Existential Friday: MEMENTO MORI & The Shadow

Click image to see enlargement to see all three faces clearly.

Once again dear readers we bring you another Existential Friday. This week’s episode entitled, Memento Mori & The Shadow is brought to by Synchronicity and Memories of Childhood.  This week’s episode begins as usual with your host, messing about on his computer with a variety of photographs, textures, and cascade of ideas & multiple associations. From Antique Angels came a bit of a surprise. An image that resembled the Angel of Death  sort of, um a  little, well  a bit of stretch. Potential was there, but it required work .

Your host began considering what to call, what could possibly be a series of images. How about Memento Mori – a Latin phrase translated as “Remember your mortality”.  Well this blog content stuff can consume you and sometimes you take a break and visit your fellow bloggers to see their latest endeavors . So off your host went to see Syncopated Eyeball and the newest post waiting to greet him was, Drive Safely filed under, ….. Memento Mori.  Hello Synchronicity!

Now, this sign from the digital universal unconsciousness gave me encouragement that the idea wasn’t dead before it started, but something was missing.  Well it just so happened that there was an announcement this week and some advertising to stir up buzz for the new comic version of that great Pulp Magazine and Golden Age Radio man of mystery, The Shadow.  Dynamite Comics were launching a new series of The Shadow.

Now for those of you who are too young  or poorly informed on certain areas of Mass Media cultural history, There is no fictional character to better convey the concept of Memento Mori and a sense of existential choice than The Shadow.

As to our other sponsor, Memories of Childhood, I had the fortune of having slightly older parents than most of my peers. They told me about the growing up in the Golden Age of Radio, when the theatre of the mind was home & family  entertainment.  I knew all about The Shadow, Lights Out and the Martian Invasion and when in the mid-1960’s there was a revival broadcast  of sorts of the old radio dramas  I was ready.

Note: There may be more than three face in my piece, if so they are further signs of synchronicity or The Shadow.

For more information about Pulp Magazines , The Shadow, and Mass Media cultural history see  my post Superheroes Part 1:”It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s A Target Audience !”  from Media Literacy blog and  my Pulp Heroes Resource Page for Media Literacy Students.

For other explorations of Pulp Magazines on this blog just click the pulp link in the cloud tag. You may wish to start with, Doc WordPress vs. The Phantom Referrers ! .