Friday, June 3, 2011

Forgotten Coloring Books: The Shadow and The Lone Ranger


Here's some great summer reading for those of us with short attention spans. The Shadow Coloring Book, from 1974, features art by Tony Tallarico (of whom I've never heard) and features two complete stories, told in full page colorable pictures with captions. In the first tale, The Shadow foils a museum robbery, and in the second he catches some jewel thieves. 


To make sure you get your money's worth from this post, we offer two uncolored pages. It is highly recommended that you print them out before coloring, but if you prefer to apply your crayons directly to your computer monitor, hey, go for the gusto. 


The Lone Ranger Color Book, copyright 1954 but no doubt reprinted in the 70s, is somewhat less cool. The uncredited artwork is less distinguished, the publisher was cheap in applying the ink, and the pages are just random drawings. Despite the subtitle "A Western Adventure," there is no story here.


Forgotten Books are brought to you each week by Patti Abbott at pattinase

13 comments:

Deka Black said...

Colouring The Shadow, unless you're colourblind must be... too easy!

pattinase (abbott) said...

It never occurred to me they made coloring books from this material.

Richard Prosch said...

Cool coloring book. There was quite the Shadow nostalgia in the early to mid-'70s. I remember nicely packaged cassettes of the OTR shows showing up in our drug store around 1977. The DC comic was a few years earlier, around the same time as this coloring book. Cool stuff.

Evan Lewis said...

Yeah, that series of Pyramid reprints with Steranko covers was in full swing, too. And I, of course, was a member of The Shadow's Secret Society.

George said...

I actually had that LONE RANGER coloring book when I was a kid! Boy, does that bring back a lot of memories!

J F Norris said...

Do coloring books even exist anymore? What would be the subject matter today? Justin Bieber? American Idol contestants? Probably Disney still licenses their empire to some publisher of coloring books.

Way back when I had some Planet of the Apes coloring books that transformed into rather lurid and gruesome primitive art once I attacked them with a box of Crayolas.

Todd Mason said...

It is an option available to the colorist, which colors to add to Cranston's laughter in the one panel above, or how gory to leave the apes in John's example...

Todd Mason said...

Dover, probably still, keeps a remarkable line of coloring books in print, dealing with all sorts of subject matter.

Anonymous said...

The last coloring book I saw for sale was a Smurfs one, but I'll bet there are ones for whatever Saturday morning cartoons are popular, and The Simpsons too.

Cap'n Bob said...

Tony Tallirico was a Marvel artist, usually of marginal titles. I'm sure he had many other credits. I'm sure they still make coloring books today. I haven't looked since the girls were little, though.

Yvette said...

Coloring books. Love 'em. Well, not now exactly, but way back when. I had tons of 'em when I was a kid. I hope they do still exist for my granddaughter's sake. My favorite thing to do is - if anyone tells you to stay within the lines - immediately do the opposite. Teachers do a lot of damage by insisting that kids stay within the lines.

I love the cover of The Shadow book. That cape. :)

Oscar Case said...

This raised my curiosity so I went thru my great-grandsons' coloring book drawer that we keep for them for babysitting. Of course, neither of these were in there, but there was a Spiderman activity book with stickers and rub-offs. All that was left was the cover.

Tom Johnson said...

I still have The Shadow coloring book. Darn, wish I'd bought the Lone Ranger too. Love the artwork on that one! I never colored in my copy of The Shadow, don't know why.