Star Trek" series to date (I know, some of you will violently disagree). For me, it’s because 'DS9' threw out the old “wandering around the galaxy in a starship” formula and planted everyone on a fixed station where the characters couldn't run away from their problems. They had to live with the consequences - political, personal and moral - and that alone made it feel different from anything Trek had done before. The first couple of seasons are the show still finding its feet, but once the Dominion arrive and the war begins, 'DS9' is firing on all cylinders. Suddenly nothing is black or white. Characters change, compromise, backslide, and mature in ways that feels genuinely earned. Actions have weight. Decisions matter. And the writers were not afraid to let the Federation look flawed, frightened, or even wrong. Outside of the main arc, the show delivered some of Trek’s finest standalone episodes. The socially and racially charged "Far Beyond the Stars" remains one of the franchise’s boldest hours, while the 30th‑anniversary celebration "Trials and Tribble‑ations" is pure joy. As much as I like "The Next Generation" (and I’ve seen those episodes more times than I can count), for a long time "Deep Space Nine" was the only Trek series I owned on physical media. That probably tells you everything about what it means to me.

We're All Stories In The End 21 - Dreamstone Moon

Oh dear...

Dreamstone Moon by Paul Leonard

Eighth Doctor Adventures number: 11

Originally published: May 1998

Companions: Sam

Sam is on her own, but her distance from the Doctor doesn't make for a trouble-free life. Rescued from an out-of-control spaceship, she finds herself on a tiny moon which is the only known source of dreamstone, a mysterious crystalline substance that can preserve your dreams — or give you nightmares.

Pitched into the middle of a conflict between the mining company extracting dreamstone and ecological protesters, Sam thinks it's easy to decide who the good guys are — until people start dying, and the killers seem to be the same species as some of her new friends.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has tracked Sam down, but before he can reach her he's co-opted by the Dreamstone Mining Company and their sinister military advisers. Suddenly, it's war — and the Doctor is forced to fight against what he believes in. He alone suspects that dreamstone isn't what it appears to be. But nobody's listening — and nobody could dream who the real enemy is...

So it was bound to happen sooner or later.

All these Doctor Who novels - all these stories and ideas of ways to expand the universe of our favourite Timelord. All these reviews. And I've finally come to a book that I found so dull, unengaging and even tedious - that I actually contemplated not finishing it.

Yes sorry Paul Leonard, but "Dreamstone Moon" is that book.

It didn't bode well when I realised that this was a novel that spent most of its time with Sam - the blandest of bland companions. Books revolving around the companions do work - after all Bernice Summerfield developed into a much loved character with novel and audio series in her own right. So maybe this would give Sam some much-needed character development then ? 

But no -  when the main focus becomes less interesting than the supporting cast, you know you're in trouble

And they genuinely are the most interesting thing in the whole novel - although that's not saying much.

Tentacled Krakenites, Spider-like Arachnons, wasp-striped Zmm-Zmms, Anton's cat girlfriend  - they're all fine examples of the kind of alien species we've come to expect in Doctor Who, even if they all only have a couple of character traits and none of them really do very much. Apart from Aloisse - who seems to constantly rescue Sam - the rest are mainly fodder for the monster, but hey, it's worldbuilding of a sort.

It's still better than the humans. Anton, Cleomides, whoever else there was (I can't even remember their names now) are just puppets for whichever way the plot decides to turn - their motivations wandering all over the place.

Oh yes - there is a plot. But its one we've seen a hundred times before. People going up against the evil corporations and sticking it to the man. Monsters in the tunnels. Creatures dying. Aliens are not to be trusted. Mining is bad. 

Nothing wrong with a message - but guess what - the planet being mined is alive ! Really ? That old chestnut ? And the dreamstones themselves could have been an interesting way to explore the characters minds - but no, they're actually part of a big space brain. 

There was potential, but it was just wasted.

Instead, it's endless scenes of Sam falling into one disaster after another. In quick succession she is nearly killed when an Earth ship tries to blow up the dreamstone cavern, but is rescued and taken to a hospital ship. This is then destroyed by marines, so she takes shelter in a medical pod, which is ejected from the ship when the hull is breached. And so on and so on...

All I wanted was for the Doctor to show up and save *me* from this tedium.

By the third or fourth  "Oh no, the Doctor's dead - he's definitely dead this time. I'm so sad, how can I go on - wait, no actually he's alive. I'm so happy" - I wanted to throw the book across the room. I think at one point his "death" and recovery even happen on the same page.

And the multiple times where Sam and the Doctor almost reunite, but just barely miss each other, was laughable - except that I don’t think it was intended as joke. 

Eventually, the Doctor is around enough to affect the outcome of the plot. But - twist - the planet isn’t intelligent at all, it's all Anton's fault for infecting it with his misery. So what does the Doctor do? He convinces the poor guy that the danger is past, and - Anton dreams himself to death ! Sorry - what? 

All that and Sam's still AWOL - after more whining about how she's embarrassed and ashamed.

Sigh.

Look, apologies for the grumpiness of this review. Maybe it was the wrong week for me to read this particular novel, although I'm not sure another time would have really improved my opinion of it.

I've not read any of Paul Leonard's other works as yet - so those might be amazing and up there with the best of the best - but based on the strength of this novel, I'm not in any rush to get there.

Verdict? Utterly forgettable.