What's the connection between The Shadow and the first ever Batman story? Find out when Nostalgia Ventures' ninth volume of The Shadow, part of its classic pulp reprint series, hits stands later this year.

Batman co-creator Bill Finger once confessed that his "first script was a take-off on a Shadow story." Partners of Peril, a novel by Theodore Tinsley first published in a 1936 issue of The Shadow Magazine, contains the story in question and will be reprinted in The Shadow #9.

Nostalgia Ventures' The Shadow Volume 9 also reprints Lingo, Walter Gibson's 1935 novel that introduced the forerunner of the Batarang, and Tinsley's 1937 novelette, The Grim Joker, which featured a white-faced crime clown. The Grim Joker was published in The Shadow's sister magazine The Whisperer, whose hero's secret identity was Police Commissioner James Gordon. The 144-page trade paperback also reprints the original cover art by George Rozen, all the interior illustrations by Tom Lovell and new historical articles on the Batman-Shadow connection.

A tenth volume of Nostalgia Ventures' Shadow reprint series will feature a foreword by Harlan Ellison and Alfred Bester's The Immortal Villain, a 1944 Shadow radio script that reworked his earlier Vandal Savage story from Green Lantern Comics #10. Continuing themes from the historic "Foreshadowing the Batman" volume, The Shadow #10 focuses on the origin of supervillains, reprinting The City of Doom (the second Voodoo Master story) and The Fifth Face (featuring a master of disguise called Five-face).

The Shadow #9 and 10 are available for retail and wholesale orders from Diamond Comics Distributors and Sanctum Productions (210-679-8556) or orders@shadowsanctum.com.