Publication History
Shadowman debuted in 1992 as a flagship title in the Valiant Universe and quickly became one of the industry’s most popular comic books. After just one year in publication, Shadowman was selling over 100,000 comics books a month. By its second year, Shadowman was outselling long-standing industry stalwarts from Marvel Comics and DC Comics including Batman, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Ghost Rider, and even the Justice League of America.
Shadowman continued strongly with sales in the hundreds of thousands of books per month (ultimately selling more than 5 million copies altogether) until 1996 when Acclaim Entertainment, which bought Valiant for $65 million, started a new Shadowman series under the Acclaim Comics banner. Acclaim focused on adapting Shadowman for video games. In preparation for the leap to video games a new more action oriented Shadowman took up the mask in comics. The second series of comics (spelled Shadow Man) featured the iteration of Shadowman that would gain huge popularity in the successful Shadow Man video game franchise.
In 1999, Shadow Man was released on the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PC formats to a tremendous critical and commercial response. The game is one of the video game industry’s most acclaimed, garnering a rating of 9.1/10 on the prestigious IGN website. Acclaim launched a third Shadowman comic book series in conjunction with the highly anticipated sequel to the first Shadow Man video game. The sequel entitled Shadow Man: 2econd Coming was a hit and a third game in the series began development. The sequel, Shadow Man: 2econd Coming was released in 2002 as a PlayStation 2 exclusive. In all the Shadow Man franchise has sold over 2 million copies and grossed close to 100 million dollars in revenues making it one of Acclaim's greatest success stories. The series proved so popular that Nintendo released a special Shadow Man themed limited edition N64 console that has become a sought after collectible. In 2006, a campaign was begun by fans to make the Shadow Man series of games available for download on the Nintendo Wii system.
A tremendous roster of legendary creators have worked on Shadowman characters and storylines including current Marvel Comics Editor-in Chief Joe Quesada, former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, Sin City co-director Frank Miller, Garth Ennis, Rob Liefeld, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jamie Delano, Steve Ditko, David Lapham, Rags Morales, Fabian Nicieza, Jim Starlin, Bob Layton, Jimmy Palmiotti, Walt Simonson and Ashley Wood among many others.
Over 80 Shadowman comics have been published to date, selling more than 5 million copies. Shadowman also guest starred in a number of Valiant comics, most notably Unity and Unity 2000. Acclaim shut down all comic book publishing in 2002 in anticipation of a bankruptcy filing of its parent company after suffering heavy losses from its licensed sports video games. Valiant Entertainment are the current owners of the Valiant catalog.
Shadowman has had his likeness transferred to many other mediums in addition to comic books and video games including trading cards, posters, apparel, jewelry, lithographs, high end collectibles and more.
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