Using Hell's methods for Heaven's ends, The Shadow created both the moral avenger and the bloodthirsty vigilante at once.
Invented as the unsettling announcer of radio detective shows in 1930, he found form in the pulp mags written by Maxwell Grant (Walter Gibson) in 1933: an unnerving anti-hero cloaked in darkness, exultantly destroying cabals and sinners like an arch-devil. He found his voice in young Orson Welles, and his startling appearance in the cover paintings of George and Jerome Rozen. He emerged more ruthless and chilling in the 1973 DC Comics of Denny O'Neill and Michael Wm. Kaluta, the latter considered by many as the quintessential Shadow illustrator.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." He comes for the darkness because he is from it, but at what point is the hero as bad as the villain? From him, comics gleaned the uncanny moral avenger archetype: The Batman, The Spectre, Ghost Rider, The Phantom Stranger, The Demon, Raimi's Darkman, Ghost, Lady Death, Moore's V, and Ellis' The Spider. But conversely, comics also ran amok with its shade, the remorseless assasin: The Punisher, Elektra, Judge Dredd, The Vigilante, Deathstroke, Lobo, The Comedian, Cable, Deadpool, Spawn, and Magog. The dividing line is conscience and ethics.
Though oft maligned, the 1994 film attempts to preserve all the better aspects of the Gibson's pulps and DC's comics, to generally decent effect. In truth, the film needed to be R-rated and intensified to ring true, with less self-conscious humor and more surreal edge. Sensing this, Michael Kaluta improved on this tremendously in his adaption of the film for Dark Horse Comics.
