The Shadow vs The Spider (The fight will focus on the pulps)

 

This fight is by Baron Karza. Check out his stuff here!

 

You know, I find it a little sad that there aren’t that many pulp fiction matchups floating around. Like you got Conan vs Tarzan but not much else. You don’t see anything for captain future and the Shadow, despite being one of the most influential characters in the American Mythos, doesn’t get talked about most of the time. So why not spread some ideas ey?…okay, I know this is technically another spider man vs batman match up but bare with me there more to this.

 

Connections(this is using the pulp versions not movies or comics)

Both are millionaire philanthropists turned gun toting vigilantes. 

Both have similar costumes(Though the spider changed his costume over the course of the pulps)

Both are world war 1 veterans

Both are master’s of disguise and use their talent to gain intel on the police and criminal activity

Both have a habit of either torturing or carefully manufacturing situations to kill their enemies. For example, there was that time the shadow used a cultist’s brainwashing red room against him and that time the spider let one of his enemies get raped to death by an orangutan (don’t ask)

Both were highly popular character in the 1930s, with the shadow being  the most popular character in pulps magazines and the spider being third (the honor of second goes to the shadow’s pal doc savage)

Both were major inspirations for today’s most popular superheroes. Batman’s first several stories blatantly plagiarized the shadow, and Moonknight borrowed the idea of having several agents working under him from the shadow. Spiderman did take some inspiration from the spider, having a similar costume.

 

Animation

 

Okay right from the get go, this fight is pretty unique, it has a 1930s aesthetic and I don’t think any death battle has something like that. Also both fighters are mostly normal humans and we don’t have a lot of fights like that. 

 

Set-Up

 

This one is one of my favorite ideas. It could start with a bunch of crooks playing cards while “The Shadow” plays on the radio. They start discussing about the presence of a new vigilante that’s been terrorizing the streets. That’s when vigilante’s appear and gun ‘em down. After that, the characters lock eyes and start the fight. 

 

Actual Animation

 

I think the fight should be a bit like Snake vs Sam Fisher. Both characters use a combination of stealth and gunplay to get the better of each other. There could be one moment where the shadow uses the radio playing his show to trick the Spider. When the fight turns to melee, the spider could try to catch the shadow off guard with the gun built into his shoe.

 

Banter

 

I’m gonna admit, I’m not well versed on the character’s personalities, so I don’t know how the dialogue between the fight would go, so sorry.

 

Music 

 

I think the music should have a very noir feel to it. The closest thing to something like that in a death battle is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_KNID7byDY 

 

Who Would Win

 

Now like I said, I’m not the most well versed on both of these characters, but going off of what I know, the spider wins. The Shadow mostly fought against eccentric gangsters, while the spider basically fought batman villain, the there’s fact that the spider has a freaking gun in his shoe which could easily catch the Shadow off guard.

 

Conclusion

 

I think this is a cool match up, it brings to highly influential character back in the spotlight and provides a battle we a type of fight we don’t see often.

 

Otto’s Comments

 

Oh, what a fight! This one appeals to my pulp sensibilities. Making it early Shadow vs the Spider makes it very interesting. In the Orson Welles radio adaptation, the Shadow developed his signature ability to cloud men’s minds, meaning he could make himself invisible and in some cases read minds and hypnotize his foes like Dracula. But in the original stories the Shadow was just very sneaky, like Batman, and didn’t have any telepathic powers. The ability to cloud men’s minds was added to the character because radio shows were dialog driven. Everything was conveyed through characters speaking, a narrator typically didn’t get involved during scenes. So for scenes in which the Shadow would have to confront bad guys, they had to have him talk, and talk a lot…while remaining hidden, and often in very small rooms. The solution was to give the Shadow the ability to turn invisible, and eventually this telepathic power was applied to the pulps similar to how Superman first flew in the Fleisher cartoons and then the power was applied to the comics.

 

With the ability to cloud the Spider’s mind, the Shadow wins handily, but without that ability things get much more interesting. I haven’t read enough of either to come to a definite answer, but like Karza I do lean toward the Spider. I think he would be the more surprising adversary not only because of his hidden shoe gun (who would see that coming?) but because he was quite skilled with throwing knives IIRC. I don’t think the Shadow used any hand-to-hand weapons, so the Spider would have an edge if the fight got up close.

 

And here’s the clincher–the Spider has a silent gun that shoots compressed air. In a fire fight, the Shadow’s shots are going to give his position away from sound and muzzle flash while the Spider remains completely cloaked and hidden.

 

Under these constraints, I give the win to the Spider, but he wouldn’t mark the Shadow’s head with his ring as a sign of respect.

 

By the way, for music I would take cues from The Rocketeer. I see the fight starting as sounding like this and ending up sounding like this towards the end. It should sound very Danny Elfman because both characters are proto-Batmen.

 

For banter, they start the fight by making incredibly cool boasts and then start laughing like maniacs as they exchange gunfire.

 

(By the way, check out the Shadow episode I linked. Orson is so good! “I’ve been called fear. Conscience. Remorse. But I am best known to your kind as the Shadow.”)