It took nearly eight and a half years, with a total of more than one hundred and seventy novels, for The Shadow to meet up with Shiwan Khan, the Golden Master, yet that confrontation was inevitable almost from the start. To appreciate this, it is necessary to review the saga of The Shadow, which began and ended as an unfinished story, running a total of more than fifteen million words which carried it into its twentieth year before it suddenly ceased publication although further adventures were still in the offing. That marks the conflict between The Shadow and Shiwan Khan as a definite peak in the series.

The factor that rendered The Shadow series decidedly unique was that it opened with only the semblance of a plot; not just as a single story, but as one of four. Henry W. Ralston, general manager of Street & Smith Publications, had decided to produce a new magazine featuring a character to be called The Shadow, which required at least four issues to establish it as a regular periodical on a quarterly basis. To get it under way as soon as possible, Ralston instructed Frank Blackwell, the editorial director, to have someone update a leftover dime novel on a rewrite basis.

This confronted Blackwell with two dilemmas. None of his regular writers was anxious to take on a rewrite assignment; and since The Shadow was to be more of a mystery figure than a stylized private detective, the job itself raised too many complications. But I had already been thinking in terms of a mysterious character who would become a controlling force in the affairs of lesser humans, so I was naturally intrigued when he asked me if I would like to take on The Shadow. That offered the prospect of developing the character in the course of the story itself, and when Blackwell agreed that if the first story proved acceptable, I would get the order for the other three, that meant that the process could be continued right on through.